The House met at 2:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

o o o

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Environments and Lands.

MR. SIMMS: A point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Opposition House Leader on a point of order.

MR. SIMMS: I wonder if we could get some agreement on the clock process. The electronic one is not working. As a matter of fact it is totally screwed up. That one says l:05 and this one says 1:57. It is hard enough to operate in here without not having access to a clock. This one down here is an hour late or an hour slow, so perhaps we should have some understanding, or agreement, as to which one we use. We need to have some kind of an agreement as to which one we are going to use.

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

MR. BAKER: I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that we use both that one and that one, and add one hour. Then I think we will have two in agreement.

MR. SPEAKER: Back to Statements by Ministers.

The hon. the Minister of Environment and Lands.

MR. KELLAND: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Government has approved a request from Corner Brook Pulp and Paper Limited for a one year extension to the completion date for their new bark fired boiler. Reduced cash flow resulting from the modernization program as well as the current recession and general downturn in the newsprint market has forced this delay.

Work on the bark fired boiler will continue, though at a reduced rate. Planned completion date is June 30, 1993, a one year delay from that specified in the PUT agreement. Other air quality improvement programs will continue as scheduled.

Improvement in the Acid Tower were completed well before the December 31, 1990 target date, resulting in greatly reduced sulphur dioxide emissions. In addition, the rebuilding of numbers 3 and 6 oil-fired boilers is on schedule for completion by December 31, 1991. The result should be a significant reduction in oily soot deposits.

To ensure that the delay in the completion of the bark fired boiler has minimal impacts on the air quality of Corner Brook, Corner Brook Pulp and Paper will undertake the following: (1) Bark Burning will be further reduced in the Summer months so as to minimize particulate carry over. This action will take effect this year. (2) The Company will install an Infrasound combustion system on one existing bark fired boiler to be operational by this Summer. Testwork by other companies has indicated a potential for significant reductions in particulate emissions when using this unit. Once proven successful, the company will also purchase a second unit for the second existing bark fired boiler.

Mr. Speaker, Government will continue to monitor the work at Corner Brook Pulp and Paper Company and to work together with the company and Environment Canada for a cleaner environment in the Corner Brook area.

In the meantime an amendment to the PUT agreement will be required and details regarding this will be tabled in the House at the appropriate time.

Thank you.

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

MR. PARSONS: I want to thank the Minister first of all for a copy of his statement well in advance. I can see from the first of his statement that I think we all agree there is a turndown in the paper industry and I suppose Kruger is no exception.

But with that said, Mr. Speaker, I want to say to the House that I think there was legislation passed last spring for guaranteeing Kruger borrowing for this project. And I think this is the third time that there has been an extension given. How can the people trust Government when they have already given them this third extension? Also, Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out that I am not sure what relevance it has, but the Minister of Justice announced an increase of a grant to the City of Corner Brook, the Council, of $200,000 from Kruger. The Minister of Justice announced it.

So I hope, Mr. Speaker, that there is no hanky-panky going on here. And I hope that the people of Corner Brook, who did not have any input into this decision, by the way, the people in Corner Brook who do have a lot of this old flying ash problem which is doing damage to their property, and the environment itself is certainly endangered by this. I also know that Kruger, although reneging on spending, I think approximately $45 million, they will spend approximately $10 million this year and I suppose you would have to say that is a plus. They are not going to renege completely in spending that $10 million. But I want to point out to Government that because the legislation was brought through last year the borrowing for this project should have been no problem for that company. And, Mr. Speaker, I hope that this will be the last extension. I mean the people of Corner Brook just could not absorb something like this happening again.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time is up.

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Any further Statements By Ministers?

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

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, from news reports it appears that the Board of Regents at the university may be reconsidering its decision to cut extension services. Now I know that the Government has said that it cannot tell the university what to do, but I would like to ask the Premier if he would agree to contact the Chairman of the Board of Regents and the President of the university and advise them that the Government supports the continuation of extension services, and would he use moral suasion if nothing else to try to persuade the university to change its mind, in view of his own statement to the House of Assembly on March 28th when he said, and I quote, 'I could only wish that MUN extension was not cut out.'

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, I do not know whether what the hon. Opposition House Leader says is correct or not; whether the university is considering - I heard it now from him for the first time. Whether or not there is any substance to it, I have no way of knowing, but let me just repeat what the Government's position is in terms of the running of the university. What the university does in running the university and what it gives priority to, within reason, has to be the university's decision. It will be a sad day, Mr. Speaker, when the Government of this Province starts to run the university directly in that way and we have no intention of doing such a thing, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. SIMMS: Perhaps I did not make myself clear, Mr. Speaker. I would like to phrase the question in perhaps a more simple way. I did not ask the Government. I indicated in my preamble that I know the Government says it cannot tell the university what to do. What I am asking is if the Premier would agree to contact the Chairman of the Board of Regents and the President of the university to use some moral suasion to ask him to continue MUN extension and to indicate that the Government supports the continuation of MUN Extension, which both he and the Minister of Education have repeated in this House time and time again.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, the Government would be pleased to see MUN Extension continued, but what do we tell the university to cut out if we tell them to continue MUN Extension? Now the Government is not going to place itself in that position where we will have to tell the university to cut out MUN Extension or put back MUN Extension, or so much of it, and cut something else. The university is going to make its own decision in that regard.

Now if we were to do what the hon. Opposition House Leader asked we would have to do one of two other things, either tell the university what else to cut out in place of MUN Extension or otherwise provide the university with more money, and the Government does not have more money to give to the university at this stage.

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

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary for the Minister of Education, perhaps taking up the challenge issued by the Premier. My supplementary to the Minister of Education, who should know the answer to this question: can he tell us the annual costs of operating the Harlow campus, and can he also tell us what the dollar value of the campus is?

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

DR. WARREN: No, Mr. Speaker, I cannot provide that information but I will get it and supply it to the House, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, would he agree with the statements made in the newspaper over the weekend by somebody from the university who indicated the annual cost of Harlow Campus is approximately $300,000 a year?

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

DR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, I did not see the article in the paper, but I will get the information from the Board of Regents and provide it for the hon. Member.

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

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, when the hon. Minister gets the information I am sure he will confirm that it costs several hundreds of thousands of dollars. I am sure he will confirm that and he does so now. Now I would like to ask him, would he not agree that it would be a far better use of the scarce resources available to spend that money in rural Newfoundland and not in rural England. Would that not be a better use of that money?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

DR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding that the students who go to Harlow are students from all over Newfoundland and Labrador. I do not think it is used as he indicated, I think Newfoundland students are the ones who benefit from Harlow. No, Mr. Speaker, we understand that the university looked at all the options and I am sure it looked at the option of abolishing or terminating the Harlow programme as one of the options and they made their decision. Mr. Speaker, we have to leave these decisions to Memorial University.

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

MR. POWER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the President of Treasury Board. Last May the Minister stood in this House and proudly announced a two year agreement with nurses who had an overall wage increase in excess of 23 per cent. When the Minister was here gloating about his wonderful negotiating skills he made reference to the fact that this settlement, and I quote him. `recognizes that nurses are a special case in this current labour market. It also recognizes the value of the contribution made by this group of professionals in providing quality service in the health care field'.

Could the Minister explain to this House why he felt last May that nurses were a special case in the current labour market? Are nurses still a special case? And in particular, are nurses going to be exempted from section 8 of Bill 16, so that when this freeze period is over they will be able to have some catch-up to get what are supposed to be their just rewards for the job they do?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the President of Treasury Board.

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The hon. Member opposite obviously does not understand what has happened in the last year in this Province and in this country. He does not understand, so let me remind him. First of all, expected revenues have fallen from two sources. From Federal sources as well as from the revenue from economic activity within the country and within the Province, our revenues have fallen, and also because members opposite when they were in Government pushed us to the absolute limit of our borrowing and ran us out of credit in the world markets. Those two things combined mean that we do not now have the money to spend.

If I had a couple of hundred million dollars of my own I might be tempted to throw it in the pot. But there is no money. Things have changed in the last year; we do not have the revenue, we cannot make the expenditure. Does the hon. gentleman understand that?

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

MR. POWER: Mr. Speaker, I am not in one of the Minister's former biology classes. I do understand what happens in the Province. I do understand that the Minister said last year that nurses were a special case. What happened in this Province affected everyone. Now are nurses still a special case? And if they are a special case, are they going to receive special treatment so that they do not have to pay twice for what has happened in this Province over the last couple of years? That is all I am asking the Minister.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the President of Treasury Board.

MR. BAKER: Mr. Speaker, I suppose we could say everybody is a special case. The nurses certainly were at the time and received substantial increases because of that. And the hon. Member for Humber East can laugh all she wants but she can not dispute the facts of the case.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the hon. Member is still -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

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

MR. BAKER: The hon. Member -

MR. POWER: (Inaudible).

MR. MURPHY: Go on, you are a hypocrite.

MR. BAKER: The hon. Member is still -

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

The Chair heard the word "hypocrite" but the Chair did not know where it came from.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

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

MR. MURPHY: I will gladly retract that statement, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the President of Treasury Board.

MR. BAKER: The hon. gentleman opposite is still assuming that somewhere there is oodles of money and that we are simply making choices. I will say to the hon. gentleman that in terms of the wage freeze we have imposed for one year, everybody in the public service of this Province is being treated equally; the same thing is being done for everybody. That is the only way you can do something like this. It has to be done fairly and equally across the whole spectrum.

The unions have a choice in this legislation, as the hon. Member knows if he has read the legislation. They have a choice, and the amounts that were in this particular year, the contracts for this particular year can be moved one year ahead. This is the choice all unions have, and in that way everybody will be treated fairly.

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

MR. POWER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My final supplementary. I am asking the Minister a very simple question. If something was unfair last Spring and new legislation, Bill 16, is being implemented to make some changes, will the Minister agree that if something was unfair, that there was a certain group of persons in this Province, our nurses, who were being discriminated against, who have been treated unfairly and who, in his words, were a special case, will he agree that in the next series of negotiations with the nurses union, that the nurses union may be exempt from section 8 of Bill 16 which prevents them from ever being allowed to be treated fairly in this Province? That is all I am asking the Minister.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the President of Treasury Board.

MR. BAKER: Mr. Speaker, the nurses already have received three of the four increases negotiated. Those three increases were substantial and went a long way to correct the imbalance that existed in this Province in terms of the way that nurses were paid; it went a long way to correct the imbalance between Newfoundland and the Maritime Provinces; it went a long way to correct that imbalance which was caused by Members opposite turning a blind eye to the problems of nurses in this Province. Mr. Speaker, what hypocrisy for the Member to get up and say what he is now saying.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Grand Bank.

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question for the Minister of Finance. Could the Minister inform the House what the total estimated salary savings for the fiscal year 1991-92 from the lay off of public sector employees will be? And how much will the Government pay out this fiscal year in severance and redundancy pensions?

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

DR. KITCHEN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would gladly table that information, but the figures are not final as yet.

AN HON. MEMBER: What?

DR. KITCHEN: No, the redundancies have not all been made up. This is a continuing process. When the information is finalized, Mr. Speaker, which will probably be mid-summer, then we will table it.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Grand Bank.

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It seems to be another case of what we saw last year, where the Minister came here and delivered a budget calling for $10 million surplus and got $250 million deficit. Now he is laying off 3,000 or 4,000 public employees and does not know what he is going to save or what the redundancy pensions or severance is going to be. Let me ask the Minister if he can tell the House how much Government will save this fiscal year as a result of the rollback in public sector wages?

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

DR. KITCHEN: Mr. Speaker, I can only answer in rough terms because, again, all the individuals are not identified. But the total approximate savings with respect to the lack of pay equity and the freeze is about $50-odd million dollars.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Grand Bank.

MR. MATTHEWS: Completely incredible, Mr. Speaker, that Government could make such drastic, drastic decisions affecting thousands of people in this Province and not know what the bottom line figure will be to this Province. I think it was the President of Treasury Board who said a few days ago that before the Budget decisions were made, Government was looking at a deficit of $200 million or $215 million in 1991-1992, I think he said, and $300 million in the fiscal year 1992-1993.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who said that?

MR. MATTHEWS: The President of Treasury Board said that.

I would like to ask the Minister of Finance how much did net salary savings contribute to the deficit reduction this year, and how much will Government save from those measures next year?

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

DR. KITCHEN: I will have to take that under advisement, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. RIDEOUT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The House is no doubt aware that a Provincial acute care bed study just a few years ago recommended that the M J Boylen Hospital in Baie Verte have its acute care beds reduced from thirty-one to twenty-five, a reduction of six beds. Now the Government intends to close it entirely as an acute care centre and convert it to a chronic care centre with three or four holding beds. The professionals on the Baie Verte Peninsula are telling us that the residents of that peninsula will be the most poorly served in the Province when it comes to an acute care centre. I want to ask the Minister of Health how can he explain how the health care needs of the Baie Verte Peninsula will be met under this kind of plan that was announced in the Budget?

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

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, I do not think the hon. Member has his facts absolutely right about the four or five holding beds. During this year the Government will be working very closely with the hospital board out there to change that facility into a chronic care facility where there is a proven need. However, there is adequate provision made to provide the acute care beds in the Baie Verte area, just as there was last year and the year before. There is no big difference in the number of acute care beds.

The hon. Member talked about the twenty-five beds which were in use last year, the twenty beds, whatever it was. The fact is that hospital has been operating at about 35 per cent to 40 per cent utilization over the past number of years.

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

MR. RIDEOUT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well that is going to be a very comforting answer to the sick on the Baie Verte Peninsula. Let me ask the Minister this: Is not the Minister aware that residents of the Baie Verte Peninsula have well in excess of three hours on most occasions to get to an acute care facility in Corner Brook or two and a half hours in Grand Falls? Is not the Minister aware of the geography of that part of the Province and that there are going to be people severely hurt from a health prospective because of the decision imposed on them by this Government?

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

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, I am very much aware of the geography of that particular part of the Province, however, I am not aware that we are heightening the chances of anyone suffering extremely because of that. The fact is the delivery of health care has changed in this Province; usage itself has shown that the trends have changed;

MS. VERGE: People's needs have not changed!

MR. DECKER: The hon. Member says people's needs have not changed. Mr. Speaker, the way these needs are treated has changed drastically in medical science over the past number of years. It is too bad the previous administration did not recognize that and left us with a totally unstructured health care system which went off in 110 different directions with no general plan whereby one had a part. It is too bad that happened. And as my good friend Peter Fenwick pointed out yesterday, Mr. Speaker, I have more, I believe he said `guts', than the whole Tory Government put together. I concur with his opinion.

MR. MATTHEWS: You have more guts than sense.

MR. SIMMS: Do you concur with what he said about -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. MATTHEWS: And more space between your ears.

MR. RIDEOUT: Mr. Speaker, we will see what guts the Minister of Health has and other Ministers over there, when they have to face the people of this Province when something dramatic happens to them under the guise of this restructured health care system. We will see the Minister's guts then, Mr. Speaker. There is not one over there who has guts enough to go out and face the demonstrators and speak to them, whether it is in Baie Verte or St. John's, not one. Now, Mr. Speaker, let me ask the Minister this. I understand consideration is being given to reconsidering decisions affecting Placentia, for example, affecting Old Perlican, affecting Port aux Basques. Is the Government prepared to include Baie Verte on that list that is being re-considered?

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

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, I have to correct some of the statements the hon. Member is making. And by the look of his face, I can see why he was not present when the Placentia demonstrators came in.

MR. RIDEOUT: (Inaudible) every one of my constituents know it.

MR. DECKER: I went out and met with the Placentia demonstrators -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. DECKER: I went out and met with the Placentia demonstrators and got quite a welcome. I shook hands with a fair number; I also just came back from a visit to Burgeo. The hon. Member is talking about reconsidering. I will have the hon. Member know that this is a very open, listening Government and when any group of people, be it a hospital board, be it any group who has an interest in health wants to meet with this Government, we will bend over backwards to meet with them. That happened, Mr. Speaker, with Placentia, that happened with Port aux Basques, that happened with Burgeo, where I went with the hon. Member for the district on the weekend and had a delightful weekend in that area.

Now the Baie Verte people have set up a meeting with myself on Wednesday coming, and the hon. Member is welcome to sit in on that meeting provided the people from the district are prepared to do that. However, I do not want to hold out any false hopes to anyone. We believe we are putting in place a plan for the health care system of this Province which indeed will be the way to march proudly into the 21st century. However, Mr. Speaker, anyone who comes in we listen to. But I do not want to hold out any false hopes that we are going to change our minds unless it is proven that we are wrong, and to date we have not been proven wrong.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Humber East.

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have questions for the Minister of Justice about the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary and guns. These are following up the questions asked Friday by the Member for Kilbride. Will the Minister advise the House whether all Royal Newfoundland Constabulary cars will now have guns? Will the Minister explain the policy respecting the use of guns in Constabulary cars? Will he tell us specifically whether Members patrolling in vehicles will require permission of superior officers for the accessing of guns?

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

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Essentially the Member's questions do not vary from the ones I heard Friday from the hon. the Member for Kilbride. If I got them all, and there were several in that, the first was how many cars will be carrying guns in the trunk? There will be an increase beyond the number that are presently doing so. I think there are approximately fifteen cars on patrol and possibly more at different times during the day. What we will have in all likelihood is virtually all those cars will have guns locked in the trunk. That is not a change of policy, it is merely a change in numbers. So the quality of the action does not change but merely the quantity, and I am sure the hon. Member is well aware that during her term as Minister of Justice this was, in fact, the case.

As to the conditions under which the RNC will use guns, that is really a policing matter, Mr. Speaker. I am not prepared to stand in the Legislature of this Province and set down black and white rules for any police officer as to when he or she has to defend either his own safety and security or the safety and security of the members of the public. But I want to give this House and members of the public the assurance that the police are extremely well trained in the use of guns, that if we were to have them available at all times they would be carrying side arms, but as a Province we recognize it is a matter of last resort and for that reason they are locked in the trunk.

Beyond that, Mr. Speaker, I am not prepared to go and give any greater detail as to the times and circumstances at which the police should and do have access to weapons.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Humber East.

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A supplementary to the Minister of Justice. Is the Minister of Justice concerned that this major escalation in the availability and carrying of weapons by police in their vehicles - and it is a significant increase in the circulation of police arms which apparently is prompted by cutbacks in the policing and the elimination of two member patrols at night - will eventually lead to the wearing of fire arms by police?

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

MR. DICKS: There are a number of assumptions and statements that the hon. Member made, frankly, which are inaccurate. She says this was prompted by changes in the shift in the evening. That is not the case. Otherwise, we would have had no weapons in police cars at all. She knows that to be inaccurate and should not be putting that in terms of her question. In fact, the review of security was prompted as a result of the recent arbitration. And the Member obviously knows that the Constabulary and Treasury Board have recourse through an arbitration process to resolve differences. The weapons issue is one that has perennially been in the topics to be discussed between the police and the Treasury Board and the Department of Justice. The arbitrator in that case indicated that how and when the police had access to guns was not a matter for arbitration but a matter that should properly be a policy decision of Government.

However, notwithstanding that the three person board indicated to Government that it felt that the number should be increased, and may, in fact, have mentioned the number in that arbitration. But in view of that and in view of the fact that we were also generally reviewing police procedure and that arbitration board recommended that we provide the police with bullet proof vests which is also being done at this point in time, we decided to review the matter of security and we determined that it was, perhaps, an appropriate time to increase the number of cars which had weapons available.

And I want to repeat for the hon. Member that she well knows there have in recent times always been cars available with weapons to the Constabulary. The only question is, what is an appropriate number? And because, frankly, the number of incidents we have had in the last year formed part of our considerations, we decided to make more generally available.

The hon. Member also said something and it does not have a basis. She said that because we are making weapons available in this fashion it will eventually lead to them carrying side arms. Mr. Speaker, I do not think anything in life is inevitable. I think we all take pride in the fact that to this point in time the police in our Province, at least the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, have been able to police without access to side arms, and I would hope that would be a policy we can continue. There is no inevitability to this, Mr. Speaker, it is an ongoing assessment. Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Torngat Mountains.

MR. WARREN: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Health, when he stops talking to his colleague. To the Minister of Health: In other parts of the world, such as the United Kingdom, Government funds not only doctors but also nurse practitioners and midwives to provide health care services. Apparently, results have been very good: better patient care, less illness and fewer deaths. Has the Government given any consideration to expanding MCP coverage to health care provided by nurse practitioners and midwives?

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

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, Government has not given any consideration to directly paying nurses out of the Medicare budget. But I do not think it matters whether they are paid out of the Medicare budget or whether they are paid out of the general revenue of the Province. The fact of the matter is Government is still paying for nurses and midwives in this Province.

Now the role of the nurse, the hon. Member is talking about, is an interesting concept, because at this very moment the Government is conducting a project out on the southern shore with the nurses who are delivering primary care nursing, this particular project, this experiment which is being carried out down there, Mr. Speaker, is carried out in co-operation with the World Health Organization. We have representation from Denmark in that organization who are monitoring this program out there. And it looks like - we are going into our second year now - there might just be some possibilities where we can transfer that experiment to the rest of the Province. Now it is a three year project, so we will not know until after that is over.

But I share with the hon. Member that there is indeed a place for nurses doing primary care, especially in areas of the Province were it is extremely difficult to recruit medical doctors.

As to the role of the midwife, this Province is head and shoulders ahead of the rest of the nation in midwifery. We are one of the few provinces which has midwifery legislation. Now, Mr. Speaker, that midwifery legislation refers to the untrained midwife and it is probably a little bit dated now. But we have been talking with the Association of Registered Nurses about the role of the midwife. However, our Association of Registered Nurses is not quite of the opinion that midwives should be doing deliveries out in remote areas of the Province unless the back up services of a surgeon and obstetrician are available. But we do recognize that there is a role for the midwife as long as there is adequate supervision by the obstetrician.

The hon. Member raised some good questions which are under consideration and we are looking at, but we do not intend at this time to pay nurses out of the MCP fund.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Torngat Moutains.

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

My second and final question the Minister partly answered it. With the Government closing hospitals in various parts of the Province it is going to be naturally increasingly difficult to attract doctors to those areas. I would ask the Minister: with less doctors in the remote areas of the Province because of the close down of hospitals, who is going to provide the health care to people in those areas now that will be affected? Should not the Government be making provision for nurses who are living in those areas to provide the health care that is necessary? And I would suggest to the Minister also, that serious consideration be given to it being covered by MCP?

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

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, the hon. Member is making two assumptions which are both erroneous. The first assumption is that we are closing hospitals. We have not closed a single hospital in this Province. We have changed the roles to make them reflect reality.

MR. WARREN: Come By Chance.

MR. DECKER: Come By Chance - the previous Administration, Mr. Speaker, -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. DECKER: The previous Administration closed Come By Chance and replaced it with an eight hour a day clinic. After coming into power they had already gutted the Come By Chance area, and we had no choice but to close it down because it had become pretty well ineffective.

The other assumption that the hon. Member is making is that because we are changing the roles of some of our institutions, there will be indeed less doctors in rural Newfoundland. That assumption is wrong as well. This has nothing to do with doctors. As a matter of fact the general family practice area where doctors work this will be a much better field for them to operate in, Mr. Speaker, where they will be able to do what they are trained for. So I do not think his assumptions are right. Therefore, the other part of his question becomes totally irrelevant, unless his assumptions were right.

The doctor shortage though - the hon. Member will be pleased to know that I am working very closely with the University and with the Newfoundland Medical Association in an effort to try and address the problem with the shortage of doctors, especially in the hon. Member's District, as well in the District which I happen to represent, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Question Period has expired.

MR. SPEAKER: A point of order, the hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, as pleasant as it always is to see members of the Constabulary around the city and around the Province I have to raise this question because security for the House, as I understand it, is under Your Honour's jurisdiction. It is the first time that I can recall several members of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, other than a duty constable, patrolling the galleries of the Legislature. I am wondering if this is a new policy, or if Your Honour instructed this emphasis on security, or if there is a special reason that you would like to tell us about privately, afterwards, that we are not aware of?

MR. SPEAKER: I will talk to hon. Members after.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

DR. KITCHEN: Mr. Speaker, I give notice that I will on tomorrow move that the House resolve itself into Committee of the Whole to consider certain resolutions relating to the advancing or guaranteeing of certain loans made under the Loan and Guarantee Act, 1957.

I also give notice that I will on tomorrow move that this House resolve itself into Committee of the Whole to consider certain resolutions relating to the guaranteeing of certain loans under the Local Authority Guarantee Act, 1957.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Environment and Lands.

MR. KELLAND: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to lay on the table the response to question number eighteen on Order Paper 21, April 4, 1991 by the Opposition House Leader. I will not read the answer, Mr. Speaker, but I will table it for his information.

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

MR. A. SNOW: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I wish to rise and present a petition on behalf of 299 residents of the district of Menihek who have great concerns about cutbacks to the quality of health care in the Labrador West area. The prayer of the petition is that: we, the concerned citizens group against hospital cutbacks would like to canvass your support against the cutbacks at the Captain William Jackman Memorial Hospital by signing this petition.

Mr. Speaker, almost 300 people from the district of Menihek signed that petition because they are upset with the number of cutbacks delivered by this regime to the Captain William Jackman Memorial Hospital in Labrador City. A cutback of $870,000, a cutback which will result in the loss of fourteen jobs at the Captain William Jackman Memorial Hospital. While the people in the district have a concern for the individuals who lost their jobs they are more concerned about the quality of health care that is going to be affected in the Labrador West area, an area that produced since its conception thirty years ago more economic wealth to this Province than any other electoral district in this Province, and an area that continues to do the same thing day, after day, after day. They find it terribly unfair that this regime has seen fit to gut the health care system in Western Labrador. Because of the nature of the geography of this Province we find that we are located about 600 miles away from the main hospital centres of this Province, which is St. John's. That means, Mr. Speaker, that if we were to lose our surgeon in western Labrador, and that is a direct possibility in the fact that elective surgery is going to be cut back by 15 per cent, and there is a distinct possibility that we may lose a surgeon because of that, because of the lack of the opportunity of a personal development of the surgeon, he may indeed leave. In that case we will have the three largest industrial complexes, combined they probably represent the largest industrial complex in Eastern Canada, undoubtedly the largest industrial complex in this Province, and the potential for tragic accidents that could cause serious injury to workers, the opportunity for it is always there, and it means that people will not have adequate health care service in the case of an accident. It takes an eight hour turnaround time from the time there is a call for an air ambulance to come into western Labrador. So this Government should reconsider what they have done because of the geographic position that we are in in western Labrador.

We have seen cutbacks, we have seen the closure of eight beds, we have seen a relocation of the chronic or geriatric section. These are people who have worked and produced the wealth of this Province in previous years. People today who need our help, need the help of the tax dollars that they have paid in over the last twenty-five or thirty years. And now what are we doing? We are relocating them. This is terribly unfair to the people of western Labrador. We are seeing a 40 per cent reduction in physiotherapy services. That is terribly unfair to the people in western Labrador. We are seeing specialist visits reduced. We live a tremendous distance away from specialists who service this Province. We live in Labrador, 600 miles away from the island portion of the Province, from St. John's. Air fare is over $900 to come out here to visit. Now we are seeing fewer specialists coming into the area. We are going to see 350 fewer patient visits by specialists in the area. There will not be a speech therapist in that hospital.

We are seeing a serious reduction in the quality of health care in western Labrador. We see it because this Government, contrary to what they are saying, does not have a plan to improve health care in this Province, it just has a knee-jerk reaction to a lack of revenues and we are seeing it displayed not just in western Labrador but throughout the Province, and that is what really concerns the people of western Labrador - in the towns of Labrador City and Wabush. It will also affect people who reside in our neighbouring community of Fermont. This hospital services the community of Fermont and that puts an additional burden on it, but it also does something else. It provides a revenue to this Province, because the Province of Quebec provides money to this Province to help pay for the health care that these people will receive from our hospital.

I would ask, Mr. Speaker, that this Government, this Minister, reconsider what they have done to the health care in western Labrador, reinstate it. Because the morale of the hospital workers and the people of western Labrador is tremendously affected by this. Bill 16, we are going to see the wages frozen -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time is up.

MR. A. SNOW: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. POWER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just want to take a couple of moments to support the petition on behalf of the 299 residents of Lab City-Wabush and I guess the Fermont area as well. These residents of Menihek district are very concerned with health care as are most people in this Province. If there is one place in this Budget where this Government has caused itself a tremendous amount of damage and lack of credibility it is to try and say that the vast amount of health care cutbacks that we have had in this Province - laying off close to 1,000 workers, closing down 438 acute care beds - and somehow or other trying to tell the people of the Province that we have a better system, is one thing that the public just has not accepted nor will they accept in this Province.

In Menihek, in the Lab City-Wabush area that I know quite well, where does a person go if they become seriously ill and you have not got the right kind of doctoring and medical services there? It is easy enough to do in St. John's where if you go to a hospital in an emergency you go to St. Clares's and if you cannot get in, you go to the Grace and if you cannot get in, you can still go to Health Sciences. Or you can go to the Janeway if you are a younger person who happens to be sick. But what do you do in Menihek? What do you do in Lab City-Wabush when you are sick and the hospital that you have normally gone to has less services, less acute care beds, less access to specialists, losing a speech therapist - there is not another speech therapist across the road in Lab City-Wabush area that you can go to simply because there is not one at the hospital.

And that is where the credibility of this Government has been seriously undermined, by this health care supposed plan which we have been exposing in this House as not being a plan at all. It is simply a reaction to some political pressures that may happen in certain areas. And of course the other very, very unfortunate part for the people from Menihek district is, how do they protest except coming to the Legislature? How do they convince this Government, this Premier and this Minister of Health, that they do have serious regional health concerns in their area?

Mr. Speaker, they cannot do it because they cannot bring in enough people to protest. And if you cannot fill the lobby with 1,000 people - or I suppose you are only allowed to bring in 200 now - I guess if you keep seeing enough of the police force around the galleries you will not be allowed to bring many into that place either. And we will have this place closed down from a democratic point of view, it will be for a small enclave, for a few people who want to make a scattered speech supporting the Government. If you do not support the Government there will not be very much you can say in this Province.

We are already getting reaction on this side of the House, asking us: not to be saying too much about health care in certain areas of the Province because we are afraid of this Government, we are afraid this Government is going to react, we are afraid this Government is not going to do what is right for us, because you keep bringing it up in the Legislature. That is what people in rural Newfoundland are saying. The Premier may grumble and growl if he wishes, but that is what people are saying. The people in Placentia and other areas of the Province are saying to us in the Opposition: please do not bring up too vocally our problems because this Government is going to react in a very political way, and make sure you do not respond to our legitimate health care concerns. That is what people are afraid of.

Mr. Speaker, that is what people in this Province are saying. The Members opposite are only hearing what they chose to hear. When you listen to the people from Menihek who speak through their Member in this House, and when we are suppose to get better regional services and you get a downgraded regional service, when we get our cottage hospital systems severely destroyed by this Government, then all of a sudden somebody has to say to this Premier and to this Minister of Health, will you please have a second look at what you are doing? Unfortunately, we cannot bring 1000 people to the lobby but we still have legitimate concerns and I can only fully support the Member for Menihek who has brought this concern to Members of the Legislature and hope there will be some reasonable response from this Government to look at what is a request to re-establish, in a very isolated region of Newfoundland, legitimate and adequate health care services.

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

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, I wish to speak to the petition and thank the hon. Member for presenting it to the House, and to assure the people of the Menihek area that Government will review their petition and give it due consideration. The hon. Member in his speech referred to health care and he also somehow tied that into wealth. Mr. Speaker, everybody recognizes the tremendous contribution that Labrador City has made to the economy of this Province, however when you administer health you have only to consider health concerns. We are delivering health care to that area, Mr. Speaker, to the best of our ability. The occupancy rate of the hospital to date has been somewhere around 35 per cent, however there was a shortage of mental health workers in the area. In the Budget we addressed that, so basically what we have done is try and reflect in the Labrador City area what has really been happening instead of trying to provide services which are not required. Mental health is required so we are putting more for mental health in there. The acute care occupancy has been down so therefore why keep alive underutilized beds? We have recognized that Labrador City is a special case because of geography, and for that reason that hospital, although not big enough to warrant surgeons, we are still keeping alive some surgery in that area. We are making a special case for Labrador City, as well as Melville, as well as Churchill Falls, so geography is a consideration. The hon. Member for Ferryland makes a big issue about the fact that they cannot put 1200 people into this Confederation Building. Well, I will make a better offer, Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to go into Labrador City and speak to 5000 people if they have them there. There is only one thing I would ask and that is that they give me half an hour without shouting, booing, and screaming and let me outline our case. After that half hour is up they can shout, they can boo, they can hiss, they can cough, they can do what they like, but if they will give me half an hour to make my speech I am prepared to go into Labrador City, as I did in Burgeo. There, uninhibited by those who have a political agenda as opposed to a health agenda, Mr. Speaker, I have absolute confidence that when the people of Labrador City hear the facts, unpolluted by politics, when they hear these facts, they will know what Government is doing, and if Burgeo is any indication, Mr. Speaker, they will go along with us. All I ask is one half hour before the boos and the coughs start, after that they can cough and they can boo.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Torngat Mountains.

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

I rise to present a petition, signed by ninety-nine people from the community of Mary's Harbour in the district of Eagle River.

MR. DUMARESQUE: (Inaudible)

MR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, I knew I was going to get some kind of comment, one way or the other, from the other side. I should say to the hon. gentleman who made that remark that the reason I am presenting this petition is because he was asked to present it and he said, no.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who was that?

MR. WARREN: The Member for Eagle River refused to present this petition. He said, no, because he does not believe in it.

The prayer of the petition, is: we the undersigned, the friends of MUN Extension state that whereas MUN Extension has provided and continues to provide an essential service to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, and whereas no other agency is capable of providing that service, MUN Extension should be reinstated.

Mr. Speaker, I have been given a note that this petition was given to the Member for Eagle River to present in the Legislature and the Member for Eagle River said that MUN Extension has outlived its usefulness, in fact, the Member said, to quote, 'That if he were to support this petition, then the money that goes into keeping Mun Extension operating would have to come out of air freight or air traffic subsidies.' Now, Mr. Speaker, that is ninety-nine people from the community of Mary's Harbour on the coast of Labrador, ninety-nine people who represent a major number in that small community of eligible voters. The people in Mary's Harbour realize what Mun Extension has done for their community, not only for Mary's Harbour, but other communities on the coast of Labrador. It was Mun Extension that helped the Labrador people to organize their town councils. It was Mun Extension, in fact, in the early 1970s, at the time, Mr. Speaker, I was working with the Government in Makkovik, it was Mun Extension then that started the ball rolling to get the people in Labrador organized into community councils. Even today or even five months ago when the Labrador (inaudible) Conference was held in Happy Valley/Goose Bay there was praise from Members opposite about the work that Mun Extension was doing, only five months ago, and now today they will not support, they will not support asking the President of the University to reinstate Mun Extension. I think, Mr. Speaker, if money is coming from this Government, this Government should make sure that Mun Extension is reinstated and let them go about the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador and continue to do what they were doing for our rural area. And I have to say, Mr. Speaker, and I will go back, I guess, twenty or twenty-five years ago knowing when the people were coming along the Labrador Coast and bringing ideas to the people on how to govern their own affairs, it was Mun Extension that did this, and they are still needed. Ninety-nine people in Mary's Harbour, and I would think in looking at those names, a lot of them I know by name, Mr. Speaker, I know them from seeing them, in fact I stayed with some of them, those people I am sure, supported my colleague in the last election. They have given him support because they were hoping he would stand up and fight for them. But, Mr. Speaker, what he did here today is he had the opportunity to present the petition and he would not present it because he stated that Mun Extension is no longer needed anywhere else in this Province. I think it is a shame, Mr. Speaker, and I call upon the Government, as my friend for Grand Falls said today, to ask the Premier and ask the Minister of Education to go after Memorial University and ask for Mun Extension to be reinstated. We can probably do without this famous school over in England for a year or two. I think the people in rural Newfoundland and Labrador will be more pleased to see the Rumbolts and the Russells and the Stones and the Spearings and all those people from Mary's Harbour have a service that they were promised for years and years and that has been good to them, and hopefully, Mr. Speaker, in the years coming it will continue to flourish as it has in the past.

Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Humber East.

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise to support the petition so well presented by the Member for Torngat Mountains on behalf of the residents of Mary's Harbour. The Minister of Education and the Premier are trying to pretend that they have absolutely nothing to do with Memorial University's decision to cut the Memorial University Extension Service.

Now, in fact, as the Minister of Education himself said to CBC radio recently, the Government is always involved when matters such as University budget cuts are discussed. The University functions independently of the Government, yes, but the University gets virtually all its operating funding from the Government, and the Government is intimately involved when the University has to consider options for reductions.

The Minister himself said in an interview that was broadcast, and I quote 'As times get tough, when Government wants certain goals achieved, economic development, for example, and technology is a good example, we will be talking more perhaps with the Boards of Governors in the future and with the Board of Regents than we have in the past, before they make their decisions.

So, Mr. Speaker, the Government cannot be allowed to get away with responsibility for the extinguishing of Memorial University Extension Service. Mr. Speaker, at the same time as the Government reduced the university grant in aid, the Government has escalated funding to the Premier's new agency, the unelected Cabinet, the Economic Recovery Commission. The Government is giving that agency $44 million this year and members of the Economic Recovery Commission and their Advisory Board in particular are telling people -

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

I want to remind the hon. Member that in presenting a petition, that one keep their remarks to the material allegations of the petition, to the signatures signed, and it would appear now that the hon. Member is wandering somewhat away from the petition.

The hon. the Member for Humber East.

MS. VERGE: Mr. Speaker, with respect, I do not think I was straying from the prayer of the petition. The point I am making is that, Members of the Government's -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MS. VERGE: - Economic Recovery Commission, are saying that they are being put in place and augmented to replace Memorial University Extension Service, and I would like to say on behalf of the residents of the Province, who understand the fallacy of that approach, that it is patently ludicrous to replace an organization with several years of successful operation in rural and urban parts of the Province, with a brand new agency with no track record, it makes absolutely no sense and it puts the lie to the Government's excuse about not having enough money.

The Government has enough money for a $44 million Economic Recovery Commission and $600,000 for protocol and $550,000 for a propaganda office, and it also has enough money to continue Memorial University Extension Services, it is simply a matter of choice, a matter of attitude, a matter of values, a matter of political will.

Mr. Speaker, I submit that Memorial University Extension Service in rural parts of the Province has never been needed as much since the resettlement days of the 1960s. Right now, the Government is carrying out a major programme of shifting services and population from rural parts of the Province to the urban growth centres and probably to the growth centres of Ontario, Alberta and Kuwait as well, and now is the time that the residents of those rural areas, so much threatened, need the support and leadership of Memorial University Extension Service; so it is for these reasons that I am supporting the petition of residents of Mary's Harbour, Labrador.

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

DR. KITCHEN: Mr. Speaker, I do want to respond briefly to the comments of my hon. friends. There is not too much new that I can add, other than the fact that I have paid tribute and the Premier has paid tribute and I have heard the hon. Member for Eagle River pay tribute for what Extension has done in Labrador in the past, and the valuable services performed. Mr. Speaker, I have heard him say also, and I think, the Government's position is that there are other agencies now can help fill that void.

In Labrador, I really am excited about what the community college is doing, it is an outstanding effort; the President and the Board provide expanding service to the people of Labrador through the community college; I have heard my friend for Eagle River talk about rural development associations, all kinds of agencies, it is not any disrespect to Extension, it is just that the hon. Member said other agencies are now performing a very valuable service.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the second point very briefly, is that this Government respects the arm's length position of the university. We are not going to tell Memorial which programmes to introduce, which to end, we are not going to tell them which physics professors to hire, which physics course to terminate. We respect the arm's length position of the university, and this is traditional in the western world and in this country.

Having said that, I do want to go back to what the Member for Humber East said about accountability. Mr. Speaker, I think I would argue that today we need to look at new mechanisms for holding universities more accountable in the future. For this we will have to look at, perhaps, how Boards of Regents can be held more accountable. When you are putting $115 million into an institution, as we are to Memorial, I think you have to look at new ways to hold Boards of Governors and others more accountable for the future. Up until this point in time we respect the arm's length position of Memorial, but in the future we will talk with the Board of Regents and the Board of Governors of the institution about an increased accountability.

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

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, I have the privilege and honour to present a petition signed by 122 people, the prayer of which is `the undersigned state that whereas MUN Extension has provided and continues to provide an essential service to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador; and whereas no other agency is capable of providing that service, MUN extension should be reinstated. Your petitioners respectfully request that this hon. House take such action as may be necessary to ensure that Memorial University reinstates its extension service and that it be funded and equipped to provide the services it has traditionally provided.'

Mr. Speaker, this is a very special petition, because it is signed by 122 people who have a certain amount of experience in the area of rural development and extension services. These are the people the hon. the Minister of Education just spoke of, the people in rural development itself, the people involved in the Rural Development Associations. The Minister will know that these individuals and the Rural Development Council met last weekend in Goose Bay, Labrador, and at that meeting this petition was circulated and signed by these people. And they are talking here about people from the Labrador-White Bay Development Association, the Cape Shore Development Association, the Codroy Valley Development Association, the St. Mary's Bay Development Association, the Greater Lamaline Development Association, the Cape Freels Development Association, the Eastport Peninsula Development Association, the Corner Brook Development Association, the Placentia Development Association, the St. Barbe Development Association, the Central Development Association, all over this Province, Mr. Speaker. There were individuals from communities spread out from Point May, Rushoon, Petley, Baine Harbour, Melton, all over Newfoundland, people experienced in rural development, members of these Rural Development Associations.

And the Member for Eagle River was praised by the Minister of Education for being aware of that. Well, the Member for Eagle River was there at this meeting in Goose Bay and he knows what these people want. These are the experts in rural development. They do not say that Extension Service outlived its usefulness, as the Member for Eagle River says. Here is what they say. In a resolution passed by the Rural Development Council last weekend they say MUN Extension was the only tangible link between the university and rural Newfoundland; and that the services provided by Extension Service were invaluable to rural Newfoundland; and that rural Newfoundlanders paid taxes on an equal basis with urban dwellers; and they resolved therefore that the recently announced abolition of MUN Extension be revoked and that the department be reinstated; and further resolved that MUN Extension Service be enhanced to provide rural Newfoundlanders with the services to which they are entitled.

These are the people the Minister of Education says replaced MUN Extension. Well, they know what invaluable services have been provided by Extension through the years and are still necessary. You do not by being elected Member for Eagle River or any other place become all of a sudden an expert in rural Newfoundland. You were elected to this House to represent your people. The people who are experts in this field are the people in rural Newfoundland who are involved in these development associations. They know what the problems are and they know the services and the help they need in order to be successful in development. Is the Minister of Education saying we have gone far enough, that rural Newfoundland has developed enough? The Development Associations themselves say they need MUN Extension in order to continue to do a good job in developing rural Newfoundland. When they say those services are necessary, who is this Minister of Education to say no, you have developed far enough?

Mr. Speaker, we have heard they listen to the people. Well if they truly listen to the people who know what they are talking about in the area of rural development, they will find a way. Arm's length or no arm's length, it is easy enough for the Minister of Education to go to the Board of Regents of Memorial University and say we believe in MUN Extension, we think it is an important and invaluable contribution to the Newfoundland community, what do we need to do to help you make it happen? That can be done without interfering with the arm's length relationship between the University and this Government, and the Minister of Education knows full well that that is the case. And they ought to do that, because the time is now. There are people they are apparently trying to kick out of Memorial University now, pay them for the next two months and lock them out, we understand; we heard that today. It is time this Government started taking some action to save MUN Extension from extinction.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Humber Valley.

MR. WOODFORD: Mr. Speaker, I also rise to present a petition on behalf of -

AN HON. MEMBER: Another petition?

MR. WOODFORD: Oh, yes, this is another petition. I did not realize - oh, I am sorry.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Eagle River in response to the petition by the hon. Member for St. John's East.

MR. DUMARESQUE: Mr. Speaker, a number of comments have been made here this evening respecting the Extension Service as it applies to Labrador - the Member for Torngat Mountains presented a petition on that. I want to take just a few minutes to let the people know exactly where I am coming from, and maybe to give an update to the Member for St. John's East on the most prominent rural Newfoundlander in this House. I would suppose he could be denoted as that.

At 8:00 p.m. on Saturday evening I met for some hour and a half with some three development associations in my riding: the Southern Labrador Development Association, the White Bear Development Association, and the Battle Harbour Development Association. I talked for some time about the purpose of Memorial University Extension Service as it applies to Labrador, and I went through the process as I understand it. The Member for St. John's East can indicate to this House what he likes about how the need is in different parts of the Province, but I want to tell him exactly where I come from.

I grew up in the Labrador Straits and I know what the Labrador Straits has needed and needs today. I can say to the hon. Member and to the House of Assembly that when Memorial Extension first came to the Labrador Straits they were a very valuable member of the community, a very valuable tool that worked with the community at large to organize their fishermen's committees, to organize the community councils, to go out there and arrange for public meetings and the exchange of public information. Certainly as a community development tool they were an invaluable asset to that community.

However, there has not been a presence of Memorial University Extension Service in the Labrador Straits except - for the last six years. I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, what has happened. Over the last number of years we have seen seven community councils there, each with a town clerk, we have seen an office of Enterprise Newfoundland move in; as well, the rural development specialist is in that area, and we have the development office there that is functioning very, very well.

And, you know, as time goes on we are always happy to see people come and assist us, but we are always happy as well to be able to rise up at some point and say to these people with a lot of pride, we are educated. We are using our own people as the human resource to develop the kinds of things you helped us with in the beginning, But now, thank you very much, we do not need you.

And on the other side, in the Mary's Harbour area, from Mary's Harbour to Cartwright, we have seen the establishment of similar community councils, three development associations and numerous fishermen's committees. In the previous two years, before I got elected in 1989, I was the Marine Institute liaison with the Labrador Community College who travelled everywhere, from L'Anse au Clair to Nain. So do not tell me I do not know what is happening on the Coast of Labrador or what the need is there for this kind of activity on the Coast of Labrador. I have performed that activity myself, Mr. Speaker, so I do not need to take lessons from the academic from St. John's East.

If they want to contact the representatives of the respective development associations I met with on Saturday evening they will find amongst them unanimous support for my position and our position to stand here in confidence and say, We do not need you at this point in time. Thank you very much for what you have done. We will look forward to seeing a better development of communities and infrastructure in Labrador and we will do it with pride. And if at some time we need community development expertise, then certainly that can be done and be funded by some other agencies, as has been done in the past. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Torngat Mountains.

MR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the petition presented by the Member for St. John's East. I find it most interesting that my hon. colleague mentioned that he met with three development associations and they are behind him, unanimously. I took the time to go to the table and get a copy of the petition that was just presented and on it I find the name Patricia Way supporting that petition. Now she is from Cartwright. I find another name, Chubbs, from Mary's Harbour, and the name Rumbolt from Mary's Harbour. These are people who supported this petition in support of the reinstatement of Extension Service and this was on Saturday or Saturday night. This was done at the Rural Development Council meeting, and now my hon. colleague gets us and says they are all behind him. Someone just now shouted and said, you are only one. I believe he is only one. He is the only one, because he does not want to go against his own Government. That is the trouble. The hon. gentleman does not want to go against his own Government. Stand up and be counted, boy. What about Matilda Martin, Labrador White Bear Association? - another one. What about Madonna Way? You can go through this petition and find that the people are from the District of Eagle River.

MS. VERGE: (Inaudible) from Mary's Harbour.

MR. WARREN: Yes, Mr. Speaker, and ninety-nine other people from Mary's Harbour, from a community in his own district. Is there something tied in with what the Member is saying, I wonder? Before the Member came into politics he applied for a position with MUN Extension, and thank God he was turned down. Here is a person who, before he came into politics, wanted a job with MUN Extension. And now, two years later, because he joined this Government -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please

MR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, the hon. the Member for Carbonear can talk all he wants about bathrooms, but I will tell the hon. gentleman from Carbonear that the people out in rural Newfoundland are going to tell this Government in the next election. And a lot of those people, maybe some in the gallery now, voted for this Government and voted for a change. Well they got a change. But I will say that when the ballots are counted in the next election, there will be another again. Thank you, very much.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for St. Mary's - The Capes.

MR. HEARN: Thank you, very much, Mr. Speaker. I stand to present a petition on behalf of fifty-four residents of the Patrick's Cove area on the Cape Shore. The prayer of the petition, `To the hon. the House of Assembly of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador in Legislative Assembly, the petition of the undersigned, the friends of MUN Extension, states that whereas MUN Extension has provided and continues to provide an essential service to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador; and whereas no other agency - no other agency - is capable of providing that service, MUN Extension should be reinstated. Your petitioners respectfully request the hon. House to take such actions as may be necessary to ensure that Memorial University reinstates its Extension Service and that it be funded and equipped to provide the services it has traditionally provided.'

The wording in the petition, Mr. Speaker, `no other agency is capable of providing that service' is so true to those who understand Memorial Extension and to those who understand rural Newfoundland. It was with great shock a few days ago that I listened to the Member for Eagle River when he spoke earlier on petitions and he basically reiterated his own words today, except he did not spell them out. Back a few days ago he said, why Mun Extension is no longer relevant is because development associations are now in place equipped with $36,000 in funding. I have four regional development associations in my district and work very, very closely with them, and $36,000 in funding is very little when you come to pay a paid co-ordinator who has more work than any average person is expected to do for the salary, plus running an association that covers a large rural area.

Instead of taking on the extra (inaudible), Memorial University Extension has made it possible for many of my rural development associations to operate cohesively, to take on projects, to develop projects they could not do with their own expertise or funding. Memorial University has done a tremendous service in co-ordinating the activities of rural developmental associations, not replacing them.

The Member mentioned town clerks. Now, really, what do town clerks do, despite the fact you have x numbers of new councils? I have fifteen of them, but the town clerks do very little that resembles in any way the work of Memorial University Extension. Once again, a lot of the work the University Extension does facilitates the work of the various towns.

And then he mentioned, of course, we have Enterprise Newfoundland and Labrador. The biggest joke in history, Enterprise Newfoundland and Labrador, an association established to employ former Liberal candidates at high salaries which could easily keep MUN Extension in place. Community colleges, he says, are taking on part of the role. With the cutbacks to community colleges, more of which we see today, they are having a job trying to fulfil their own mandate, not to extend it to take in the role of MUN Extension. Then he goes on to talk about fishermen's committees and so on. Once again, who was the co-ordinator for the fishermen when they really had problems this past year? Who tried to bring to the forefront, to Provincial and Federal Governments the plight of the fishermen around the Province? Memorial University Extension.

So if the Member understands rural Newfoundland, then he is living in a different rural Newfoundland than I am. The part of the area from which these people come, the Patrick's Cove area of the Cape shore, perhaps with the exception of the Labrador coast, was one of the long forgotten, long neglected areas by governments in the past, an area where people had to make it on their own with very little help. In fact, it was only when finally the Liberals were turfed out some years ago that we started to see improvements on the Cape shore, and certainly in recent years we have seen a tremendous amount. A lot of it came not because of politics or politicians, but because the people became organized and their activities became co-ordinated. A number of agencies were responsible for that, but one of the key agencies in bringing together a lot of the people on the Cape shore, in highlighting a lot of their problems and then in obtaining results - not only problems highlighted, but solutions highlighted - a lot of the co-ordination was done by Memorial University Extension.

And I am not surprised at all to see several petitions coming in from that area signed not by a few people in the area, but from the numbers we see, from everybody who lives in the Cape shore area. And that makes me exceptionally proud, because it is an area which has become very well organized and they know a lot of the success they have had in recent years has come because some of their problems and solutions, as I said, have been highlighted through the efforts of Memorial University Extension.

So I am very pleased, Mr. Speaker, to stand and present this petition on behalf of the residents of the Patrick's Cove area - and we have several more to present - asking that Memorial University Extension be reinstated so it can continue to do the job it has done so well over recent years.

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise to support my colleague for St. Mary's - The Capes, and a very well presented petition on behalf of the people from the Cape shore.

I, too, am familiar with not only the Cape shore, but with many areas of rural Newfoundland. But not enough, really. I have been to visit many areas outside St. John's, and when you take everything in its true perspective, I believe the Government has lost its sense of direction. I believe this Government has thrown a ring around the Avalon Peninsula, and only certain parts of the Avalon Peninsula. Because, I mean, MUN Extension was a unit that would go and spread the good word. They were almost like a church to some people in outlying areas. They were not only where people could not do it on their own and went and asked for assistance, MUN Extension took the initiative themselves to go out and see the problem and try to correct it.

And how would they go about this? Very simply. They were people who had organizational credentials or abilities and they were leaders in organizing development within certain areas. We will take the fishery. I am still a member of the Newfoundland Inshore Fisheries Association. I mean, MUN Extension helped us, really guided us along the way. And those associations were necessary for our fishermen and our plant workers and, indeed, our processors, to get their message across to the people not only in Newfoundland but everywhere else. Finally, I think, the message from Newfoundland has gotten out to other parts of Canada, and MUN Extension played a major role. They certainly played a major role in training workshops, in organizing speaking events, organizing conventions sort of, where people came to explain their views on the fishery or on agriculture or on forestry, wherever there was an existing problem. And to even go a bit farther afield, in family violence workshops MUN Extension played a major role. Those are things that are uppermost in people's minds today.

Family violence has become more prominent in the last number of years, and we have people out there like those people from MUN Extension who are prepared to do this type of job, a job that serves our population well. And for the life of me I cannot see how someone can get in this House and say the ERC or the ENL can take the place of that group. It just baffles me. I just do not see it. I mean, when we organized not only NIFA but we organized our own town council, we had expert advice from those people. Certainly we were only people crying in the wilderness, we certainly had no experience in the field, and it was from those people we learned. And I am sure there are areas in Newfoundland where they helped people much more than they did in our area.

But for the hon. the Member for Eagle River to talk about town clerks being able to do the job that MUN Extension did for their communities and for their people, I mean it is a disgrace. Now he talks about what the community colleges are picking up.

MR. DUMARESQUE: (Inaudible).

MR. PARSONS: Mr. Speaker, there have been severe cuts in all funding for community colleges, right across the Province.

AN HON. MEMBER: Have you ever been to Labrador?

MR. PARSONS: Have I been to Labrador? Yes. I worked in Labrador before you were born. Before you were born, I worked in Labrador.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. PARSONS: I worked in Labrador before you were born - not even in diapers, before you were born.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

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

MR. PARSONS: Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the hon. Member something. Were you ever in Flatrock?

MR. DUMARESQUE: No. I am not speaking for Flatrock.

MR. PARSONS: No. Were you ever there? That is only ten miles outside St. John's. Yes, I was north - I was north.

Mr. Speaker, MUN Extension has a wealth of information.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time is up.

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Humber Valley.

MR. WOODFORD: I, too, Mr. Speaker, would like to present a petition on behalf of the people of Humber Valley, a certain number from Humber Valley, more specifically around the Deer Lake area. The petition of the undersigned, the Friends of MUN Extension, states `whereas MUN Extension has provided and continues to provide an essential service to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador; and whereas no other agency is capable of providing that service, MUN Extension should be reinstated. Your petitioners respectfully request that the hon. House take such actions as may be necessary to ensure that Memorial University reinstates the Extension Service and that it be funded and equipped to provide the services it has traditionally provided.'

Now, Mr. Speaker, one of the ironic things about this and one of the things that strikes me most is that the first three signatories to this petition are the President of the Deer Lake District Literacy Council, the Secretary of the Deer Lake Literacy Council and members of the Literacy Council. Now I do not think there is a Member in the House today who can say this is not needed in all areas of Newfoundland, let alone rural Newfoundland. The people of this Province need someone, need a link between the great university which is going to become an elitist institution in this Province rather than being something which is accessible to people in rural Newfoundland. And the first three signatures to this petition really tell you something.

Mr. Speaker, five minutes is not much time, but I find that in the brochures on MUN Extension, the yellow page, `Issues on Public Policy', I get down to activities and I see `Current Topics' and the first topic I see is `Crisis in the Fishery, Jan. 31, 1991.' And secondly and most importantly, I can probably see why MUN Extension is gone, Mr. Speaker. I found the answer in the brochures issued by MUN Extension. The answer is in number two of activities, in the Issues on Public Policy. The second current topic: cutbacks in health, cutbacks in Education and above all, Mr. Speaker - how ironic - cutbacks in other services, dated February 28, 1991. Does that not tell you something?

AN HON. MEMBER: Get rid of MUN because (inaudible).

MR. WOODFORD: Yes, get rid of them, Mr. Speaker. Because I can assure you that they are out into the nooks and crannies, so to speak, of rural Newfoundland; they are there every day of the week; they are in touch with every community council, every civic leader, every church group, and they are in touch with everything and everyone, or the who's who in Newfoundland, when it pertains to rural Newfoundland. They were there when we were there, Mr. Speaker. I sat as a Government Member on many a meeting between MUN Extension in Deer Lake and White Bay in conjunction with the Humber Valley Development Association and I took it on the chin. I sat with them, I went with them, I travelled with them to White Bay. And that is where I got some ideas to bring back and feed to my counterparts in Cabinet. That was how you could make some changes. When you are not afraid of criticism, Mr. Speaker, you can do those things; you can let those people go out into rural Newfoundland and you can sit down and talk to them. And you listen and you bring back your ideas. Because as politicians we are no different than anybody else; we get our heads in the sand at times and it is nice to get a tap on the shoulder and have someone say, this is an idea we have. You should listen. We are representing the same people you are representing.

I think, Mr. Speaker, this Government should show some real change - real change - and tell in no uncertain terms that MUN Extension should be left the way it always was. In fact, Mr. Speaker, it should be added to and it should be given extra funding. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. R. AYLWARD: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I am delighted to rise in my place today to support the petition presented by my colleague, the Member for Humber Valley. Mr. Speaker, we saw in this House today one reason why one Member opposite does not want MUN Extension to continue; we saw the Member for Eagle River speak on a petition for MUN Extension today and say his constituents did not want MUN Extension up there any more because they were overdeveloped now; he stood in his place and told us how the town councils and the development associations are looking after his area now and MUN Extension is not needed any more.

But, Mr. Speaker, not two minutes later there was a petition presented in this House on MUN Extension by the Member for St. John's East which all the members of his development association had signed requesting that MUN Extension stay in his area. Now there is a Member who is out of touch. And I do not believe he is out of touch, I believe there is another motive for him wanting MUN Extension gone.

We know the hon. the Member for Eagle River had a job with Marine Institute and he travelled up and down that coast with Marine Institute, getting paid his daily salary while he was sowing his political seeds and while he was doing that, Mr. Speaker, then he decided when he got defeated politically to take on the Member at that time and run politically because he had travelled up and down the coast. Now, Mr. Speaker, I say that Member does not want Mun Extension because of the potential of another person going in there and doing the same thing that he did, Mr. Speaker, trying to help service those people and find out, Mr. Speaker, if the people are not satisfied with his representation then maybe that next person, Mr. Speaker, would try and knock off the present incumbent and run in that District, which I think could be done by someone from Mun Extension, if they wished to, Mr. Speaker. So I know why one Member opposite is quite delighted that Mun Extension had gotten the axe at Memorial University.

Now, Mr. Speaker, we hear from the Minister of Education every time he stands to speak in this House about academic interference, I believe is what he refers to. Is he going to tell Memorial University what to do? And he says no, he should not. Well, Mr. Speaker, himself and King Clyde had no trouble whatsoever telling Memorial University to freeze their wages, now if that is not academic interference, Mr. Speaker, I do not know what is, because you cannot get, unless you pay an adequate salary for professors to come in here and teach the University students, you are not going to get the quality professors to come in here. Now if that is not academic interference I do not know what is.

Now you have no trouble interfering when it comes to freezing the wages, Mr. Speaker, but you will not - either the Minister of Education or King Clyde will not go and make a phone call, Mr. Speaker, to the Board of Regents, just a personal phone call and say: look, see what you can do about trying to keep Mun Extension because it is an essential service in many parts of this Province.

Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity before I was elected to this House of Assembly, when I was working on a Concerned Citizens Committee in Kilbride area, when we were trying to fight to keep a dump off Ruby Line and we were trying to get briefs prepared for different commissions about the amalgamation or the takeover of Kilbride with St. John's, and about protecting the agricultural resource. Now, Mr. Speaker, I had help from Memorial University Extension Service, me and that committee at that time. Now I do not say there is a great many political friends of the PC Party in Mun Extension. I do not know of them, if they are there. Well, Mr. Speaker, Mun Extension helped me when I needed it. And I will stand in this House, as often as I can, to help Mun Extension because I believe Mun Extension helps other people in the Province, Mr. Speaker, above and beyond the political aspirations of anyone involved. They are there to help people when they are needed, Mr. Speaker, and I am sure that another reason why I think Mun Extension is gone, Mr. Speaker, is that I understand last October when the cutbacks were about to come there was difficulty at Memorial University trying to decide what they would cut. And our great Minister of Finance said to some of his staff, haul them in before me, he said, haul them in before us, I will tell them where they can cut. And when they came in, Mr. Speaker, he wimped out completely because he never opened his mouth while the whole lot of them were there. But behind the scenes, Mr. Speaker, Memorial Extension was his target.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. R. AYLWARD: Behind the scenes, Mr. Speaker, he won out, up to now. I think he and King Clyde have taken the tiger by the tail, Mr. Speaker, because the type of people who are involved with Mun Extension will not be pushed around by any dictatorial type governments. They have experiences standing up for what they believe in and I am certainly sure, Mr. Speaker, that they believe very strongly that they have a useful purpose in this Province, as I believe, Mr. Speaker, and I am sure that they will be around here after King Clyde and his merry men have long left this Province, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you very much.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. BAKER: Motion 5, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Motion 5, to move the debate on Bill 16, shall not be further adjourned and that further consideration of any resolution or resolutions, clause or clauses, section or sections, preamble or preambles, title or titles or whatever else might be related to Bill 16 shall be the first business of the House when next called by the House and shall not be further postponed.

You heard the motion.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

You heard the motion, all those in favour of the motion, Aye?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: Those against, Nay?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: Motion, carried.

MR. BAKER: Order 15, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order 15. Second Reading of a Bill, "An Act Respecting Restraint Of Compensation In The Public Sector Of The Province."

The hon. the Member for Humber East.

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Today, for the first time in my twelve years in this Assembly I saw police officers standing in the galleries intimidating the demonstrators who were sitting watching our deliberations, as is the right of the citizens of our Province who we are here to represent. Now, my right as an Opposition Member, and those of my colleagues here to debate and challenge this draconian legislation violating collective agreements and discriminating against women is being limited. Mr. Speaker, this debate is not about restraining Government spending, it is not about freezing the wages and benefits of public employees, it is about breaching collective agreements, signed legal contracts, between the Government and its agencies as employers and public employees. It is about instituting spending restraint measures that penalize women more than men and accentuate the historic inequities between the sexes.

Mr. Speaker, there are alternatives for a Government facing a tough economic situation. The previous PC Administration, of which I was a Member, faced a major recession in the early 1980s when we saw interest rates soar above 20 per cent, when we saw the deep-sea fishing industry suffer insolvency, when we saw Bowater decide to abandon the paper mill in Corner Brook, the largest employer in Western Newfoundland, and when we saw Advocate Mines give up on Baie Verte. We managed that monumental economic crisis by taking a different approach. Yes, we restrained spending but did not violate contracts with our own employees and we did not penalize women. We did not roll back negotiated settlements.

Mr. Speaker, the measures we took were not popular but we allowed the negotiated signed collective agreements to run their course before we imposed wage freezes and wage controls. We did not tamper with signed legal contracts. We did not use our technical legal power in this Assembly to take away rights. Now, Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned, there are alternatives for the Government now. The Government now, of course, is responsible for making the bed in which its lying. Over the past two years the Government has spent with abandon. The Government now chose to ignore the plans made by the previous Administration's Restraint Senior Expenditure Review Committee. The Government now got elected on a platform of building new universities. They were going to increase funding to Memorial University to continue, of course, Extension Service and all the other programs, faculties, and services. But, not only that, Mr. Speaker, they were going to carry out a major construction program in Corner Brook to elevate Grenfell College to full degree granting status. They were going to build another university in Central Newfoundland, but Clyde Wells was not going to stop there, Clyde Wells promised to build universities in northern Newfoundland and Labrador, too. Two years ago. Now, do you suppose that Liberal Leader campaigning then who had served as Opposition Leader with a $50,000 a year salary supplement two years previous to that had read the financial statements of the Province? Do you suppose he read the Budget documents, the publication of the Newfoundland Statistics Agency and the Department of Finance and Treasury Board to inform himself before he offered himself to the people as an alternative Premier, before he promised to build all these new universities? Do you suppose, Mr. Speaker, that Clyde Wells deliberately mislead people, tricked them, lured them and sucked them into voting for him, do you suppose, Mr. Speaker? Well what are we supposed to think now? The two promises the campaigning Liberal Leader made that had the most impact were the one to augment spending on health care, to open more acute care hospital beds and the one to increase the number of jobs in Newfoundland and Labrador so mothers' sons could come home and find employment here. A woman on the northern peninsula, according to the Premier, when he was speaking at an election rally in Corner Brook, had offer to kiss his feet if he became Premier and brought home her children. Well, I wonder what happened to that woman. She probably moved to Mississauga to join her children because there have been so many setbacks along the St. Barbe coast.

Mr. Speaker, the Premier, on assuming office, did not institute all those promises. He radically scaled down his university plans. He did put the people in central Newfoundland through a charade of competing for the cite of a central Newfoundland university campus, and then after a year or so told them that really the Government could not afford to do that. But the Government did rush to offer its employees 20 plus per cent wage increases, put some disputes out to arbitration, signed contracts providing for hefty wage increases, and did that right up to days before the Minister of Finance delivered his Budget in this House on March 7th.

Now, Mr. Speaker, -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

AN HON. MEMBER: What kind of example are you providing today?

MS. VERGE: Mr. Speaker, look at the swings and lurches of the Government over the past few months, over the past two years that they have been in office. Lacking any kind of a coherent plan they have gone really from one extreme to the other, and the worst example is what I am talking about now, the way the Government has dealt with its public employees. Other examples, of course, are the infamous municipal amalgamation master plan announced by the Minister of Municipal Affairs two months after he assumed office. He has had to pull back repeatedly from that plan. We have seen retreat after retreat after retreat. Finally he agreed to live up to the letter though not the spirit of the Municipalities Act and have feasibility studies. He had members of the executive of his department, who serve at the pleasure of the Cabinet, do the feasibility studies. It is nothing like an arm's length independent study mind you, no, no. He had his own top civil servants do studies.

Those were done though, Mr. Speaker, more than a year ago and several of the reports still are not completed. Absolutely scandalous. Then the latest example of municipal real change was the bombshell dropped just before Christmas after the House of Assembly had closed, days before municipalities were supposed to start their new budget years in the form of a new municipal grant system.

Mr. Speaker, a small municipality in the district I represent, with a purely volunteer council, did up a budget in response to the changes in the grant system, promptly in January submitted it to the Department of Municipal Affairs on January 23rd and just got a reply the other day saying: Sorry, you are not really going to be down $3,000 this year, you are going to be down $18,000. Well the council had to go back to the drawing board over the weekend, and the most reasonable way out of the dilemma is raising taxes. Now they are prepared to do that, but the Government will not let them because the Municipalities Act says that municipalities cannot raise taxes after March 31st. So this group of volunteers, who have given so much of themselves, they are between a rock and a hard place and it is because of the incompetence and bungling of the Minister and his staff. First of all, in changing the grant system days before the start of the budget year, and then in sitting on the municipality's budget request for two months after they submitted it. So the people of this municipality are being made to suffer while the Minister dithers.

Mr. Speaker, I got slightly off the track, but I was just trying to illustrate the fact that this administration lacks a plan. Perhaps if it had done its homework and consulted and listened to the people of the Province, it could have made better choices. It could have phased in restraint measures. It could have negotiated in good faith with public employees to see and select measures that could have kept many more public servants employed and carried on vital services to the people of the Province. Mr. Speaker, the Administration could have held back spending in other areas. The prime example of excess is the Economic Recovery Commission which the Government is bragging about giving $44 million this year. That Recovery Commission is suppose to be boosting employment. Now it is ironic, Mr. Speaker, that in the two years since the Government appointed the Recovery Commission, the unelected Cabinet that answers to the Premier, that the economy has gotten progressively worse. In the two years that the Economic Recovery Commission has been in place, we have seen a 5 per cent increase in the employment rate throughout the Province. We did not have nearly as much to recover from when Doug House began with the Economic Recovery Commission, as we do right now. Mr. Speaker, there are other examples of flagrant waste at a time when essential services are being cut back.

So this debate is about stripping contracts. It is about discriminating against women in the public service,-

AN HON. MEMBER: It is not true.

MS. VERGE: -and it is about rejecting better choices. Mr. Speaker, violating negotiated legal agreements is repulsive. The Premier holds himself out as an ethical person, as somebody who is principled. Well how can anyone claim to be moral when he does not honour his word and his signature. He broke his agreement with the other Canadian First Ministers last June, and now he is breaking his contracts with his own employees here at home. I do not know how he or his henchmen opposite can expect the people of the Province to trust them anymore. But it seems to me that you would have to exhaust every other conceivable option before you would stoop to reneging on your promise, on your word, on your signature, on an agreement. Legal contracts are suppose to be sacred.

Mr. Speaker, worse than violating agreements this Administration is violating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of Canada by sponsoring legislation that has the effect of discriminating against women. This legislation penalizes women in the public service. It penalizes men in the public service but it takes much more from women in the public service. And, of course, women were disadvantaged in the public service and in our society in general always before in any case. This legislation takes away from men in the public service one year's worth of negotiated and agreed to wages and benefits. For this budget year, `91-`92, the men in the public service do not get any increase at all in their wages and benefits, despite the fact that they were the beneficiaries of signed contracts providing for increases, some large increases in some cases.

Now women in the public service similarly lose those assured contracted-for wage and benefits increases for this budget year, but beyond that, Mr. Speaker, women in the public service lose more than three years of negotiated, promised and contracted-for pay equity adjustments. Because, Mr. Speaker, in the spring of 1988 the previous administration, with my colleague, the Member for Grand Falls, as Minister for the Status of Women and President of Treasury Board, entered into contracts with the hospital sector and Hydro, with Cabinet adopting the principle of pay equity for the whole public service, employees of departments and agencies to correct the pay inequity, to finally end the entrenched practice of paying women less than men for doing work of equal value.

Mr. Speaker, the approach taken by the previous administration and favoured by the public service unions was to arrive at pay equity adjustments through a process of negotiations over a period of five years, but the adjustments were to be retroactive to April 1st of 1988. Now that process involved the public service unions and the employers, the Government and the hospitals, nursing homes and other Government agencies, analyzing the make-up of the public service, looking at classifications of jobs, seeing which ones are virtually monopolized by men, which ones are dominated by women, then scrutinizing the characteristics of the job classifications, looking at the skill, effort and responsibility in each category and then comparing. Of course, once that was all done it was obvious and it was conceded by all parties, Government, the hospitals, the nursing homes, Hydro, as well as the public service union leaders, that there was systemic wage and benefit discrimination against women. With the work that has been done over the past three years, it was found that to correct this inequity for women in the health care sector alone back to the agreed-upon date of implementation, April 1st, 1988, would cost the Government about $25 million. In other words, over the past three years women in our hospitals and nursing homes have been discriminated against to the tune of $25 million.

Now though the pay equity agreement was made by the previous administration, the Liberals, when they campaigned for election, made written promises, written assurances that they endorsed pay equity and that they would go the extra step of introducing and enforcing progressive pay equity legislation.

MR. SPEAKER: Order please! Order please!

The hon. the Member's time has elapsed.

MS. VERGE: That is unfortunate, Mr. Speaker, but I hope I will have another chance to speak later in the debate.

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

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, very much, Mr. Speaker. It gives me great pleasure to have an opportunity to speak for a few minutes in this debate. I just want to point out a few things and to make clear for the record an indication of why I will be supporting at the end of the day Bill 16.

I might just begin by pointing out that it is a little bit passingly strange and odd now to see my friends opposite all of a sudden becoming great defenders of the labour movement in Newfoundland, after my past experience. I would just like to read into the record again one more time, as I did in debate the other day on the Private Member's Motion, just a few passages from a letter to the editor in the Western Star of April 2.

MS. VERGE: Read the whole thing. (Inaudible) to the Liberals.

MR. GRIMES: `Need politicians speak truth no matter the cost?' is the title the editor chose to use. It says, `Mr. Editor, while I am at it please allow me to say that I am sick to my stomach of the sheer hypocrisy, the sanctimonious self-righteousness of Mr. Simms or Lynn Verge picking up the gauntlet for the labour movement. Not even the very arrogant, very unpopular Brian Mulroney has the audacity to propose that he or his cronies are anything other than union bashers who love the rich and abide the poor and middle-class as something to be seen and not heard, and, of course, pay taxes. At the risk of being too cynical, we do not need are politicians who jump on and off bandwagons as the political whims and fancies sway them, uttering rhetorical garbage and untruths because they think we want to hear it.' Mr. Speaker, I might say when I read that, particularly for a couple of Members opposite, it certainly rings true to me.

MR. HARRIS: A point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's East on a point of order.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I note the hon. Member was reading from a lengthy document. I wonder if he would be kind enough to table it so that we can read the whole document? I wonder if he would table it so that we would have the whole document before the House?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I will rule on the point of order. There is no point of order. It has been ruled in this House on many occasions that a private Member has neither the right nor the obligation to table any document. The hon. the Member for Exploits.

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I might point out that Members opposite are very familiar with this because I have done them the courtesy of distributing it to them a couple of times before. They have seen it already. They have read all of it. They are well aware of the contents.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Humber East on a point of order.

MS. VERGE: The Member for Exploits sent a copy of that letter to just a couple of us in the official Opposition. I believe he neglected to send a copy to the Member for St. John's East. After having read the whole letter, I see the brunt of the writer's criticism about provincial politics was levelled at the Liberal Government. Though I was not flattered, the thrust of the criticism about provincial politics was directed at the Wells' administration.

MR. SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

The hon. the Member for Exploits.

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, again, Mr. Speaker. The antics now being used are typical. One of the other points I want to make in debate, and which I will elaborate on, is that the hon. the Member for Humber East in raising trivial points as she just did just consumes time in this debate. Because on other occasions when questions have been raised and this issue has been debated in terms of Bill 16 and the merits or demerits related to it and the opinions of hon. Members in this House, every time she has spoken I have asked her to lay before the House the alternatives, what she would have done differently. I report again today that so far she has named one: we should take some more time and do some more consulting. That is the only one. Even in the address today, Mr. Speaker, she mentioned that she was going to present some alternatives fairly early in her twenty minutes. We listened, I listened. I did not interrupt the hon. Member, I listened. I asked for them the other day in debate and got none. I listened today because I was accused of not really wanting to hear any, I heard none. We got the same thing in this debate that has happened time and time again, the ususal diatribe of nonsense, talking about election promises and the past and so on. It is no wonder I continue to refer to this letter, when it refers to the audacity and hypocrisy of this group, particularly a person who was an hon. Member who was a Member of a Cabinet for ten years and was silent.

As Minister of Education, unheard of on any issue related to education in Newfoundland. As Minister of Justice, unheard of. If you did not come in here and someone told you who the Minister was you would never know the position of the Government and the Minister on the issues for which she held responsibility on behalf of the administration of the day.

Now for herself and other hon. Members Opposite, because there is something of a question of leadership to be resolved amongst that group in the near future, all of a sudden we have the great crusader for Humber East with an opinion on everything; silent for ten years when she was in a position as part of a Government to do something about it, and all of a sudden an eloquent, passionate, spokesperson for any and every cause that anybody happens to have in the Province at the present time.

Now what a metamorphosis. What a change! And she has the nerve to sit there and when asked to present alternatives, no suggestions other than to consult a little further, take some more time. However, I might point out that the hon. Member for Grand Falls and the hon. Opposition House Leader, did present several alternatives in his opening remarks on this bill when it was introduced. I would like to deal with a few of those, because I did take the time in debate to make a note of them, write them down and see what happens.

He talked about why not an extra 1 per cent cut in Transportation, Purchased Services, travel and so on in each Department, and the Member was suggesting that that could save x number of jobs. Every hon. Member on that side of the House, Mr. Speaker, who was here in the past and served in the previous administration recognizes full well, unless they are going to be involved in the total hypocrisy we have seen a lot of in the last few days, that this administration on this side of the House, and my hon. friends who form the Cabinet and Government of this Province today, have cut every one of those categories clear to the bone compared to how those hon. Members used to run the Province and those Departments. It is absolutely hypocritical. I do not see how they even have the face to suggest that travel expenses for Members and Ministers and civil servants in the Departments should be cut when, in three successive Budgets, these Ministers have brought those things under control when they were rampantly and wantonly out of control with the previous administration.

We hear about Newfoundland Information Services, Mr. Speaker. The hon. the Opposition House Leader says, why not cut the cost of Newfoundland Information Services? The list the hon. House Leader and the President of Treasury Board supplied in debate previously already shows that three Budgets later, when there should be inflation, the number of people dedicated and committed in salaried positions in this Province today to giving information about the programmes to the Government still cost over $170,000 less than the people who were employed by the previous administration, scattered throughout twenty-three Departments, going around at the beck and call of Ministers, issuing press releases and good news on behalf of Ministers and Members. And they have the nerve to suggest, just because this Government has had the good sense to consolidate all that, never mind hiding it away in different Departments under different Budget heads, put it under Newfoundland Information Services so that Government information can be given to the people of Newfoundland properly rather than political propaganda issued on behalf of Ministers and Members, as was the previous practice, and to do it and save $170,000. And the Opposition House Leader, who was party to all that, would suggest oh, that should be scrapped.

We are already doing a better job on behalf of the people for $170,000 less three years later, and they have the audacity and the hypocrisy to stand up and suggest that there is something wrong with that. Now, you talk about a group grasping for straws and looking at something to try to hang on to. Another one of my favourites, and I am glad the hon. the Member for Harbour Main came into the Chamber.

The hon. the Opposition House Leader, the hon. the Member for Grand Falls, suggested why in this bad year do the Ministers not cut out their $8,000 a year car allowance? I am convinced, and we will see shortly that this procedure used by these Ministers is going to save the Province countless thousands of dollars. When the Opposition Members were Members of Cabinet not only did they have their cars and all the related expenses, they managed to find ways to suggest that there might be a bit of business in Boston or New Orleans or Las Vegas and hook a trailer hitch on to the back of the Government car, with a gas card, and go on down to a meeting. Meanwhile, because the car was going, you might as well fill it up with all your family.

AN HON. MEMBER: Save money.

MR. GRIMES: There is nothing wrong with that in the opinion of the hon. Members opposite. And now that we have cleaned up that mess and cut it just about in half, they suggest it should be stopped altogether. For seventeen years they drove around in cars and there was nothing wrong with it. They had a wage freeze for two years. Did they suggested they give up their cars? Oh, no, the cars are great. We will keep the cars. We will drive the cars, and pay for our family vacations with them and everything else. All of a sudden now these Ministers are supposed to give up their car allowances. A great suggestion! That is really going to save the Province and do wonders.

What about protocol and hosting the Royal family? Are Members now suggesting that an invitation tendered almost two years ago on behalf of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment to have the Colonel of the Regiment, the Princess, come to this Province at the request of the Regiment to honour the seventy-fifty anniversary of Newfoundlanders who died at Beaumont Hamel should now, because we are experiencing some financial difficulty, be totally scrapped?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Yes.

MR. GRIMES: An insult to the Royal family, an insult to all Newfoundlanders who fought in the Regiment, an insult to the Legion, an insult to everybody. But insult them anyway, it does not matter. So they are suggesting that all the things Governments normally do on behalf of people should be scrapped. Another great suggestion!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. GRIMES: The hon. the Member for Grand Falls as well talked about $200,000 to $300,000 worth of renovations for Exon House, a $9 million extension to the Administration Building at Mun, a $5 million animal care centre and so on. And he knew the difference, because that hon. Member as previous President of Treasury Board knows well the difference between capital account and current account. Now there are some who will not admit it on the opposite side at the present time because it is not to their political advantage, but everybody knows that what we have this year is a current account money problem. We had $117 million deficit just finished, we are already budgeting for almost $60 million more, and the money markets are saying if you cannot pay your heat and light bill, as the penultimate Premier, Premier Peckford, used to refer to it as, if you cannot buy your groceries and pay for you heat and light, we cannot lend you money for the rest of the stuff. Nobody minds lending people money to build hospitals, to build schools, pave roads, put in water and sewer systems, the same as we run our own lives. We will borrow money to finance a house, or finance a car, but everybody will say to you you are in big trouble if you are borrowing money to go down to the corner grocery store and pick up your groceries. And it has to be stopped and brought under control. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, Bill 16.

We have been looking for alternatives. I have heard none from the opposite side only a pile of nonsense and a pile of foolishness, because they think all of a sudden they are carrying the flag. I understand fully and respect and appreciate the positions being taken by the unions and their leaders and their membership.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. GRIMES: Indeed I do and I respect everything they are doing. But for hon. Members opposite to think that all of a sudden they can turn over a brand new page and be something other than they really are, and carry the banner and wave the flag and really carry the cross for the labour movement of Newfoundland, is more hypocrisy than most people can bear.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. GRIMES: We are looking for alternatives, and there are none.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. GRIMES: To the bill itself, Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt in my mind, as I have spoken previously in a debate on Private Member's Day relating to the same issue, if there was a choice other than to bring in Bill 16, this Cabinet, this Government on this side of the House would have done it. There is absolutely nobody in elected office who takes any pleasure or pride or anything else in having to say, Look, we have to take a couple of thousand people and tell them we are sorry, you have done good work in this Province but we cannot have you on the payroll any more. And to take the rest of them and say, We are sorry to you as well. We want you to continue working, but even though you do have agreements in place, we cannot afford to pay you this year.

Do you think anybody over here, anybody anywhere in their right mind would make that choice if they had another one they could make? Somebody has to be kidding. Somebody has to be absolutely kidding, to think that given an option, anybody in their right mind would stand up and choose that one. It is being done, Mr. Speaker, because there is no choice. There are no alternatives, and we are waiting for the hon. Members opposite to stand up and suggest what they would do differently if they were still administering the Province. Not a peep. I have heard some trivial little stuff that I have talked about. I heard one about 'stop, wait, consult and delay a little longer'. Consult and delay a little longer and we go further into the debt problem than we already are. We risk our credit rating even more. You have to take action when the time comes. There was no choice and there is no pleasure in it. We certainly wish we did not have to do it. Everybody on this side, knew and knows, it was an action that would not be popular and everybody knows as well - why would politicians not want to be popular? We would love to do something that would make us popular and this was not it. Then it took a great deal of soul searching on the part of everybody to come to the conclusion that it had to be done and that hopefully over a period of time most people in the Province would understand that there were no choices, it had to be done and it was done in the best interests of the total population of the Province.

The other thing the hon. Member for Humber East keeps bringing up, it's a little slant that the Opposition tries to put on it, this Government: you cannot trust them. I understand again the unions using that as their slogan or phrase; boy, you have to watch this crowd because they will sign something one day and it is gone the next day. The hon. Member for Humber East always says: just like Meech Lake.

Now they say that it was just like Meech Lake, that the Premier committed his signature to a piece of paper and came home and did not honour it. Now, what a myth to try and perpetuate and perpetrate throughout this House and in the Province. Are the Members opposite suggesting that when Meech Lake died in Manitoba we should now try to put another nail in its coffin and that would contribute something to the national unity debate? Is that what you are suggesting? Were you willing to go along with the silly manipulation of the federal members? Is that what you are saying by your position, that you think that was all right and proper, all that nonsense that went on, that if Newfoundland promised to sign all of a sudden, mysteriously, after three years nothing could happen with the deadline, but if we signed, all of a sudden they could come up with a magic extension in Manitoba. Oh, great stuff. The Accord died as it was in Manitoba before this Legislature came back to resume debate and I for one am quite proud of the position I took, that you cannot kill something twice, and that in total respect for any chance we have, to continue on with the national unity debate you have to leave the options open. That Accord was never, ever voted down. It was never voted against, but if that was the only option left that is what would have happened in this Legislature, leave no doubt. So, what we have, Mr. Speaker, is in this Bill Government has offered the unions to honour every single provision they negotiated in their contract, but, due to the fiscal problems that we presently have it is going to have to be delayed for a year, so they can take every single benefit they negotiated and acquire that benefit a year later, or they are given the choice, if they want to take their chances at the bargaining table instead, they can forget the middle year, take the agreement as it is, cut out a year and go back and try negotiating again. You believe that here in this Province those unions, with their own strength and with the support of their own memberships, will negotiate good contracts again with this Government and those contracts will be honoured, just like this contract will be honoured except that it has to be delayed because the money is not available. You can present any number of arguments. You can look at that as the greatest disaster that ever happened to collective bargaining or you can say we have an unfortunate problem and that it is unfortunate that this Government had to take this drastic measure to deal with it, but it is far from the end of the world. Every benefit negotiated can be maintained and will be honoured by this Government, but there has to be a one year delay.

The Members opposite, as well, in my final couple of comments, talk about pay equity and the difficulty in how that discriminates against women and so on.

MR. SPEAKER: Order please! Order please!

The hon. Member's time has elapsed.

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Grand Bank.

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I rise to participate in this debate and, once again, this closure motion, but I have to say to the Member for Exploits that I find his actions and his speech revolting. Can you imagine what some people in the galleries today find it? And he talks about us turning another page. Well I want to say to the Member for Exploits, there has never been a bigger flip flop done in the history of this Province as was done by the Member for Exploits and the Minister of Labour. Never a bigger flip flop. There are fourteen Ministers in this Government, and who stands up to defend the Government's action? -- the Member for Exploits; a former President of the Newfoundland Teachers Association. When he sat down, who banged on her desk, but the one behind him and said, 'an excellent job, Roger,' the other former President of the Newfoundland Teachers Association.

Now I want to say, Mr. Speaker, is that what we have here today in this closure debate is a continuation of dishonesty by this Government, a continuation of dishonesty. It all started in the 1989 election campaign with this Liberal Manifesto. Now just to highlight for Members some of the dishonesty, they talked about the health care system, and said it was in turmoil. It said hospital beds remain closed while patients wait for months, sometimes in pain and anguish to be admitted. That is the Liberal documents talking about the Province during the 1989 election. Doctors, nurses and support staff are overworked and in many cases underpaid. Facilities and services are strained beyond their limits. This critical situation must be alleviated immediately, it is truly a matter of life and death. Liberal health policies dictate that as long as the demand exists hospital beds must be kept open. Institutions must not be understaffed and compassion must always take precedence over business administration. That is the Liberal manifesto from 1989.

I remember full well when the Premier did his tour of the Province and he came down to my district. He did not speak to very many people in my district because there were not very many who came out to listen to him, but to those who came out, he told them that he was going to open more hospital beds, that he was going to improve health care on the Burin Peninsula. What did he do in the Budget Speech a few months after being elected? He closed down St. Lawrence and Grand Bank hospitals. At that time there was a delegation came into the city from my district, from St. Lawrence, and I questioned the Premier in the legislature that day, and I was not very proud of what I did. I accused the Premier that day of being a liar.

AN HON. MEMBER: What!

MR. MATTHEWS: Yes, I accused him of being a liar. I forget the date. Like I said, I was not very proud of it. But you know something, Mr. Speaker, I have been vindicated. Early this morning while I was driving from my district and listening to VOCM I heard the chants about 'Clyde lied', and the other chant was 'tell the truth this time'. But it took awhile, it took awhile before the people of this Province really started to see the real picture. There are some people in our galleries today who took a while to see the real picture and to see the real Clyde operate. Finally it is happening. As I said, Mr. Speaker, it is a continuation of dishonesty right back to the days of the general election.

What did they say during the election? We are going to abolish school taxes, open more hospital beds, bring Newfoundlanders home. Water and sewer corporations to take water and sewer to small communities that could not afford it because Newfoundlanders and Labradorians deserve no less.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: Post-secondary education: we all remembered the four or five universities that were going to be built throughout the Province. Those are the kinds of things that were promised. So it is a continuation of dishonesty I say to the Member for Exploits, a continuation of dishonesty just the same as his dishonesty has continued when he went and used the Newfoundland Teachers Association. He used them. He was dishonest with them, and the day he was elected he forgot all about them, he fits in very very well, by the way, with the continuation of dishonesty. Then we had the infamous 1991 Budget. Where the Minister of Finance brought in a fraudulent dishonest Budget to this Legislature, and said he was going to have a $10 million surplus.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: Five or six months - all of that old stuff. The Member for Exploits said: forget all that old stuff. A $215 million deficit, all that old stuff. That is the reason we have the problem we have today in this House and in this Province. If the Minister's Budget was honest we would not have 3,000, 4,000 people laid off in the Province.

AN HON. MEMBER: What would you do instead?

MR. MATTHEWS: Bring in an honest budget and then the unions of the Province would know what the real financial picture of the Province was. That is what you did. Why would they not come in looking for good settlements? You told them you were going to have a surplus at the end of the year. What would you have done if you were president of the Newfoundland Teachers Association? Would you come looking for a good raise knowing you believed them when they told you they were going to have a surplus? But if you had told them you were going to have a deficit they may have come in a little more conciliatory tone and mood.

That is the difference. You were not honest, you were not up-front, and you continued to negotiate with those groups as your financial picture changed - so you told us. It was changing. And you gave them reasonable - that is the President of Treasury Board - wage settlements. Knowing full well that you could not afford it according to what you told us on March 7. You could not afford those wage increases. And the dishonesty continues because now you are taking it away. So you negotiated dishonestly with those people or else you would not take it back. And is there any wonder?

Today I asked the Minister of Finance to tell the people of this Province what he was going to save, the salary monies he would save, as a result of the layoffs. He could not tell me. He said: I do not know, I cannot tell you, I do not know what effect it is going to have on our bottom line. I asked him to tell us what he is going to save, or how much he is going to pay out in redundancy and early retirement, and he could not tell us. So obviously the Government went and made those decisions without knowing the bottom line. That is what the Minister of Finance has told us today in this Legislature. I do not know what we are going to pay out but we did it anyway. And that is why people just cannot trust this Government any more. Now that is what has happened with the continuation of dishonesty in this Government, I say to the Member for Exploits.

And he talked about Ministers' cars. And here is this gentleman driving around in a Government car until I brought it to the attention of the Premier in the Legislature last fall and then the Premier took back the keys and he could no longer drive around. If I had not brought it up in the Legislature he would still be driving around in a Government car. And he gets up and brags about how they have cut back. The only cutback that has been in that area is when it has been brought to someone's attention, someone has been embarrassed, and the Premier has had to act, I say to the Member. That is what happening. You have not saved a cent on the action you took on Ministers' cars. If anything it is going to cost you more, but that will come out also one of those days.

AN HON. MEMBER: Not true, (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: Oh? Of course it is not true.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: The President of Treasury Board says it is not true.

The number of people being laid off is not true, not true, this is not true and that is not true. Nothing, you know, everything is not true. I wish it was not true, I wish it was not true I say to the President of Treasury Board. Sometimes I am wrong and most times you are wrong; most time you have been wrong over the last two years, I say to the President of Treasury Board, your record is not one to brag about.

Mr. Speaker, then the March 7th Budget came in, more dishonesty from this Government; then Bill 16, the rollback bill and then of course, we see it again, a few days ago, where the President of Treasury Board gave notice of closure. I do not know how many times the closure motion has been used in this Legislature in the past two years, but it is certainly far more than the total times it has been used since Confederation.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: When it is necessary. But I say to the President of Treasury Board that it seems with this Government it is always necessary, it is always necessary. Now, this is a pretty serious piece of legislation, Mr. Speaker, because what we see here is a breach of trust, a breach of trust not by the unions of the Province but by the Government of the Province, and as I said a few days ago, that it is going to be very, very difficult for the unions to be able to go back to the bargaining table with this Government because in essence, Government has full authority, it is a one-sided show now and it is going to be very, very difficult for both sides to go back to the table feeling equal, because they are not equal.

This Government has usurped all authority when it comes to collective bargaining in this Province and that is very, very sad, Mr. Speaker. The Member for Exploits says talk about alternatives. There are a number of alternatives; there were alternatives that were given to the Government by the union leadership. The President of Treasury Board consistently shakes his head and says there were no alternatives given, no suggestions made he says, no suggestions made and because he said that, we moved a six month hoist on this bill a few days ago and said: call the union leadership in to your office, Mr. President of Treasury Board and have a chat about this whole situation and see if there is some way to avoid those massive layoffs -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible), six months (inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: You did it six months ago and there were no suggestions from them?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) rollback six months ago.

MR. MATTHEWS: There were no suggestions made six months ago, there was no way out of it?

AN HON. MEMBER: No, he said (inaudible) rollback possible six months ago.

MR. MATTHEWS: Now, Mr. Speaker, if my memory serves correctly, it was just a few weeks ago that there was some debate in this Legislature as to when, in essence the President of Treasury Board and the union leaderships had met and what was said or not said and what was suggested, we almost caught the Premier and the President of Treasury Board at odds and the Premier almost sort of did a half lie on that matter, so I say to the President of Treasury Board he should be careful. But there are alternatives, there are other things to be done, Mr. Speaker, rather than lay off those 3,500, 4,000 people. There were ways about it; it was Government priorities that caused this; it is their decision, fully their decision, even though some other people had made some very good suggestions on a way about it.

And as I have said before, Mr. Speaker, the peeve, the real pet peeve, is how they could lay off all those people who are gainfully employed in the Province and give or provide or say they are providing in excess of $40 million to the Economic Recovery Commission, knowing full well that the Economic Recovery Commission will never create that number of jobs in this Province, never create Mr. Speaker, those 3,500 or 4,000 jobs; Doug House will not live long enough or be paid enough money by this Government to create that many jobs, so I say to the Member for Exploits there are alternatives, there are alternatives to this situation, there were alternatives but the Government decided, in its lack of wisdom, to gut the public service of this Province, is going to significantly increase the unemployment rate in our Province and the unemployment rate has gone up, I think, all but one month in the last thirteen or fourteen months; it is going to reduce spending in the Province and I would say, come the end of summer again, Mr. Speaker, come the end of summer, July or August, we will see the Premier make another statement to the people of the Province, saying that our financial position has further deteriorated; our revenues are not on target and the Premier is going to be surprised at that, Mr. Speaker, he will not be able to comprehend why that would be, why the people are spending less, why the Government is taking in less money in revenues. He is going to not understand that, he is going to blame in on some other outside forces I suppose, Mulroney, Wilson, Bush, and God knows who else he will blame that on. He will take no responsibility himself, even though he has laid off 3,500 to 4,000 people in the Province.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: I am sorry?

MR. MURPHY: One hundred and eighty million dollars (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: Well let me say to the Member for St. John's South, because I almost forgot this point, Mr. Speaker, last March the Minister of Finance projected a $10 million surplus, towards the end of the year he told us we were having a $215 million deficit. What a lot of people in the Province have forgotten is that in two Budgets this Minister of Finance has taken $160 million in additional taxes out of the pockets of Newfoundlanders and Labardorians, $160 million additional taxes. So can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, how bad they mismanaged this Province. Can you imagine how bad off we would be, Mr. Speaker, if Government had not imposed those new taxes on Newfoundlanders and Labradorians? We would have had a deficit somewhere close to $400 million. So the big question that people in my area of the of the Province has been asking, Mr. Speaker, is where did the money go?

The ordinary Newfoundlander and Labradorian cannot understand where the money went. You predicted a $10 million surplus, you came in at $215 million deficit. You took $160 million in additional taxes, you took in $160 million in additional new taxes. So the big question that people are asking out there, what did they do with the money?

MR. BAKER: (Inaudible) blew the credit rating.

MR. MATTHEWS: No, and I say to the President of Treasury Board, and he said the other day, blowing the credit rating. Is there any wonder that credit rating agencies called in the Minister of Finance and the Premier and threatened them to reduce the credit rating when a Minister of Finance in five or six months went from a $10 million surplus, and was talking about a $200 million deficit in a period of five or six months. I make no wonder. The President of Treasury Board - there are two defences that he comes up with, Mr. Speaker, when you start to get to him. There are two things he brings up, one is the credit rating. He always talks about the credit rating, and he talks about alternatives. That is the only defence that the President of Treasury Board has. And he knows full well that if he was to tell the truth he would say, he is embarrassed to tears over what happened to the finances of this Province over the last twenty-four months. He is embarrassed to tears to even talk about it.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

DR. KITCHEN: What about the last seventeen years?

MR. MATTHEWS: The Minister of Finance talks about the last seventeen years. But let me tell him again as he walks out of the House that the financial position of the Province did not deteriorate as much in seventeen years as it has done in the last seventeen months under your rule. He inherited a $4 million surplus when he came to power on current account, $4 million surplus and about sixteen or seventeen months into the term he is talking about a $215 million deficit. Now if the Minister of Finance wants to brag about that I say, -

MR. EFFORD: Be nice now.

MR. MATTHEWS: No, I am not being nice. It is being truthful, I say to the hon. the Minister of Social Services, because that is what happened to the financial situation of this Province since this Administration came to power. And who has to suffer the consequences, Mr. Speaker? The public servants of the Province have had to bear the brunt of fiscal mismanagement by this Government. That is the problem. People who had no say whatsoever in the running of the affairs of this Province. People who negotiated in good faith with this Government, Mr. Speaker. People who got what the President of Treasury Board referred to as reasonable increases. And then, Mr. Speaker, what did we see happening, the Minister of Social Services says he has not had a raise in three years. Well I can see that is another false statement, Mr. Speaker. Because all we have to do is look at the estimates of the last couple of Budgets and we can see that indeed the Minister of Social Services has had increases. He will not get one in this fiscal year. That was announced. But the last two years, Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Social Services got an increase.

MR. WINSOR: Did you hear what some lady said about him this morning on Open Line?

MR. MATTHEWS: No, tell me what she said.

MR. WARREN: She said, she liked him.

MR. WINSOR: The Premier came to your defence though.

MR. MATTHEWS: Mr. Speaker, this closure bill is a very, very serious piece of business. It is very, very disturbing that we would have to face this closure motion so soon into a debate on Bill 16. I mean the President of Treasury Board, the Premier and the Ministers of the Government know the concern that is out and about the labour movement about this particular piece of legislation. And I really thought, Mr. Speaker, that we would see a number of days of debate on Bill 16 before the President of Treasury Board would bring in the notice of the closure motion.

AN HON. MEMBER: There is lots more to come (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: Yes, there is lots more to come, I am sure there is, you know. Because that is the way this Government has been operating from Day 1, I say to the President of Treasury Board. You want to shut down the Province -

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

The hon. Member's time is up.

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

MR. SPEAKER: Are we ready for the question?

The hon. the Member for Torngat Mountains.

MR. WARREN: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I would say to my hon. colleague from Port de Grave, the Minister of Social Services, that it is quite possible he may hear something in the next twenty minutes that may be of interest to him. (Inaudible) in particular that here we are talking about Bill 16 and at the same time he increases the per diem for the Chairman of the Social Services Appeal Board, from $200 to $350.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. WARREN: Yes, Mr. Speaker, yes. It is tied into this bill. Cost saving in this Province and the Minister, since September, when this Government and the President of the Treasury Board and the Premier were saying throughout the media in this Province that we are going to use restraint. So the Minister met with the President of Treasury Board -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WARREN: Yes. Now, my hon. colleague was gone away for a few days and now he is surprised, right? So, now, all of a sudden, where the former Chairman was getting $250 per diem, all of a sudden it is increased to $350. An increase for the Chairman of the board.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. WARREN: But that is not the best of it. The best part of it is that now the Chairman is allowed to get paid per diem to get ready for going to the meeting. Okay? To get ready, to prepare yourself for a meeting. You have to, you know, if you have to get ready to go to a meeting, you are the Chairperson, so he is paid an extra per diem -

MR. WINSOR: (Inaudible) one day preparation, a day for (Inaudible).

MR. WARREN: Yes, right, okay. Now my hon. colleague is right. That is two days, right?

MR. WINSOR: A day travelling out to central Newfoundland.

MR. WARREN: That is three days.

AN HON. MEMBER: What are you suggesting? We should not pay him?

MR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, let me say to my hon. colleague. It is only today I spoke to a member of the Workers' Compensation Board, and this particular person on the Workers' Compensation Board last month, or the month before, attended five meetings, not getting one cent.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. BAKER: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

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

The hon. the President of Treasury Board on a point of order.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) take any more.

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, it is not that I can not take any more. I can sit here for hours and hours and listen. My point, Mr. Speaker, is simply this. Members opposite have been complaining about not having enough time to speak about this bill, and now a Member is getting up and I am wondering about the relevance of what is going on here. Members want time to speak about this bill and I believe they should use the time available to speak on the bill and not get off on tangents, things not even remotely connected with the bill, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

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

The hon. the Member for Torngat Mountains to that point of order.

MR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, to that point of order. But I understand that the Member for Exploits asked us how can we save money. And I would think that what the Member said and tying it into this, it is an answer to how we can save money. And it ties into Bill 16, because Bill 16 is talking about saving money.

Mr. Speaker, I think there is no point of order.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

There is no point of order.

The hon. the Member for Torngat Mountains.

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

I was just interrupted by a note from the media who wanted to talk to me about my colleague for River Eagle but I want to wait until after for that.

Mr. Speaker, I think we are missing a very important point on this particular Bill. I want to go back to, I do not recall exactly, but I think I was probably seventeen or eighteen years of age, around that period in my life, and let me say to my hon. colleague this is going to tie right into this particular Bill, at that particular time there was the famous IWA strike.

AN HON. MEMBER: That was in 1959.

MR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague said in 1959, and in fact he is correct, because I was in high school at the time and due to family circumstances I was compelled to go working with the AND company with my father. I want to say this because I think it is pretty close to what we are doing today. This legislation today, Bill 16, is very similar to what happened in 1959. When the Premier of the day -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WARREN: My hon. colleague says I do not know what I am talking about. Well, let me say to my hon. colleague that I was one of the individuals that was stopped by sixteen members of a union -

MR. WINSOR: The Minister of Finance is getting carried away.

MR. WARREN: I understand that the Minister of Finance is naturally upset, and why should he not be upset, Mr. Speaker, having such a Bill brought in? I want to go back and repeat what I was trying to say. My hon. colleague for Placentia is definitely showing interest and I believe he is interested in what I want to say. When I was only eighteen or nineteen years of age I was one of the individuals who was stopped by members of a union because we were, five or six of us, going down to what we call Terra Nova, or down in the woods, the old saying was, we were going down there but we were stopped by this particular union. Now, a short time thereafter the Premier of the day decided he was going to do something that this Bill is practically doing today. This bill is doing through the backdoor what the Premier was doing in 1969 - this bill is actually decertifying unions.

AN HON. MEMBER: What is wrong with that?

MR. WARREN: What is wrong with that? My hon. colleague, the Minister of Social Services is asking, what is wrong with that? Mr. Speaker, I would say to my hon. colleague, maybe when I was 18 or 19 years of age, when I was one of those people like my hon. mature colleagues are today, at that time I probably did not know what I was doing. I did not know what I was doing then, but I would say thank God for the union movement in this Province; thank God that since Frank Moores became Premier unions have been recognized in this Province. That is the important thing. Up to 1971-72, unions were not recognized in this Province.

Mr. Speaker, you can say you would put him in jail, you can say what you want, but there is one thing, that since 1972 no Government has rolled back wages. And if my hon. colleagues for St. John's South or Mount Scio - Bell Island believes this bill is not rolling back wages, then there is something wrong. It is rolling back wages. So do you agree with rolling back wages.

MR. MURPHY: No.

MR. WARREN: You do not agree with it. Well stand up and say so!

MR. MURPHY: I have already stood up.

MR. WARREN: You have not stood up in this House on this bill yet.

MR. MURPHY: (Inaudible).

MR. WARREN: You have not stood up on this bill yet! Stand up and say you do not agree with this bill.

MR. MURPHY: (Inaudible).

MR. WARREN: Stand up and say you do not agree with this bill and vote against your Premier, vote against the great pretender in this Province.

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

MR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, I hope after I sit down, within the next fifteen or twenty minutes the hon. the Member for St. John's South - he just said he does not agree with the rollback of wages - will get up and condemn this bill. Before tomorrow passes, this bill will be ready for the vote, and the hon. Member for St. John's South just said he does not agree with the rollback of wages. So I would hope the people of Newfoundland and Labrador will tomorrow be able to say the Member for St. John's South voted against the bill.

MR. WARREN: And I would think the Member for Mount Scio - Bell Island -

MR. WALSH: He may regret what we have to do but he will support the action that we have to do it.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. WARREN: So, therefore, we now know what the Member for Mount Scio - Bell Island is doing. What about the Member for St. George's? Will he vote against the bill? He will not answer.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, one thing about my hon. colleague for Placentia, he goes right to the point, almost right up to the point that he is going to vote against the Government. On three occasions now he went so close. And when there is a standing vote called, the hon. Member is the last one to rise in his place. He rises, but he is the last to rise. But I must say something else. The Member for Fortune - Hermitage, since that Member got over there, as soon as a vote is called he is the first one up out of his seat. As soon as the hon. President of the Council calls a vote on anything, the Member for Fortune - Hermitage is the first one to jump up and support the Government.

Now what about my hon. colleague for Bellevue, where the Hibernia oil development is taking place, where we have thousands of people involved with the union? Everyone associated with it is involved with a union. In fact, you cannot get a job there unless you are in a union. Unless you are a part of a union, you cannot get a job there.

Now just a couple of days ago I had a visit from a constituent of my colleague, a relative of mine, by the way, who is not upset. In fact, he really appreciates what my colleague is trying to do. But he said to me, why would the Member support this Government and at the same time -

MR. EFFORD: God forbid you ever belonged to this Government. I would move out. Don't be talking so foolish!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, I have to say to my hon. colleague, the Minister of Social Services, one more time if he would concentrate more on stovepipes and stoves and look after the social services people in this Province -

MR. EFFORD: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. WARREN: I am glad the hon. Member said that. He just mentioned about $80,000, roughly, that was spent by Government on bathroom facilities and office space for me when I was minister.

I would say to the Minister, why would his department give retroactive pay to the Chairman of the Social Services Appeal Board -

MR. EFFORD: No retroactive pay.

MR. WARREN: No retroactive pay? We will find out in due course.

AN HON. MEMBER: He is from his district, is he not?

MR. WARREN: Yes. In fact, the Chairman is a former liberal candidate from the district.

MR. SIMMS: How many people are on that board?

AN HON. MEMBER: Three.

MR. SIMMS: Three in total.

MR. EFFORD: Three and an alternate.

MR. SIMMS: How many from the Port de Grave District?

MR. EFFORD: Four.

MR. SIMMS: That would not surprise me. Are they all getting retroactive pay, or just the chairman?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, apparently on bill 16 we are talking about rolling back wages for civil servants in the Province, for nurses in the Province and for everyone else in the Province, and at the same time the Minister sees fit - I am sure my hon. colleague, the Speaker is amazed at this. The New Perlican hospital is closing down and people are being laid off in the hon. Speaker's district at the same time as a constituent of the Minister of Social Services is being paid $350 a day to attend a meeting. Now there has to be something wrong with the way this Government is working.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

Now, I would think the hon. Minister -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, also on bill 16 we have to talk about the group homes the Minister said he was going to close.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, that is not right. I have fifteen minutes left yet.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister wants to close down a group home in Goose Bay, and the only reason he is trying to do that is to save money for the Government.

MR. EFFORD: (Inaudible) you know nothing about (inaudible).

MR. WARREN: No, Mr. Speaker. It was only Saturday evening around 5:00 p.m. that I had dinner with the father of one of these people, one of those individuals. I was sitting in their house, and he is still concerned about what the Minister said to him in a private meeting.

MR. EFFORD: Yes, like somebody who was left in the woods waiting for (inaudible).

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

MR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, let me say that with this bill 16 this Government is doing today the same thing Joey Smallwood did in 1959 - the same thing.

MR. NOEL: (Inaudible).

MR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, I would say to my hon. colleague from Pleasantville, I guess it is as the old saying has had it for years and years in Newfoundland and Labrador, I am a Liberal because my father was a Liberal, he was a Liberal because his father was a Liberal. But somewhere along the way he will gradually wake up and, I would suggest - I have five minutes left. Mr. Speaker, I will adjourn the debate.

AN HON. MEMBER: Carry on?

MR. WARREN: I cannot. It is five o'clock.

MR. SPEAKER: Am I to assume that we are to recess until seven? Do we have leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: Seven o'clock?

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes, okay.

MR. SPEAKER: Is it agreed that we recess until 7:00 p.m.?

The House is now recessed.

The House resumed at 7:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Torngat Mountains.

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

I understand I have only a couple of minutes left; however, I want to continue from where I left off when we adjourned at 5:00 p.m.

Bill No. 16, in my opinion, is the beginning of what the first Premier of this Province did back in 1959. I say that because the Premier of the day, at the time, was determined to decertify unions in this Province, and shortly thereafter, in 1966, it is interesting to note that the present Premier of our Province was appointed Minister of Labour. It is most interesting to note that the Premier of our Province, today, was the Minister of Labour, in the Government in 1966, that despised unions. I think, Mr. Speaker, that the Premier is continuing to show the same today as he did back in 1966, that he did not like unions then and he does not like unions now. And the way to get rid of unions and collective bargaining in this Province is to bring in Bill 16. Bringing closure on this particular bill, I believe, is the first indication of the Premier making a move for which I am sure the people of Newfoundland and Labrador will repay two-fold when the next election is called.

Thank you.

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is a pleasure for me to rise in my place today to offer what I have as it pertains to this closure bill, Bill 16. It is certainly, as far as I am concerned, a regressive step.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. PARSONS: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I suppose the hon. the Minister of Social Services, from what he read or heard, is certainly right, this is something like Confederation, because any of us who can remember, Responsible Government won that vote, although it was not seen that way. At any rate, Bill No. 16, as far as I am concerned, takes away whatever democracy there is, as it pertains to collective bargaining. This Government has had two years, as far as I am concerned, of incompetence. They talk about what happened to our rating. Our rating was no worse than that of any other Province. In 1985, in many provinces of Canada, the rating came down a point or two, and ours was no different. They talk about why this had to happen.

I have a lot of respect for the hon. the Government House Leader, but I find it hard to believe that he could stand in this legislature and say that when he signed those collective agreements, giving that responsible allotment to the nurses, he did not know then that the Province was in the situation it is in. I have said, over and over, I have a lot of respect for that gentleman, but I suppose, perhaps, having been dictated to, his conclusions may have been influenced by persuasion, I do not know. He said today, on being questioned in the House, that the nurses were a special group. He, himself, said that the nurses were a special group. He gave the nurses, he said, the raise they should have gotten, but, now - I believe they received two increments - the other part of the raise is to be rolled back.

Mr. Speaker, today, my friend, the hon. the Member for Torngat Mountains, related what the present Government is doing to the IWA strike. There are not many of us here today, I suppose, who remember the IWA and the strike, but I do. Your Honour, I was a member of the Newfoundland Constabulary, at the time.

AN HON. MEMBER: Were you in Badger?

MR. PARSONS: I never did get to Badger. We all had our day off. We used to work six days a week, then, and you would not consistently get days off. Members of the force would take consecutive days. And Constable Bill Moss, who was killed out there, was a very good friend of mine. There is a memorial to him, now, here in the City of St. John's. That was a hard time for everyone.

In the Smallwood era, trade unions, almost, was a dirty word. And the IWA were fighting for the rights of the people, trying to give Newfoundlanders better status. I think the hon. the Member for Placentia was in the force, at the time. At least, I am sure his father was. But, to make a comparison between the IWA and what is happening now, I did not, until I was reminded today. And surely, God, we cannot get away with doing to the workers of this Province what was done in 1959; that young man - and I know the same things are not happening now - that young man should never have died, because there was no reason for him to be out there in the first place.

I was standing a few days ago and mentioned that, coming out of the bathroom, I met one of the people who had lost his job, and it was a big joke on the other side. I do not know if a fellow is not allowed to go the bathroom. Anyway, it was a big joke over there. And I suppose the only way you would not want to go to the bathroom is if you were a bunch of hens. I am not saying you are a bunch of hens.

But the point remains, coming out of the bathroom, I met this gentleman. And I am always saying, `How are you doing?' or whatever. I said to the gentleman, `How are you doing, today?' `Not too well, Sir,' he said, `because I just received my notice.' Mr. Speaker, he received the notice shortly after receiving a raise, whereupon, he had gone out and, because of his raise and his steady employment in the civil service, had bought a better home for his family; and, all of a sudden, he found himself laid off.

Now, I do not stand here, today, saying the Government do not find themselves in hard times, perhaps they do. I have not seen all their books, I speak only from what I have been told and what members of the Government have been saying here day after day. But I think there is a better way of doing things. When you deprive a man in his late forties of his right to work and his right to raise his family in a normal way, then I think that person is almost deprived of his life.

Mr. Speaker, I talked with that man for a few moments and he told me, `I went out and bought a new house, on the strength of the raise, and now I am going to lose my home and my car because I am no longer in the work force. For a man of my age, 49 years, with no specific training, no special training, it is pretty hard.' Mr. Speaker, there are perhaps 1200 or 1300 stories out there just the same as that of the man I was speaking with.

Mr. Speaker, being a family man, and having lived through an era when many Newfoundlanders and Labradorians were deprived of the necessities of life, when the essential things were almost looked upon as a luxury, it is hard, now, to see Newfoundlanders and Labradorians being thrown out of their jobs, especially when they had such great expectations. You know, Mr. Speaker, I even talked with a person who, on the strength of his permanent job and his raises, had put away savings, making investments for his children, that now had to be cancelled because of what this Government had done. This Government had taken away almost their right to existence.

Again, Mr. Speaker, the Premier and the members of his Cabinet signed a document, supposedly in good faith, but they broke that agreement. An agreement to me, Mr. Speaker, personally, is sacred. I believe that once two people join in any agreement, then that agreement should be kept, unless there are extenuating circumstances beyond the control of either party. Now, I look across at the hon. the Government House Leader and I cannot, for the life me, see how that hon. gentleman did not know, when he signed the greater number of those agreements, what this Province was headed into. Mr. Speaker, they can blame it on Ottawa or whomever they like, but the point remains, it was the responsibility of the people opposite to do justice to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

Mr. Speaker, last year, the Minister of Finance came in here with a $10 million surplus, and we find, this year, he has a $215 million deficit. A lot of people out there are wondering what happened in the interim. Where did the money go? He could say we did not get our just amount from Ottawa, but, Mr. Speaker, that has no bearing on it. Where was the money spent? Where could it be spent better for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians? Certainly, it was not spent taking away hospital beds, taking some of the niceties we had in our educational system, taking away from Newfoundland and Labrador, especially the rural areas, the assistance given by MUN Extension. All those things have happened in the last two years, under this Government.

There was a $4 million surplus on current account when they took over, and no matter what they say, they can get up and talk until the cows come home, but there is no way they can say they were not responsible for the last two years. There is no way they can tell me they should have signed those collective agreements and then taken a step backwards, as far as Newfoundland and Labrador is concerned.

You know, many people in Canada, and not only Canada, but in other parts of the world, feel they can count on the word of Newfoundlanders; their word is the same as if you took an oath in the courts. And the Premier and the House Leader signed those agreements with the Civil Service.

The Premier and I, as he knows, differ greatly on the Meech Lake Accord; we did earlier, and I still feel as I did then. I feel that the Premier should have signed it, and I see now that, as he has done again and again, he reneged; he reneged on signing the Meech Lake Accord, he reneged on what they offered the civil servants, he reneged on what they offered the policemen, he reneged on what they offered the nurses. So, right down the line, Mr. Speaker, he has reneged. From the day of Meech Lake, he has been a reneger.

Perhaps many in English Canada will not feel as I do, but, as far as I am concerned, our Premier has contributed to the dilemma Canada is in today. I am not saying he did not do it in good faith, I am not saying he did not think he was right, but, as far as I am concerned, he was teetotally wrong.

AN HON. MEMBER: You do not believe that.

MR. PARSONS: Yes, and he deprived us, again, of having that vote on the Meech Lake Accord in the old Assembly.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. PARSONS: There were a lot of people on the other side who went up there and said, `We agree with the Premier,' but there were people on the other side, as well, who disagreed. They disagreed and they should have had that right, but the Premier deprived them of that right. I do not believe the hon. the House Leader even spoke on the Meech Lake Accord. I do not know whether he wanted to or not, but the point remains, he did not.

I do not know how long this shame can go on. I do not know how long Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are going to sit back and say, `Well, this had to happen.' And, as in the first instance, Mr. Speaker, I am not saying that because of Government restraint, certain things should not have happened. Life is like that, there are ups and downs, and certainly, as human beings, we have to respect that and abide by it. But, for the life of me, I cannot see why certain monies were being allotted for other things, while people would be losing their jobs.

I was thinking, today, about the Speech from the Throne. Granted, the arts and the culture of our Province have to be kept in stride, but I noticed, today, as I was reading through the Estimates, that $100,000 was given to the Arts community, and rightly so, they need it to further the Arts and to further our culture, in every respect. We have a wonderful history, some wonderful traditions, and I think they should be kept. But, Mr. Speaker, you have to re-arrange your priorities when it comes down to people's livelihood, and I think an extra $100,000 could have been used to keep five people employed in the civil service, rather than spend the money otherwise.

Many people have asked today, `Well, what would you do?' I have said consistently that I believe we were elected to do a job. I believe we were elected as reasonable men and women to come into this House and work for our constituents and, Mr. Speaker, I believe the Government of the day has failed. They ask, `What would you do? As I have stated before, Mr. Speaker, as far as the layoffs are concerned, I do not think this Bill No. 16 should ever have been before this House, because I do not think there is any need for it. I believe, Mr. Speaker, that if attrition had been put in place, whereby no one would be hired to fill vacancies, where there would be no hiring in the civil service, and a freeze for two years rather than one year, there would be a great number of people out there who would not be in the dilemma they are in today. I think, if there were money to be saved - and I repeat myself, and I know it - then it should have come from other sources.

I certainly cannot take anything away from Dr. House, he is more than likely an honourable man; I do not know the gentleman personally. I have read some of his reports.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who is that?

MR. PARSONS: Dr. Doug House, Chairman of the Economic Recovery Commission, Deputy Premier, and sometimes, I think, while the Premier is absent, Acting Premier.

MS. VERGE: What about the junior Minister of Development sitting opposite us?

MR. PARSONS: I would like to touch on that Mr. Speaker, and also, the ENL, Enterprise Newfoundland and Labrador.

I have great respect for the Minister of Development, as I have said before in this House. He is a fine young man and certainly has the credentials to bring in the necessary people and finances to develop this Province, but he has not been given free rein. The Premier appointed Dr. Howse and a group of other people, and brought in ENL to try to help Newfoundland and Labrador, as well. Mr. Speaker, what can they do that the hon. young man across from me could not do? I am sure he has the capability.

MS VERGE: Well, at least, he was elected.

MR. PARSONS: At least, he was elected - twice.

What the Premier did, Mr. Speaker, was bring us back to what we were in 1949. From 1934 to 1949, we were ruled, deprived and trodden on, by a Commission of Government, and this is what we have today, Mr. Speaker. Every time the Premier gets to his feet, he will say, when questioned, `Well, the ERC has done this, the ERC has done great things, the ENL has done great things,' with a cost of perhaps $45 million that we can see at the present moment, and I am sure, Mr. Speaker, that could escalate to many more millions of dollars.

So, Mr. Speaker, if there were an alternative, first of all, I would say, rather than layoffs, go with attrition, freeze wages, if necessary, for two years; perhaps, after one year, there would be no need of a freeze, and, at least, young men and women would not lose their jobs.

I also question the Government on what it would cost to lay off -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. PARSONS: Yes, because the second year might never be needed; but people would stay in the work force and those who are losing their homes and cars and whose families are being deprived, would not be in that situation.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time has elapsed.

MR. PARSONS: May I clue up?

AN HON. MEMBER: No leave.

MR. PARSONS: One minute, Mr. Speaker. That fine young man over there wishes me to go on for another minute.

AN HON. MEMBER: No leave.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. gentleman has no leave. Sorry, no leave!

MR. PARSONS: Oh, Mr. Speaker! Oh my! Shocking, Mr. Speaker!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. A. SNOW: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

AN HON. MEMBER: You did not give us leave.

MR. A. SNOW: I did. Contrary to what the private member on the other side of the House is saying, I did give leave to the hon. the Member for Exploits. I thought he should have continued speaking this afternoon. I would have liked to have heard him speak.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: Yes, the hon. the Member for Exploits. I was hoping that he would continue to speak, because I thought a lot of the people in the gallery were very interested in what he had to say, being a former labour leader, somebody very involved in the labour movement in this Province, and seeing how he was defending Bill 16. I was hoping he would continue, and I look forward to his participation further in the debate.

Mr. Speaker, what we are talking about here today, in Bill 16, is An Act Respecting Restraint Of Compensation In The Public Sector Of The Province, a rollback of wages to the public employees of this Province, Mr. Speaker.

AN HON. MEMBER: Randy Collins (inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: Randy Collins may, indeed - but, Mr. Speaker, a very knowledgeable labour leader from Western Labrador, you have just recently appointed to do a study, I think, or to pass some of his practical knowledge on to - I believe he was actually appointed by the Economic Recovery Commission.

MS. VERGE: That Liberal Employment Agency.

MR. A. SNOW: Anyway, I am sure you have appointed a very knowledgeable labour leader from Western Labrador, and I am willing to bet my bottom dollar - I do not have a lot of them, but I would bet quite a few of them - that he would not be in favour of Bill 16. I will bet you he will not write a recommendation saying that you should have more Bill 16s, because I believe he would have a commitment to the labour movement. And, apart from having a commitment to the labour movement, in recognizing the needs, especially the needs, not just the wants, the needs of the working person out there in the economy, he also understands the fiscal restraint that can be placed on employers. The man has shown it in his history of negotiations in Western Labrador.

We, too, have accepted the brunt of the global economy and the recessions that came in the early 1980s, and he was the labour leader there. He was also the very good labour leader who negotiated the eight-dollar wage increase in Western Labrador this year. When you think that the bottom is dropping out of the economy, the workers of Western Labrador got an eight-dollar-an-hour wage increase. Mr. Chairman, when the people on that side speak, they forget to mention those types of things, the confidence that that company has in their ability to produce iron ore competitive with the rest of this world. That is who their competitors are. This Government has not done anything to create any greater confidence in the economy of this Province.

In the introduction of this bill to this House, the President of Treasury Board talked about, first of all, how, when they sat around the table last - I believe he suggested June, which was only, I believe, two months after they brought down the Budget that was forecasting, I think, a $10 million surplus - he said they were going to see shortfalls.

He said, when he introduced this bill, that because of the huge deficit they could see looming before them, they knew they were going to have problems, and would have to do something, because it would prevent them from borrowing more money. Because - and he tried it, my hon. colleague for St. John's East - his only solution was to offer a borrowing. I am not sure that was his only solution, I would be surprised if it were. I thought some of the responsible people on this side of the House, and out and about in the Province, were suggesting, probably there would have to be a combination of several things.

But one of the things that needed to be done was to create an air of confidence, and that was not done. This Government created, out there, a sense of fear in the public sector. And we all know how the public sector drives the economy here in this Province. The Minister responsible for Treasury Board said, and I quote: Governments have allowed the credit rating to drop. When they ran into trouble in 1985, there was some trouble. There was a downturn in the credit rating. The credit rating dropped. It is easy. Let the credit rating drop. But we no longer have that luxury.

Now, he was correct when he suggested that the credit rating did, indeed, drop in 1985. In Newfoundland, in 1984, we had an A credit rating, and in 1985, it went down to A minus. That was with Standard and Poor. But, what he failed to mention, Mr. Speaker, was that if we could all remember back to the mid-eighties when we were deep into the recession, we were not the only people in the recession. We do participate in a global economy. Other provinces also were affected. Now, I wonder what happened in Alberta? In 1984, they were AAA, in 1985, they were AAA, in 1986, they dropped. Their credit rating, too, dropped one notch, very similar to ours. Our credit rating dropped. That is not the be-all and end-all. Maybe, you say, well, that is the richest - my God, I went to the richest! Now, what about something more comparable. How about Saskatchewan? They had an AA rating. In 1985, they had an AA plus. In 1986, they dropped to an AA. So they, too, dropped a notch. That was Saskatchewan, a smaller province, not a wealthy, large province like Alberta. So there is some comparison. But let us look at Nova Scotia. In 1984, they had an A rating. In 1985, they went down to an A minus rating. They, too, dropped.

So, it was not just this bunch of drunken spenders over here, having problems with the credit rating, there were other provinces.

AN HON. MEMBER: Irresponsible government.

MR. A. SNOW: No, other provinces had a problem with their credit ratings, too.

AN HON. MEMBER: What about Ontario?

MR. A. SNOW: In Ontario, they, too, had a problem at that time, because they dropped from AAA to AA plus. So, what we are seeing is what the - the President of Treasury Board laid out the idea that if we borrowed any amount of money this year, we could be run right out of the market. We would be considered like a South American country, I suppose. But, relative to what occurred to the other provinces in 1984, 1985, and 1986, I submit to him and to this House that we are in a similar situation today. We are all participating in a global economy, and this is the only Province I am aware of that is making this huge roll-back in wages plus massive layoffs in the public sector, Mr. Speaker. I submit to the hon. the President of Treasury Board that if, indeed, the credit rating did drop a little, it is not the end of the world.

AN HON. MEMBER: It is not good.

MR. A. SNOW: No, it is not good.

DR. KITCHEN: It is the end of the world.

MR. A. SNOW: Pardon?

DR. KITCHEN: It is the end of the borrowing world (inaudible).

MR. SIMMS: Is it, now?

MR. A. SNOW: I submit, the hon. the Minister of Finance should know the sky will not fall.

DR. KITCHEN: Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

DR. KITCHEN: I must correct the misrepresentation the hon. member is making. Our credit rating is now B with Moody's and A minus with Standard and Poor. We cannot drop one notch in either rating, if we do, we have very great difficulty borrowing, and to compare us to Ontario and the others is a false comparison.

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

MR. SIMMS: To that point of order. It is rather interesting to note that the Minister of Finance has the gall to stand up and interrupt another member who has only twenty minutes to speak. He does not give him the courtesy to finish his remarks. Why does he not get up in debate? That is the proper place. That is a bunch of foolishness, not a point of order.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

There is no point of order.

The hon. the Member for Menihek.

MR. A. SNOW: I would clue up and allow the Minister of Finance to stand up for twenty minutes, but I am sure the Premier would have him down and he would not be allowed to stand for twenty minutes and discuss this Budget. I agree with the hon. member on the opposite side, that you do not need that Cabinet Minister, that Minister of Finance. Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that the hon. the Minister of Finance suggests the sky is going to fall in if our credit rating drops one more point.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) Meech Lake and -

MR. A. SNOW: No, I did not suggest that even with Meech Lake the sky would fall in. I did suggest that it was going to create problems in this country, constitutionally, and because of the uncertainty constitutionally, it was going to create economic problems. I did suggest that, and I think a lot of people are suggesting the same thing today. That is probably part of the reason why we have a deepening recession in this country. It is one of the reasons, not the only reason. This is a point I would like to make, Mr. Speaker, that there is not just one reason for the recession we find ourselves in, in this Province. It is not just one single factor that is creating this. We are participating in a global economy but the problem with the reaction, I believe, of this Government, is that we are going to drive ourselves into a depression in this Province. I say that because, the other day, I asked the Minister of Finance a question with regard to what the effects of his Budget would be on the local economy vis-a-vis the employment levels of the private sector and gross provincial product, I believe it was, and the other one was revenues to the Province, and he told me that according to the Conference Board of Canada there was going to be an economic growth forecast in this Province, this year. And he is correct, they did forecast that last year. The problem is, of course, when they made that forecast they did not anticipate the massive public sector layoffs that were going to occur. They did not anticipate that.

PREMIER WELLS: He did.

MR. A. SNOW: Well, he was quoting the Conference - the Premier suggests that they did. Well, the Conference Board of Canada did not know that when they were forecasting. I do not think they did. So the economic growth forecasted, I do not believe, will be there. I think, one of the factors that have created the deepening recession in this Province has been the fear, the uncertainty, of the nurse, the teacher, the government worker, out there, that they might be laid off.

We heard today, in this Chamber, that it may be as late as August before an employee who works in the Provincial Government will know whether or not he is out the door.

DR. KITCHEN: I did not say that.

MR. A. SNOW: The Minister of Finance says he did not say that. Well, that is what I understood him to say.

Now, if you were a public employee and you thought that in August you would be losing your job, do you think you would be rushing out to buy a car today? I do not think so. And you will not be buying a carpet for your house, you will not be buying a new house. You probably will not even be buying shoes from the capitalists on Water Street. You probably would not even want to be buying shoes nowadays from the capitalists on Water Street.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: Pardon?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: So this Government has set about - probably not deliberately, probably being more naive than anything - rolling back the wages of the public employees. They are going to create more economic damage to this Province by this reaction than if Hibernia was not even created. Now, I really believe that.

MR. BAKER: Where is the money coming from, Alec?

MR. A. SNOW: The hon. the Member for Gander, the President of Treasury Board, has asked: `Where is the money coming from, Alec?' Well, I suggest to you that after the next election when the people show their choice - you say you had no choice - we will show you where the money will come from.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. A. SNOW: I am telling you, while you have been affected - you have been saying the reason why we cannot do this is because we are afraid of lowering the credit rating. The big thing is, you lack credibility, and people do not have confidence, today, in this Province. Now that is unfair. I want to see the people of this Province have confidence, I sincerely do. I want to see this Province grow.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: What is he saying?

AN HON. MEMBER: Walshian economics.

MR. A. SNOW: Walshian economics. His approach to it, as somebody over here on this side suggested, just cannot be a piggyback approach to offering a government or a solution to this Province. You have to take into consideration the damage -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

AN HON. MEMBER: Come on, Alec! (Inaudible). I am sending a copy of Hansard to your bank manager. He is not going to believe what you are saying.

MR. A. SNOW: I am sure the confidence is going to improve, in this Province. I certainly hope it does, anyway, in Western Labrador.

MR. SIMMS: I tell you, the bank manager is smiling; do not worry.

MR. A. SNOW: You must know something I do not, then.

But, Mr. Speaker, this is a very serious matter we are discussing here tonight. The other thing that is affected by this Bill 16, of course, is the lack of trust, now, in the public sector, with regard to negotiating a contract. It is very important to keep this trust between employer and employee when you are talking about collective bargaining because, in the private sector, when you talk about collective bargaining, there is always a check. There is a check in the private sector, and that fact is -

MS COWAN: There is?

MR. A. SNOW: Yes, the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations says she is surprised that there is a check in the private sector negotiations. And there is, because, if the employer gives too much money, he will wind up going broke. I also recognize a problem in the public sector, in that the employer there has to take physical responsibility; they have to. The problem is, of course, being the public creatures we all are, that sometimes we are forced by public opinion to concede, such as happened with Parizeau, in Quebec, and they found themselves in the situation you people are in today, in rolling back the wages of your employees. He made a deal with the unions - Does this sound familiar to any of you people? He made a deal with the unions, got elected, then rolled back the wages.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who was that?

MR. A. SNOW: Parizeau. Of course, the other province in this country that did that was British Columbia - Vander Zalm. And these are not the two provinces I would like to see my Province emulate. I do not want to see my Premier compared to Vander Zalm. But, believe me, a lot of people out there are comparing them. Mr. Speaker, the trust that is necessary in public sector collective bargaining today, is being broken with this bill.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. gentleman's time has elapsed.

The hon. the Member for St. John's East.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I speak on this bill because I see it as a travesty of legal history in Newfoundland. It is a terrible bill, because it destroys the foundation of Labour Relations in the public service.

Mr. Speaker, this is a subject of which I know something, having practised law in this Province for a number of years. I think I need to tell you, Mr. Speaker, for the members of the House opposite, that when it comes to labour relations in Canada and in Newfoundland and Labrador, they rest on a number of foundations, particularly when we are dealing with labour relations with Government. Prior to statutory authority, any laws, employees had to fight on their own, as individuals. In fact, when they worked together, when they joined together to try to improve their wages and working conditions, they were declared illegal by the courts, and it was only legislation developed over the course of a number of decades that made their activities legal and provided for them some of the basic premises of labour relations as we know it today.

In Canada, this came about during the war, with a Canadian Government in Ottawa which was, at that time, the Liberal Government of Mackenzie King. There were four essential elements of the labour regime in Canada developed during that period. The first was the freedom to organize into unions without interference by employers. The second was that the employees were free to negotiate through their trade unions with employers, items such as pay, hours of work, and working conditions, and to enter into collective agreements. The third feature was that disputes during wartime had to be settled without a stoppage of production for the war effort. The fourth was that every collective agreement had to have and provide for settlement of disputes about its interpretation, without stoppage of work, during its lifetime.

Well, Mr. Speaker, those features, with the exception of the third one, having to do with settling disputes without stoppage of work during wartime, were incorporated into all the labour legislation of Canada. Newfoundland joined the Confederation in 1949, and shortly thereafter, the Liberal Government of Joseph R. Smallwood introduced labour legislation in Newfoundland which incorporated these basic features. Prior to that, we operated on the English system, which is quite different. But the cornerstone of that labour legislation, introduced in Newfoundland by the Liberal Government of Joseph R. Smallwood, was a collective agreement. The collective agreement was the central feature, the central ingredient of that labour legislation, and that is so today.

The legislation we are talking about here that is affected by this Bill 16 includes: The Labour Relations Act, The Public Service Collective Bargaining Act, The Newfoundland Teachers Collective Bargaining Act, The St. John's Fire Department Act, and The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Act. All of those pieces of legislation that are affected by this bill have inside them an essential feature. That feature is that collective agreements are binding. They are binding on employers and employees.

The Labour Relations Act, Section 81, says that the collective agreement is binding upon the bargaining agent and the employees and the unit of employees, and every employers organization and employer who has entered into the agreement or on whose behalf the agreement is entered into. That makes the collective agreement binding on both the employee and the employer, and that is enforceable, Mr. Speaker, through the process of arbitration and the process of injunction. In fact, a violation is also considered, for certain purposes, to be an offense under the Act.

Similarly, The Public Service Collective Bargaining Act, Section 35(3) says that every collective agreement made under this Act is binding on and shall be implemented by the bargaining agent and the employer as parties thereto. And that legislation, Mr. Speaker, is binding on Her Majesty the Queen. It is also an offense to violate the provisions of The Public Service Collective Bargaining Act.

So, Mr. Speaker, we have a regime in this Province which is recognized by both employers, trade unions, employees and the courts, as being a system of collective bargaining based on both sides to the bargain negotiating in good faith which is also required by the legislation, and entering into collective agreements that are then binding by law on both the employers and the employees.

That system, Mr. Speaker, has allowed us to develop in this Province, a labour relations system which, at times, is rocky, which has the pros and cons, I suppose, the ebb and flow of economic power on one side and economic need on the other, which result in collective agreements. Now, when that process fails, as it sometimes does, there is a process of binding arbitration which, in certain cases, under The Public Service Collective Bargaining Act, the Government has the power to change from a collective bargaining process into enforced arbitration.

I believed that this Government supported that system. This party, when it sought office, said it believed in that system, and said it was going to improve it. This Government, in the last round of collective bargaining with the public sector unions, said they believed in it. They said they believed in negotiating fair, reasonable wages.

They said it in the beginning, for example, about the nurses. They listened to the nurses. They heard their stories about the difficulty they were having in keeping people in the Province. They listened to the Newfoundland Hospital and Nursing Association and heard about the difficulties they were having with keeping nurses, attracting nurses in the Province, because of the wages.

They decided this was a special case, that a special case had to be made to give a proper and reasonable wage increase to nurses in this Province, and they made it. Shortly thereafter, there came along the lab and x-ray workers, and they made a strong case to Government; they bargained, they went through the process, they went through conciliation, and they ended up on strike. We will not debate, at the moment, whether it was a legal or an illegal strike. It was legal because the Government did not invoke certain procedures it could have invoked, that it did invoke in the next strike, but it was felt by both sides, we will let this one go as a legal strike.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: There was no agreement in place. There was no agreement signed, as required by legislation, to make that strike, strictly speaking, legal. But they went on strike and, as a result, eventually, a bargain was reached. Under the provisions of the Public Service Collective Bargaining Act, they entered into an agreement with the Government and went back to work.

Of course, another group was then out on strike, and that strike was deemed and found by the court to be illegal. And this House passed a resolution which had the effect of requiring binding arbitration to take place. It did take place, and resulted in, again, a legislative provision to establish a collective bargaining regime and a collective agreement which would be binding on the Government and on employees and the employers, such as the hospitals and nursing homes, that were affected by it.

And then, during the course of the fall, we had other bargaining units entering into collective agreements, some with the Government, others with Newfoundland and Labrador Housing, others with group homes. The Government continued to negotiate, and continued to say it was negotiating in good faith, and I believed them when they said it. I think the unions believed them. The unions sat down and negotiated. If they had not believed them, they would not have come. They would have gone to the Labour Relations Board and said: if the Government is not negotiating in good faith, the Government is refusing to bargain. But no, they did not do that. They sat down and had conversations with the President of Treasury Board and with the Premier, during the course of these negotiations. Meetings were held with the bargaining representatives. All this was going on during the course of the fall and the winter.

And, as late as the first of March, an agreement was signed with this Government, another agreement, binding on the employer and the employees. And, despite the comments we have heard in this House about the plans and the late hour of things, I really think, now, the President of Treasury Board knew in his heart of hearts that the agreement he signed on the first of March was not going to stand. Because, the plans of the Government concerning the effects of the Budget, all the things they have heard now, they did not discover that in the three or four days before the Budget came down; they did not discover the economic problems. They were talking about them all fall.

They did not discover, all of a sudden, on the fourth or fifth or sixth of March that they were going to have a shortfall of $50 million or $60 million. The Minister of Finance, in the House today, said that some $50 million was being saved by the wage freeze. I am not sure, he is not sure. We will find out, I suppose, later on, when we get the full numbers and when we examine the Estimates. He was not very certain, but he said something in the order of $50 million. Well, that is not something that came upon the Government in a dream some night. They knew. And yet, throughout the fall and winter - what has to be regarded now by every trade union involved as a charade of negotiations, a lack of seriousness on the part of Government - the retrospective charade was carried on.

And what we have now, after not a very long period of collective bargaining in the public service in Newfoundland - it has only been on since the early 'seventies. The Public Service Collective Bargaining Act, I think, was first introduced in 1973. Prior to that the government employee associations came - with not exactly cap in hand, but they had no authority, no power, no right to strike - to government, and talked about their working conditions. But in 1973, collective bargaining was introduced, not by the Liberal government but by another government, and that went on for a period of eighteen years.

Now, we have this Government turning its back on collective bargaining in the public service, saying to the public service unions, `You can go ahead, you can bargain collectively, and we will bargain with you. We will sit down, negotiate, meet all hours of the day and night, put you out in the street in strikes, legislate you back to work, have the collective agreements and the laws enforced in the courts' - although the Government was not directly involved in that, they let someone else handle that. The Newfoundland Hospital and Nursing Association took the people to court, not the Government. But `We will let all that happen, because it really does not matter. At the end of the day, we have the power of the legislature. We can take away these rights that you were given in the Public Service Collective Bargaining Act, the St. John's Fire Department Act, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Act, and in the Labour Relations Act as it affects the University and other employers. We can take all that away and we will! - because we do not think that is important.'

Well, Mr. Speaker, the unfortunate thing about what this Government has done is that it has, instead of creating labour peace, finding other alternatives, finding different ways of doing what they had to do - and I have to say that it was said to me by prominent labour leaders in the public sector, after the distraught nature of last summer and all the events that took place, with people in the streets and illegal strikes, it was said after that, `Well, that has been done now.' You go through these motions of public challenges, you go through these battles, sometimes, they are necessary. It looks as if we are in for a period of labour peace in the public sector for the next five or six or seven or ten years. The actions over the summer and the fact that they went through the battles that they did with the Government, took the Government on, ended up in arbitration, were ordered back to work, that process resulted in significant changes in agreements, significant changes in the relationship and reasonable increases for public servants, and that could have been the commencement of a period of labour peace in this Province between the public sector unions and the Government.

But what has this Government done? It has destroyed all that, it has thrown it away after going through the agony, after putting all the people of Newfoundland through the agony of watching on their TVs day after day, our problems in the public service, people on strike defying the laws, watching television where people are being shown in daily defiance of the Government Acts in legislation.

After going through all that and after coming out of it with the labour system intact, with the public service unions intact, collective agreements in place, people still coming willing to sign collective agreements with this Government, what have they done? They have thrown it all away. And this Government - and this Premier, who prides himself on honour and the fact that you can accept him at his word, that when he says something, he means it his Government and his Minister of Treasury Board, on his behalf, sits down on March 1st and signs the collective agreement binding on the Government, binding on the employees, binding on the unions, and his Government dishonours that trust in a matter of days and tears up those agreements, but, Mr. Speaker, if the choice they made was to dishonour their own Government, dishonour their agreements, dishonour their own legislation, that is the wrong choice. They have made the wrong choice.

Let us look at an analogy of what do we do with legislated freedoms? We take away legislated freedoms for economic reasons. We have economic hardships, I do not deny that, nobody in Newfoundland with a grain of sense would deny that we have economic problems and financial problems.

We do not turn first to the freedoms that we have granted our citizens and take them away, we find other ways; what other ways do they look for? They look at the most expensive item in their budget and they said: how do we make this smaller? Their answer, Mr. Speaker, was very simple; their answer was to destroy their honour, to destroy their collective agreements to destroy their contracts, to destroy their rights that have been granted to public servants in this Province and have been exercised by the people of this Province and by the employers of Government; that is what they did, they destroyed their honour, they destroyed those rights and they tore up those agreements and this Bill, not only in detail, not only clause by clause - and we will get to argue that and I will make another speech about what other alternatives there were; we can talk about the Budget another day. But, I am talking here about principles, about rights and about honour, and, Mr. Speaker, this Government has turned its back on its principles, it has turned its back on the rights of the people of Newfoundland and public servants and has turned its back on its own honour; it has dishonoured itself, it has dishonoured its party, it has dishonoured the people of Newfoundland and, Mr. Speaker, we all should vote against it. Anybody over there who does not do that is further dishonouring his Government and his party.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Harbour Main.

MR. DOYLE: I am very pleased this evening to have a few words to say on this particular bill. This is a very sad day, indeed, for the labour movement of Newfoundland and Labrador, a very, very sad day, indeed, for the labour movement here in this Province. I am certainly not the senior member of this House but I have been here a fair number of years. I have been here now twelve years, longer than most members opposite, probably with the exception of the Minister of Fisheries. But I have been here twelve years, and I do not believe, in that twelve-year period, that I have seen a piece of legislation brought into this House by a government that is going to have the devastating effect that this particular bill is going to have in destroying the labour relations climate in Newfoundland and Labrador.

What we are seeing in Bill 16 is probably the setting back of labour relations in Newfoundland a full twenty-five or thirty-five years. And what we are seeing is a government that has failed miserably to keep the election promises it made only two years ago that it would improve and enhance the labour relations climate in the Province. That is spelled out very, very clearly, I say to the President of the Council, in the Liberal Policy Manual of 1989, Mr. Speaker. It was spelled out that the aim of the Government was to bring about a fair and reasonable labour relations climate in the Province, something the Province had not seen under the former administration. And the Premier said publicly on a number of occasions on TV screens across the Province that he would enhance and improve the labour relations climate in the Province. That is why, I would say to the Minister of Development, the Liberal Party received the support it did, especially in the urban areas of the Province, from unions. That is why it received the support it did in the St. John's area. The Government, which was then the Opposition, did receive a certain amount of support from the labour movement in Newfoundland and Labrador on that promise, that they would improve the labour relations climate.

Now, I ask the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations and the Government if Bill 16 is designed to improve and enhance the labour relations climate? I ask the Minister if Bill 16 is treating the unions in a fair, reasonable and equitable manner?

Mr. Speaker, no union expects to forge ahead and get unreasonable wage settlements in a time of restraint. Nobody expects that to happen when times are tough. Everyone expects to have to bear his share of the burden when times are tough in the Province. Mr. Speaker, at times, the former administration had its problems, as well, with the labour movement and all you can hear from members opposite is that we did the same thing. Well, Mr. Speaker, we did not do the same thing. We did not roll back existing collective agreements. We did not go to the bargaining table with unions and sign collective agreements, and then, two or three months down the road, decide to break those collective agreements.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DOYLE: Yes, we brought in zero, zero. We were forced to do it at the time. But we did not roll back existing collective agreements, as this Government has done, Mr. Speaker. So, what this Government has done is it has bargained in bad faith, because while Government sat around the bargaining table, eyeball to eyeball with the unions, making settlements that were convenient and expedient, in making these agreements, with settlements of 20 per cent, 21 per cent and 22 per cent, they were saying in essence, we will not have to keep these collective agreements, we will not have to live up to promises we have made, so we can make these agreements. In essence, Mr. Speaker, while Government was playing Mr. Nice Guy on the one hand, on the other hand, it was throwing collective bargaining completely and totally out the window. As I have said, Mr. Speaker, it set collective bargaining back possibly twenty-five or thirty-five years in this Province.

Mr. Speaker, when a union and an employer get involved in the collective bargaining process - and I am speaking directly to the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, because I do not believe the Minister has any real idea of what the collective bargaining process is all about. What happens when two bodies of people get involved in collective bargaining? They start on an equal footing. The union puts down one set of demands and the employer puts down another set of demands. But the essential principle is they both start on an equal footing.

Mr. Speaker, this bill is tipping the scales, as it were, in favour of one party, in this case, the Government, and that is violating a very, very important principle.

MR. MURPHY: What is that?

MR. DOYLE: Now, if the Member for St. John's South would listen to what I am saying, he would not have to be asking, `What is that?' I said, the whole basis for collective bargaining is that two bodies start off on an equal basis. One party sits down and makes a set of demands and the other party makes a set of demands, as well. But this bill is tipping the scales in favour of one party, and that is a violation of a very, very sacred principle in collective bargaining.

So, Mr. Speaker, I do not believe that the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations fully understands what this bill is all about. I will be quite anxious, indeed, to hear what she has to say, what her position is on this bill. I would be very anxious, as well, to know what her position would be if she were still President of the NTA; if she were President of the NTA and the Member for St. John's South were Minister of Labour, would she still support this bill?

Mr. Speaker, I would be pleased to sit down, as a matter of fact, and let the Minister of Labour stand up right now and tell us whether or not she supports this bill, because, when she was president of the NTA, Mr. Speaker, she was the first one to come front and centre, when the teachers had a problem, criticizing the Government of the day for unfair labour practice. Now, Mr. Speaker, this bill, as I said a few minutes ago, violates and eats away at the very foundation of collective bargaining.

So, I will be quite anxious, indeed, to hear what the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations has to say, because I believe we have a Minister of Employment in the Province who is totally oblivious to the damage this bill is doing to the labour movement in Newfoundland and Labrador. If this is to be the Minister's contribution, the Government's contribution, to fair labour practice and collective bargaining in Newfoundland and Labrador, and, if this is what the Minister of Labour is going to be remembered for, then I can tell her she should hang her head in shame here tonight.

All you can hear from the Government, Mr. Speaker, is that we did the same thing. Again, I say to members opposite, we did not do the same thing when we were faced with tough times in Government and had to bring in restraint. When we had to bring in restraint, Mr. Speaker, we did not go to the unions and violate existing collective agreements. Granted, we froze wages for a period of time - we had to do that - but we did not violate existing collective agreements.

AN HON. MEMBER: No, you put them in jail.

MR. RIDEOUT: You did not either.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) not their fault. That is what they told me.

MR. DOYLE: Yes, and Peter Fenwick should have been thrown in jail, on more than one occasion.

So the unions have been betrayed, Mr. Speaker, by this Government, and they have been used in the most despicable way they could ever be used. And the Minister of Labour stands idly by, supporting this dastardly deed the Government is involved in.

Incidentally, this is probably the first and only significant piece of labour legislation to come before the House in that two-year period, certainly not in keeping with Government's commitment back two years ago to bring in fair and progressive legislation, to bring the labour movement ahead and to correct the deeds of the past Government, as was said so many times by the Premier. Unions that have fought long and hard to get these benefits, and to get where they are today, have been betrayed by this Government.

MR. BAKER: It is not fair for you to say that.

MR. DOYLE: Well, Mr. Speaker, the President of Treasury Board will have his chance when he wants to get up and tell us all about it.

I hate to be difficult and hard on the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, and keep harping on what she has done to collective bargaining in the Province, but it has to be pointed out that this Government has no concern, and the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations has no concern and no respect, for the ordinary working people of this Province. I guess, a very good example of that would have to be the fact that not one employment program was put in place by this Government in this year's Budget, despite the fact that we have an unemployment rate of 22.5 per cent - that is the new data released by Stats Canada - up from 17.5 per cent the last month the previous Government was in power, an unacceptable employment rate of 17.5 per cent, which was pointed by the President of Treasury Board, at that time. But, now, since this administration took office twenty-two months ago, we have an unemployment rate that has gone from 17.5 per cent up to 22.5 per cent, a full 5 per cent increase. A really good example of the concern that Government has for the ordinary working people of the Province is seen in this year's Budget, when not one employment program was introduced by this Government, at a time when we have the highest unemployment rate, probably in the history of the Province, certainly since Confederation, back in 1949. Mr. Speaker, not only did we not see any new employment programs brought forward by this Government, we even saw the existing employment programs cut by a full $700,000. The Minister of Employment and Labour Relations just sits there and does not have anything to say about the fact that we are approaching a time when we are in a real emergency situation. How far can the unemployment rate go in Newfoundland and Labrador before the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations is willing to come up with some kind of plan to address this very real problem? What do we see Government doing, Mr. Speaker, at a time when we have such a horrendous unemployment rate? We see Government laying off 2,500 people, when they should be encouraging the people of the Province by bringing in some kind of initiative that would give the unemployed people of the Province some encouragement.

Mr. Speaker, in this bill, we see a violation of trust. Public sector bargaining is based on some very basic principles and it is based solely on the trust that Government will not use the big heavy hand, it will not use the power of the legislature to break agreements. So, Mr. Speaker, what are unions going to do in the future, when they go in to sit down with Government, to try to reach an agreement? Are they now going to have to demand from Government that a clause be placed in the agreement that the Government will not use the power of the legislature in order to break that agreement before it expires?

AN HON. MEMBER: It would be a worthless clause.

MR. DOYLE: It would be a worthless clause, would it? But this is what you are going to see unions doing. They will have to go in now and bargain with the Government and say, `We want the clause put in our collective agreement, that Government will not use the power of the Legislature to roll back our collective agreement, that they will allow it to expire before we get involved again in rollbacks and what have you.' That will be a very, very sad day, Mr. Speaker, in the labour movement, when they have to do that.

So, this bill sets a very, very dangerous precedent for bargaining. Government is setting a very dangerous precedent and is sending a very clear message to the unions. The Government is prepared to bring in a wage restraint bill in order to change an existing collective agreement. It will, in future, be impossible for the two sides to bargain equally, and to bargain in good faith.

MR. EFFORD: (Inaudible).

MR. DOYLE: Mr. Speaker, speaking of restraint, would you please restrain the Member for Port de Grave?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. DOYLE: If he wishes to stand in his place and be heard, he will have his chance. I will be very, very pleased to send out copies of his remarks to the hard-working people of Port de Grave. Mr. Speaker, it will be interesting to see if the Member for Port de Grave supports that bill.

MR. EFFORD: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. DOYLE: I will certainly be sending out a copy of the Minister of Labour's remarks to the people of Conception Bay South, where you have a very, very high concentration of government workers. I am going to insist, Mr. Speaker, that the Minister of Labour stand and tell us what her position is on this bill, because she has been very, very quiet.

MS. COWAN: How would you know?

MR. DOYLE: Mr. Speaker, I admit, I have been away for a couple of weeks, but for the contribution that the Minister of Labour is making, she could be a permanent resident of Florida and nobody would know the difference.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

AN HON. MEMBER: We would not be so lucky.

MR. DOYLE: She could be a permanent resident of the South and nobody would know she was gone.

Mr. Speaker, this is an unwarranted use of the Government's power, an unwarranted abuse. The Government, in the past, has used the argument that it was elected to govern, that it has the right to use the legislature and it has the right to use the heavy hammer in order to do what it wants to do. Mr. Speaker, the Government can do what it wants to do, but there is a price to be paid for it, and it might be paid next year or two years from now. The Government will pay its price for the damage it is doing to collective bargaining in this Province.

Mr. Speaker, again, I say that the Government has bargained dishonestly, and I would now like to hear what the Minister of Labour has to say on the subject. I am sure she will have a contribution to make, as well.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the member's time has elapsed.

The hon. the Member for Ferryland.

MR. POWER: Mr. Speaker, I would like to have a few words. For members opposite, who are so silent in their defence of the Government -

MR. EFFORD: (Inaudible).

MR. POWER: - especially the Minister of Social Services, I would just as soon you asked him to be quiet. He has lots of time to get up and defend his Government's closure motion that we are on now, to defend Bill 16, to defend Section 8 of Bill 16, which is very unfair, particularly to women workers in the Province. They will have lots of time to do that if they so choose.

I have never seen a ministry so weak in its defence of what the Government does. I mean, they will defend what their departments do but they will not defend what Government does. If some other department it doing it, you never hear a word. The Minister of Social Services may get up afterwards and actually defend the collective bargaining negotiations that took place in this Province for the last eighteen months. Get up and defend that, not social services, at which you are quite good in your own department, but get up and defend what the Government does. It is almost like the ministers opposite keep saying, `What the Government does in other departments is not my fault, I did not have anything to do with it.' Some ministers, by the way, are saying that, in their areas, when they talk about health care cuts and other things. They say, `Well, that is not really my fault, because somebody else did it.' When the Premier hears those comments coming back, there will be a few less Cabinet Ministers around, I suspect.

Mr. Speaker, I just have a few comments to make about the closure motion, itself, and about Bill 16, in general. I just wonder why we are doing closure on this bill. There is no immediate urgency. There is no particular need today to pass Bill 16. We are on closure because the Government is getting sick and tired, I suppose, of the Opposition making some very valid points about why we perceive things to be wrong and why the Government, I suppose, assumes they are right. In this legislature in the last week or so, listening to the Premier's lectures, you hear, basically, that the role of the Opposition is to be tame, to be quiet and to say only what the Government agrees with. I mean, obviously, that is not the function of an Opposition, it is not the role that we play in a parliamentary democratic process. We play a very valuable role to the persons in Newfoundland who object to the actions of Government. They speak through the Opposition. If there are government members on the other side who do not choose to do that or cannot, because of their particular roles, then it is left to the Opposition to do it.

So, we are speaking on behalf of a large number of Newfoundlanders who object to Bill 16, in particular, and to the Minister responsible, for bringing in closure every time he gets sick and tired of the government's not listening to our Opposition arguments. I know they may be repetitive; one of the few ammunitions an Opposition has is to continue to be repetitive, to continue to repeat, time and time again, that we are not happy, that certain segments of the public are not happy with government actions, and we do that. Obviously, that gets boring for the Minister responsible for running legislation through the House, it gets boring for the Premier, but the reality is, that is how the parliamentary process is supposed to work. The closure motion that we are on now is designed to circumvent the rightful duties of members of the Official Opposition to say what people in Newfoundland want us to say. Closure takes that away from us. No matter how much the minister nods, there is a process in place in this Government whereby closure is being used at every beck and call, for the Minister to get through the House, legislation which is not urgently needed.

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to the closure motion, itself, and to Bill 16 and the whole provision of Bill 16, I can only say, as one member of this legislature and the constituents that I represent, that we are against what Bill 16 stands for, against certain sections of the act, in a very real way. That is not to say we are spendthrifts, that we want the Government to go out and spend all kinds of money it does not have, we are simply saying that this process of Bill 16 in collective bargaining with our public sector union, is wrong. It is not the process you should follow in a civilized, developed community. It may be something you can do in Nicaragua or someplace else in the world. It may be something you can do in some ex-communist country, but, in a developed, civilized community, Bill 16, in this collective bargaining process, is wrong. It is not the way it should be done. It does not have to be done that way. We could have saved our credit rating by simply saying to our bond rating people, for the next two years there is going to be a wage freeze on any collective agreements, whether it starts in 1993 or 1994 or 1992. It happened before. We were threatened with a downgrading of our credit rating back in 1984 and 1985. We put in a wage freeze, but we did not break any collective agreements. We went to the unions and told them the position we were in. They did not, at all, like what we were about to do, but at least we did not break the agreements we had signed.

I guess, one of the problems I have with the whole of Bill 16, and with the budget process, in particular, is the discrimination. The budget is totally imbalanced, and it picks on the workers in this Province, especially the health care and public sector workers, who got it two ways, with a very substantial wage rollback and with tremendous layoffs. I heard the Liberal Government of New Brunswick saying they were going to have a wage rollback, to avoid massive layoffs. In this Province, we had both, which certainly seems to be very unfair.

Mr. Speaker, besides the unfairness of the budgetary process, especially in the way it affects our public sector workers, there is also the fact that there is so much discrimination in the budget process, itself. Pay equity is one part of it, and the number of women workers in our hospital and health care system. Many of the people who will get bumped and laid off in the public sector itself, are going to be women. I hope, somewhere along the way, the Minister Responsible for the Status of Women in this Province, or somebody, will give us the actual list of the numbers and names of individuals laid off, and we will see how many are women in this Province, how many have been treated unfairly, and how many have been discriminated against by a Government which said they would do away with discrimination.

The last argument I have about Bill 16 - I know Bill 16 is going to pass; closure has been invoked. We have another couple of hours and then the Government numbers are going to pass Bill 16, and I am not going to waste any member's time just ranting and raving, trying to prevent something that is inevitable. If you read page 20 of the Liberal Policy document of 1989, just a couple of years ago, one of the policies says, `The Liberal Government will be determined to create an atmosphere of realistic co-operation in developing labour legislation, and in dealing with public sector unions.'

Mr. Speaker, there has been one, huge fraud perpetrated on the people of Newfoundland. It happened in 1989, when that Premier, that Leader of a political party, said, `I am going to improve collective bargaining negotiating in this Province. I am going to help the public sector unions,' not to say all of the other things in the 1989 election that were related to deception. But there is no question in my mind that that Premier knew in the Spring of 1989 what the deficit was, and he knew what it had been in 1988, when he was in this legislature. He knew. The man was supposed to have so much insight, but still he lead a political party which kept saying to the public of Newfoundland, `We are going to have a real change, more hospital beds, better schools, more job opportunities, a more diversified economy, and we are going to have better collective agreements in this Province, negotiated in good faith.' All of those things were based on deception.

Now, with that deception, which got the leader through the election in 1989, at least in the election in 1993 or 1994, people in this Province will be able to say, `We will vote for the Liberal Government based on Bill 16, based on no collective agreements being signed in good faith.' At least then the public of Newfoundland will vote on the record of the Premier and say, `Here is what really happened,' and the public of Newfoundland can take him or leave him. But, in 1989, the election was based on fraud, based on a whole pile of premises put out by the Premier which, in fact, had to be untrue, and the Premier knew they had to be untrue. He knew he had a deficit problem. He knew he could not open more hospital beds. When it comes down to it, I just wonder who is really behind Bill 16. I have a strange suspicion that this wonderful conservative, small `c' - capital `C' - conservative Premier that we have, has a group of advisors, not in his Cabinet, not in his backbenches, who tell the Premier, `Yes, we have problems in Newfoundland.'

DR. KITCHEN: (Inaudible).

MR. POWER: Now, the Minister of Finance might get up and say a few words later on. But I suspect that one of the groups of advisors -I know some of these are major contributors to the Liberal Party financially; and a lot of people in this Province, who support the Liberal Party from a business point of view, are saying, `One of the main problems Newfoundland has is with collective bargaining agreements. It is unions - unions are destroying our Province, unions have too much say, unions are putting people out of work; you cannot run a company because you have unions.' And, you know, a lot of those persons saying that are also whispering it to the Premier. They are whispering it when they make a Liberal donation and all I say is, that if the Premier and the Cabinet listen enough to those right wing people who want to destroy our unions, who think that unions are bad, that unions hurt our economic development, then you are going to see a lot of other bills like Bill 16 coming into this legislature in the next couple of years.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I can only say that I am very strongly opposed to Bill 16, I am very strongly opposed to the notion of closure that the Minister brings in every time he wants to get something passed through the House and I say, in concluding, that there will be a price to be paid by the labour movement in this Province, if items like Bill 16 can pass through this legislature unopposed.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. MURPHY: I suppose this can be said to be the same song, hour after hour, with a few different words in it.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I can really appreciate, concur and agree with a lot of the words of members opposite when they talk about Bill 16. I do not think there is one single, solitary member in this House who is very anxious to see this bill even on the table, on the Order Paper or wherever; it is not a bill that is easy to digest.

I suppose it could be compared to a root canal, something you do not want, but you have to do. It is like the prescription for that awful tasting medicine, you know you have to take it if you are going to get better. Now, that is what Bill 16 could be compared to and I do not like it any more than anybody else. And I have great difficulty, being an advocate of the collective bargaining process, to see any kind of a problem dealing with labour contracts; but reality is reality is reality.

Now I say to hon. members opposite, that it was not very long ago, when they had a lot more money, a lot better opportunity to handle the affairs of this Province, that Bill 16 which is in front of us to debate right now, would not be in place. You know, it is only a couple of short years ago, that the then Premier of the Province, Mr. Peckford, went to Brian Mulroney, by-passed the Newfoundland Representative in the Federal Cabinet, Mr. Crosbie, and Dr. John Collins, then the Finance Minister, bypassed Mr. Crosbie, and went to Mr. Wilson looking for more money.

Now, Mr. Peckford said - and I would like to quote exactly what he said, because I guess he had solid, sound wisdom, more wisdom than hon. members opposite, obviously - Mr. Peckford said, and I quote, `If we do not get a better deal from Ottawa on equalization payments, established programme fundings and fisheries jurisdiction, the Province will face a 1933-1934-style financial collapse in two years.

Now, thank God, the people of this Province had sense enough, two years ago, to change, real change, put our friends opposite where they belong, and put this group of lady and gentlemen in here to look after the affairs of this Province. If they really are sincere - I watched the hon. the Member for Ferryland standing and wailing away when he knows in reality that there is a very outside chance, if something terrible happens, and I suppose God knows what can happen, I do not even want to think about it, but he could conceivably be the new leader.

AN HON. MEMBER: Oh, no!

MR. MURPHY: Yes, there is a chance that the hon. the Member for Ferryland could be the new leader of the Tory Party.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MURPHY: And, as remote and extreme as it may be, he might even be - now I do not know if I can say this or not, but I have to say it in all fairness, he could be the Premier of the Province.

AN HON. MEMBER: There is not a chance.

MR. MURPHY: Do not say that, because people told me that the hon. the Member for St. John's East never had a chance, and there he is. He is there. I hope he has all the dollars he needs to do all the things that need to be done and that he does not have to be in the position of looking at a bill such as Bill 16, he does not have to think about hospital cuts and he does not have to think about layoffs.

Anyway, maybe the day will come. So, it is great rhetoric now for him to get up, and, after reading Chapter 4 of the book there on his desk, `How to be a Leader', he has it in hand now. Chapter 5 is titled: `How to Win Friends and Influence People', Chapter 6: `How to get Campaign Funds', and so on, and so on. I have a lot of respect for the hon. Member for Ferryland, because he represents me. I am a constituent of his, so I have a lot of respect for him. In the meantime, he has not done much for me.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. NOEL: Can't get the road ploughed!

MR. MURPHY Now, I have to refer to some of the comments made by the hon. the Member for Harbour Main. Many members do not know, but the hon. the Member for Harbour Main still carries a union card.

AN HON. MEMBER: What!

MR. MURPHY: He is an iron worker by trade, and a good one, I might add. He was a little afraid of heights, but he was not bad at shaking out the steel and reading blueprints. I worked side by side with him. But for him to stand in his place tonight and contradict and criticize the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations in this Government is foolish and shameful.

I remind the hon. member, it is not the public sector that is in such trouble, not only in this Province, but, we will see, in every Province. And I cannot wait for Mr. Rae to bring down the Budget in the Province of Ontario. I cannot wait, because I want to see what happens to this wonderful party that is for nothing, against everything, and goes here, and goes there. There is one thing I can say about the hon. the member for Harbour Main, he is in a union. Now, I want to ask the Member for St. John's East, who represents the unions in this Province, if he is a member of a union?

AN HON. MEMBER: No, he is not.

AN HON. MEMBER: He is a member of (inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: May I respond, Mr. Speaker?

MR. MURPHY Yes, by all means.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. HARRIS: I thank the member for giving me an opportunity to respond. I have been a member of a large number of unions, including the Labourer's union, the Alliance of Actra, the performers' alliance. I am also a member of the Law Society, which is one of the biggest unions in the Province, a very successful union.

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

MR. MURPHY I think the hon. member, Mr. Speaker, should definitely hold his card in ACTRA. I would suggest to him - however, not to lose the trend of thought, we are going to see budgets come down across this country, from provinces that are much richer, having much more natural resource and much more opportunity than this Province, extremely severe budgets that will impact even more on the people of other `have' provinces than this Budget will have on the `have not' Province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. MURPHY: I fail to see - the hon. the Member for Menihek, who probably is one of the great entrepreneurs in the House of Assembly -

MR. NOEL: The Northern magnate.

MR. MURPHY: Yes. It has been said of the hon. member that he is only here to break the monotony, that he could stay up in Labrador West and put his feet up for six months and then he could go down with our friends - as a matter of fact, tonight, Mr. Speaker, I am a little disappointed; with four hon. members just coming back from Florida, I would have thought we would have fresh orange juice here this evening. We have a long night ahead of us and we need all the vitamin C we can get our hands on, but here we are drinking good St. John's water.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. MURPHY: Now, Mr. Speaker, again -

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

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. the Member for St. John's South, but the level of noise on both sides of the House is getting a bit much, and I ask hon. members to refrain from shouting and from private conversations.

The hon. the Member for St. John's South.

MR. MURPHY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank you, because, being a new member here, I have been browbeaten, from the day I came in here, by hon. members opposite. Every time I stand in my place and deliver these good words - of course, the only way is the old tactic my friend from Grand Falls told me, `When the members opposite are making sense, make noise.'

MR. NOEL: When is that going to happen?

MR. MURPHY Well, I do not want to get back to the empty barrel. But you know, Mr. Speaker, there is nothing new about problems associated with financing. I am going to give hon. members a little story that happened in the United States in 1982 -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MURPHY: Well, no. There you go, our friend from St. John's East is against the United States, also. He is against everything - against Hibernia, against the seal fishery.

AN HON. MEMBER: He likes the rental business, though.

MR. MURPHY: I wonder is the hon. member against real estate?

- when our friend at Chrysler went on his knees to the President, who, I think, was Jimmy Carter, at that time; there were 18,000 jobs in jeopardy, and he asked the Government of the United States to put a signature to a guarantee. He rolled back the wages, not the wages in the contract signed, but actually took away $1.80 an hour from all the auto workers with Chrysler.

AN HON. MEMBER: Where are those jobs now?

MR. MURPHY: Those jobs are now back in place, and Chrysler Corporation of the United States is doing extremely well. So, you adjust yourself to your financial climate, and this Province, this Government, has adjusted itself; through absolutely no fault of its own -

MR. HARRIS: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

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

The hon. the Member for St. John's East, on a point of order.

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, the hon. the Member for St. John's South would not want to mislead the House, by not telling them that that agreement was signed by the union and the company, not imposed on them by somebody else.

MR. SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

The hon. the Member for St. John's South.

MR. MURPHY: That is right, it was not imposed, because the membership -

MR. HARRIS: (Inaudible).

MR. MURPHY: I want to tell the hon. Member for St. John's East that the President of Treasury Board said many, many times in this House, that he gave the four leading unions of the public service sector an opportunity to bring something forward, as an option, as far back as November, and told them the truth and told them reality.

MR. HARRIS: That is not true.

MR. MURPHY: No, it is not true! It is not true, because it does not suit the hon. member. Nothing is true when it does not suit him.

MR. HARRIS: And it is true, because it suits you.

MR. MURPHY: The hon. the Member for St. John's East knows only too well, that the auto workers took it on the chin, but six months later they saw a turnaround, and six years later they had their $1.80 back, plus another $3.00.

MR. A. SNOW: Clause 8. Get the bill, Clause 8.

MR. MURPHY: The entrepreneur bawls out, `Clause 8'.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MURPHY: The entrepreneur, that is right. If we had his interest, we could avoid the cuts. Do you notice whom he sits with when he is not speaking? - the other entrepreneur. `John', I do not know what you are doing over there.

Anyway, Mr. Speaker, it is time our hon. friend stopped pounding away on this closure. We are dealing with something that needs to be done here, as distasteful as it is. And they get up, one after another, after another, after another, saying absolutely nothing different. They can take a lesson from my hon. colleague from St. Mary's - The Capes. They are dealing in a lot of blarney.

Now, when they get up, Mr. Speaker, I would like to see them, very quickly, like the hon. the Member for Ferryland did, talk about - I thought he was going to make it for a while. I was hoping, I was on the edge of my seat, I was waiting with bated breath, but he lost it. I thought he was going to get up and criticize the bill, as he should, but that he was going to offer a solution. What did he do? He offered nothing, only rhetoric associated with leadership.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I have obviously said it enough, because -

AN HON. MEMBER: Too much.

MR. MURPHY: Well, that is right. I agree with the hon. member, too much.

AN HON. MEMBER: You have not said a thing, yet.

MR. MURPHY: That is right, I have not said a thing.

I want hon. members, when they stand, to sincerely think - now, the hon. the Member for Kilbride got up the other night, Mr. Speaker; and he started clawing - they are clawing through the Estimates, clawing through the Budget: `If the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation took 0.1 of 1 per cent out of his budget, we would be able to save seven jobs,' and he went on and on.

AN HON. MEMBER: Forty-seven, was it not?

MR. MURPHY: Yes, they totalled at forty-seven.

Now, I can see the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation following the formula of the hon. the Member for Kilbride, and two days later he will be up like a jack-rabbit saying, `Ha, you cut out all the services. Your estimates are all down. You took another $180,000 here and there. Shame on you!'

MR. R. AYLWARD: I promise, I will not do that.

MR. MURPHY: Oh, you promise! Yes! And every one of us over here believes you. I like the Member for Kilbride. He is a good colleague, and I think he has the best interest of farmers at heart, and strawberries at heart. He sits, very appropriately, behind the Member for Humber Valley and between the two of them, I suppose, we could have strawberries and cream - not only orange juice, but strawberries and cream. This House could be a lot better place to debate in, if hon members would contribute, not fertilizer, but the real McCoy, the strawberries coming from Kilbride, from the East Coast of the Province, the cream coming from Humber Valley, and the orange juice coming from the ability of friends opposite to go South. This could be a really nice place, a better place to be in the evenings, and it would be marvellous. We would all enjoy the vitamins and probably lose a few pounds.

So, I beg members opposite, when they stand to criticize the bill -I am expecting that, I am prepared for that, and I agree with them, the bill is a terrible bill - but, when they stand, identify that, and please, do your best to offer a solution. Now, I know that is extremely difficult for the Member for St. John's East, because I have yet, since the NDP has been formed, to hear any solutions to anything.

MR. HARRIS: I will get a chance again.

MR. MURPHY: Oh, you will get a chance again, I am sure, during the debate. I am waiting. I tell the hon. member, Mr. Speaker, I am waiting for him to stand, because there is a little left of me, I have a great feeling for the blue collar worker. I really have, and I am waiting for the hon. member to get up and say something that will help the people he is basically representing. I have not heard anything, yet. All I see the hon. member doing is scooting here, scooting there, and asking question. Well, that is fine, we all did that when we came in. I did it, Sir, and I do not mind telling the hon. member I did it. But I am still waiting for him to stand in his place and offer some concrete, solid, solutions.

Mr. Speaker, I could go on for hours. I have enough material here to go on for days, but why stand up and talk about `Collins kick-starts budget to better times' - 1988? And he goes into great dissertation about what he is going to do. One of the areas that our friends opposite - as soon as they jump up, it is `Doug House, Newfoundland Recovery', and they go on and on. This is what Dr. Collins, the Minister of Finance said in 1988, `Entrepreneurship and business financing,' and he totalled out $75 million of his Budget to give to entrepreneurship and development for that Budget year.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time has elapsed.

MR. MURPHY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, I will rise again.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Kilbride has already spoken in the debate.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Nobody, that I know of, spoke in the Closure Debate.

MR. RIDEOUT: Mr. Speaker, everybody present in the House can speak, tonight, on this motion.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Government House Leader.

MR. BAKER: Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, I understand from where you may have got some direction, but Standing Order 50 indicates that the question as to closure `shall be decided without debate or amendment; and if the same shall be resolved in the affirmative' - and here is where we have to look, which it was earlier - `the same shall be resolved in the affirmative, no member shall thereafter speak more than once, or longer than 20 minutes in any such adjourned debate;' which seems to indicate that all members, at that point, have the right to speak for twenty minutes. Now, that is my interpretation of it. I understand, that is the way we have interpreted it in the past, and it surprises me that there is a different interpretation, right now.

MR. RIDEOUT: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order.

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

MR. RIDEOUT: The Government House Leader clued up by saying, surprisingly, there is a different interpretation now. There is no different interpretation between both sides of the House. If there is a problem at the moment, I think it might be with His Honour who, for whatever reason, may have just made a mistake. I am sure His Honour will correct the mistake.

The point of the matter is that every member present in this House who wishes to speak on this motion, tonight, can do so, up until 1:00 a.m. No new member can be recognized after 1:00 a.m., but if there are members who want to speak, we are permitted to speak up until one. It has nothing to do with whether you spoke on second reading or any other stage of the bill, on an amendment, or anything of that nature. Under Standing Order 50, we can all speak once for twenty minutes until 1:00 a.m.

MR. SIMMS: Yes, that is what `Winst' said, but the Chair -

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair would like to recess for a few minutes, because the directions he got from the Table are different.

MR. SIMMS: Before you recess, Mr. Speaker, I will just make a quick suggestion. The Government House Leader and the Leader of the Opposition have both agreed what the rules are, so, Your Honour might want to consider that when you recess.

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

MR. BAKER: One further submission, in terms of closure, from Beauchesne, paragraph 519, sub-section 2, on page 159, and this is, perhaps, where there might be some confusion. It says: "If debate is on an amendment under closure" - and that is what this is - "and a division takes place on that amendment before one o'clock in the morning, a new amendment may then be proposed, but the speeches thereon will be limited to one for each Member who has not already spoken -" and I think the interpretation of that is simply that if, for instance, we were now to take a vote on the amendment, then for the remainder of the debate, people could not speak the second time who have already spoken tonight, which seems to indicate to me that the intent is that anybody who is present in the House can speak that one time, but no matter how many amendments are dealt with, a previous speaker cannot speak a second time.

MR. SPEAKER: We will take a short break.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Probably, we could put into perspective, the confusion we get into with a closure motion. If hon. members were to understand, the closure motion just sets up time restrictions. We are into the same debate; it does not change the debate at all. All it does is set in motion time restrictions. We ran into the same problem, if hon. members will recall, in the Meech Lake debate last spring, when we had an amendment and introduced closure, as well, at that time. And I thought we should bring that to hon. members' attention, although I was getting the feeling there might be some agreement that everybody could speak once the closure motion was brought in. But that is up to the House, itself. But I thought it right and proper to remind hon. members of the ruling we made during Meech Lake, remembering, again, that the closure motion just sets up the time restriction. What we are really debating is the amendment made to the motion by the hon. the Member for Kilbride, so we are into that same debate. All the closure motion does is set up the time restrictions. When the closure motion was introduced, we voted on the motion,itself, as to whether or not closure would be accepted, and once closure was accepted then these were the rules for the debate. In other words, closure brings in rules for the debate; we are doing the same debate. And if hon. members will, just for a moment, I will read to them the ruling that was made during Meech Lake, when we were into the same kind of situation. It said, `As we had indicated before we recessed the closure motion is the same debate. All we have done is brought in restrictions of time. Checking with our own precedents Members would find it difficult to be able, at a glance, to see that that was the case. What happened in each case we had closure in the past: the House was in committee where the rules of speaking are different and where a person can speak more than once.' Hon. members understand that when you are in Committee. And that has been the precedent in our House. Every time we have had closure, it was in Committee.

In checking with the House of Commons, their rules clearly state that closure is the same debate and the member who has spoken in that debate does not get a chance to speak a second time. The ruling is, we are now on the amendment, so members who have spoken on the amendment cannot speak a second time. By the same token, members who have spoken on the resolution cannot speak a second time. And it went on the recognize the member who was speaking next.

So that is the situation. If hon. members want to by-pass that rule and say that hon. members could all have the chance to speak by rule of the House, then that is fine. But I thought that hon. members should be made aware of that specific ruling.

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, I wonder, with all due respect, what the precedent - we have had in this House, over the last couple of years, use of closure on a half a dozen occasions, probably. I wonder was research done to clearly indicate that the ruling that you gave on Meech Lake is the practice that had been followed, or if in fact the ruling that both of us understand is the ruling for debate in closure was followed? It would be interesting to find out, because what is ruled by the Speaker on one occasion does not necessarily follow, as Your Honour knows, in Beauchesne as a precedent. And it could be that we have used both practices. My recollection is, the practice we have used in our House has been that once the closure rule is invoked and it has been voted on, and it has not been debated and carried, anybody who wishes to speak may speak for twenty minutes maximum and only on one occasion. That is my recollection of the practice and the precedent.

One exception is the ruling Your Honour gave on Meech Lake. So, perhaps it would better - I mean, we agree to carry on tonight, rather than delay the thing or carry it out any further. But maybe we could suggest, Your Honour might wish to research the other six or seven times, particularly in the last two years, where it has been used, and see if, in fact, there is any evidence that shows that we have, indeed, allowed any member who wishes to speak under the closure motion the right and the opportunity to speak. Because otherwise, it would seem to me that if every member has spoken in the debate, then the closure motion that is put and non-debatable would be carried by the majority of the Government, obviously. But then there would not be any further debate on anything, because everybody would have spoken at some stage during the debate.

It seems to me, that is not the intent, certainly not the understanding I have always had of the closure motion. I read it differently.

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

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Your Honour. The position that I put forward - and Your Honour was not in the Chair and did not hear the submission I made with regard to this particular situation - my understanding, from reading Standing Orders plus Beauchesne, is that the closure motion sets up, not simply a limit on time, but a whole new set of circumstances. And the new circumstances are that each member can speak once.

Now, as Your Honour recognizes, as proof of that interpretation, normally, in debate, when there is debate on a motion and a number of speakers have spoken to that motion, then an amendment is moved. And when that amendment is moved, then all members can speak again. Then, if another amendment is moved, all members can speak again. This is a normal method of proceeding.

However, with the closure motion, that particular avenue is closed off. Beauchesne, page 159, clause 519 (2), indicates that the closure is a different kind of situation. It says: "If debate is on an amendment under closure" - which is what this happens to be -"and a division takes place on that amendment before one o'clock in the morning, a new amendment may then be proposed." Now, that is normal. That is an ordinary procedure. But the speeches thereon - the new amendment - will be limited to one for each member who has not already spoken, which indicates that the members who have not spoken to the first amendment can speak to the second amendment. In other words, the normal rules of procedure do not apply in terms of closure. That was the presentation that I made, and perhaps it may be an idea to go back and have a look at what has occurred in the House, and have a look at the Ottawa situation, because it is very similar. It seems to me that, perhaps, all members should, according to our rules, have the right to speak once.

Anyway, to get over the problem now, I would suggest that we, by agreement, allow the hon. the Member for Kilbride to make his twenty-minute speech.

MR. SIMMS: I have a submission, Your Honour.

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

MR. SIMMS: I agree totally with everything the Government House Leader has said. The only thing I would suggest is that, if Your Honour were still insistent on ruling the opposite way, or another way, then clearly there is, sort of, an understanding and agreement that what has been the understood practice should continue, and, therefore, we either put it in our precedents as a ruling, or we change the rule, when we do the new Standing Orders, so that it reads much more clearly in the future.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. R. AYLWARD: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

AN HON. MEMBER: Oh, yes. He is going to get nasty now.

MR. R. AYLWARD: No, I am not, not tonight.

MR. MURPHY: It is out of your time now.

MR. R. AYLWARD: I am too tired, tonight, to get nasty. I was not recognized before, so it could not come out of my time. I still have twenty minutes, thank you, the Member for St. John's South.

Mr. Speaker, As was noted by two of the speakers, I have spoken on the amendment and on second reading. I was not going to speak again in this debate, because there are enough people who are going to make the points, and it is fruitless because the Government is going to pass this bill, anyway. But when I listened to the speech of the Member for St. John's South, a few minutes ago - and I congratulate him for speaking, by the way. He is one of the members over there who, at least, had the intestinal fortitude to stand and speak, and I congratulate him for that. I do not agree with what he said, because most of his comments were kind of childish, but congratulations for getting up. That is good.

I do agree with one of the things he said, and that is what got me up out of my seat. He said that he hated the bill, that he found it despicable. He found that this bill was not an acceptable bill, and is a bill which he did not want. Mr. Speaker, obviously, we have won over one person. By speaking the way we have done, we got one person over there who will vote against this bill. Now, Mr. Speaker, if I did not think we had, at least, got that one vote over there, I would not have stood up, tonight.

So, maybe we should keep this going, and maybe we should keep speaking, Mr. Speaker, because I know there are others over there who would like to vote against it. The Cabinet cannot, obviously, because they made up the bill and they are responsible for it, but there are other reasonable people over there. I will not indicate, because the Cabinet is looking this way - I do not know if Rob is around tonight taking the report card. Rob is not here either. Because the Cabinet members are looking this way, I will not indicate which of the backbenchers are nodding and shaking their heads and saying, yes, that they want to. I will not say that, because it will only embarrass them, and maybe they will not vote for us then. Maybe, Mr. Speaker, if I do that to them, it will put too much pressure on them.

I am sure, if we can give some logical reasons as to why this bill should not be passed, we will get another six or seven or eight or ten, maybe.

MR. SIMMS: We can use the very logic that this is a bill we hate.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Yes, this is a bill we hate. Any member over there who hates the bill, who really finds it despicable that this bill would be presented, certainly that person would have to vote against it. I mean, if you say that you find something as offensive as a bill like Bill 16, certainly, you have to vote against it. So, obviously, we have made some headway.

It is getting awfully quiet around here. I do not know what happened in the last couple of seconds. She has certainly calmed down. But, anyway, Mr. Speaker, I have, on a couple of occasions, spoken on this Bill, and I am sure I have convinced one member, at least, over there now. I will just go on.

I am disappointed that more members over there have not been to their feet and either spoken in favour of this bill or against it. The people in the backbenches opposite can do that. They are not bound by Cabinet secrecy or Cabinet solidarity. They can get up, if they find a bill offensive, and speak against it. They can represent their constituents who are being laid off and whose salaries are being rolled back and who cannot catch up in the next set of negotiations, as would ordinarily be done. They can get up and speak about that, and they could, theoretically, vote against this bill, if they find it so offensive.

MR. MURPHY: (Inaudible).

MR. R. AYLWARD: Well, Mr. Speaker, maybe I am losing the Member for St. John's South, again. Maybe I had better sit down. I thought I had his vote, there a minute ago. But I have just a few words that I want to say.

We have been debating this for some time, now. And, actually, I find the principle of this bill to be offensive. I do not agree with breaking the agreements. I do not necessarily disagree that we might have had to have zero-zero, or a freeze in wages, or whatever. I do not have a good look at the books, so I am not sure it was all necessary.

But I do not agree, in principle, with breaking the negotiated contracts that only came up a couple of weeks ago. If I were a union member in this Province, I would be extremely upset with this Government for doing to me what this bill is going to do. And if I were so upset, especially tonight, when not everyone in the public service is working, I would have these galleries blocked. Maybe, Mr. Speaker, the Member for St. John's South has changed my mind, because, at least the union leaders, the president of the nurses' union, the president of NAPE, and the president of the teachers' union could be here. If they are so upset with this bill, where are they?

AN HON. MEMBER: They were here this afternoon.

MR. R. AYLWARD: They were here for a little while this afternoon, Mr. Speaker, but they should have this place blocked tonight. They should have the 200 - whatever you are allowed out there should be ignored and it should be blocked tonight, if this is such a bad piece of legislation. And I would be tempted, because I do not know where they are.

I know it is embarrassing for Fraser March to be speaking to his union shop stewards and saying what a bad piece of legislation this is when he did his best to put you over there. It has to be embarrassing for him to be talking to his union shop stewards around this Province. I would say he feels extremely betrayed. I do not hear him say it, I have not heard him say it very often. I heard him say a lot when we were in there but I have not heard him say very much since this administration took over. And one of the reasons, I believe, and a fundamental fault with what is happening to some of the unions in this Province and other areas - if I were leader of a trade union group in this Province, I would consider it my duty to represent my union members in union matters, and I would consider it my responsibility to stay out of provincial politics. I would consider it my responsibility to be able to tackle any Government that went in there and treated my labour people unfairly, but that has not happened this time. This does not seem to be happening, because we have at least one union leader, that I know of, and I know a couple of his lieutenants, who worked very hard to put you were you are. And maybe that is why this gallery is not filled tonight, Mr. Speaker. I would be tempted to vote for this legislation because of that, but I cannot vote for it because personally, on principle, I believe it to be wrong. This is the wrong approach and it should not be done in this Province. I have doubts as to whether or not I am right when I do not see those galleries blocked. Maybe I am missing something in this and have made a mistake as to what I feel are principles.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. R. AYLWARD: Pardon? I cannot hear you.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. R. AYLWARD: Yes, I have, and I said so in the two speeches that I made to date. I showed you how to take bits and pieces by reducing four subheads of the Department of Transportation by 0.7 per cent. Now, that was for supplies; it was for purchasing property, buying furniture, and some other supplies. These are optional spending decisions where, I think, by 0.7 per cent you can save over fifty jobs, fifty-seven I think it was. So, if you reduce that by 5 per cent, or even 10 per cent, I do not think the world would come to an end. If you bought a piece of road that was sixty feet wide instead of sixty-six feet wide I do not think he whole Department of Transportation would stop. That purchase of property was one of the biggest expenditures in there, so you buy sixty feet instead of sixty-five feet from a piece where you want to put a road in, you buy an extra five instead of an extra ten that you really would like to have, so you would have extra room to throw the snow back. Is it not more important to keep fifty people working in the Department of Transportation than to have that extra five feet to throw snow on? You might break down a fence every now and then and you might have to put it up again for someone but I personally think that is more important. You could do that with every single department of Government, pick away and find four, five, ten, fifteen, or fifty jobs. That was possible, but you did not consider that. There are other possibilities.

If you had wanted to - but it would have upset too many people and you would have had a war - you could have instituted a plan like we did, a four-or-five-year plan, saying, It is zero and zero for two years, that is all we can do about it. Then, you would have a two and a four for another two years, and then the credit agencies like Moodys or whatever you call them, look at the plan and see you coming out of the hole. So you would not lose your credit rating, because there would be some kind of a plan. You would not be going more in the hole, because you would have a way to come out. You would not have to break your agreements with the people, agreements you were negotiating a week before. You do not have to do that, there are alternatives. You could roll back everyone's salary by 5 per cent. Now, I agree, that would cause a war, but I would take on that war if I were over there. Because I would not want to see people I know, neighbours of mine, nurses who, having worked sixteen years in the health services of this Province, and having been aggressive enough to move from regular nursing positions to management positions, more responsible positions, after sixteen years, out the door, with no union to look after them, nobody to complain to, no arbitration. That is what I would not want, Mr. Speaker. I would have worked very hard. I would have had 35,000 public employees upset with me. That is why I am on this side, because we did it one time. That is what took guts, not what you are doing. You have 2,000 that you are going to fire and another 4,000 who are going to be affected, and you figure you can get away with it by just hurting a few. Well, Mr. Speaker, I do not think that is going to work. There are other alternatives.

The biggest problem in this Province, bar none, is employment. Another problem is, we are borrowing too much, I agree with you. What you did to solve your number two problem was to create a bigger number one problem, and that bigger number one problem is going to have the rest of the economy affected. There are public servants in this Province, today, who will not spend money, because they say to me, `If Clyde Wells gets away with this, this year, it will be worse next year.' So they try to hold on to their money, because, `I might get mine next year.' That is what public servants are saying.

So, what does that do for our economy? I know the hon. the Member for LaPoile would realize what it does. If you do not have people spending money, you do not have an economy moving. You can lay off 2,000 people here, and Ches's, on Freshwater Road, is going to feel it. You lay off 2,000 people here and K Mart, in on Topsail Road, is going to feel it. You lay off 2,000 people here and Bidgood's, a store which does its best to create local employment and sell local products, is going to feel it; I cannot go in to Bidgood's and buy my crock of bakeapple jam, because I cannot afford it. I am afraid to buy that. I have to hold on to that couple of bucks because I might need it for gas when I am laid off next month.

That is what happens, Mr. Speaker, when people in this Province have their wages rolled back. It is not a restraint programme, as the bill says. There were other alternatives. You could have done better. Well, Mr. Speaker, I do not know but you are right, because the galleries are not blocked, anyway.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Humber Valley.

MR. WOODFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WOODFORD: I would just like to make a few short comments. I spoke earlier in the debate on the six-month hoist, so I will just have a few short comments pertaining to this closure bill.

The hon. the Member for Kilbride made a very important comment, and that is pertaining to why the union membership are not in the galleries tonight. Maybe, Mr. Speaker, the reason they are not there is because they are feeling like a lot of other people around the Province today, they are feeling betrayed. They do not see - it is like water on a duck's back. It is evident from the questions asked in the House. When I asked some questions a couple of weeks ago pertaining to health care, I was told that by cutting out the X-ray unit in Deer Lake, doing 3600 X rays a year, and putting it in Corner brook, we are going to have a better service.

MS. VERGE: Four people laid off in Corner Brook.

MR. WOODFORD: Then, on top of that, when they lay off an extra four technicians in Corner Brook to provide a better service, Mr. Speaker, that tells you something. That tells you why members of the trade unions in this Province, all NAPEs, CUPEs, and what have you, feel betrayed, let down, and are feeling a certain sense of mistrust when it comes to labour groups and unions in this Province. They fought what they thought was the good fight, last year. They fought it in 1985 - 1986, when we were there, and thought they had it over with. To say that there was no other alternative, Mr. Speaker, is wrong. It is wrong.

In the campaign manual of 1989, one of the strong points professed by the members opposite was consultation. `A Liberal Government is committed to full consultation with labour and management in the creation of competent legislation to address these issues.' Some members, tonight, have already stated that the unions were given a chance, last fall. I say to members opposite, that they were not given a chance. If they were told, in no uncertain terms, that that is what would have happened, their jobs would have been gone, I am sure, Mr. Speaker, that common sense would have prevailed and they would have gone for the other process.

Now, you talk about being hypocritical! Members opposite say, `What is the alternative? Come up with an alternative.' If I go into a business today, a business not doing well, and I see poor management, give me the set of books for a few days or a week or so, and I can tell you, in no uncertain terms, where to make some changes. Sometimes it is due to management. Sometimes it is due to economic and market forces, and what have you. But, in most cases, if one part of the industry is doing well and the other is not, then it is due to mismanagement, and that is no alternative.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WOODFORD: The hon. member brings up the Sprung thing again. I was never, Mr. Speaker, never, one to back down from the subject of Sprung. I can debate Sprung with hon. members opposite. The member always makes reference to the so-called pickle factory. But I tell the member - and he should mark down the date and the night - and some other members opposite, tonight, I can assure you, before their term of office is over they are going to be wishing they had something to pickle. Because one of the biggest pickles in this Province is going to be the administration opposite. It is easy to become number one but staying number one is another thing. Staying there is something else.

They are going to be wishing - the Economic Recovery Commission, the so-called, I suppose, where-all, whatever you can get, that is the only thing they can depend on now. That is it, the last thing they can go for, the Sprung of this administration. It is called, in short, ERC. They are grasping at straws now. They are going to be grasping at a lot more straws in a few months time, because the money going into the ERC will be a pittance compared to the jobs to be created.

That will be the Sprung and the albatross around this administration's neck. They will be looking for the so-called cucumbers from Sprung to create those 200 jobs to make it look like they have done something in the last four years. They will not, I do not think, be waving - we will be waving a different book, but from the other side of the House, the manual marked ERC. And I can assure you, that will determine - along with all the promises made to the labour unions in the Province, along with all the problems and the rollbacks, and what have you, when it comes to the labour movement in this Province.

Government is big business, no different from the corner store, or the vendor on a street, or anything else. It is run as a business and you need the trust of your employees. You can be as good as you like at the top, but you need the trust of your employees, firstly, to make it. If not - and examples were brought up today about the MUN Extension - your employees, over a period of time, can do you an awful lot of harm.

There were, I think, 600 or 800 let go from different departments in Government, itself. Now, I do not know how many are employed by Government, but I am sure that if some effort - E-F-F-O-R-T - were made to comb the civil service in this Province, the people who were fifty-five and fifty-six years of age, more than that, fifty-eight to sixty, who were let go with a few short years to go to be eligible for a pension - I am sure we could have found enough pensionable people in the whole civil service, who would have been able to go, anyway. They may be in different departments, they may not be from the different departments that Government -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WOODFORD: Well, maybe I am wrong.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WOODFORD: Well, that is interesting, because I firmly believe that of 600 people out of the whole Government service sector, there would be enough pensionable people there to be able to avoid causing undue hardship to the individuals affected.

Mr. Speaker, never before in this Province - and we have had a lot of hard times over the years. I remember back when I first got elected in 1985. `What am I after getting into?' I asked myself, when I have seen strikers out here being arrested and put in paddy wagons and so on. At least, then, Mr. Speaker, they kept their jobs. They came back with a sour taste in their mouths, there is no doubt about that. And I suppose we did something, unknowingly at that time, we gave the labour unions in the Province a real shot in the arm, because when the election was called in the spring of 1989, every one of them fell in line and worked for and voted for the Liberal Party of the Province.

So, today, they reap the seeds of what happened, and they have admitted it. Even Mr. March, the President of NAPE, one of the biggest labour unions in the Province, has admitted it, and he worked hard on behalf - Now the Premier, granted, probably did not know that, he probably would not have had the president of the labour union working on his behalf, but, deep down, that is what happened, and we see the results on the other side.

Mr. Speaker, that is history now. The election was held in 1989 and that is over. They won the Government and we have paid the price for the pickle factories, we have paid the price for putting people in the paddy wagons. We paid the price. As I have said before, after seventeen years, with this administration, thirty-one or thirty-two hon. gentlemen, coming to power, all I hear - Mr. Speaker, if we are on this side of the House for seventeen years or for three or five, I should say, and have no better plan than they had after seventeen years, then I do not want to be there, Mr. Speaker. I do not want to be there. I am quite satisfied here. I can assure you, I have never seen so many hon. gentlemen, fourteen, fifteen or whatever, in Cabinet, being bankrupt of ideas.

Mr. Speaker, no economy in Canada in any province will function - we can lay off everybody in the general service, we can lay off everybody around this Province - nothing is going to function if we do not have any money to spend. And the biggest employer in this Province, as I said before, in a lot of Atlantic Canada, especially P.E.I. and Nova Scotia, have a very high percentage - I believe it is 70-odd per cent in Newfoundland, if I am not mistaken; I could be out a few percentage points. The biggest employers are the governments and the service sector with regard to the government, government buildings, government offices, and so on. We can cut so much, we have to, but we can do it by some of the things that I mentioned earlier, by the attrition method, and so on, but we will never survive. You have to remember that if you cut today and yes, granted, spend what you have today, that is all you are going to have for tomorrow, unless we create an economic climate in this Province to build on. We must have something to build on, and we are not doing it. We are not doing it. Now the Economic Recovery Commission is supposed to be doing just that. We can do it with small businesss. We can do some of the biggest employers -

MR. EFFORD: How do you say, `We are not doing it?' You do not know how it is. You are not supposed to be doing it.

MR. WOODFORD: When it comes to creating jobs, Mr. Speaker, whether in Government or Opposition, I will be the first to tell anybody whether they are in Government or not, or trying to get in business, give them a hand to try to get started in business. Now, the hon. gentleman had it in a little different way. But, anybody who tries to start a business in this Province, I do not care who is in Government or who is not - I would be a fool! I am representing a constituency, and I would love for that to prosper. I would like nothing more than for the District for Humber Valley to prosper. Now, whether there are Liberals over there, or NDP or communists, I do not care who is over there, or, over here, I want it to prosper, and I am here to try to help it do that. At the same time, when I criticize, I criticize constructively.

Hon. members opposite, just a short time ago, were on this side of the House, doing the same thing, only a little more graphically - especially the Member for Port de Grave - a little more graphically than I am doing tonight, when it comes to criticizing. The Minister opposite, responsible, now, for Forestry and Agriculture, has a great opportunity. I have been in the company of the Premier, at meetings, where he said the same thing. We have a great opportunity now to expand and expound on something that we can do in this Province, and it is going to be very interesting to see what is going to happen over the next couple of years. If we do not put money into something that is guaranteed in this Province, then we might as well all pack up and head for the boat. I can guarantee you that. We do not have to be on an Economic Recovery Commission. We do not have to have a Commission for it. It is going to help, because, in this case, with regard to the Agrifoods report, one of the big things we had against us was the fact that nobody believed, and that may change now, and it may put some emphasis on the agricultural sector in this Province, a sector that can and will grow.

AN HON. MEMBER: (inaudible) seventeen years.

MR. WOODFORD: There is something funny about that, Mr. Speaker. I have not yet even looked at the Task Force Report, but some of the comments made over the last few months, and I am sure they are in the report, have been how much agriculture grew in the late 1970s and the 1980s, where it has gone from $10 million.

Supply and management has always been there; it has kept Canada in business. Supply and management is keeping all North America in business, when it comes to the farming sector. And EEC - one of the reasons why we have trouble today with the GATT talks is because of supply and management. The Europeans are very envious about what is happening in Canada with regard to supply and management. If they had that going for them, do not worry, they would not be in the so-called pickle they are in today. Supply and management is excellent provided it is managed properly. Marketing boards can be carried away, as well as anything else. I agree, there should be some control, and if you have good membership on those boards, then they can serve the industry well.

We have a lot of room to move in this Province when it comes to different agricultural sectors. Mr. Speaker, uncertainty is the economy's worst enemy, and until we create an atmosphere of certainty, hope and vision, not only for our people, the general populace in the Province, but for any entrepreneur or potential entrepreneur in this Province, then, I tell you, we will always be the `have not' of Canada. With a population of 560,000, we do not have to be a `have not' Province. We should not be, but mistakes over the years - and I will not get into them. I will not talk about Churchill Falls, or some of the other mistakes we made. If that is the only mistake we made - it seems as if that is the only one, it the only one being talked about - that is not a bad record after seventeen years in power. I am sure, if I sat down with a pen, right now, I could come up with some dillies in the last twenty-two months, twenty-four months in another couple of weeks. I could come up with some dillies, I can guarantee you that.

And when you look at what is being put into business in this Province and the returns from it, it does not hold splits to what we did in the seventeen years, I can tell you that - just in twenty-four months.

When you talk about the crucifixion in municipalities in this Province, with all volunteers working in this Province for the good of the people in the communities, to say there is no hurt - we are going right to the grass roots, that is where we are hurting. It is chop, chop, chop, chop, and, with that kind of attitude, we will harvest nothing, absolutely nothing. And it is going to be very interesting to see - the Minister is not here now - in another few months, some of the loans that have gone out to the people in this Province through Enterprise Newfoundland.

I do not want to get off - I got carried away with regard to the bill.

It is coming in other sectors in the Province, I can see that now, and it is going to hurt in those sectors, I can see that. I will not mention any names, here, tonight. But the damage has already been done to unions in this Province through, as I said, the uncertainty created. Our nurses - what are we going to do about the nurses going to nursing school? Where are they going when they finish? I talked to a gentleman on the plane this morning, coming in. He told me, his wife, in there seventeen years, is second on the seniority list. What are we doing? What is a young nurse going to do, coming out of school over here?

Am I wrong? Did the man tell me a lie? Where are they going? For what are we training them, when we have so many around that they have nowhere to go but out? We are just shipping them out, day after day. You go to the airport in Deer Lake on Monday mornings and you see four or five boxes on the floor with rope around them. You can be guaranteed it is marked `Fort McMurray' or `Calgary' and I saw two, the other day, marked `Kuwait'. Good for them! Because they will do well; they will make more money in Kuwait than they would, probably, in ten or fifteen years in Newfoundland. So, at least, for those two -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time has elapsed.

MR. WOODFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. EFFORD: You already spoke!

MR. WINSOR: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Minister of Social Services is losing his memory. No, I have not spoken on the closure debate. It was on the amendment and the six month hoist I had spoken, not on the closure debate.

This is, I think, about the sixth or seventh time that the President of Treasury Board has invoked closure here in this House. Perhaps this bill is different, because it is an attack on the public service unions in this Province.

The President of Treasury Board has constantly said that up until the last minute they did not make this decision, that it was a last-minute decision to lay off all those people and roll back wages, and that type of thing.

AN HON. MEMBER: Not true.

MR. WINSOR: Now, the President of Treasury Board says it is not true. Well, if Bill 16, introduced in this House, is not an assault on the collective bargaining process that he was head of in this Province, then I do not know what it was. The President of Treasury Board negotiated contracts up until the first week of March, and five days after, introduced a Budget with massive cutbacks, knowing that a restraint bill, as he so calls it, was about to be introduced into this House, taking back the guarantees that had been given.

As we said earlier, one of the worst aspects, the most despicable things, we find, beside the breach of fair collective bargaining in this Province, is Clause 8 of this bill, which, forever and a day, takes wages from the public service of this Province by rolling back wages this year and never giving them the opportunity to catch up. And what amazes me most of all is how the Members for Exploits and Conception Bay South can sit by and allow their party to implement such a bill as this. I recall quite well, when the two former Presidents of the NTA put together their bargaining package to give to teachers, they always put in catch-up for the years of zero-zero and the years of two-three and so on. Now, this administration has seen fit to do away with any possibility of ever catching up. This bill, because of Clause 8, is going to mean, forever and a day, that unions, which will have lost in this one, will never ever have that opportunity.

Now, also, this marks an about turn from what this Government said it was going to do. It had said in its campaign manifesto that it wanted to - `A Liberal Government will be determined to create an atmosphere of realistic co-operation in developing labour legislation and dealing with public service unions.' Now, Mr. Speaker, the question is, Is this the bill that is going to deal with public service unions? Is this the kind of legislation that this administration is going to bring forth?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINSOR: `You have more coming'- I suspect, more dastardly than this one. If the President of Treasury Board says there is more coming, the labour movement in this Province should take note. He told us there were going to be no freezes, no cutbacks no nothing, and look what happened on March 7. So, if there is more legislation coming, then God help the labour movement in this Province.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINSOR: The Minister of Social Services has gone heckling again. He goes to different seats. He goes back with the backbenchers, occasionally. He does not like to heckle as much from the front benches because the Premier is there. Now that the Premier is here, notice how he moves to the back, so he can be a $90,000-a-year heckler from the back.

Besides, there is the attack on the collective bargaining process, because, right now, there is none in this Province, it effectively ended; because you cannot trust the administration. How can you deal -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SIMMS: Yes, they are going to (inaudible) that one, too.

MR. WINSOR: Yes, with the NTA, I suspect. That is a momentous thing. But we have to wait. We have to wait, number one, to see if teachers in this Province are going to ratify it, because there are some things starting to come out that are not quite so rosy as they thought. I think the President of Treasury Board left them with the impression, either intentionally or unintentionally, that indexing was going to be addressed. He did not tell them what the cost would be or when it would come.

The other thing is, of course, if the President of Treasury Board says there is going to be indexing, why do we think they will implement it if they do it? Because they have signed contracts before in the collective bargaining process and rolled back wages, so indexing might be a way to trade off some more things. The NTA might be trading off again to get indexing.

AN HON. MEMBER: That is their concern, not ours.

MR. WINSOR: Yes, it is theirs, but the problem is, you cannot trust this administration to uphold the contract they signed.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) cannot trust the NTA executive, too, (inaudible)?

MR. WINSOR: The NTA executive cannot trust the President of Treasury Board, who signed collective bargaining contracts with other members of the public service unions. He cannot be trusted.

It is interesting, also, how wage restraint is applied to other groups across the Province. Now Bill 16 mentions a whole group of government-funded agencies which are going to be subjected to wage restraint. Interestingly enough, Municipal Affairs was not included. Was that because the minister has already gutted their budget enough? Because this Government provides monies to Municipal Affairs, as well. Perhaps, it had, in its grant system, gutted the system enough that it could not apply wage restraints to these people, because they have no wages to pay; they have already had to lay off a considerable number of their employees.

Mr. Speaker, the reason the Government says this wage restraint and the massive layoffs we have had are necessary is because of the financial condition of the Province. Now, you would never have believed that if you had seen the campaign policy manual for 1989. It is absolutely incredible that the same group of people who sat in Opposition for seventeen years were not aware of the financial situation of the Province. All you had to do was pick up the Estimates, each year, and they would have shown, exactly, the financial position of the Province. The Budget showed it a number of years, you knew exactly what you had to borrow. In 1989, when the Budget was done, you knew that the borrowing of the Province was something in the range of $4 billion or so, 1990 was almost $5 billion, and up to $5.6 billion (Inaudible). So you knew what your borrowing was.

And, yet, you had all of this in 1989, where you were going to do things differently, knowing exactly what the financial position of the Province was. Now, in addition to that, when you signed your collective agreements in 1990 and 1991, you knew, then, the financial position of the Province. Your officials have told you, since you have been elected, that established programme financing was going to be reduced. You keep saying that the federal Government is responsible,but you knew that all along, that should have been a part of your planning. And if you engaged in collective bargaining and gave too much to unions, then the only one to blame for that is the President of Treasury Board. The only one we can blame for it is the President of Treasury Board, who negotiated the contracts. And, if he gave them too much money - and to add to that, of course, perhaps he only has to take half the blame. The other half might rest with the Minister of Finance -

AN HON. MEMBER: If I am going to take it give it all to me (Inaudible).

MR. WINSOR: - who miscalculated what his income was going to be. These are the two officials - the Minister of Finance takes it in and the President of Treasury Board spends it. And perhaps the Minister of Finance miscalculated. The President of Treasury Board miscalculated on his bargaining and the Minister of Finance miscalculated on his income. And, even to this day, he has not satisfactorily explained or even given any inkling of information as to how much this is going to save. We asked a question, today, on the overall impact of this, how much he is going to spend in severance pay, in redundancies, and so on, and the Minister did not know. Yet, he able to produce a Budget not knowing what his expenses are going to be.

DR. KITCHEN: Redundancy pensions have nothing to do with the Budget.

MR. WINSOR: What about severance packages?

DR. KITCHEN: That is different.

MR. WINSOR: Going to have some difference, are they? How much? Does the Minister know yet? The Minister does not know, I would not expect him to know.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. WINSOR: Everything is included.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the assault on health care is perhaps the most serious aspect of this Budget in 1991, four hundred and thirty-eight beds closed, and the impact has just been phenomenal throughout the system. Complaint - they are horror stories, not complaints. Horror stories are being told about what is happening in the health care sector as a result of this restraint programme. The Minister is well aware of them. He is well aware of what is going on in the health system. And when 1,000 people came in from Placentia, the other day, we saw how quickly the Minister became aware of it. Perhaps, that is what it takes to make this administration aware of what is going on in this Province.

Now, Mr. Speaker, it is no wonder that out in the community there is widespread cynicism about politicians and politics. No doubt, action such as we saw here with this closure bill can only make people cynical of governments; it leads people to think we cannot be trusted, on both sides of this House, because it casts a reflection on the House of Assembly, that a government, duly elected, signed contracts and, the next day, tore them up. I suppose, it is, perhaps, only in government we could do it. If you entered into a deal with the bank on your mortgage and the bank rates were extremely high, the bank would not be quite so lenient when the interest rates went down to say, We will tear up your mortgage, now, and give you one at a lower rate. They do not do that kind of thing. The only place that you can enter into contracts and have them stripped, like the President of Treasury Board has done, is in the legislature. But it casts aspersion on all the members of the legislature when he does something like this.

Mr. Speaker, it is clearly obvious that the President of Treasury Board bargained dishonestly with the public service unions in this Province. In 1990 and 1991, they knew they were facing severe financial restraint and they did not have the intestinal fortitude, at that time, to implement it.

Now, Mr. Speaker, what is more interesting is what is going to be the long range plan for this administration, assuming that the deficit is out of control this year as it was last year, because we do not really believe the Minister of Finance. Are we going to have another round next year such as we have experienced this year? Are we going to be told in August that the Budget projections are off again and we are experiencing an even greater deficit, and departments are going to have to live within the same salary estimates as they did the previous year? Is that going to occur next year? Because, if it does, then the uncertainty in this Province now can only be added to by an act like that.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I know I have some time left but the Minister of Social Services wants to take part in this debate, so I will take my place and pass over to him.

MR. SPEAKER: Is the House ready for the question?

MR. RIDEOUT: Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. RIDEOUT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. EFFORD: (Inaudible).

MR. RIDEOUT: I am sorry, I missed what the Minister said. Pardon?

Mr. Speaker, if there is any humour in the Minister of Social Services, it certainly has a difficult time coming out. I cannot think of any time - perhaps with the exception of the debate on, I believe, Bills 34 and 59 - in the sixteen years that I have been here in this place, that we had such a major piece of legislation before the legislature, affecting the very basic fundamental rights of collective bargaining in this Province. Just as those other two pieces did, this piece does the same thing. I look across the House tonight, Mr. Speaker, and all you can hear is a laugh and a rumble and, `You are some browned off,' or, you are this or something else. Mr. Speaker, this is serious precedent-setting business that we are doing here tonight, very serious precedent-setting business. I can only compare it with those other two pieces of legislation. I was not here when the IWA Bill was debated, that was before my time, but in my sixteen years here, I can only compare it with those two pieces of legislation. Mr. Speaker, at the time, the Government of the day, who felt strongly that those things had to be done, were taking a political beating that those who were giving it argued very strongly we deserved, and we were arguing very strongly that we had no choice.

What we are seeing in this debate, so far, Mr. Speaker, is very, very little defence from the Government: `We have no choice, and because we say we have no choice, we have no choice, and everybody should understand that.' We are seeing some organized opposition outside this Chamber. I must say, it does not seem to me to be the kind I have seen in this Province on some occasions before, but there is some. There is not a lot, but there is some.

Mr. Speaker, we had before us, through all that - let us argue the fact that the Government did not have any other options. We can argue all those things, but the fact of the matter is, when you take away all of those frills, and you take away the record, and you take away the argument, we have a piece of legislation before the House that fundamentally changes the character of collective bargaining in Newfoundland and Labrador.

AN HON. MEMBER: Why?

MR. RIDEOUT: Why do I say that, Mr. Speaker? Because, for the first time in the collective bargaining process, the ultimate power of the legislature is being used. The Government, rightly or wrongly - I have some views on that - but the Government, either at their own hand, or by handing over the purse strings to binding arbitration, made some significant, I am sure, every cent deserved, salary settlements over the last twenty or twenty-two months. There can be no denying that.

Mr. Speaker, right up until a few days before the Budget was brought down, in this Province, the last Budget we have for the new fiscal year, despite the fact that Government was preaching from last August that it faced a very serious fiscal problem this coming year, they proceeded to negotiate and sign contracts. In other words, Mr. Speaker, the Government had to know that there was a day of reckoning coming. With all of those legal agreements in place, the Government, if it were going to follow the route of rollback, had only one choice open to it, and that is legislation. Hence, we find ourselves here tonight with the legislation before us, and we find ourselves here with the closure rule on. So the press is now on for the Government to get this bill through. Mr. Speaker, why is the press on to get this bill through? Why? I mean, this is the most significant anti-collective bargaining piece of legislation we have had in this Province in some time. There may be a couple of others that I referred to earlier, but this is certainly the most significant in quite a number of years. Why does there have to be time restraints now put on this particular bill? Is it, Mr. Speaker, because the Government faces its next payday on this coming Wednesday? Is that why time has now become the essence for Bill 16?

We were told by the Government House Leader, and I assume the Member for St. John's East may have been told the same thing, but we were certainly told, that the Government was going to bring in this bill at the end of the Interim Supply process, I believe it was, and debate it for a day or so. There was no great rush, we would get it through sometime during the legislative process, but there was not a time frame on it.

MR. SIMMS: Originally, that was what we were told.

MR. RIDEOUT: That was what we were told.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) have it by the end of March.

MR. RIDEOUT: That is right.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. RIDEOUT: Mr. Speaker, it was worse than that. Now, I do not want the Government House Leader going and getting fancy there. It was worse than that. The Government House Leader's original intention was to elect that this legislature adjourn Holy Thursday and not come back until the fifteenth, and that bill was going to lie over. That was his original intention, so do not go getting fancy-footed about it, now. I mean, there were negotiations back and forth across the House, and that bill was going to stay on the Order Paper after being debate for, well, at that time I think it was a maximum of two or three days. Now, that is what the Government House Leader proposed, and all of a sudden, something happened to change the Government House Leader's mind. Whether it was the Leader of the Government, or legal advice, or what, I do not know, but I am putting forward a proposition. Of course, every proposition that does not meet with the blessing of the Premier is without foundation. My God! What a penetrating insight into the obvious! If the Premier does not like it, it is without foundation. You are not intelligent enough, or you do not have the ability to articulate it. There is something wrong with everything that the Premier does not accept as his.

Anyway, not to be sidetracked, because we only have twenty minutes in this debate. I am suggesting that the reason the pressure is on this bill, now, is because Wednesday, the tenth of this month, is payday for the public service who have collective agreements signed, and if Government does not have this bill through all stages by this coming Wednesday, April 10, then they have legal advice that they are going to have to pay up. They have legal advice that the wages that were negotiated, that were to come into effect April 1st -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. RIDEOUT: Yes. Now, Mr. Speaker, that is how serious it is.

We have asked the ministers this in this House before, but we keep hearing that because certain increases are signed into the collective agreements that come into effect on April l, the Government has to pay them next payday. Now, the Government keeps saying it is not true, or if you raise them again, Government keeps saying you are sunstruck, you are sun this, or sun something else. Does the Government have any advice to that effect, Mr. Speaker? There are certain legal opinions around this community, and around this building, that says there are legal obligations, if this bill is not in place. Now, is that true? However, I cannot see how Government is going to have this bill by Wednesday. Surely, they are not going to deny two or three days debate on clause-by-clause study of the bill, are they, on this significant piece of legislation that rolls back negotiated signed rights on behalf of employees? They are not going to deny the people's elected representatives to have a two-or-three-day close scrutinizing of the clauses in the bill? When we get to third reading, Mr. Speaker, certainly Government is not going to deny a debate on third reading? Under the rules of the House they cannot deny it. They can move to cut it off. They can move to cut off debate on the clause-by-clause by giving notice of closure again, and then there is a gag order in effect on every clause. They can move to cut off debate on third reading, but we all know that before Government can invoke closure, it has to give twenty-four hours notice. I do not think the Government would, anyway. I would think, if we wanted two or three days to debate the clause-by-clause part of this bill -

AN HON. MEMBER: Who is going to (inaudible)?

MR. RIDEOUT: You cannot. That is the point I am making, you cannot.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) sensible.

MR. RIDEOUT: Well, I do not expect the Government House Leader to say I am making sense. I would not expect him to do that, because he is sitting too close to the Premier. If the Premier heard him say that somebody in the Opposition was making sense, he could be flung the length of the Chamber, Mr. Speaker!

Now, that is the situation I have been hearing about around here. We have asked questions in the House, they have not been answered, Mr. Speaker, and they are not being answered in this debate. I do not know if some other members of the Government are going to get up and speak on this debate, or not. I do not know.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. RIDEOUT: Does the member want to say something?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. RIDEOUT: Oh, I see. So, Mr. Speaker, there has been some debate on this bill, a fair amount, I suppose, but it is a very important bill. I know there have been two amendment to the piece of legislation, and those have been debated, so there has been a significant amount of debate on the principle of the bill, no doubt about that. I think the piece of legislation is so significant that it could still have more debate, but that is the Government's decision.

MR. SIMMS: Well, really, there has been little debate on the principle of the bill; there has been a lot of debate on the amendments.

MR. RIDEOUT: That is right.

MR. SIMMS: Only two have spoken to the principle of the bill.

MR. RIDEOUT: There have been only two members in the House, I guess.

MR. SIMMS: No, three, counting the Government House Leader.

MR. RIDEOUT: Three, counting the Minister who introduced it -

MR. SIMMS: Four, maybe, with the Member for Eagle River.

MR. RIDEOUT: - who spoke to the principle. So the principle of this bill has not had a lot of debate. The six-month hoist - and I was not here -

MR. SIMMS: Recent amendment.

MR. RIDEOUT: - and the second amendment that had some debate. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, a very detailed examination of this bill in clause-by-clause, I think, is very, very justified, and we look forward to doing that. We will do a very detailed analysis of this bill in clause-by-clause and we will do what we have to do, what we think we should do, to make sure that this legislation - it will pass at the end of some day or other. We do not deny the Government the right to do that, Mr. Speaker. The Government have the numbers and the Government, using the proper parliamentary procedure, will do that, there is no doubt about that. But we do, Mr. Speaker, insist that it will continue as long as we think we have something else to continue to a particular stage of debate, whether it is this night, a couple of nights from now, or a couple of nights from there. As long as we think we have a contribution to make, then we are going to continue to make it.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Question. All those in favour of the amendment, please say, `aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: Against, `Nay'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: The amendment has been defeated.

Is it the pleasure of the House that the said bill be now read a second time? All in favour?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: Contrary-minded?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

AN HON. MEMBER: Division.

MR. SPEAKER: Is it the pleasure of the House that the bill be now read a second time? All those in favour, please stand.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hold on, now!

MR. RIDEOUT: We are under a standing vote provision here and the bar is supposed to be over. Members are not supposed to be coming in. I mean, a whole bunch of things are supposed to happen to have this done properly.

MR. SIMMS: Right on.

MR. SPEAKER: Whoever came in after should not be allowed in.

MR. SPEAKER: Is it the pleasure of the House that the said bill be now read a second time? All those in favour, please stand.

The hon. the Premier, the hon. the President of the Council, the hon. the Minister of Development, the hon. the Minister of Health, the hon. the Minister of Forestry and Agriculture, the hon. the Minister of Environment and Lands, the hon. the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, the hon. the Minister of Mines and Energy, the hon. the Minister of Fisheries, Mr. Barrett, the hon. the Minister of Finance, the hon. the Minister of Education, the hon. the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs, Mr. Hogan, Mr. Ramsay, Mr. Gover, Mr. Noel, Mr. Penney, Mr. Murphy, Mr. Dumaresque, Mr. Walsh, Mr. Langdon, Mr. Oldford.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against the motion, please stand.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Rideout), Mr. Simms, Ms. Verge, Mr. Doyle, Mr. Matthews, Mr. Hearn, Mr. Snow, Mr. Warren, Mr. S. Winsor, Mr. Power, Mr. Greening, Mr. Woodford, Mr. Harris.

CLERK (Miss Duff): Mr. Woodford.

AN HON. MEMBER: You did not call Mr. Parsons.

LAW CLERK (Mr. Noel): I am sorry - Mr. Parsons and Mr. Woodford.

CLERK (Miss Duff): Mr. Parsons, Mr. Woodford.

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. HARRIS: Am I correct in saying that all members, on Division, are required to vote `yea' or `nay'?

MR. SPEAKER: Yes.

MR. HARRIS: I understand there was a member who did not vote, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. R. AYLWARD: Nay, Mr. Speaker.

CLERK (Miss Duff): Mr. Speaker, `ayes' twenty-three, `nays', fifteen.

MR. SPEAKER: I declare the motion carried.

On motion, a bill, "An Act Respecting Restraint Of Compensation In The Public Sector Of The Province," read a second time, ordered referred to a Committee of the Whole House on tomorrow. (Bill No. 16).

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

MR. BAKER: Mr. Speaker, two things: first of all it is my intention to call committee stage of this same bill tomorrow.

I would like to advise all hon. members that on Wednesday, the private members' bill for debate will be the one on the Order Paper, put forward by the Member for Eagle River.

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

MR. SIMMS: Before putting the motion, may I ask the Government House Leader if his intention is to sit normally, for the next day or so, or is there an intention to have night sittings?

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

MR. BAKER: Mr. Speaker, it is our intention to go through the process with regard to the committee stage of the bill and then third stage. We intend to complete this bill before we go on to any other and there probably would be some night sittings.

MR. SIMMS: Tomorrow?

MR. BAKER: Probably. I could let you know tomorrow morning sometime but probably, tomorrow.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House at its rising do adjourn until 2:00 p.m. tomorrow and that the House do now adjourn.

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, a matter came to my attention that I neglected. I am sure all members of the House would like to pass along their congratulations on this particular point and while I have a minute, I would like to do it.

At the recent provincial drama festival held in Grand Falls - Windsor, members would be aware that two distinguished members of our press gallery were singled out for major awards during that major provincial drama festival and I think it would be appropriate for all members of the House to show our congratulations and appreciations. The winners were: Philip Daniels, who covers the legislature from time to time in the absence of the major reporter, if I may refer to him as that, for lighting; the other individual won the award for sound, and both of these were for a production put on by the St. John's Players. The individual who won the award for sound was the President of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, one, John Murphy, from CBC.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS VERGE: And it all happened in Grand Falls.

AN HON. MEMBER: Is that the famous golfer?

MR. SIMMS: No, not that John Murphy, not the famous golfer.

That all happened in Grand Falls - Windsor and I am sure that will probably get an extra mention in due course.

On motion, the House at its rising adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, at 2:00 p.m.