The House met at 2:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (L. Snow): Order, please!

Before we begin the routine I would like to welcome, on behalf of all members, the executive of the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Fire Chiefs, President, Vince MacKenzie, and directors, Richard Murphy, Bill Lynch, Jim Andrews, David Messie, and Hubert Sparkes.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: As well, I would like to welcome twenty-seven Democracy and Law students from St. Francis High School in the District of Harbour Grace, along with their teachers, Tony McCarthy and Ms Laurie King.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise in the House today to advise the House that Petro-Canada, as project operator, is today issuing a press release advising that along with their partners in the Terra Nova project they will be proceeding with the preparation of a development plan application for submission to the Canada/Newfoundland Offshore Petroleum Board for the development of the Terra Nova oilfield.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WELLS: The preparation of a development plan application is a requirement under the Atlantic Accord Acts. It represents the initial step in the approval process of the CNOPB for the development of the Terra Nova oilfield.

The decision by the project participants to proceed with the preparation of a development plan application for the Terra Nova oilfield is indeed welcome news. It is a clear statement of the commitment of the owners to the development of this important offshore project.

In their release, Petro-Canada and the other owners have clearly indicated that the final decision on the filing of the DPA with the Canada/Newfoundland Offshore Petroleum Board will be dependent on reaching agreement with the Federal and Provincial Governments on fiscal and benefits matters. The Province has been pursuing discussions on outstanding issues for pretty well most of this year - I think they started in February - and we remain confident that final agreements can be in place by the time the development plan application is completed. The completion date for the DPA is targeted for the end of March, 1996.

In the coming weeks, Petro-Canada will be releasing further details on the consultation process they will be following in the Province for the public input to the preparation of the development plan application. I encourage all those in the Province with an interest to make their views and their concerns known when the opportunity is presented.

The development of the Terra Nova oilfield is the next phase following Hibernia in building an oil and gas industry in our offshore area. Although many critical decisions remain to be taken, the government is encouraged by the decision of Petro-Canada and the other project owners to proceed at this time with the preparation of a development plan application. The government will also continue to dedicate its efforts to finalizing agreements on fiscal and benefits issues so as to ensure that this important offshore oil project can become a reality at the earliest possible date.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This is welcome news indeed. The Official Opposition, along with everyone else in the Province, have been anxiously awaiting a positive announcement about Terra Nova go-ahead. Of course, if it weren't for the legacy of the Peckford Government which some of us were part of, and the contribution of John Crosbie when he served in the federal Cabinet, we wouldn't have an Atlantic Accord, we wouldn't have an offshore petroleum board, we wouldn't have an offshore oil industry, Mr. Speaker.

I would urge the Premier and his colleagues to be vigilant in completing the negotiations to ensure that the fiscal and industrial benefits arrangements agreed to, will benefit this Province and the people who live in this Province.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Does the hon. the Member for St. John's East have leave?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: No leave.

MR. SPEAKER: No leave.

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

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have questions for the Minister of Natural Resources about Hydro.

It was at the end of last week that the minister, without any prior warning, tabled in this House a bill which significantly affects Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, and which will hike electricity rates. The measures could well pave the way for another go at Hydro privatization. Yesterday, the minister ruled out a process of public consultation. I ask the minister now: Have you reconsidered? Will you now refer Bill 35 to a House committee for public hearings early in the New Year, so that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians can have a say, over the future of Hydro?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Natural Resources.

DR. GIBBONS: Mr. Speaker, let's make it clear so that the hon. member opposite can understand, the public can understand, that what we are doing has absolutely zero to do with privatization, we are not proceeding with privatization. We took the decision on that because the public, the people of the Province said they did not want us to privatize Hydro and we listened.

What we are doing now, is taking some steps so that Hydro can be a much more efficient organization, publicly run through the Public Utilities Board.

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

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I ask the minister: If you are not afraid to have the public scrutinize the technicalities of this measure, if you are confident that upon examination it will be found to be consistent with continued public ownership, why won't you refer it to a House committee for public hearings? What are you trying to hide?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Natural Resources.

DR. GIBBONS: Mr. Speaker, we aren't trying to hide anything. We've had two years of debate about this. We've passed in this Legislature an Electrical Power Control Act that this Province should be proud of for the production, distribution and sale of electricity no matter where it is produced in this Province. We want to proclaim that legislation. The action we are taking in this regard with this Bill No. 35 will allow us to do that immediately.

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

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Won't the minister admit that Bill No. 35 does far more than whatever might be necessary for them to proclaim the Electrical Power Control Act, 1994? Why, for instance, would the government now be changing that act so that the Cabinet can direct the Public Utilities Board to set Hydro rates to recover on top of Hydro's costs more profit, as much as double the profit Hydro is permitted to recover now? Why would the government want to do that?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Natural Resources.

DR. GIBBONS: Mr. Speaker, we are cognizant of the implications of rate increases. We are cognizant of the implications of having, for example, a lifeline rate in the rural diesel areas, and we are cognizant of anything that may change rates. That is one of the main reasons why we think Cabinet should still have authority to give direction on issues of provincial significance, policy-wise. That is what we are doing in this. We will give policy direction where we deem it appropriate to do so.

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

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

What is wrong with the present policy? Why is the government changing the law to enable the PUB to permit Hydro, to direct Hydro, to recover, on top of its costs, as much as double the profit it is permitted to get now? And how much would that result in electricity rate increases? How much of that would be passed on to consumers? Will the minister tell us that?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Natural Resources.

DR. GIBBONS: Mr. Speaker, what happens to rates depends on the policy direction that we give. It depends on the policy direction that we give relative to the rate of return, relative to the phase in of the rate of return, relative to the sitting of the debt equity ratio. If the debt equity ratio is maintained as it is today, 81/19 at this time, approximately, so 80/20. If we say we are going to keep it at approximately that and if we say that the dividends that we expect from Hydro are going to be at a certain amount maybe there won't be any change at all. There may not be any significant change at all. It depends on what we do in terms of giving direction to the Public Utilities Board.

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question for the Minister of Health.

Your department has placed a cap of $2,100 per month on the Enriched Needs program. Now since the waiting list for admission to nursing homes is quite lengthy and is growing rapidly, what is the minister doing with people who are assessed as needing more then that cap of eight to nine hours per day? Are you enforcing the $2,100 cap in all new cases as well as in the current cases that now require more then that amount?

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

MR. L. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The hon. member is correct, we have capped Enriched Needs to seniors for services in their homes at $2,100. We are in the process now of implementing that new and revised capitation throughout the system. In some instances the Department of Social Services are continuing to carry on the work that they done wholly in the past. Eventually, by January 1, the Department of Health will be actually dealing with all of the clients or the seniors population on the account of the Enriched Needs program.

We are doing two things by direction; new entrants into the program, we will not bring them on at a service level beyond $2,100. Those who are at the moment receiving more then $2,100, we are working with them on an individual basis giving due consideration to their circumstance and all of that sort of thing, to ensure that we can bring them down to within the $2,100 cap and still provide to them an appropriate level of service such that their needs will be adequately met.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for Ferryland.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Your department recently changed its policy allowing Level II people into personal care homes even though you said in this House, one year ago, that personal care homes are not equipped to deal with Level II care. Your department, in its eligibility criteria, which I have here, for the three levels of care outlines the heavier level of care that is needed for Level II as compared to Level I. It states that care in this level can be carried out by a nursing assistant under the supervision of a registered nurse as directed by the attending physician. I ask the minister if there is a change now in the requirements for professional staffing in personal care homes as a result of that policy change?

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

MR. L. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We have not opened up the personal care home industry, carte blanche, to Level 2 clientele. What we have done is indicated to that private sector group of homes that operate, about seventy-one or seventy-two at the moment, that where they can demonstrate that they meet an appropriate level of programming services, and where they can meet life safety and other types of requirements, we will entertain increasing their licensure level from Level 1 to Level 11 where they can meet the requirements and the standards, so nothing is changed. We are simply making provision for those private sector homes to continue to fulfil a very vital role in the continuum of care for the elderly in the Province.

I might add that in terms of the personal care homes, these homes average about $800 or $900 a month for a very, very good level of care. Certainly that is probably the best value for dollar that seniors could spend in terms of accessing long-term care for themselves, and certainly it is the best value for dollar that government is spending in the long-term care sector.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Ferryland on a supplementary.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Your director has written all Level 1 homes asking them if they are interested in taking Level 11 people. The minister has stated that your department has a policy that states we need a higher level of care than is provided in Level 1. You said that a year ago and your policy that I have a copy of indicates that. I say to the minister, you are now allowing Level 11s in without the care your department has specified in its policy. I ask the minister if his department is now going to increase its subsidy to personal care homes for those beds to reflect the increased level of care that these people need?

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

MR. L. MATTHEWS: To the question directly, no, we have not put any additional funds into that sector. Let me tell the hon. member that in the personal home care sector there are two types of beds available. There are the subsidized beds which are the majority in the system, and there are a significant number of unsubsidized beds, in other words beds to which we do not contribute anything. In the subsidized beds there is a vacancy rate of about 12 per cent at the moment and in the unsubsidized beds there is a vacancy rate of 30 per cent, so there is on average a vacancy rate right across the system of about 15 or 16 per cent. Really what we are doing is allowing, where the homes can meet a Level 11 licensure requirement, and only in those instances, we are allowing them to apply for level 11 licensure so that two things can happen: They can fill the beds that they have and make their industry more viable; but more importantly, we are increasing the number of spaces for level 11 and level 1 people so that they can access good quality care in the time of their lives when they some help beyond what they can provide for themselves.

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

MR. CAREEN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question today is to the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation. Yesterday I asked a question of the Premier regarding the Province taking over the wharves and freight sheds on the South Coast, and wharves and sheds in other parts of this Island, from the federal government for an amount in excess of $10 million. I'm led to believe that a letter from the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation was sent to federal Minister of Transport Doug Young earlier this month agreeing to the take-over of these assets. I want to know if this is true or false.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

MR. EFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last year when we started discussions on a take-over of the ferry service along the South Coast, in negotiations for taking over the full ferry operations, the taking over of the wharves was part of that. It started last year. We've had continued discussions with Transport Canada officials on taking over those wharves on which the provincial ferry service is operating, and only those in which the provincial ferry service is operating within the Province.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for Placentia.

MR. CAREEN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am told the estimated value of these wharves and freight sheds is around $30 million. I would like to know where the Province is going to get the money to keep up maintenance and repairs to these assets when they are taken over by the Province when the Ministry now cannot adequately look after its road system.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

MR. EFFORD: Let me correct the hon. member, two parts of his question where he is absolutely wrong. First of all, we can very adequately take care of the road system. I must say, the people of the department are doing an excellent job in the road system. We have one of the best road services in this Province anywhere in Atlantic Canada.

In the second part of his question, we have done a full study into the wharves. We have had a study done. There will be no need to do any major work on those wharves for the next twenty, twenty-five years. The wharves are going to be completely rebuilt. Let the hon. member do the full research on his question and get the answers, and he should get the answers before he asks the question, because he would know full well that the numbers he is quoting are not correct numbers.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Placentia on a supplementary.

MR. CAREEN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to remind the minister that minds are like parachutes; they work better when they are open.

Mr. Speaker, I was told that a letter was received from Transport Minister Young last spring stating that the feds would assume all responsibility for the wharves and freight sheds on the South Coast and other portions of this Province. I am asking the Premier: Why would his government want to go against this policy unless it is to get the $11 million miscellaneous monies this government needs to make up their $60 million deficit?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

MR. EFFORD: First of all, the hon. member is not correct again, the federal minister did not write this Province and tell us that his office would be responsible for all wharves within the Province. In fact, if you had listened to the minister's speech, and saw excerpts of his speech when he was here in Transportation Week and gave a speech -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. EFFORD: - the Minister of Transport, here in St. John's, Newfoundland, he said the opposite, that he would be working with the Province, with all the users of the ports within the Province, in assuming responsibility, so again you are wrong.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Bonavista South.

MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Fisheries, Food and Agriculture.

In light of the information contained in a recent fisheries resource conservation council report to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, it states that there are approximately 4.8 million harp seals consuming approximately 7 million tons of fish on an annual basis. I would like to ask the minister if he has put forward any quota suggestions as a harvesting management plan to Minister Tobin, and if so what figures did this minister suggest?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries, Food and Agriculture.

DR. HULAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am a little out of breath because I just ran up over the steps, and I guess I am not in the shape that I used to be, but there is no question that the population of harp seals off our coast is alarmingly high and certainly, there have been suggestions from this government that should be addressed, and I am sure that the federal minister will indeed be addressing it when he announces his plan for the coming year as far as the harvest of the seals off our coast.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Bonavista South, on a supplementary.

MR. FITZGERALD: Mr. Speaker, I asked the minister if he had made any suggestions to the federal minister and what his suggestions were, exactly what quota did he suggest might be harvested this year? I would like to ask the minister that again, please.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries, Food and Agriculture.

DR. HULAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The harvest of harp seals must be one that is sustainable within the confines of the present population, and certainly, the present quota of 186,000 harp seals is certainly somewhat below. There is no need to say what would be needed for a sustainable harvest. If we look at the fact that there are approximately 4.8 million harp seals off the coast, a sustainable harvest should be somewhere of the order of around 300,000 to 350,000 animals. The final decision on that of course, as to what that harvest will be, will be up to the federal minister, but certainly the request from this government is that an increase in the harvest should take place; and as to the exact numbers, that would be up to the federal minister.

Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Bonavista South, on a supplementary.

MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, from what I understand, the only seal tannery existing in the world today is in Norway. There was some hope and optimism created a few weeks ago when it was announced by the minister or his department that a decision would soon be made as to the location of a new seal tannery somewhere on the Northeast Coast. Would the minister inform the House as to the status of this potential new industry, and if he has made a decision on the location of the same?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries, Food and Agriculture.

DR. HULAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Let me correct one thing. This minister did not say a few weeks ago -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

DR. HULAN: - that there would be a decision shortly on the establishment of a tannery for this Province. I will say that there is a great need, indeed, for a tannery to tan the hides of different animals. I will also say, Mr. Speaker, that there are several groups who have expressed an interest for the establishment of a tannery to tan leather but in particular for the tanning of harp seal skins. To say that Norway is the only country in the world that has a tannery for tanning seal hides, that's not quite right either, Mr. Speaker. Certainly, there is a tannery in Russia that tans seal hides, but the whole issue of a tannery is being addressed -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

DR. HULAN: - will be addressed and probably should have been addressed ten years ago -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

DR. HULAN: - as the population of seals were increasing at that time but was ignored by the previous administration.

Thank you.

MR. FITZGERALD: Mr. Speaker, we find out there is a tannery in Norway -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Chair has not recognized the hon. member yet.

The hon. the Member for Bonavista South, on a supplementary.

MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We find out that there is a seal tannery in Norway, we find out there is one in Russia but I say to the minister, one is still needed here in Newfoundland.

Last year, there was provision made for a food hunt of mature seals allowing individuals to take a maximum of six for the season. Would the minister inform the House if such a hunt is being considered again this year and if those people, who are taking part in the food hunt, will be allowed to sell their pelts rather than discard them and dump them because they are not considered as commercial fishermen?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries, Food and Agriculture.

DR. HULAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Everything that we harvest off our coast should be utilized to the fullest extent. That is why, recently when I asked the federal minister to give us an early decision on the possibility of a caplin harvest, in that request I also asked the federal minister that part of that decision be ruled a policy on anti-dumping, so that every animal harvested off our coasts, every animal harvested, male or female, be utilized to the fullest degree. Now, if there is a food seal harvest this year, I can assure you, the requests from this minister will be that all parts of the animal, be it commercial or food harvest, be utilized to the fullest extent. Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Green Bay.

MR. HEWLETT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have a question for the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

Mr. Speaker, I had constituents involved in that recent tragic accident out near Badger. Badger is one of those areas in an inland valley which has the earliest and deepest frosts in the Province. I am told that his department used to have someone stationed at Badger to monitor roads in that area because of the peculiar climatic conditions in the Badger area. I am also told that the individual staff member - there is no one doing that headquartered in Badger anymore. Have I been told right, Mr. Minister?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

MR. EFFORD: Mr. Speaker, what we do in the case of the reorganization of the Department of Works, Services and Transportation, we have foremen on twenty-four hours, week-in and week-out. That foreman is responsible for a section of highway. The foreman responsible for the section of highway into Badger was stationed and he was out on the road that morning stationed in the area. He was out on the road that morning of the accident, prior to the accident. In fact, it was 5:00 o'clock in the morning before the sun had come up and it was a mild temperature. He went back to his office and went down over another section of road. So the areas all across the Province, not only in Badger but every section in the Province, there have been some changes to the location of where the foreman or the unit, the driver or whatever is located, but the whole area of the Province is under full surveillance twenty-four hours a day.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Green Bay, on a supplementary.

MR. HEWLETT: Mr. Speaker, I would ask the minister, given the unique geographic position of Badger and the sudden drops in temperature in that particular area, will he reconsider having someone stationed at Badger to monitor the roads in that particular area? Because my constituents tell me it is an ongoing and growing concern.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

MR. EFFORD: Mr. Speaker, that argument could be made pretty well with every section of the highways in Newfoundland or every region of Newfoundland. I don't think that it is unlike - the temperature rises and falls in Badger, the temperature rises and falls on the Northern Peninsula, Western Newfoundland and Eastern. So the hon. member, or any hon. member can make the argument for any part of this Province. I don't see it necessary to change it when we have full surveillance of all sections of highway. That morning, I say, and I will tell the hon. member again, the foreman responsible for that section of highway was out there two hours prior to the accident and had his second visit back over that highway that morning before the accident happened and knew full well what the condition of the road was, but the temperature dropped as the sun came up. You could have people on the highway twenty-four hours a day, you are not going to prevent all accidents from happening.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

MR. MANNING: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

In the absence of the Minister of Social Services, I would like to put my questions to the Premier. They have to do with the Auditor General's report and the Cadillac computer system that in 1989 was estimated to cost $3.7 million for software only and be completed in four years. The completion date now, Mr. Speaker, will be sometime in 1997 at an estimated cost of $47.9 million. I would like to ask the Premier: How come this development has gotten totally out of hand? How does the Premier justify this immense expenditure of public funds when at the same time over 30,000 children are going to school hungry in this Province?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

MR. EFFORD: First of all, the hon. member is not correct in his assessment of the Auditor General's report. There has not been $47 million spent to date. In the beginning -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. EFFORD: Let me finish. And there will not be $47 million spent. In fact, as of last year, the whole expenditure was put on hold. If the hon. member had read and researched he would have found that out. What the Auditor General said was at the beginning it was $3.4 million, and if it went to its fullest extent it would be $47 million. It is put on hold, and to date, somewhere in the vicinity of $10 million has been spent.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. Mary's - The Capes, on a supplementary.

MR. MANNING: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The only thing that should be put on hold is the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation, I would say.

According to the Auditor General's report, of the $10.3 million spent on the project thus far by March 31, 1995, only $2.5 million has been identified as providing some future benefit. The remaining $7.8 million, according to the Auditor General, was spent in areas that are difficult to evaluate their future benefit. I would like to ask the minister: Does he believe that the $10.3 million expenditure was money well spent? Also, did Newfoundland and Labrador Computer Services, NLCS, have any part to play in the development of the new computer system?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

MR. EFFORD: Mr. Speaker, what the Auditor General said was at this time she could not evaluate the $7.8 million to be spent. It is money well spent. All the programming, all the statistics of the Department of Social Services, had they been put on the computer, would make a very efficient service. In the case of writing cheques - every cheque was hand-written and signed by people working in the department. Now, it is in the computerized system. It is a much more efficient, effective way of doing business. When all the files of the Department of Social Services get put on a computer programming system, yes, it will be money well spent.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. Mary's - The Capes, on a supplementary.

MR. MANNING: Part of my second question was the involvement of Newfoundland and Labrador Computer Services, which the minister failed to answer. If he would remember that for the next time.

At a time when we are laying off staff, cutting programs, in an effort to be fiscally responsible, I would like to ask the minister: Would he participate, as a member of the government, in cutting this expenditure? And, as you are telling many people in this Province now, to start living within your means, will you take this public fund of $10 million and put it into things that will directly help the people of this Province?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

MR. EFFORD: It is quite obvious, Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is just getting his question out of the Auditor General's report. Because I just told the hon. member, as of last year, because of budgetary restraints, everything in the expansion of the computer service for the Department of Social Services was put on hold. The hardware and the software that is already done, and the training, and already in place, is money that was well spent within the department to computerize clientele information, rather than have it done in files stored up in buildings all around the Province. Now, it is easily accessible - money well spent, but put on hold because of budgetary problems.

MR. SPEAKER: Question period has elapsed.

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

MR. HARRIS: I give notice that I will on tomorrow ask leave to introduce the following resolution:

WHEREAS good labour relations are built on fairness between workers and their organizations, and employers and their organizations, and a fair balance of power when collective bargaining breaks down; and

WHEREAS the use of scabs or replacement workers by employers during strikes or lockouts is a threat to bargaining rights and an incitement to breaches of the peace; and

WHEREAS the experience of other provinces in Canada has shown that anti-scab legislation which bans the use of replacement workers during lawful disputes results in shorter strikes and lockouts, and greater harmony between unions and employers;

BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED that this House go on record as supporting the introduction of anti-scab legislation, banning the use of replacement workers in lawful strikes or lockouts; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the government be directed to introduce such legislation in the next session of the House of Assembly.

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

MR. MANNING: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise today to present a petition on behalf of ninety-three residents of the Trepassey, Biscay Bay, Portugal Cove South, and St. Shotts areas of my district. I presented a petition here last week and it concerned the layoff of the mechanic at the Trepassey depot and the concerns it has raised for the people of my district. The prayer of the petition is as follows; we the people of Trepassey and surrounding communities who use the Cappahayden and Peter's River barrens as a lifeline to hospitals petition you and your department to reconsider your decision to cut the heavy duty diesel mechanic's position from the Trepassey depot for the 1995-96 winter season. Last winter the employee in this position worked extensive overtime hours along with his regular hours to repair and maintain the snow clearing equipment so that we the people in this area would not be isolated from essential services.

It takes one minute to write a safety rule, it takes one hour to hold a safety meeting, it takes one week to plan a safety program, it takes one month to put one in place, it takes one year to win a safety award, it takes one lifetime to be a safe worker, and it takes only one second to destroy all that with an accident. Please do not let this happen to our residents this winter while waiting for the services of a mechanic, either from St. Joseph's or Renews, to repair the equipment necessary to maintain our highway for the safe use of our ambulances, school buses, fire trucks, and other motorists.

Over the past couple of weeks we have heard questions being asked in this House by members on this side of the House, petitions being brought forward, concerns raised about the situation that is starting to evolve out around this Province as it relates to road maintenance, and winter maintenance by the Department of Works, Services and Transportation. While I have much faith in the people in my district who are employed with the department I say that you can only work and do with have you have, and the equipment you have to do the work with, and that has created many problems.

Just the other morning when driving through my district I came across a sand truck on the side of the road belonging to the Department of Works, Services and Transportation broke down. I stopped to talk to a couple of the gentlemen who were there and I said: boys, according to the minister this truck is under warranty so you should have no problem getting her fixed. They said: there is no warranty now because she is sixteen years old, and then the minister stands up here in the House and says, all new equipment. We do not need half the mechanics out there because for the next five years everything is covered under warranty. Well, I say to the minister that there is a lot of equipment on the roads of this Province now that should be in the dump. There is a lot of equipment on the roads of this Province that need a mechanic close by because there are continuous breakdowns.

MR. EFFORD: Who were you talking to?

MR. MANNING: I ask the minister, why do you want to know the name of the man I was talking to? So, you can send him a loud and clear message to go home for the rest of the winter. Threats again. Knowing what the minister has done in the past to anybody who questioned his authority, the intimidation tactics that they use on the workers of this Province, not only in Works, Services and Transportation, but in many other fields, I will not give the minister his name, but I will tell the minister in all honesty that there is equipment on the roads in this Province now that is thirteen, fourteen, fifteen and twenty years old that has continuous breakdowns and needs the help of a mechanic close by, and not to be sitting on the side of the road for three or four hours waiting for a mechanic to arrive.

This is the problem that is evolving now in Trepassey. The winter months have come upon us now, the snow has come, machines are on the road early in the morning and are having breakdowns, and they have to sit on the side of the road waiting four or five hours for a mechanic to arrive. Down in Trepassey now they have to depend on a mechanic to come from Renews while they had a mechanic, as the petition states, who worked many overtime hours last year because of the problems they had with the machinery in that area.

Mr. Speaker, the cutbacks that this minister and this government has put out on this Province is causing hardship for many, many people. This issue alone is only one of the many issues that are facing the Province at this time due to the cutbacks of this department in an effort to save money. I have no problem with trying to save money. I have no problem with this minister trying to run an efficient department, but I do have a problem with putting people's safety at risk, and that is what is happening with the cutbacks that this minister has brought into this House and in his department over the past couple of months.

There is a safety issue in this Province now. All you have to do is drive the roads and know that. Not everybody, I say to the minister, can hop in a taxi and go home; they have to get in their cars. There may not be taxis in a lot of parts of rural Newfoundland to take them home. They have to depend on getting in their own car, and it is a danger to their life now in a lot of cases getting on the roads in this Province because of the cutbacks in his department, and the people who are out there working are only working within the means that they have to work. They only have the machines that they have. There are very few new machines on the road, even though the minister may get up and say we have this many bought, and that many.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. MANNING: You go out around the Province and find out. There are some, but they are not providing the service that is needed. The mechanic in Trepassey is needed. The machine down there demands a mechanic be put in Trepassey -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. MANNING: - and I ask the minister to take this petition from these ninety-three people, along with the 405 I presented last week; take the issue seriously for a change, I say to the minister -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. MANNING: - and put the mechanic in Trepassey where he belongs.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise to support my colleague in the petition he is presenting on behalf of the people in Portugal Cove South, Trepassey, Peter's River, St. Vincent's area, and I ask the minister: Where are your priorities? The Premier said they were out shopping and they got a good bargain in water bombers and spent $7.2 million - because they had a good bargain. Does that mean if you see something else you get a special warrant to spend $7.2 million that is not in the budget, when $2 million or $3 million extra will guarantee safety during the most dangerous time of the year.

The minister stands in his place here and tells us what they spend in winter maintenance. Well, I tell the minister, according to the estimates filed by his department, they spent less on snow and ice control last year than they did the previous year and three years ago, and that is filed by your department.

MR. EFFORD: That is not correct.

AN HON. MEMBER: That is so correct.

The minister might as well admit it, that cutbacks in winter snow clearing, in snow and ice control, are endangering the lives of people in this Province and contributing to an increasing amount of accidents.

Now he might talk about statistics for the past ten years, how there are less fatalities. The minister has to wake up. Divided highways and less head-on traffic has contributed to saving lives in this Province, and he cannot try to use that as a means of supporting the cutback measures that he has brought about in his department. It is not reorganization. He might as well face the fact; it is a cutback that is occurring in the department.

If you look at the area, not one mechanic in an area now from Renews right over to St. Joseph's, not one heavy equipment mechanic to care for trucks on the highway. Some of this equipment is over twenty years old. Some mechanics have worked on that equipment for twenty years. They know the problems, and know how to deal with them. A warranty is not going to fix it. You need human beings to fix trucks, not warranties, I say to the minister. The minister has done nothing but try to deflect responsibility.

There is a dangerous stretch of highway from St. Shotts into Trepassey. They come every single day to school in the area, and from Portugal Cove South. There are school buses; there are no hospitals in the area; there is one doctor; ambulances have to come into this city for a few thousand people in the surrounding area. On a daily basis here people are being sent in, so they are endangering the lives of people who cannot get the medical care they need; they cannot get to drive on our highways, and they send someone out scouting for a few hours in advance and make a decision hours later when it is too late. The time to get a response is early, when the road is slippery, not two and three and four hours later.

The same thing happened in Purbeck's Cove, and the minister, I think, admitted afterwards he is taking some corrective action. Whether it is suitable or not, I don't know. You will have to ask the people in that area. He admitted yesterday in the House he was wrong on something. Well, the minister should admit that what he is doing here now - and there is a lot of scepticism by people in his department - that the cutbacks in those areas are not going to be cost saving in the long-term.

MR. EFFORD: (Inaudible) names.

MR. SULLIVAN: I won't tell the minister names. The minister is using his scare tactics and trying to tell people they will be fired if they speak out. He is trying to use the high power of his authority to scare people. Well, I won't fall for the minister's tactics, very low tactics, to scare people in the department. They are honest, hard-working people in there, who are putting in dedicated work and a lot of hours, I say, a lot of time spent in overtime, over and above the normal work period to keep the roads clear in wintertime.

The minister now, is going to take equipment that breaks down in Trepassey, put it on a flatbed, wait for a flatbed to arrive, be out of commission for hours and hours. I say to the minister, we don't need the equipment if there is no snow; it doesn't break down when it is not working, it only breaks down when it is being used. So we don't need it fixed when it is not being used. But we need someone there on the spot to deal with problems, some preventive maintenance. It is going to cost this department in the long-term by cutting back the few million dollars that are cut back on the highroads in the Province. It is going to pay a terrible price, and it has been paid already by families. Over the years, a terrible price has been paid for the conditions of roads.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: No, I am not blaming the minister for highway conditions if a road is slippery, but I will blame a minister for not taking preventive and corrective actions and for not using money wisely in his department to get the best results for that money. Sure, I blame the minister, you are responsible and nobody else and we need people to care for the highroads in the wintertime, a very dangerous section of highway between Renews depot right up to Trepassey area, and that has been eliminated.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time has elapsed.

MR. SULLIVAN: So I say to the minister, they should look at some long-term planning -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. SULLIVAN: - and save us money in the long term, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

MR. EFFORD: Mr. Speaker, there are no cutbacks, and I will say it again: there are no cutbacks. Do you understand it? no cutbacks in winter operations.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. EFFORD: You see? All of that fuss for one mechanic, Mr. Speaker, all of that fuss for one mechanic. He must be some supporter.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

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

MR. EFFORD: Because that's four petitions -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

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

I ask the hon. member to take his seat.

The hon. the Member for Kilbride, on a point of order.

MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation, boldly stands up in this House and says: There are no cutbacks. There are nine people laid off on the Baie Verte Peninsula alone, it would take me the next three hours to go through it and -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. E. BYRNE: - outline where the cutbacks have been.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. E. BYRNE: At least, he should have the decency and the courtesy -

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

I ask the hon. member to take his seat. That is not a point of order.

The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

MR. EFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Let me take a couple of minutes and explain to hon. members opposite, who don't seem to understand the rationale and the logic behind our making the decision to reorganize the department. Let us go back to the first days of Confederation - there were very few roads built in this Province. As years went by, we built more and more roads; therefore, at the completion and the building of these highways, we didn't need as many depots around the Province so we closed out a lot of depots that we didn't need.

Then, in the last three or four years, we started to buy new equipment, those high-speed truck ploughs, much different from the old-fashioned, slow plough, so because we bought new equipment, more modern equipment, we don't need as many mechanics, we don't even need as many people out there working in the department. The one thing you always were blamed for in government, was having too many employees. Now, that is the way they operated, that is the reason why we are $7 billion in debt and they are still carrying on the same policies as the former administration. I thought, the new, younger people coming in would at least have some sensible ideas, but I can see that fell on their mindless heads and they are still carrying on with the same foolish policies: borrow money, hire on people, keep people happy, drive the Province further into debt. And that was the policy they operated under for seventeen years.

The reality of this is, some logic, business decisions based on need, not based on politics and silly ideas as with the Member for Mount Pearl on building a pickle factory and a cucumber factory in the middle of Mount Pearl.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. members to my right to do the courteous thing and let the hon. member speak.

The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

MR. EFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Very simply, Mr. Speaker, had it not been for the foolish spending of money by that crowd on the opposite side for seventeen years, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today. We wouldn't have to make hard decisions on so-called cutbacks, as they say in my department. We would be able to buy twice as many ploughs. We could have ploughs parked on the side of the road waiting for the snow to fall. But, unfortunately, we have to deal with a major financial problem that we took over from the former Administration that just spent money like drunken sailors.

MR. SHELLEY: (Inaudible).

MR. EFFORD: So the answer is, we will do what has to be done.

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

I believe I heard the hon. the Member for Baie Verte - White Bay make an unparliamentary statement. I ask him to withdraw it.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: You know what the statement is, I think.

MR. SHELLEY: I am sorry, Mr. Speaker. I withdraw the statement.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Kilbride, on a petition.

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise today to present a petition on behalf of people in the Province. It reads: To the hon. House of Assembly of the Province of Newfoundland in Parliament assembled, the petition of the undersigned residents of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador asks for the House of Assembly to accept the following prayer: We, the undersigned, hereby request the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations to immediately provide emergency funding to generate desperately needed employment in our communities.

Mr. Speaker, back in September and October when people in this House - myself and other members on this side of the House - asked the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations would there be an emergency employment program this year, he stood and said that there would not be. But there was a caveat, and that caveat was that there were negotiations taking place with Ottawa that something would be coming down, to use his words, or something was about to happen by which Lloyd Axworthy and the Federal Government would look at some form of emergency employment program. What we have seen in the last two weeks is what the Federal Government calls an emergency employment program, but what I call a complete claw-back and neglect of duties in what has happened with the UI program and what is about the happen.

Today, people in rural and urban Newfoundland and Labrador have every right to be concerned about what is about to happen to the UI program. As a result, many people - and the government know this to a minister, to the Premier. They know what the impact will be, but they are trying to do, somewhat, damage control, spin-doctoring of what the real impact of these changes will be. The reality is this: As a result of UI changes there will be significantly fewer people who qualify - thousands of people who will not qualify who have normally qualified for work because of the nature of their employment. Nothing to do with a `do not wish to work', nothing to do with not looking for work, but due to the nature of the type of employment that they are in, namely seasonal industries, they will not find themselves in a position of even qualifying for UI.

Thus petitions are starting to come in. This issue will become more heated - I promise the minister and I promise the government that it will, over the next two to three months - as people begin to realize that the benefits outlined by the federal minister will not directly put enough money in their pockets to even survive, to even pay light bills. People will be forced to go to two options: Pack up and leave Newfoundland and Labrador with their families in tow, or to come with cap and glove in hand to the Minister of Social Services and depend upon welfare. That is what these changes will do to this Province.

I ask the minister today: As a result of these changes, and as a result of pending funding coming from Ottawa and what he has described as transitional funding, how much funding will this Province be given in transitional funding? How much of it will go towards direct employment creation, if any? When will that employment creation begin? What proportion of the money will we get? Will it be proportionate based upon our population compared to the rest of Atlantic Canada and the country, or will the proportion of money be given to us based upon the unemployment rate in this Province per capita, compared to other provinces?

It is a serious issue, more serious than the government, in my opinion, has cared to admit to date. Even last week when we presented the private member's resolution on the impact of the unemployment insurance changes, members on the other side came within a hair's breadth of supporting the Opposition's private member's resolution. But they did not because the door was left open, as the Member for Fogo said, that there may be some hope, there may be an opportunity for more people to qualify.

The reality is the teflon of the Federal Government and the teflon of the Provincial Government on this issue and this Provincial Government's silence to date on how this will impact on Newfoundlanders and Labradorians; people who live in Kilbride in my district, in the Goulds, Petty Harbour and Maddox Cove, who will know in January, February and March what these changes will mean and the hard realities that they will have to face, Mr. Speaker. So I ask the minister today to stand and respond to some of the concerns that I have raised on behalf of my constituents and other people in the Province and to further enlighten members of this House on what this government plans to do.

Thank you very much.

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

MR. MANNING: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am pleased today to stand and support the petition put forward by my hon. colleague, the Member for Kilbride.

Mr. Speaker, on a daily basis, I receive calls from my district. When I am out and around my district there are people on a continuous basis talking to me about work, some type of work. Because of the fishery crisis we are in, many of the people in our Province and in my district of St. Mary's - The Capes, have to rely on NCARP, TFAA, TAGS and some other programs.

The problem that we are faced with out there - and for some reason or other, I don't think this government or the Federal Government has come to sit down and think about it. The problem is, Mr. Speaker, is that we have had a great many indirect jobs in our districts - in my district, for example, a great many indirect jobs such as the people working up in the stores, the people who are working in the restaurants, the people who are working as baby-sitters, or whatever the case may be, who were employed because of the fishery. But, because they were not directly involved in the fishing industry they could not participate in any of the programs, such as income support, and could not participate in the training programs that are being offered.

So these people are being shut out, Mr. Speaker, because they were not directly involved; people who were even driving the fish trucks, people who were working on the wharves and who, for many, many reasons, Mr. Speaker, could not participate in any type of training, the TAGS program or anything else. These are the people who, as the old cliché goes, fell through the cracks in this system.

This is what I would like to make a few comments on today, in speaking to my colleague's petition, that there is very little being done for these people who have fallen through the cracks. I talked to a gentleman the other day out in my district, fifty-two years old, married with three children, and for the first time in his life, he had to go down to the Social Services office. Mr. Speaker, the dignity of that man had over the years, and everything else, he felt, has gone out the window. I had to sit down and explain to him that there was no other choice. There was nothing coming forward from this government, there was nothing coming forward from the Federal Government that gave him an opportunity to go out into the work force. I had to sit down and say to him: Look, Sir, you have no choice. You are going to have to rely on Social Services. Hopefully, things will get better, hopefully, things will improve. But, Mr. Speaker, it is a problem that I am sure members on the other side of the House are aware of - it is not only the people on this side of the House, Mr. Speaker, who know that these people have fallen through the cracks. There are thousands of Newfoundlanders in this Province. The Minister of Social Services herself confirmed the other day that there are over 70,000 people now depending on Social Services in this Province. Over 70,000 people, over 30,000 caseloads. They are in my district, as I said before, for the first time in their lives having to turn to Social Services.

Mr. Speaker, we have an out-migration in this Province that I don't think anybody has come to terms with. Many, many years have passed when people have left the Province and gone away to work and that has been going on for a long time. Newfoundlanders have been known to travel to other parts of the world to work. But out in my district, right in my home town a few months ago, nine young fellows under the age of thirty, left in one day. One Sunday, Mr. Speaker, nine young fellows left and flew away to British Columbia. Why? Because they had no opportunity to find work in their community, there is no hope in their community and no promise of a job down the road. Now, it is easy to say go out and make your own job. We hear that from people in government - go out and make your own job. That is not very easy in a small rural community, with 300 or 400 people who for hundreds of years depended on the fishing industry to provide the employment and provide the opportunity to live, work and raise their families in rural Newfoundland. The fishery is gone, it is depleted in my district to the point where we have very little fishing activity now except for a few weeks of the year and a very small number of people get to participate in it.

So there is a need, Mr. Speaker, for this government to come forward with something to provide some emergency employment to let those people get over this tough time that we are in. Even in the years when there was plenty of work in the fish plants and everywhere else, the government always came forward with an emergency program. Here we are now with nothing going on in our fishery and the government refuses to come forward with an emergency program to provide employment. People find many, many faults with those programs. They call them stamp factories, they call them everything else. I call them lifelines. You can go out around my district, and indeed every district in this Province, and find infrastructure that was put in place through these programs, such as new fire halls or community halls, water lines, helping municipalities, garbage cleanup, the whole works, and all done through these programs, Mr. Speaker. These things to some members, Mr. Speaker, may have passed lightly, but I see the need and I see what those programs can do for small communities when people put their minds to it.

Mr. Speaker, the problem with the programs in the past, as I see it, was the administration of them and the political game that was played with those programs, and that was on all sides, the political games played with those programs. It is time that government start taking the issue of the unemployed in this Province more serious and put forward some program that will give the people of this Province an opportunity to get back to work.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time has elapsed.

The hon. the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations.

MR. MURPHY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Just a few words. I think the hon. the Member for Kilbride and the hon. the Member for St. Mary's - The Capes would remember that when we discussed that issue when the question was raised initially, there were a couple of things that were identified. Number one was the fiscal position the Province was in, and everybody realizes and knows that that program was always entirely funded by the Provincial Government. The other thing that has to be considered at that particular time and point was that we were negotiating with the Federal Government, and discussing with the Federal Government, not only the UI situation, or the EI, whatever you want to call it. So, really, the quandary that faced this government was, number one, trying to find the extra dollars that were needed to respond to that type of program.

Hon. members know, as well as I know, that there are tremendous numbers of opinions out there as to whether or not these programs should or should not be. Now, personally, from my point of view, people in need are people in need. We discussed it at department level and we knew and understood that the Minister of Finance's problem was obviously grave to say the least. We have been dealing with that for some time now and that was one side of the coin, and the other side of the coin, was again, we were trying to take a position with our federal counterparts in recognizing the regional problem that this Province had. I think we accomplished that. As a matter of fact I do not think, I know we did. The other side of the coin that my friend, the Member for Kilbride discussed was that I mentioned at that time there were going to be some dollars in skills training and what have you. I stand to be corrected on the hard dollar amount, but I understand that the Atlantic region, from Mr. Axworthy's announcement, will have some $150 million in that program.

Our position is quite clear. I mean, if you look at it nationally we are 2 per cent of the population, and in the Atlantic region, of course, we are much greater, but I think if we are going to be treated fairly - and this is the position we are taking now, is making representation to Mr. Axworthy and trying to ensure that he looks at the unemployment rate or the per capita rate that my friend, the Member for Kilbride talks about. These things are ongoing now and we are hoping to have that program in place as soon as possible, I say to the member.

Of course, who will deliver it, and so forth and so on, is still there to negotiate. We have, as the member is probably aware, become very involved in the delivery, and/or co-ordinating the whole career role with HRDC. As I said just the other day, we have five offices around the Province trying to help Newfoundlanders to bring up their c.v., bring up their abilities, identify the needs. We are trying to deal with the kinds of statements that Mr. O'Brien made, that there are 7000 jobs out there that could not be filled. He never identified them.

MR. CAREEN: (Inaudible).

MR. MURPHY: I do not know what that has to do with it, I say to the member. That has absolutely nothing to do with it. It is always when you are trying to deliver a message that you get the same old gobbledygook from the Member for Placentia. Why do you not give your ears a chance?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) out of touch.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. MURPHY: No, I'm not out of touch, I say to the member. The last thing the member did, in trying to make sense, finally he couldn't resist, he got into the political foolishness. I say to the member, when we had the program last year - the member knows and the member - his seat colleague or mate well knows that I did everything I possibly could to try to distribute the money evenly throughout the Province, both on the Island portion and in Labrador. Every member in this House knows that.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. MURPHY: The member should know that as far as I was concerned there was no politics. I can honestly say that to him. We will continue to try to do our best, I say to the Member for Kilbride, the member on the opposite side who seems to make the most sense. We will do our best to try to address the issue. I know how serious it is, I know how people are suffering. You can be sure that my department and this government will do our best to negotiate a position on behalf of people in the Province to do what we can under the circumstances.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time has elapsed.

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise to present a petition on behalf of 53,067 Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, I would say one of the largest petitions ever to be presented in this House.

It states as follows: Whereas the Janeway Child Health Centre has served the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and their children for more than twenty-five years as the only acute care children's hospital, and whereas the Janeway has provided a first-rate service to generations of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians which should be further improved and enhanced rather than down-sized, and whereas the people of Newfoundland and Labrador show their support for the Janeway by contributing millions of dollars every year to enhance the services provided by the children's hospital, we, the undersigned, support the continuation of a stand-alone children's hospital to provide quality health care for the children of Newfoundland and Labrador.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HARRIS: Now, Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation says these people are silly. I say to him that these are people of this Province who have a genuine concern and fear of what this government is planning to do with the Janeway Child Health Centre. We have a very valuable, well-recognized, well-known, first-class facility, a specialized centre of excellence in children's medicine and paediatrics, that there is legitimate concern and feeling by the people of this Province that will be lost by moving this hospital to become just another part, just another wing, just another department, of the Health Sciences complex.

This is an issue that goes deep to the hearts and minds and understanding of people of this Province. Every community in this Province, perhaps every family, has a deep emotional attachment to the Janeway Child Health Centre because they have had the experience of having a child or a relative, a family member, or a person in their community, who has been required to be treated by that hospital and has come back home to their community after receiving that treatment.

This is a petition that was initiated by a local of NAPE at the Janeway, Local 6205, but it was one that was carried around this Province by men and women and children who had a great desire to have some influence on this government. I will give you an example. A woman from Torbay writes to the people who organized the petition: My nine-year old daughter, Candice Taylor of Torbay, doesn't want the Janeway hospital to close, so she took it upon herself to start her own petition, and here is a list of 239 names that she has collected. We hope this list will also be of help.

There is a grass-roots reaction to the initiation of this petition. In stores, shops and businesses all over this Province, individuals took it upon themselves to collect names, and spontaneously people asking for more, so that they could go and collect them. And there is more to come, because the people of this Province are very concerned with what the Minister of Health is planning to do, and they don't get assurances from the kinds of comments that have been made by the minister.

There is $100 million said to be allocated for the moving of the Janeway Hospital, which also has to deal with the Children's Rehab Centre, the Grace Hospital moves and other capital costs in St. Clare's. This cannot do all that has to be done. The minister has some rule of thumb that he is trying to apply to this. There has never been any study or plan tabled in this House to show how this could be done for the costs that have been suggested and that the savings can be obtained. There is a need for a proper assessment of the government's plan in this matter. Put the negatives and the positives all together and look at the costs and the benefits. I don't think that has been done, and the people of this Province don't have faith that this government has done that work.

They are supposedly going to save the duplication of services, but you can't have an operating room where you have children and adults together. You cannot have an emergency service with children and adults together. There is a need for a separate service.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time has elapsed.

MR. HARRIS: By leave?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: By leave.

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

There is still going to be a requirement of a separate service, and a separate specialized service, and the people of this Province who have donated to the Janeway Foundation over the years, the hundreds of thousands of people who have donated, have an emotional and a material and a real commitment to a stand-alone child health facility, the Janeway Child Health Centre. That won't be there. That will be lost if it is seen to be absorbed in some super hospital that does not have a separate stand-alone facility. The reputation, the emotional attachment, the commitment to service, the commitment to quality and excellence for children's health will be lost if this is absorbed into a larger hospital. So I ask this minister to commit himself and his department to reviewing that decision, and reconsidering that decision, and doing a proper cost benefit analysis, and listen to what these petitioners and others have to say about what is happening to health care in this Province, particularly as it relates to the Janeway Child Health Centre, and commit himself and his government to maintaining the Janeway Child Health Centre as a separate, stand-alone hospital facility.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

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

I am happy to rise again today and speak to the petition that has been presented. Certainly, I want to pay recognition and say thank you to the 53,667 people of the Province who have sufficient interest in paediatric services in the Province such that they were willing to take the time even to sign a petition indicating an expression of interest in paediatric services, and indicating a degree of support that we maintain and continue to maintain at the highest level children's health services in the Province, and a dedicated service at that.

I also would offer a word of commendation to the people who organized this. I gather the NAPE people are the ones who spearheaded this particular initiative, and certainly, their interest in children's affairs is not being expressed here the first time today. In my experience with children's charities in the Province, one of the greatest supporters of children's charities and children's causes, I can say to the hon. House, has been the labour movement. People in the movement have taken much effort and great interest in supporting causes like the Children's Wish Foundation, the Janeway Foundation, and a number of other efforts and initiatives -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) the food program.

MR. L. MATTHEWS: The food program, and a number of other things that are concerned with children. Certainly, I can only respect and commend them for their level of interest in ensuring that children's services of all types are maintained in this Province and enhanced where we can possibly do so.

It gives me another opportunity, of course, to again state as clearly as I know how for the people of the Province and the people of the House this government's commitment to essentially what the member has suggested we should continue to have, and that is a dedicated paediatric service delivered from a point where it can be done in the most efficient and most effective manner, and this government announced on the 29th of June, in the site reduction initiatives that we outlined for the St. John's area, a singular commitment to maintaining a children's hospital attached to, contiguous with, as a part of the services being offered not at the old site in a building that is substantially redundant and is run-down and outlived its usefulness, and which is only about half-occupied basically based on the number of beds that it originally had, but we are committed to providing a hospital, a paediatric service at a new site, at a new address and a new location in the most modern setting possible for the services to these children and that will be over at the Health Sciences Centre on Prince Philip Drive.

In addition to what we are doing today at the Janeway, we want to improve services that are required to be delivered to new mothers and to new babies and we believe that bringing all of these services and the mothers and babies under one roof over to the new site that we are proposing at the Health Sciences Centre, will be an improvement in services to the new-born and to the mothers who have given birth to them.

The new facility that will be provided at the new site on Prince Philip Drive, will not be a department of the Health Sciences Centre. It will not be a secondary service to that being offered to adults. It will not be a situation where children will have to line up behind adults for service; it will not be a situation where children will be mixed with adults for ongoing care. It will be a situation where children will receive dedicated, professional services provided by the care givers who are presently working in the system at the Janeway, and by others whom we can bring in to that continuum of care, such that, at the end of the day, we will have I suppose, in comparative terms, something like we have at the Health Sciences/H. Bliss Murphy Cancer Clinic setting over there now.

We have brought over there, the cancer treatment services of the Province, they have been located and situated and co-ordinated with the Health Sciences Centre, and the people of this Province, by national standards, have the singularly, best delivery of services, clinical space available anywhere in the country for cancer patients. We will duplicate that in spades on behalf of the children of this Province in terms of the dedicated paediatric services that we will provide in dedicated space, staffed by dedicated clinicians, doctors and health care providers, and the mothers and the children of this Province will be better off by a million country miles when we have completed the reorganization -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. L. MATTHEWS: - of health care in this city and relocated the Janeway services where it most appropriately should be.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The minister must have attended a different press conference than I attended when he announced on June 29. There was no mention ever made of having a facility that is contiguous with, attached to the Health Sciences Centre. After being browbeaten by the public, by the Opposition and by everybody else, by union, staff and people, several days later, in fact it could be weeks later, the first mention ever made of having an extension was made by Mr. Tilley on CBC Radio. I listened every day and followed intently one morning on CBC that they are going to look at attaching a building on to the Health Sciences Centre. It was never stated, it wasn't their intention, they were looking at downsizing and pushing everybody in together, and the minister stood in this House -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. SULLIVAN: I tell you, the minister stood -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. SULLIVAN: I will tell you what I said to the press.

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

The Chair has recognized the hon. Member for Ferryland and I ask the other hon. members to let the hon. member speak.

MR. SULLIVAN: Before I finish I will tell them what I said to the press that day, exactly what I said but I have other points I will add first.

The minister stated in this House -

AN HON. MEMBER: Your not speaking to the petition, (inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. SULLIVAN: - in response to questions, the minister does not want to get hurt, he said in this House that in the new centre, kids are going to share operating rooms, studios and x-rays and so on when I was there. It is in Hansard, and I asked him in this House and I quoted it several times. That is what the minister stated. That is what his plan is, to share operating rooms -

MR. L. MATTHEWS: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: I see I am annoying the minister now with the truth. It is in Hansard, I say to the minister. That is something the minister is not very familiar with.

I will give you some examples. First, Mr. Speaker, I will give him examples to back it up. I will give him examples.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. SULLIVAN: First, they made no mention of extension, then Mr. Tilley said we are going to have an extension. Then the minister said we are going to have a separate Janeway attached and contiguous to. The earlier proposal said it was going to take $300 million to do the consolidation. Now they come back and say $100 million. To this day, and the minister stated in this House also and in the public, by the end of this year they will tell us the plan.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

On a point of order, the hon. the Minister of Health.

MR. L. MATTHEWS: Mr. Speaker, from the comments made by the hon. member he is quoting me incorrectly. It is an infactualization that he is putting forward. He is suggesting that I stated in this House dollar figures that I never did state or commit to and I would ask him to be asked to withdraw that assertion.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

There is no point of order. There is a difference of opinion between two hon. members. That certainly does not constitute a point of order.

MR. SULLIVAN: The minister is more interested in giving, Mr. Speaker, $250,000 to buy a house for an executive director in Goose Bay when he could be putting $250,000 into a children's hospital, I say to the minister.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SULLIVAN: And $90,000 to buy a Tim Horton franchise, I say to the minister, that is what he is talking about. No, the minister has made barefaced falsehoods in this House. I have heard -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member cannot say that. I ask the hon. member to withdraw that comment.

MR. TOBIN: What about what he said?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member to withdraw that statement, it is unparliamentary.

MR. SULLIVAN: Mr. Speaker, I withdraw it and I will say that since 1958 - I am speaking now on the petition, since 1958 it has been ruled parliamentary in the House of Commons to use that phrase.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. TOBIN: What about infactualization, Mr. Speaker?

MR. SULLIVAN: Mr. Speaker, I am not going to get tied up on a point of order. It is in Hansard, it is in citation, I think, 479, it has been ruled parliamentary in the House of Commons. I won't get hung up on that issue here but the minister has made several statements that are not factual, I say to the minister. He keeps contradicting and jumping all over the place because they have no plan. They don't know what we are going to save. It could cost substantially tens of millions of dollars more to move it. I will agree and here is what I said to the media that day -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. SULLIVAN: By leave to tell them what I said?

MR. SPEAKER: No leave.

Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Burin - Placentia West.

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I would like to present a petition on a new subject, namely Sunday shopping. I present a petition on behalf of 613 people from the Corner Brook area; from Irishtown, Gillams, Meadows and these communities in the Premier's district, as well as Port Saunders, St. Anthony and other communities, Corner Brook. That is where I present it. Tomorrow I will present more from the Grand Falls area, from the Lewisporte area. I will present them from every nook and cranny in this Province, Mr. Speaker, as long -

MR. REID: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I didn't (inaudible) get anything, I say to the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs, I didn't (inaudible) get anything. They are people who are concerned about the actions of this government, the callous and the non-caring, Mr. Speaker.

MR. REID: You got sucked in.

MR. TOBIN: Yes, I got sucked in like the municipalities got sucked in from you with the MOGs, Mr. Speaker. Like the municipalities got sucked in on the MOGs when you levied taxation on the people of this Province through the back door what you, sir, have not got the guts to do through the front door! That is what is going on in this Province, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, now I will present a petition on behalf of 613 people, taxpayers and voters who are opposed to Sunday shopping in this Province. I would say that the people of this Province are concerned. If anyone in this Province has been successful in uniting the labour force and the Board of Trade and the chambers of commerce and the church groups and every working person in this Province, it has been the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: I would say to the minister, it is more than I would ever want to do on an issue such as this, Mr. Speaker.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: No, Mr. Speaker, I didn't say it was a grand idea, I would say to the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations. My head doesn't think like his. The only one who told you it was a grand idea was your cousin, Peter O'Brien.

AN HON. MEMBER: He is against it.

MR. TOBIN: He is against it, is he? Your infamous cousin, your claim to fame, a man who says there are jobs going crying in this Province, and his cousin the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

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

I ask the hon. member to get on with his petition.

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I intend to get on with my petition if you would keep the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs quiet over there, the man who levied taxation in through the back door.

This petition is from 613 people who are very concerned about Sunday shopping. The people of this Province have expressed their views: We the taxpayers and voters of this Province are opposed to Sunday openings of stores. That is the prayer of the petition. Quite clear, I would say to the minister. They are talking about Sunday shopping. You don't go confuse, Mr. Speaker, don't -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. TOBIN: Why don't you go to Florida again on another trip and keep your yap -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. TOBIN: - quiet in this House? Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

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

I ask the hon. minister to refrain from interjecting in the proceedings of the House.

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, the people of this Province have spoken on a very important issue. The people of this Province are concerned, I would say to the minister, regarding Sunday shopping. I heard the president of the provincial Chamber of Commerce today on the radio saying that it has surveyed its membership, and 80 per cent of its membership in this Province is opposed to Sunday shopping.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I would ask the minister if he would look at this very seriously, if he would withdraw immediately this proposal on Sunday shopping. He never gave anyone the opportunity to have input. No one in this Province had the opportunity to have input on this very important issue. No one, not a soul.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: It is true, Mr. Speaker. The Federation of Labour had to go into your office the other night for a meeting on it. It was not consulted on this issue. The Chamber of Commerce. The minister got up in this House and he said: It would take me all day -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

The hon. the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations.

MR. MURPHY: Yes, thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. There is a lot of truth in what the hon. Member for Burin - Placentia West is saying, there are quite a number of individual people who are against Sunday shopping. There are some groups out there which are against Sunday shopping. I am hearing from a lot of people. The bill is on the paper. If government decides to call the bill we will call it; if we don't, we won't. We are listening to the people, we've always listened to the people, and we will continue to listen to the people.

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

MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, all I can do is laugh at the Minister of Employment and Labour Relation's response: We listen to people, we will continue to listen to people, and he sits down.

There was no thought whatsoever gone into presenting a bill on Sunday shopping by this government through the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations. He stands in the House on one day and says if he had to list every business who phoned him and phoned his office about Sunday shopping he would be here until 9:00 a.m. tonight talking about them, and outside in a scrum -

AN HON. MEMBER: We said, "Name six".

MR. E. BYRNE: Name six, and he could not do that.

AN HON. MEMBER: Then we said, "Name three".

MR. E. BYRNE: Name three, and we went down, six, five, four, three, two, one; he couldn't even name one. He goes out in the scrum; the media asked him, `What about business?' `Well, I really didn't get much pressure from businesses'- five minutes later. Now, the reality is that the larger corporation, multinational corporations that operate in this City, would be the only -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) shopping?

MR. E. BYRNE: Am I against Sunday shopping? Yes, Sir, I am. I will say that anywhere, at any time. The difference is that I will say it here and out in the scrum I will say it also, I say to the minister.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, the only people who are in favour of Sunday shopping are the large, multinational corporations that operate in this city. Those are the only beneficiaries.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: The Minister of Employment and Labour Relations brought people together like never before, who would never sit in the same room together let alone agree on an issue together, but he did it. When the Baccalieu Chamber of Commerce, the St. John's Board of Trade, representing the majority of businesses on the Avalon Peninsula, stand up and say emphatically that they have no understanding of why the government is proceeding, that what it is going to level on businesses are extra costs, that they are going to go after the same amount of dollars, and the Federation of Labour, at the same time, were not consulted, stand up and say: Where is this government coming from? No one consulted them.

What was really interesting was when the minister first introduced it, and how he sneaked back step by step by step from his original statement. It is hilarious, but he has retreated. I give him credit; he has retreated. He has heard the people loud and clear, there is no doubt about that, and I suggest his office heard it loud and clear.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: It must be.

Mr. Speaker, Sunday shopping does not work in this Province. It is a day where people can take it off, a day of rest, for lack of a better term, but the reality is, from a strict economic point of view, that there are only so many dollars to go around in this Province. It would be detrimental to local business, and would only benefit large, multinational companies that take taxes and profits and leave the Island to places in Montreal, Toronto, New York and elsewhere.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, I assume we are now at the happy point where the Orders of the Day are called.

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

MR. ROBERTS: Your Honour, we have had a vigorous go 'round. Before we get into the major business of the day, which is the adjourned speech of my learned friend from St. John's East on Bill 35, perhaps members might wish to take a minute to see where we are. My friend from Grand Bank is not in the Chamber, but I assume my friend -

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes, he is, over there, to your right.

MR. ROBERTS: Oh, he is to my right, geographically if not politically. In fact, he is probably to my right politically as well.

He and I have had some conversation, Your Honour, behind the Chair, and I will suggest to members on both sides that this requires, of course, the consent of every member, that if the House will agree we will pass up the Private Members' Day that we are entitled to tomorrow, Wednesday - it is a day called by government motion, and my friend from LaPoile has agreed to what I am about to say - that is on the understanding that members opposite will agree as well. We will deal with next Wednesday next Wednesday; we are not at next Wednesday yet. That is Wednesday, the 20th. of December. We are getting very close to St. Nicholas' slide down the chimney by that stage. It would be our proposal to call Bill 35 again tomorrow, and to conclude debate at second reading on it tomorrow.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: If we finish it today we will call something else tomorrow, but I suspect that my friend from St. John's East and my friend from Ferryland and others who wish to speak will take us beyond 5:00 p.m., and we will not sit beyond 5:00 p.m. today because I understand there is a social function to which we have all been asked.

Let me first of all ask Your Honour if you could ascertain whether the House is prepared to deal with that. My friend from Grand Bank wishes to say something.

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

MR. W. MATTHEWS: To the point raised by the Government House Leader, we did have a chat behind the Chair, and basically what this side is willing to agree to is that we forgo Private Members' Day tomorrow but do government business up until 5:00 o'clock with an understanding that we again will adjourn at 5:00 o'clock on Thursday. That is the understanding we have. The Government House Leader said, well, next week will take care of itself, if we are here next week. As next week unfolds we can make decisions then about next Wednesday, if we are here then, or whatever. We are willing to forgo Private Members' Day tomorrow to do government business for a couple of hours, but only until 5:00 o'clock and then again the same thing on Thursday.

My own read on the situation, I say to the Government House Leader, is that we will be able to finish the government business by adjournment time next week, that is my view, without getting into night sittings or that stuff. For what it's worth I know the Government House Leader has some concerns, and trust, and time, and the business he has to do, but being the season that it is I do not see any problem with us finishing the business that government so desires to finish by the time we adjourn for Christmas, whenever that is next week. It will be sometime next week for sure.

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

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, I am not prepared to facilitate the passage of Bill 35 by tomorrow and this Private Members' business put on the Order Paper as of notice of motion today, which I would like to see debated. I have not had any discussions with my friends about this.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: What did you say?

MR. HARRIS: I said I am not prepared to facilitate the passage of Bill 35 by having more government business tomorrow, the Government House Leader intends to call this and finish it tomorrow. There is Private Members' business on the Order Paper, including a motion which I moved today, and I would like to have debated before Christmas. I would like to try and facilitate that.

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

MR. ROBERTS: That is fine. We will deal with Private Members' Day tomorrow. We shall be here on Thursday and Friday after 5:00.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: We will not be here tomorrow after 5:00, and Thursday we will see what comes. Members have every right to insist upon the protection of the rules and my friend for St. John's East may, and others will have to do the same. I have no problem with that at all.

MR. TOBIN: (inaudible) Burin - Placentia West.

MR. ROBERTS: Well, my friend for Burin - Placentia West has a problem with a friend for St. John's East, then perhaps the two of them may perhaps go behind the Speaker's Chair and we will see what happens. I would hope, at least in the parliamentary sense, that the two of them are friends. I understand why my friend for Burin - Placentia West would say he has no friends anywhere.

MR. TOBIN: You are the only friend I got.

MR. ROBERTS: In that case, Mr. Speaker, we are both in bad trouble. If I am the only friend the gentleman for Burin - Placentia West has we are both in bad trouble.

Your Honour, we will deal with the Hydro bill and will not sit beyond 5:00 today. On Thursday we shall be dealing with the Provincial Offences Act, and if we get through that we will begin debate on the Mineral Tax -

AN HON. MEMBER: Thursday?

MR. ROBERTS: I do not know how long the Provincial Offences Act will take. It should not take very long, but that is up to members, including the learned gentleman for St. John's East. If he wants to bore us with another of his disquisitions we will sit and listen. Then we have three other mineral related bills which we will deal with the remainder of Thursday and on Friday.

MS VERGE: I am still trying to get them.

MR. ROBERTS: The hon. lady has already got two of them and given what she has done with them she does not need another for awhile. The first of them on the Order Paper is the Minerals Impost Bill, then there is the Minerals Act Amendment which is processing in the Province, and the third is the Mineral Tax Bill which will be distributed, I hope, tomorrow in the House, and it will not be the first one called I say to my friend.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: The Minerals Tax Bill. That is the one that stands as Order 32, Bill No. 43. That will take us Thursday and Friday, and then we have four other bills to come, three of which are not in the House. One is the Pension Benefits Act which is in the House, the second is the Attorney Generals Bill which is the usual cleaning up the commas, full stops, and what have you. The Public Accountancy Bill, I understand, requires further attention from Cabinet and I do not know where we are on that. I understand my friend the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs has a minor amendment to the Assessment Act. What is the other one Art?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: Okay. He has a minor amendment to the assessment act which will come forward and we will see what it says when we are here to deal with it.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: The government is prepared to stay. We will take off enough time for Christmas, I have no problem with that.

MR. FUREY: Christmas Day.

MR. ROBERTS: We will take Christmas Day. No, Christmas is Sunday. We will take Saturday and Sunday off, I would say to my friend the minister.

MR. FUREY: Oh, okay. We don't have to we can –

MR. ROBERTS: I've got no problem with that.

MR. FUREY: - come back Saturday.

MS VERGE: (Inaudible) turkey on the Table (inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: There are enough turkeys in this House, I say to my friend for Humber East.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: I think there is also enough sauce in this House, I would say to my friend for Grand Bank.

Your Honour, that is where we are.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: Sounds good. There is a lot of whining on the other side. Your Honour, would you be good enough - I feel like saying a prayer: For what we are about to receive, may we be truly thankful. But with that said, I wonder if Your Honour would call Order No. 31, and we will let the gentleman for St. john's East get on with what has to be the most boring speech I've yet to hear.

MR. SPEAKER: Order No. 31, Bill No. 35.

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are debating at second reading Bill No. 35. First of all, let me say to the Member for Grand Bank that I didn't intend to imply that he was facilitating the passage of this legislation, but it seems that the -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: I will repeat myself, as you weren't listening.

MR. ROBERTS: (Inaudible), Jack.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: The Government House Leader is very interested in cooperation from all sides of the House and he is doing everything he can to facilitate it, I say to hon. members.

When I made my comments about government business tomorrow I didn't mean to imply that the Member for Grand Bank was attempting to facilitate the passage of Bill No. 35. I did notice that the Government House Leader said he intended to call Bill No. 35 tomorrow and have it pass second reading tomorrow. That is what I object to, and I don't intend to facilitate that action by the Government House Leader.

Mr. Speaker, Bill No. 35, under the guise of what is called An Act To Amend The Hydro Corporation Act, The Electrical Power Control Act, 1994 And Other Acts, is as I said yesterday nothing short of the pre-privatization of Hydro bill, or an act to facilitate the privatization of Hydro. Every section of this act is designed to place this corporation in a position where it can be privatized. I believe upon a review of the act, in what little time that we've had, that the Hydro corporation can be privatized if this act is passed without further reference to this Legislature. There are numerous scenarios which see that happening.

When we look at the act as a whole - and we are looking here in principle at the act - we have to go and look at what the Hydro corporation was and is designed to do in this Province. We can only look to its mission statement which is published as part of its annual report. Their mission statement includes the primary mission of providing electricity to the people of this Province at the lowest possible price consistent with reliable service and the safety of its employees. That is the mission of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro under its present constitution and its present legislative powers.

What is the government doing to this mission, to this corporation which has as its mission the provision of this kind of electrical service to the people of this Province at the lowest possible price consistent with reliable service and safety to its employees?

Its intention, and stated clearly by the Minister of Natural Resources yesterday, is to conform and to transform Hydro into just another private corporation. Just another private facility with commercial goals whose only response is to the bottom line and returns to the shareholders. That is what a private corporation operates for, to return to its shareholders a return on their investment, a return on their equity in an enterprise. There is no question about that, that is the goal of a private corporation.

As part of our pluralistic society private corporations have a role, a very strong role in the development of an economy, the provision of goods and services, the organization of new enterprise and effort. There is nothing wrong with the existence of private corporations which have goals that are set by the shareholders in terms of their own commercial interest, as long as they obey the law, as long as they don't destroy the environment, as long as they don't exploit their workers, as long as they don't act contrary to legislative intent and as long as they pay their taxes.

There is nothing wrong with a private enterprise corporation but that is not what Hydro is there for and that is not what the people of this Province want when they said last year loud and clear, we don't want our Hydro Corporation sold. What were they talking about? They weren't talking about some corporation that is going to be made by this legislation. They weren't talking about a Newfoundland Light and Power look alike. They weren't talking about a corporation that had, as its only goal, the return on investments, that shareholders are making money, stripped of its public policy objectives. They were talking about the Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro with a strong history of a corporate culture dedicated to public service, with the rights and duties under the Hydro Corporation Act, to act in the best interest of the people of this Province as directed by the Cabinet.

They were given extraordinary powers, extraordinary powers as a corporation with the approval of Lieutenant-Governor in Council the Hydro Corporation could expropriate land, waters, water privileges, water powers, rights, easements, privileges of every description which the corporation considered useful for its purposes. Well they had first call in all the hydro electric generating power of this Province. The right of access for transmission lines, the distribution services, special rules with respect to Crown lands that apply to the Hydro Corporation because in fact, it was indeed seen as an arm of the people's government.

What does this government propose? We saw the Premier avoiding questions on it today, passing them off to the Minister of Natural Resources. He doesn't want to have his name associated with this. He is not prepared to stick his head into it. He is trying to downplay it and the Government House Leader keeps saying: oh, this is a minor piece of legislation. It is insignificant. He even calls a speech, which I started to make yesterday, describing it as a Hydro privatization - one of the most boring speeches he ever heard in his life. We can all fall asleep and that is what he wants everyone to do, Mr. Speaker. He wants the whole Province to fall asleep between now and Christmas Eve. The whole Province to fall asleep so he and his government can pass this legislation without a public outcry, without the public knowing what is going on. We will just downplay this, we will lowball it as much as we can.

The minister was in the House yesterday, he was huddled over his papers and he was speaking quite lowly. He was trying not to attract any attention to himself. He was just there huddled over his papers. The Minister of Natural Resources started reading out a few things, half-heartedly, saying well this is what we plan to do. No big pronouncement by the Premier like we had the last time, Bill No. 1, Bill No. 2 the last time - the first order of business, the Premier all puffed up about his plans to privatize Hydro. No, we don't have that. They obviously consulted with their PR gurus. They obviously consulted with the people who tell him that they will be walking into another wall of fire if they reveal their real intentions but I say to you, Mr. Speaker, and through you to the people of this Province, this government has not changed its mind on the privatization of Hydro. The Premier in his speeches, the government backbenchers and the ministers said in this House that Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, in their view, has no public purpose, and what does this legislation do? It follows through on that very policy objective. It says Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro has no public purpose. We will take away all of its public powers. We don't even want it controlled to the extent of the Public Tendering Act. Let them go and do their own contracting with whoever they want, and the only people who have any control over it are the shareholders. Now, who are the shareholders? I didn't quite get that out of the minister yesterday. He said, `Oh, it was us.' The reality is that the shareholder is the Minister of Finance, who holds these shares for the time being, I say, on behalf of the people of this Province. The legislation does everything except pass over the shares in a public offering or private sale, or whatever else the government may decide to do after this legislation is passed.

There are some hints, you know. The government didn't just come out of the blue and say this. They said: We have no public purpose for Hydro; we want to sell it off. Then, when they ran into a brick wall on that one from the public and from the backbenchers in caucus they decided to do another plan, and as part of their plan they appointed a new chairman, a chief executive officer. Who was that? Mr. Bill Wells. There is nothing wrong with Bill Wells as a man. He is very competent, I am sure. He has a long history of business dealings, practice of law as a labour lawyer on management side, negotiated with the fishermen's union for many years on the side of management, was president, at one time, of the fisheries association. He had differing views than a lot of other people.

I recall him back in 1973, Mr. Wells taking the position that we could not have a collective agreement for trawler men in this Province that provided a guaranteed minimum wage for a voyage because they would stay in their beds; they would not fish. I recall some rather antiquarian and rather patrician arguments from him at that time, but he has over the years shown himself to be competent in his profession and in acting on behalf of another private corporation that was once public, FPI. Fishery Products International was a government controlled corporation established by the Government of Canada and the Government of Newfoundland after the near collapse of the fishing industry in the early 1980s, and he participated in that company as if it was privatized, so we do have a hint of what the government plans. We will put Bill Wells in there. He does not have a history of commitment to the public service. He is not a man who has spent his life in the public service, in the corporate culture that goes with that of public service. He is a man who has been involved in private enterprise for a large corporation all his latter working life, so what message does that send to the people of this Province of what their intentions are with respect to the operation of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro? What message does that send?

This legislation is just one little step away from selling off this corporation, a proposition that the people of this Province are opposed to. They opposed it last year, the spring of '94 when this government tried to run it through the House of Assembly. It resulted in a major public issue, televised debates, public opinion, had lots of opportunity to divide on the issue, and divide it did. Over a period of several months it became very, very clear that this government was about to embark on a very unpopular move. The people of this Province rose up against the government's plan, the series of events, involvement of public opinion on Open Line programs, demonstrations, one after the other, public opinion polls, expressions of public opinion through newspaper articles, letter-writing, phone-in shows, petitions in this House, Letters to the Editor, letters to members, for the most part, with one voice, opposed to the government's plan to privatize Hydro.

As a result of this massive public opposition, even the back-benchers on the other side got nervous. The plans of the Premier, the hopes of Fortis corporation, the plans of individuals and stockbrokers to make a lot of money very quickly, the plans of some investors to capitalize on the privatization of Hydro, all of these had to give way to the desire of the people in this Province to maintain a public Hydro corporation with public goals and with the kind of corporate culture that it had.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. HARRIS: I do not expect members opposite to like what they are hearing from me, and they can tell me to sit down if they like. But I won't sit down, Mr. Speaker, until I have had my say about what this government plans to do with the Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro Corporation.

Every section, every clause in the bill that is now before the House, is designed with one goal in mind: to gut the Hydro corporation of its public purpose and to turn it into just another public utility, just another Newfoundland Power, or there could be a dozen of them, in the government's view, with no vehicle for public purpose, no engine of economic development that we talked about the last time, the way that Hydro-Quebec has been for the people of the Province of Quebec, an engine of economic growth, a training ground for engineers dedicated to the public purpose.

That is going to be all gone. They want it just to have one purpose and one purpose only, a commercial venture for its shareholders. Who are the shareholders? Temporarily, I say, the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board. In a few months we might be hearing the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board saying he has to rejig his accounts, he has to find a couple of hundred million dollars of new debt issue, and after the creation of some artificial crisis, will say, as the Premier said on his return from London, that he had no choice. `I had no choice,' was the cry of the Premier as they cut 400 people from the workforce. I had no choice but to put $15 million into water bombers and Marble Mountain while we were watching our deficit grow and our ability to maintain our balanced Budget slip away from us. I had no choice.

That is the same tune we are going to hear a few months down the road, I predict, from the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board, when he offers to sell a proportion of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro to some shareholders to raise some equity, to change the rules, to further take what this enabling legislation provides for them to do and to turn it into the privatized corporation that they have always wanted it to be, contrary to the wishes of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

All of the provisions of this act, some of it is found in the Hydro Privatization Act, bringing certain things into their capital value, bringing the Hydro pension plan into - or separating out the Hydro pension from the Public Service Pension Act and making the ratepayers pay up the difference that in this case, I guess they are making the ratepayers pay up the difference. I don't believe that the Public Services Pension Plan is making up the difference.

There is provision for an agreement between the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board and the Hydro corporation with respect to the existing obligations on the Public Service Pension Plan. It is not clear what the intention of all that is, but what is clear, Mr. Speaker, is that they intend that this corporation be controlled by shareholders and not controlled by the Cabinet of this Province which, under the existing legislation, has control and direction of Hydro through the powers set out in the various provisions of the existing Hydro Corporation Act.

By taking away the authority of the Executive Council, the Lieutenant-Governor in Council, and substituting in its various provisions, the shareholders is setting the stage for there to be more than one shareholder, Mr. Speaker, and it is very clear that if the government did not intend to sell Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, they would not be doing what they are doing here today. If there were no intention to sell Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro on a public share offering, the government would not be putting in legislation that they have here now.

Why would you be taking out the rights of the Lieutenant-Governor in Council in section 8.1 of the act and substituting the shareholders by special resolution? Why would you be doing all of those things that are here if there was no intention of selling Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro? I think that the plans of the government are transparent despite their denial. The passage of this legislation, the installation of Bill Wells as the new Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, all point in one direction, the same direction, and that is to try to do and try to get through this House by stealth what they couldn't get through this House by direct action, and that is to achieve the privatization of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro contrary to the wishes of the people of this Province.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Green Bay.

MR. HEWLETT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to have a few words on this Bill 35, "An Act To Amend The Hydro Corporation Act, The Electrical Power Control Act and other acts including the Crown Lands Act.

Mr. Speaker, this act might be better termed An Act to facilitate the revenge of Premier Wells on the people of the Province for having rejected his earlier foray into the Hydro privatization debate. What we have here is an attempt on the part of this government to do through the back door what they tried to do through the front door, the front door being soundly slammed in their face. So they come around to the back door to try to get into the house, and the house we are talking about is privatization.

Over the years since this government has come to power, it has become very obvious that the hon. the Premier and his Administration have had a plan, and still have a plan, to somehow get rid of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro Corporation, put it out there in the private sector where there are a number of corporate entities and individuals with money who seem to have a very close association with the Liberal Party, and who seem to be fully expecting the Liberal Party to somehow, for whatever reason, in return for whatever favours, heaven knows, they seem to expect the Liberal Party to come across and turn over the people's Hydro corporation to them, one way or the other.

Very early in the game, we saw changes to the Crown lands act in this Province that to some extent defied logic, unless there were certain reasons why certain individuals or certain corporate entities wanted full access to the water. We had a Crown lands act that allowed for a shoreline reservation around water courses. The act was changed to basically allow people unfettered access to the beach. That is good for people if you are going to go into the business of launching a boat; it is also good for, I suppose, individual corporations which might want to get into hydroelectric generation and have unimpeded access to a water course.

At the time, the government was extremely evasive as to the exact nature of what they were up to with regard to the Crown lands changes, but I think now the - we suspected at the time and indicated our suspicions at the time, but right now the picture is becoming somewhat clearer. I will give this government Brownie points for one thing. They are determined, they are dogged. It doesn't matter what the people think, it doesn't matter what the House of Assembly says, it really doesn't matter what the Open Lines say. This government is intent on having its way with regard to Hydro, come heck or high water. They really want to get their agenda completed on that one. One has to wonder just what they are up to.

This particular Bill No. 35 is essentially an interim step on the way to privatization. We have a government that are going to make certain changes in the structure, in the running of Newfoundland Hydro, which will make it look and behave corporately much more like Newfoundland Light and Power, a privately-owned, publicly-regulated utility. We are seeing certain changes in the structure and behaviour of Hydro under this new law, changes which for the most part will cost money which, in due course, will be passed on to the ratepayers of the Province in increased electrical rates. The other change that we have seen by way of practice with regard to this Administration is requiring more and more dividends from the Hydro corporation to offset the government's revenue crunch.

Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro was set up as an instrument of public policy with regard to the generation and supply on a sustained and regular basis of electricity for the citizens of our Province. It was not set up as a cash cow for the government, and that is what the government have been using it as lately. The changes that are in this current act will indeed facilitate Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro more easily becoming a cash cow.

In so doing, Mr. Speaker, what this government are essentially up to is raising taxes on the people of the Province through a surreptitious way by putting restraints and conditions on Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro which will cost them money, and eventually force them to the Public Utilities Board for redress of the restraints and conditions imposed on them. And make no mistake, that redress will involve an application to the PUB for higher electrical rates.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HEWLETT: Mr. Speaker, this government is in fine condition to talk about leaving. Their Hydro bill left us some time ago and it has come back, too, and the - my apologies, Mr. Speaker. It is not the hon. members opposite who have stopped me, but a minor case of postnasal drip.

Mr. Speaker, this government have been up to this agenda from the very beginning. As I said, their changes to the Crown Lands Act foreshadowed what they are up to. They talked about a merger with Fortis corporation, a corporation known to be at least associated with individuals in this House - I need not name them - and they tried the concept of a pure sale of the Hydro corporation, but both of these items struck a raw nerve in the Newfoundland psyche.

Since the Churchill Falls arrangement entered into by the Smallwood Administration, there has been an extreme sensitivity in this Province to anyone fooling around with Hydro, especially with its mandate to be a generator and supplier of electrical power to the people of this Province. So the government's attempt to sell Hydro, which everybody saw as a good working corporation, one that was fulfilling its mandate with relative efficiency, that sort of thing went down very badly with the people and there was a considerable outcry on the Open Lines, in public meetings, and indeed, in this Assembly.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) is the only member I know who makes public policy (inaudible) Open Lines.

MR. HEWLETT: Mr. Speaker, public policy doesn't have to be made on the Open Lines, but I will say one thing to the hon. minister. The Open Lines are highly reflective of what the public of the Province think on a given issue. As they saw from the Hydro debate, the tone and tenor of the debate on the Open Lines reflected very much the tone and tenor of the opinions of Newfoundlanders on the Hydro situation.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HEWLETT: Pardon?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HEWLETT: Mr. Speaker, I must be making some sense because I normally don't get interrupted by the hon. ministers opposite when I am not making any sense; they let me run with it. So obviously, if I am making some sense, there will be an ongoing and concerted effort by the people on the other side to shut me up and sit me down.

Mr. Speaker, having failed miserably to proceed with selling Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro through one means or the other, the Premier was not about to relent. First he had to put a little healing on his wounds. The humiliation he suffered at the outset when he tried to sell Hydro, that wound had to be healed somehow and, of course, he got his first bit of healing on that wound with his education referendum. Having been terribly humiliated in an attempt to defy public opinion with regard to Hydro, of course, the Premier locked on to the well-known and well-established ten-year run of polling on denominational education which said about 55 per cent of people were in favour of a non-denominational school system, and as an interim, interim measure, the Premier, to get his confidence back, and in order to breathe a spark of life into the Liberal Party, went into the business of an education referendum and surprise, surprise, the final outcome of the referendum, even with the minimal debate that you could probably get on that issue given the fact that it was summertime, the final outcome of the referendum was exactly like the polling had indicated the public opinion structure of the Province had been for the last decade.

So, having rebuilt his confidence after having had himself humiliated at the hands of the Newfoundland people in the earlier attempt to privatize Hydro, the Premier has decided now that: I am going to push on with my agenda, but this time I am not going to be as open and up front about what I am up to. This time we are going to prepare Hydro for privatization. We are going to put through a bill which makes certain structural and procedural changes with regard to Hydro in its relationship to the Public Utilities Board, its relationship to its unions and its relationship to its pension plan. All of those things will be put in place, as I indicated earlier, at some considerable cost to taxpayers through increased rates. Mr. Speaker, these things are being put in place so that at the end of the day, after a phase in period, be it a few years or even one year or ten years, Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro will eventually be no different then Newfoundland Power except that the government owns it rather than a bunch of shareholders who hang out around the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Mr. Speaker, in due course what the government can do then of course, when they come in with a budgetary problem again of absolutely monstrous proportions, they may well put it to the people in a panic situation saying things are absolutely horrible, we are going to go bankrupt, et cetera, et cetera. Under those circumstances maybe then they will get the leave of the Open Lines and the polls and so on and so forth, to sell Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro to save the Province from eminent bankruptcy. Mr. Speaker, the spin doctors that work for that crowd are among the best in the business. They are among the best paid in the business and you have them all working for this government and they have done a very good job of doing that.

I remember when hon. members opposite were in Opposition and my party was in government, each minister had a junior aid called a press secretary. A very junior aid, very low paid compared to his executive assistant and that was the scandal of all scandals, Mr. Speaker, that a minister should have a press aid. The Liberal Party ranted and roared ad nauseam with regard to that. Their solution, when they came to power, was to take away individual low paid ministerial aids and to instead put together, in the basement of Confederation Building, a high powered, high paid public relations job answering to the high paid public relations director in the Premier's office and so created a spin doctoring machine. So much spin you would swear it was a jukebox, Mr. Speaker.

So, Mr. Speaker, what we have is a public relations machine quite capable of doing an excellent job of telling people what is good for them. What I fear in due course, having put Hydro into a new mode, which this bill will do, sooner or later the circumstances will arrive or sooner or later the circumstances will be contrived to lay it on the Newfoundland people that we have no choice, sob, sob, we are so sorry, sob, sob but we have to sell Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro to save the Province from bankruptcy. Mr. Speaker, who wins in this game? If the hon. the Premier leaves this Assembly there is some speculation that he will become a judge but there is also considerable speculation that he will re-enter the private sector. He was involved with one of the power companies before. There was considerable speculation, during the last Hydro debate, that he might well take up the cudgel again for the new privatized Hydro Corporation, some smaller Hydro Corporation who now is allowed to get access to the rivers. Another thing in this bill is the exclusive franchise, enjoyed by Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, is no more.

If one is enterprising enough, I suppose, in having facilitated the onset of these smaller private Hydro corporations onto the scene one would be well placed, after leaving politics, to get a job with either the smaller new emerging Hydro corporations, the existing private company or the emerging private new Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro. Either way, Mr. Speaker, there is sufficient cause for concern as to just why this administration is up to this. There is a deep rooted, very, very deep rooted suspicion among the people of the Province, Mr. Speaker, that there is more to this then just a restructuring of a hydro corporation.

This government has been in office six years and they have had tremendous financial problems. They really have not dealt with the fundamental restructuring of government. They have been chipping away day after day, year after year with regard to individual departmental budgets. They really have not restructured but somehow they seem to be utterly fixated on restructuring Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro. One only has to wonder why that fixation. It has to be a restructuring leading, eventually, to a privatization. A quick cash influx to the government which would come in very handy in a tight budgetary situation and in the interim, the new restructured Hydro, under this new act, becomes a vehicle through which they can suck tens of millions of dollars out of the population of Newfoundland and Labrador through rate increases without having the nerve to stand up, the Minister of Finance does not have to stand up on Budget Day and say your sales tax is going to 14 per cent. He can drop your sales tax a percent and make himself sound like a jolly good fellow and then whack it to you on the hydro rates, and you will not know what hit you until you find your wallet is empty. That is what this government is up to, Mr. Speaker. I am not fooled by it, the people of Newfoundland and Labrador are not fooled by it, and neither are they fooled by the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs who stands and heckles me in the background, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I wonder why it is that every time I stand to speak and I manage to get my throat clear and say a few things with a degree of clarity, and a degree of loudness so that I do not really need a microphone, that the hon. members opposite tend to have a bad reaction. Maybe, for once they hear something they do not like to hear, and once they hear it, as the boys say behind me, the truth hurts. We are going to keep saying the truth because the bible tells us that if you speak the truth the truth will make you whole, and there has been so little truth associated with this whole thing.

The handling of this entire Hydro thing has been laced with deception and has been a situation where what you see is not what is going on. It started very early in the game with Crown lands changes, it started with attempted mergers in the sale of the Hydro corporation, and now today we are into a situation where they are doing through the back door what they had the nerve to try and do through the front door and what the people of the Province said, you cannot do through the front door. We hope if enough of us speak our piece that the people of the Province will say loud and clear in public opinion polls, `yea', on the open line and in other forums. Mr. Speaker, they are not allowed to do it through the back door either. Seeing we are getting close to Christmas and the front door is closed, and the back door is closed, no doubt like the good Santa Clauses they are they will be trying to get down the chimney.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HEWLETT: It reminds me of the story of the three little pigs. The Premier, the last time around, was going to huff and puff and blow the Hydro house down, but the people of the Province would not go along with that, so now having failed to knock down the house of brick he is going to try sticks or straw which is a way of doing it through the back door, but it is not going to work without some damage to the Liberal Party. Sooner or later the Liberal Party is going to burn so many bridges that when the time comes to cross the river they are going to politically drown, Mr. Speaker.

It has burned a lot of bridges in the last six years. I worked for an administration that was in office ten years and we did not burn near as many bridges in ten years as this crowd has burnt in five or six years, Mr. Speaker. One would think that the Bailey bridge was invented for the Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador because they have to keep slapping something over the river where they burned the bridge the week before.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HEWLETT: Now, the hon. Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs offends my gender no less, but I will not rise to that. I do not have any worries with regard to that at all. I was a good boy scout and I was a good karate expert and so on, so I am not afraid of the hon. minister in the least, Mr. Speaker. I cannot get up here and make a speech and make a few points, and make them strongly, without the other crowd getting upset and saying all kinds of nasty stuff to me.

You would swear I was the Member for Eagle River. I did not kill the Premier's dog. I do not run around with notes for him, but somehow they attack me in the same way and it is not fair. It is close to Christmas and you would think there would be a little bit of charity in that they would leave the people of Newfoundland and Labrador alone with regard to their Hydro Corporation, and leave little old me alone when I stand to make a few points in peace in this Assembly. It is disgraceful.

I really do not understand why they are the way they are unless basically they are ashamed of what they are doing, as they should be ashamed of what they are doing, because they know they are doing something that is not in the public interest, but it is, Mr. Speaker, in certain private interest, and there is a conflict of interest with regard to the administration in general, with regard to its position on this Hydro matter. It has been a consistent thread running through the six years they have been in office, Mr. Speaker, it has been something that they have been up to and one has to wonder, who are they trying to please? It is not the people of Newfoundland and Labrador they are trying to please, Mr. Speaker. Obviously, there are certain well-connected people, certain moneyed people, certain corporations that seem to have an undue influence on the Liberal Party in Newfoundland and Labrador and yes, Mr. Speaker, with regard to the Hydro issue, the Liberal Party is in a conflict of interest.

MR. TOBIN: Motor mouth is at it again over there, look.

MR. HEWLETT: Oh, the hon. Member for Eagle River has returned to the Chamber to heckle me from the back row.

Mr. Speaker, you know, I have only been in this Assembly six or seven years, but when the hon. Member for Eagle River comes down from his nest in the tower or from the backrooms to heckle me, that only tells me one thing, that I must be doing something good, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, they wax eloquent about my severance pay and you know, they forget the millions that they are paying out in severance pay by virtue of the actions of their administration in difficult times.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HEWLETT: Yes, maybe that's the problem with the Member for Eagle River, even though he is on the Premier's staff, maybe the Premier hasn't set him up with a good severance system, I don't know, Mr. Speaker.

Okay, Mr. Speaker, I guess I should say in summary, and let someone else have another chance at saying a few things on this bill. My throat is going, Mr. Speaker, I would love to yell back at the Member for Eagle River but I don't have the energy.

AN HON. MEMBER: Or the ability.

MR. HEWLETT: One thing I have no problem doing, is having the ability to speak back or speak loudly and you know, that usually moves the hon. minister to the front benches so he can more easily heckle me down, but he will have to be in this Chamber a long, long time before he can shout me down in this House.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HEWLETT: Mr. Speaker, yes, the Liberals are lively after their party last night I am told. Now I am told, Mr. Speaker, to come to our party tonight and they are going to teach us all how Liberals have fun.

MR. L. MATTHEWS: Alvin, Bud Hulan is teaching ballroom dancing after 10:00 o'clock.

MR. HEWLETT: Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt that the Liberals are good dancers because what they have done with regard to Newfoundland Hydro has been an explicit dance. The hon. Premier, in the early days of his administration, liked to dance the constitutional ballet on the national stage and he made quite a name for himself running around that stage in his tutu, but now, Mr. Speaker, we have a different dance going on and it is a dance of the Seven Veils and has been going on for the seven Budgets that this crowd has been in office, Mr. Speaker.

Sooner or later, those of us in Opposition, sooner or later, the ordinary people on the Open Line, Mr. Speaker, they are going to peel the veils off, one by one, and sooner or later, the people are going to find out what the Liberal Party is up to on Hydro. The whole thing has been one, steady, slow, relentless pace towards restructuring, privatization for the interest of the few against the interest of the many and that's the reason, Mr. Speaker, I will not support this bill.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to say a few words on Bill No. 35, An Act To Amend The Hydro Corporation Act, The Electrical Power Control Act, 1994 And Other Acts.

It is interesting that a week before the House closes government brings in this legislation. It immediately begs the question why. I'm not going to get into that. It has its own reasons for that. But I will say that the main thrust of this act is to make Hydro more of an arm's length corporation, to use the words of the Minister of Natural Resources, by making it fully regulated and not subject to the whims of government. I.e., it wants to commercialize it.

Hydro is now only regulated with regard to retail customers, but from here on in this government is saying, if this act passes the Legislature, it will be fully regulated. While the intent is not a problem I say unto itself, the amendments contained in this piece of legislation will mean higher rates for electrical consumers of the Province forever and a day.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: If the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation would like me to send over my notes after, or I can send them over so he can read them, or he can sit diligently by and listen and I will explain it to him.

Mr. Speaker, the first few amendments basically substitute the word shareholders for the Lieutenant-Governor in Council. The plural use of the word "shareholders" is just a guise. It can be seen only as that. Just a guise to make it sound like Hydro is not a fully owned Crown corporation. The deletion of section 14 is most interesting. This is where I have significant trouble with this piece of legislation. The deletion of section 14, which gave Hydro the sole right to develop water rights on the Island, is significant because it now means that private companies like Fortis, Newfoundland Light and Power, (inaudible), anybody, can develop hydro sites for private gain.

The role of Hydro, the role of the Crown corporation when it was established, was to ensure that any hydro sites, any generation of electricity sites above 15 megawatts, was to be done in the interest of Newfoundland and Labrador as a whole. All its residents. Not in the interest of one or two different companies, or one or two individuals. It was done with that specific intention in mind. To that end, up until this point in time, Hydro has fulfilled admirably its public policy purpose.

The new section 17, section 17(1) regarding accounting methods and the rate of stabilization plan, could have serious repercussions should the Public Utilities Board order changes. This is very significant, because this section here in this act will see rates rise significantly. Ministers know this. The Minister of Natural Resources announced himself that they had done a thorough analysis of the pieces of this bill, and they know what it will do. How will it do that?

At present Hydro does not use the straight line depreciation method for its hydro plants, number one, but does for thermal plants and transmission lines. Pretty obvious, for those who have taken the time to research it. Hydro plants are depreciated over a period of sixty-five to seventy years. When we look at what that section will do and the rates that it will increase upon the average Newfoundlander and Labradorian, they will be significant. It can be described as nothing else but a tax grab.

If we want right now as government to get more dividends from Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro we don't need to introduce this piece of legislation. We can say it right now. We don't need to hide behind the coat-tails of the Public Utilities Board, or hide behind the coat-tails of a piece of legislation that really does not make sense. But this government has chosen to do exactly that.

The new section 17(3)(a) could also increase rates if the assets transferred from the public service pension plan to the new Hydro pension plan are less than the contingent liabilities. This is a serious situation. Everybody knows in this Legislature that this government, the people of the Province ultimately, not just the government, but government as caretakers and the people of the Province, have a serious problem when it comes to the unfunded liability portion of our pensions. What we will do with it, how we will correct it, these are things that we must make strides toward, but we must be straightforward, we must be forthright in how we do it.

What this government is doing in terms of the public service pension plan is taking the contingent liabilities under this act and putting them onto Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro. Now, while that may sound fine up front, what will be the impact of that? That is the question we must ask, and the impact will clearly be increased rates in Newfoundland and Labrador to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

Mr. Speaker, the likelihood is also implied in section 18-3, section 17 (d) and (e) provide for the amortization of these shortfalls and would not be necessary unless there is one pension plan. Overall, the Province will be transferring part of its unfunded pension liability to Hydro and allowing Hydro to cover the shortfall by increasing rates. That is what we are doing. Whether we do it by the back door, through the front door, the result, the end, will be the same. Whatever way we do it, the result is the same. We are transferring the unfunded liability portion of the pension of those public employees at Hydro to the payroll of Hydro, and they will have to make up the shortfall. Government accounting will look fine, but it is a simple accounting measure. Where we get the money from in taxation, how we get it in taxation, how we get added revenues, we are all talking about the same dollar, we are talking about the same person when we talk about the consumer and the rate payer, because ultimately they are the same individual.

The repeal of section 26 could also be significant. Hydro, through its subsidiary, the Lower Churchill Development Corporation, now has the right to develop the Lower Churchill. The question that must be asked is: Does the repeal of this section mean that anyone can now develop the Lower Churchill? I wonder if there is a minister or a member opposite who can answer that question? Nobody? Can you believe this? Unreal, hey?

AN HON. MEMBER: They don't know it.

MR. E. BYRNE: You talk about a piece of legislation.

AN HON. MEMBER: Ask the Minister of Tourism.

MR. E. BYRNE: I will ask the Minister of Tourism; maybe he knows. No, he is not going to answer. Does the repeal of section 26 open up the door for anybody or any private group or consortium to come in and develop the Lower Churchill? Yes or no?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: Alvin, boy, they're a dead bunch today - amazing. They know that is in fact what it will do, because that is the prize the private sector is after. It is not the small generating stations on Terra Nova River. It is not the other small megawatt developments in around the Island portion. The prize in this piece of legislation is the Lower Churchill development. Make no mistake about it. We will see Fortis enter into the picture. You will see Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro out of the picture. You will see the Rothschilds of Europe enter into the picture, because they have never left the picture, and that is the prize that this piece of legislation is giving up, that Hydro... Right now, if government were to develop the hydroelectric power, or harness the hydroelectric power of the Lower Churchill, it has to be done through Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, but this piece of legislation does not allow for that, and the Member for Harbour Grace should stand up and say, "That is wrong". The Government House Leader should stand up and say it is wrong, because that is the prize that the private sector is after, and that is the prize that this Premier and this government are going to deliver to the private sector; mark it down.

Mr. Speaker, the Electrical Power Control Act has not yet been proclaimed, but will be when the amendments are passed. This opens up the whole question of the Churchill Falls contract once again. If and when the Public Utilities Board tries to allocate power away from Hydro Quebec, indeed what we could look at, and it is a possibility that we must be prepared for, that Hydro Quebec could challenge immediately. What would be the repercussions if that happened? Are we going to be tied up in court, expensive court costs to the Province, litigation, more court costs in terms of Hydro, more litigation costs, all transferred back to the consumer, to the rate payer? Because they ultimately are, as I said, the one person.

The new section 5.1, Mr. Speaker, is significant and will lead to the increased rates over time. It also uses the term "public utilities" and so applies to more than just Hydro. Newfoundland Light and Power will also be very concerned with this. The question is: How concerned will Newfoundland Light and Power be? In the short term it might be concerned, but what has it been guaranteed through its parent company, Fortis, in the long term?

If this government continues to proceed down the path of commercializing and ultimately privatizing Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, but right now commercializing, we will see rate increases double. We may even see them triple over time as the new corporation, or as the Hydro corporation scrambles to meet budgetary shortfalls and return bigger dividends to government.

The idea here is to move Hydro to a rate of return basis rather than an interest margin basis for setting rates. This is serious stuff in terms of the electrical bills each and every one of us will pay. Some can afford it, some cannot. Most cannot, I suggest. It will allow Hydro to earn more money in profit and allow the government to get a larger dividend. Either way we look at it we have to come to terms with shrinking resources, but let's be up front about what we are trying to do.

At present Hydro sets its rates to recover all its costs, including interest, and is allowed a margin of interest to keep the bond holders happy and satisfied. That is essentially what takes place now. This margin varies from rate hearing to rate hearing, but Hydro aims for a cover of at least 15 per cent as a general rule across the board. This margin then becomes Hydro's profit, simply put, and is how Hydro has built up equity in the last twenty years which now exceeds $300 million.

If you take hydro's profit earned from its interest margin and apply it as a percentage of its equity, what do you get? You get a de facto rate of return, simply put. For example, if Hydro makes $20 million this year from its interest margin and has a total equity of $300 million, then its implicit rate of return is 20:300, or approximately 7 per cent. If it was a private utility, i.e. like Newfoundland Light and Power, it would be allowed to make a rate of return of about 13 per cent. So its profits would be about $39 million, generally speaking. About double, that is what it is, if you look at it in hard cold terms, in terms of a private utility versus a publicly owned Hydro corporation. It would be about double in terms of what its rate of return would be able to be.

As it moves to this higher rate - and this is very important - over a period of years it will have to increase rates and it is as simple as that. There is no way around it. There is no way around increase of rates if this piece of legislation goes through. Significant increases. Not the ones that we have been accustomed to, not the ones that each and every year we have seen throughout the Province, in rural Newfoundland, on the Coast of Labrador. We will see significant increases year after year.

It can be argued that it can become more efficient. Hydro, any Crown corporation, it can be argued, and a strong case brought forward, that it can become more efficient, but that is true regardless, and there is nothing to suggest that it is not operating efficiently now. And if it is not, then government has the power right now, without passing this piece of legislation, to make it more efficient, Mr. Speaker. Moving to a rate of return basis and then taking most of the profit as a dividend is therefore, merely a disguised increase in provincial taxes paid for by electricity consumers.

The proclamation, Mr. Speaker, of the Electrical Power Control Act will also mean higher rates for domestic consumers because, under section 3, paragraph 4: The share of rural subsidy paid by industrial customers will be phased out by 1999. How does that affect, for example, the Member for Eagle River's district, as the share of rural subsidy will be phased out from 1999? Does that have any impact on your district and the people who consume electricity and depend upon electricity on the Coast of Labrador? It does, it has a negative impact, he knows that. If he doesn't, he should look into it in more detail.

This presently amounts, Mr. Speaker, to about $8 million a year, I say to the member, about $8 million a year and so domestic rates will have to rise by that amount over the next four years if we are going to phase out the rural subsidy on the one hand by 1999 and that subsidy right now, amounts to $8 million, then over the next four years, that will be recouped and it will be recouped on the backs of those people now getting the rural subsidy, Mr. Speaker. There is no way around it.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) 16.

MR. E. BYRNE: What is in section 16? Okay, go ahead. Direction to the board.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: But, that is only direction to the board, that doesn't lock the board into doing that. If we proceed with this piece of legislation and commercialize Hydro, I say to the member, and the Public Utilities Board becomes the only regulating body without any Cabinet or government interference, and the rural subsidy is going to be phased out by 1999, no matter what direction is given to the board, the $8 million that that now represents will have to be lost and will have to be recouped. I mean, that is not a section that tells the board what to do, it is only a section that advises the board and gives the government power to give direction to the board. It does not lock the board into what it should be or what it should be doing and you know that. That is all that section is.

Mr. Speaker, overall, the amendments in this legislation will result in higher electricity rates, and that rate of increase will depend on the speed with which the new provisions are implemented. The phase-out of the industrial share of rural subsidies will mean $8 million more a year by 1999. There is no denying that, Mr. Speaker, that is exactly what it will mean. The pension transfer liability will also increase rates, as will the move to a rate of return base. Those are unarguable facts and we should recognize them for what they are as opposed to hiding behind the veils of a leaner, meaner Hydro, making it more efficient. Government has within its power right now, Cabinet has within its power right now, the Premier has within his power right now to ensure that Hydro is more efficient.

We do not need to pass this piece of legislation, because all it will mean, Mr. Speaker, is higher electricity rates to consumers and eventually leave the door open for privatization of major, major electrical developments in this Province, like the Lower Churchill, because it gives and leaves the door open. It gives this government, it gives any government the power to look through development of Lower Churchill or any mega project of electrical power of that size and scope, to go outside the corporation of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro to deal exclusively with a private corporation, that we will not necessarily get the same rate of return and the same benefits that we should have gotten.

Mr. Speaker, the Upper Churchill is a lesson to everybody here. At the time when legislation came before the House it was passed unanimously, no one can debate that fact. However, Mr. Speaker, we must beware, be completely and totally aware that we don't walk down the same path on the development of Lower Churchill that we walked down on the path of Upper Churchill, that is the biggest concern. Government must be involved. The Lower Churchill must be used as a linchpin in economic development in this Province. This is not an example of a policy that - this is an example of a policy, Mr. Speaker, this piece of legislation, that exploits rather than empowers the people of this Province. That is exactly what it does - for such a huge, huge industry that we have before us that provides some glimmer of hope, that can provide real dollars and real revenues to the Government of this Province. We, right now, through this piece of legislation, are saying that we have more confidence in the private sector to develop the Lower Churchill than we do in our own Crown corporation; that is what we are saying, and we are setting a dangerous precedent. If this piece of legislation passes this House, Mr. Speaker, a dangerous precedent will be set, and we will forever-and-a-day regret doing it, if we make a mistake. The expertise that this Province has built up as a result of past mistakes on the Upper Churchill is built up in Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro. Some of the most technically advanced people in hydroelectricity, the consumption of hydroelectricity, and the development of hydroelectricity exists in this Province. The Minister of Employment and Labour Relations shakes his head, but I am right. They can compete with anybody and everybody, and he knows it.

We must beg the question, why this piece of legislation is opening up the opportunity for the private sector to come in and develop resources that belong to each and every one of us, and that it can be done in Cabinet, it can be done through the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board without coming to this House. Frankly, Mr. Speaker, it is scary. I do not trust the Public Utilities Board to regulate Hydro the way I would trust Cabinet to regulate it. It does not happen that way and it should not happen that way. It is a direct and distinct cut with the policy of why Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro was set up in the first place. We are breaking away from that right now and heading in a new direction with this legislation. It is as simple as that. The amounts could be quite significant, the amount of tens of millions of dollars a year.

Finally, should the Public Utilities Board change the accounting method used for depreciation, it should also be said that rates would have to increase even further. There is no doubt in my mind as a member of the House, and having taken the time to look at this piece of legislation, and look at the implications of what lies within the clause-by-clause section of this piece of legislation, that it is not in the best interest of the Province.

If government wants to get a bigger dividend from Hydro, if we want to get a bigger dividend right now, then let us do it. If we want to get $40 million, $50 million, or $60 million from Hydro, let us demand it from them, no problem. But to do what we are doing here leaves too much room for private interests to exploit rather than for public interest to empower the people of this Province. With that said I will sit down.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. E. BYRNE: I will adjourn debate until tomorrow.

MR. ROBERTS: We vote against the adjournment of the debate. The hon. member has six minutes left. Let him use some of it.

MR. E. BYRNE: Do you want me to? Then I will continue. There is no problem, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I say to the Minister of Justice, before he leaves here he may have some positive impact on the House of Assembly, because to this day he has not.

AN HON. MEMBER: No, it's not possible.

MR. E. BYRNE: It's not possible?

AN HON. MEMBER: No.

MR. E. BYRNE: Where is the Minister of Energy? Maybe the Minister of Energy would like to - he was out for most of what I was saying, but if I could ask him a simple question, Mr. Speaker. In terms of Bill 35, the section that is repealed, opening up the opportunity for possible interests other than Hydro to develop other electrical power sites in the Province, namely the Lower Churchill, does that opportunity exist with this piece of legislation? Does it open the door for that to happen?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Does the hon. minister have leave? He is responding to a question.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Yes.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Natural Resources.

DR. GIBBONS: Mr. Speaker, annually I sign a water rights agreement with the Lower Churchill Development Corporation for the water rights of the Lower Churchill. I have been doing it annually, or approximately annually, I think November 24th. every year since I became the minister - I did it again last month - and that will continue as long as the Lower Churchill Development Corporation has an interest in that water.

Relative to other water rights in Labrador, Hydro presently has what is called a contingent franchise. It is not a shall; it is only a may. The water rights reside with the government, and the government may sign a water lease with anyone, I guess, that government would desire to do so with, anyone at all, but it requires the signing of a lease. Presently the Lower Churchill is covered by a lease to the Lower Churchill Development Corporation.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Kilbride.

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Well, the minister just answered the question that I asked. He said that Newfoundland Hydro is contingent. It is not a shall; it may, but through a public Crown corporation such as Newfoundland Hydro, which was established to -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) Lower Churchill.

MR. E. BYRNE: Pardon me?

AN HON. MEMBER: Not for the Lower Churchill (inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: No, I understand that. I heard him as you heard him, that it may. So what we are seeing with this piece of legislation is that the first option may not necessarily be given to Newfoundland Hydro where our expertise existed, where it would be logical to assume that we would go through there, I say to the minister.

Mr. Speaker, I am looking forward to hearing government members, including some ministers, stand - maybe the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation, who shouted out across the hall that we should privatize Hydro, I am looking forward to hearing him again stand up and explain why he believes that this piece of legislation will benefit the people who elected him in his district, that will benefit the people of the Province.

We all know where the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations is. He has been singing about the privatization of Hydro for the last three years, and would like to see - this is only the first step for him, correct?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: What? You aren't going to bite? What about the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations?

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes, yes, give it to her. Privatize (inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: Privatize it?

MR. MURPHY: Yes.

MR. E. BYRNE: Did you get a call last fall when the bill was presented here?

MR. MURPHY: (Inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: No? No one showed up to your public meeting on Patrick Street and gave it to you? What?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: All the crowd from Shea Heights didn't show up?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. E. BYRNE: (Inaudible) all those fellows believe we should privatize Hydro? What about good supporters of yours, do they believe we should privatize Hydro?

AN HON. MEMBER: Whatever our member wants is good enough (inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, the only reason that the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations will say that so emphatically now is because he will not be running in St. John's South after the next election. That is my prediction. Because the crowd that got behind him are not so much behind him today, I can tell you. He knows it as well as I do.

MR. MURPHY: I say to the member now, if he runs in St. John's South I will run against him.

MR. E. BYRNE: Is that right, Mr. Speaker? Well, that would be contingent upon the fact if somebody can pick me off in the nomination in Kilbride. Once that happens I will come after you then.

Mr. Speaker, with that I will move the adjournment.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, I say to the hon. gentleman for Kilbride that his father-in-law would be proud of him.

Your Honour, tomorrow it is the wish of the House that we will be dealing with the resolution put down by my friend for LaPoile. Then on Thursday we will be dealing first with the provincial offenses act, and then going into the legislation relating to mineral matters. Perhaps we could deal with the processing minerals in the Province bill first. Those are amendments to the mineral act. Then we will deal with the mineral impost bill which has been on the Order Paper for some time. It is quite routine in itself. Then, either on Thursday or on Friday, we will get into the mineral tax amendments, and we will go on from there.

With that said, Mr. Speaker, I will move that the House adjourn until tomorrow, Wednesday, at 2:00 p.m.

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