June 4, 2008              HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS                Vol. XLVI   No. 38


The House met at 2:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (Fitzgerald): Admit strangers.

Statements by Members

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Today we welcome the following members' statements: the hon. the Member for the District of Port de Grave; the hon. the Member for the District of Bellevue; the hon. the Member for the District of Kilbride; the hon. the Member for the District of Humber Valley; the hon. the Member for the District of Mount Pearl North; and, the hon. the Member for the District of Grand Falls-Windsor-Buchans.

The hon. the Member for the District of Port de Grave.

MR. BUTLER: Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to stand today to congratulate Mr. Eric Jerrett and the Bay Roberts Heritage Society on the wonderful occasion of establishing the Western Union Cable Building in Bay Roberts as a designated National Historic Site.

This accomplishment has taken many years of dedication, perseverance and hard work. I can remember as far back as 1989 when I had the opportunity, along with Mr. Jim Tee of the Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation, and Mr. Eric Jerrett, of visiting the old Western Union Cable Building, when plans were just being formed to rescue the crumbling building and preserve its history.

Mr. Speaker, the Bay Roberts Heritage Society has worked diligently for the past nineteen years. They encountered many difficulties along the way, but they kept going, they kept their dream alive, and they faced adversity head on.

These dreams came to fruition recently, Mr. Speaker, when the Western Union Cable Building was designated as a National Historic Site.

I ask all members of this House to join with me in congratulating Eric and Betty Jerrett, the Bay Roberts Heritage Society, and all those individuals who have contributed and played a very important role in the success of this project.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Bellevue.

MR. PEACH: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise here in this great hon. House today to inform you of the event I had the pleasure of attending this past weekend: the thirty-sixth Annual Ceremonial Review of the 2903 Royal Canadian Army Cadet Corps Norman's Cove-Long Cove.

These fantastic young people put on a wonderful show. Their shoes were shined, their uniforms pressed, and their drill was perfect.

Many of these cadets will go on to the cadet camp this year to train in their chosen cadet field of study, and they will bring this knowledge back to the corps to share and encourage their corps to grow and strengthen.

It is organizations like this one which help to give our young people a sense of dignity, pride, leadership and confidence.

I ask that this great House join me in congratulating the 2903 RCACC Norman's Cove-Long Cove on their job well done and many successes in their future endeavours.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DINN: Mr. Speaker, I rise in this hon. House today to recognize and congratulate the Sisters of Mercy Centre for Ecology and Justice, and specifically their Seed and Feed project that has been operating for the past five years.

For each of these five years the Mercy Centre for Ecology and Justice has been farming approximately one acre of ground in the Kilbride-Goulds area producing fresh produce for local food banks, Emmanus House, and the Gathering Place.

The primary purpose of the project is to bring young people back to growing food and to reach out to the poor who are among us.

For the first three years of this project, using student grants and student volunteers, the Seed and Feed group grew thousands of pounds of food. For the past two years, the Association of New Canadians has become eagerly involved in this project. Once or twice a week after their English Language classes they come out to the farm and go to work. Last year, young children from Day Break participated.

Besides learning the types of vegetables that grow best in our climate, and the skills for organically growing food here in Newfoundland and Labrador, this project affords a healthy, respectful connection to the land which is part of us. It also helps young people who volunteer to become contributing members of our community.

Local farmers in Kilbride and Goulds have helped greatly with this project by spreading manure and plowing the ground.

Mr. Speaker, I ask all hon. members of this House to join me in congratulating the Mercy Centre for Ecology and Justice and the great work they are doing.

I specifically want to reference Sister Mary Tee, a driving force with this group.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KELLY: Mr. Speaker, I rise in this hon. House today and pay tribute to the Deer Lake Chamber of Commerce. All members were invited to a celebratory meeting at the Hideaway Pub in Deer Lake on Friday last week. The Chamber recently received notification that it had been awarded "Chamber of the Year 2007 Award" from the Newfoundland and Labrador Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Richard May, Regional Director from the Newfoundland and Labrador Chamber, was at the gathering to present the award and applauded the Chamber's level of activity and commitment of its executive in his presentation to Chamber President Guy Stratford. The award carries the inscription, "Deer Lake Chamber of Commerce, for your outstanding commitment and promotion of the Chamber movement in your local region of Newfoundland and Labrador."

Mr. Speaker, in accepting the award, Chamber President Guy Stratford was keen to acknowledge the Deer Lake Chamber's high level of membership, the huge effort and commitment of its executive committee who give up their time on a regular basis, and the tireless support of the Chamber's co-ordinator, Susan Goulding.

Mr. Speaker, I ask all members of this hon. House to join me in extending congratulations to the Deer Lake Chamber of Commerce on winning this award and wishing them well with their future endeavours.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Mount Pearl North.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise in this hon. House today to recognize the recipients of the Duke of Edinburgh's Provincial Silver Award. This ceremony was recently held at Memorial University in St. John's.

Mr. Speaker, this success is a testament to the hard work and dedication of those individuals who participate. I myself participated in the Duke of Edinburgh's Award program and I know first-hand the commitment and perseverance it takes to achieve this honour.

I would like to recognize all the recipients, and in particular Julie Orr and Deidre Halliday of Mount Pearl. I wish them all the best in their future endeavours and hope that they continue to participate in those activities that are of great interest. They are role models for others who have hopes of exploring their inner talents and interests.

Mr. Speaker, I ask all members of this House to join me in congratulating the winners of the Duke of Edinburgh's Silver Award.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Grand Falls–Windsor–Buchans.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform my hon. colleagues of a significant achievement of a resident in my District of Grand Falls–Windsor–Buchans.

Chris Feener, a twenty-year-old prodigy guitarist in Grand Falls–Windsor, has just been chosen as one of the top twelve guitarists in an international competition entitled "Guitar Idol '08." Guitar Idol is an on-line guitar competition based in the United Kingdom and is open to competitors worldwide. Guitarists submit an audio and/or video entry showcasing their guitar-playing abilities and the public votes for the entrant they believe displays the most talent as a guitarist.

Chris, along with eleven other finalists, will be heading to London, England next week to perform and compete for the title of Guitar Idol 08. These twelve talented guitarists were chosen out of over 700 entries worldwide, and votes were cast by more than a quarter of a million viewers in a two-month period.

In addition to being a finalist in the Guitar Idol 08 competition, Chris has also won a Provincial Arts and Letters Award for an original music composition which he performed at The Rooms this past weekend.

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of this hon. House, I offer my sincere congratulations and best wishes to Chris Feener as he travels to London to represent us for the final stage in the Guitar Idol 08 competition.

Good luck, Chris.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Statements by Ministers.

Statements by Ministers

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, with an investment of $750,000 in Budget 2008, we plan to expand the Futures in Skilled Trades and Technology high school program to an additional thirty-five schools across the Province.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS BURKE: State-of-the-art equipment is now being shipped to these schools, ready to be used for the new school year.

We all know that there is an increasing demand for skilled labour to meet the needs associated with the many large-scale development projects on the Province's horizon. This dynamic program exposes students to the skilled trades using the same calibre of equipment that is found on job sites across the country. With our investment in this year's budget, more schools can renovate their space to accommodate the new equipment and courses and ultimately, increase opportunities to more students.

The Futures in Skilled Trades and Technology program is currently offered in thirty-seven high schools. Four new courses have been developed, with the goal of eight new courses to be implemented Province-wide by 2010. These courses are supported with industrial equipment such as computer-controlled routers, sliding compound mitre saws and a wide variety of power tools. Courses engage students in a variety of activities associated with technology and skilled trades – from simple construction and small engine repair, to the design and development of control programs using computers and robotics.

Special measures are also being made to raise awareness about the opportunities in the skilled trades among female students. Last fall, we launched the campaign, Jump Start Your Life, designed to show young women that a career in the skilled trades is exciting and lucrative, while at the same time, demands creativity and skill.

Mr. Speaker, over the past two years, government has allocated an unprecedented $53.8 million in the areas of apprenticeship, science and technology, programming, training and infrastructure.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS BURKE: These investments have funded new programs at the College of the North Atlantic, improved infrastructure and learning resources, and effectively doubled the number of seats in trades-related programs at campuses throughout the Province.

Building our Province's skills base is critical if we are to be competitive in the global marketplace. These investments are ensuring we have a strong, responsive education system. A career in the skilled trades offers enormous opportunities in Newfoundland and Labrador. With more students having access to the skilled trades program in high school, we look forward to increased participation in post-secondary skilled training.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Port de Grave.

MR. BUTLER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I want to thank the minister for an advance copy of her statement, and to say that we, I can assure you, are very pleased to know that there are additional schools in this Province that will be taking part in the skilled trades program.

We all know that there is a tremendous shortage here in the Province of skilled trades. As major projects come on stream, no doubt that will increase, Mr. Speaker, but we also have to be very cognizant of problem that we are experiencing and why many of our skilled trades people are not here in the Province today. They are just leaving the Province and going away, not only in my district but I am sure right throughout the Province.

With this wonderful program that we are talking about here, we also have to find the way to get the people to come back. I know the Premier said from time to time they will return, and no doubt they will, but we have thousands of skilled trades people who are outside the Province now, let alone the ones we are going to train in the future. I think that is the challenge that we have to encounter.

It is good to see those programs in the schools, there is no doubt about it, and to know that the female component of this in the schools is also taking part in skilled trades program. Mr. Speaker, we say that this is a good program, and hopefully down the road, we will see to it that individuals will not have to leave this Province when it comes to not only the skilled trades, but any trades in the Province.

Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

MS MICHAEL: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the minister for the advance copy of her statement.

I, too, am quite pleased to see the increase in the skilled trades program in high schools. It is extremely important in the context of today's economy and climate here in Newfoundland and Labrador, as the minister has pointed out.

This program, the orientation of trades and technology for women program at the College of the North Atlantic, the apprenticeship program, all of these pieces together should help to increase the numbers of people with skilled trades here in our Province.

I would encourage the government also to continue with its goal of decreasing the cost of education for our students, so that when they go into post-secondary education they will want to do their training here in this Province. The government will also have to be ready to be working with industry as the large scale developments develop to assure that the salaries and benefits that are being offered in these large scale developments are going to be competitive with the developments that our skilled trade workers are now working on outside of the Province.

I say, this is good and let's keep up the work because there are many steps and many pieces to what has to be done.

Thank you, very much, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Further statements by ministers.

The hon. the Minister of Human Resources, Labour and Employment.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SKINNER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise today to bring to my hon. colleagues' attention the need for federal engagement in housing and in particular the need for long-term sustainable federal funding for housing. Of immediate concern, Mr. Speaker, is the federal government's cost-shared funding programs for the Province's Provincial Home Repair Program, the Affordable Housing Program and the Homelessness Partnering Strategy. These are set to expire in March of 2009.

The options for the longer term management and sustainability of the existing social housing stock represent a critical issue for all levels of government. Federal funding for the operation of the existing social housing portfolio in the Province is declining each and every year with no more federal funding for the existing housing stock after the year 2039.

Mr. Speaker, in February of this year I became the Chair of the Provincial-Territorial Housing Ministers Responsible for Housing and in April of this year, all of the provincial and territorial minister were invited to meet informally with federal Minister Monte Solberg. As a result of our meeting in Ottawa, there was unanimous agreement among all of my provincial and territorial colleagues to press Minister Solberg to attend a formal meeting as soon as possible to address these urgent housing issues. To date there has been no response.

Newfoundland and Labrador Housing is the Province's largest landlord with approximately 5,700 non-profit social housing units Province-wide. Many of these properties are twenty-five to fifty years old and house an estimated 14,000 individuals. In addition, Housing serves an annual 2,500 applicants under its Provincial Home Repair Program to assist low-income homeowners. In addition to the approximately $130 million spent by the provincial government over the last four years alone on housing programs, the government has announced two major initiatives in the past year. The first initiative was a $25 million increase over five years for more modernization and improvement to our existing housing stock.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SKINNER: The benefits of that investment, Mr. Speaker, can be seen if you drive around some of our cities and towns throughout the Province where we have social housing units. As well, there was a $24 million increase over six years to our Provincial Home Repair Program.

Mr. Speaker, throughout Newfoundland and Labrador, there continues to be considerable demand for placements within the social housing portfolio, for funding under the Provincial Home Repair Program and for funding for affordable housing in communities throughout our Province.

I ask all of my colleagues in the House of Assembly to support the provincial government in our efforts to urge the federal government to agree to meet with the Provincial and Territorial Ministers Responsible for Housing as soon as possible. We are calling on the federal government to reinstate social housing funding limits to the 1993-1994 levels and to extend the existing cost-shared arrangements for the Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program, the Affordable Housing Program, and the Homelessness Partnering Strategy beyond next March, 2009.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Port de Grave.

MR. BUTLER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I want to thank the minister for a copy of his statement and to say that we agree with government in, I guess, pressuring the federal government to come on stream. I believe that they will, because those are three wonderful programs, very much needed here in the Province.

With regard to the Affordable Housing Program and the Homelessness Partnering Strategy, I am not all that familiar with those but I can assure you that, with the repair program, I know what work that does for many of the people of our Province, and in my district in particular, Mr. Speaker.

In calling upon the federal government we have to co-operate and have a good relationship, and I say, Mr. Speaker, that is a two-way street; because, back about a year-and-a-half ago, there was what they called the Home Heating Efficiency Program, where funding was put into a program by the federal government for the people of this Province and other provinces. I believe we are only one of two provinces in this country today who have not signed on. We were told back a year-and-a-half ago that applications would be made available to the people of our Province. I believe under the new federal government the program now is called the ecoENERGY Retrofit Program. To date that program is not in force, and I am of the impression that it is being held up by consultation with two departments here in this Province, and the people in the Province cannot avail of it yet.

I just call upon the minister. I agree with your statement, Sir, that we have to force the federal government, but I also call upon our provincial government to see that this other program is put in place so the people of our Province can avail of that service.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

MS MICHAEL: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the minister for the advance copy of his statement.

These announcements are so very important, because housing is an important determinant of health, and having good housing is essential to everyone. Also, bad housing for people who are dependent on social housing, bad housing adds to their poverty, and, in that way also, is part of a determinant of health.

I applaud very much the minister, as Chair of the Provincial-Territorial Housing Ministers Responsible for Housing Committee, in the stand that they are taking with the federal government. I think it is very important that they really get the federal minister at the table, to try to get agreements going. It is an issue right across the country, and I am really glad to see that the minister from this Province is chairing and giving that leadership.

I also applaud the extra money that has gone into housing this year. Of course, some of it is money that will be going on over a five-year period. At least for the next five years we will see that, and I am sure that we will maintain a commitment to this housing.

I also look forward to the long-promised housing strategy that I hope the minister and his department are still working on, because it is not just enough to see money without the strategy. I would like to see the strategy and then, one would hope, more money matching with that strategy.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Further statements by ministers.

Oral Questions.

Oral Questions

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Conception Bay North area has a significant problem with recruiting and retaining family physicians, something that is not just unique to that particular region, Mr. Speaker. There is a high turnover rate as doctors come and only stay for a short period of time. The joint councils in the area have already made their concerns known to the department and to government.

Mr. Speaker, the Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Association have indicated that we need an additional 120 family doctors for the Province.

I ask the minister today: What is being done to address this growing shortage of doctors throughout the Province?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite references a particular location in the Province that is experiencing some difficulty now in recruiting physicians. What is interesting, Mr. Speaker, if you look at the number of physicians in the Province today, and we just had a reconciliation of the numbers from last year compared to the previous year, I think it is seven or eight more doctors in the Province today then we had last year at this time.

The recruitment initiatives over the course of the last twelve months have been on par with our recruitment initiatives in previous twelve month periods. So I say, Mr. Speaker, through our four regional health authorities, together with the additional resources we have put in as a government, in establishing a centralized recruitment process for physicians, we have had a tremendous amount of success in attracting physicians to Newfoundland and Labrador. Some regions of the Province have had more difficulties than others in retaining them, but I say, Mr. Speaker, together with the four regional health authorities and the investment we have made in the centralized recruitment process -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. WISEMAN: - we will continue with the efforts that we have put into it in the last twelve months, I say, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We are pleased to see they have recruited another seven or eight doctors, family physicians, this year more than last year, but it still takes the vacancy rate to about 115 to 120 family physicians in the Province. This is being felt in areas like Gander where today people may have to put their name in a hat to be drawn out to see if they can access the services of a physician. In fact, Mr. Speaker, the manager there told us that they have about 3,000 names on a list right now, of people wanting to have a family physician, and they will be accepting names up until tomorrow night.

Mr. Speaker, I ask the minister again: When can people of the Province, those people like the ones I mentioned in Gander, expect to see family physician services being provided to them in a timely and effective manner?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: I am glad the member opposite raised the issue of Gander and used that as an example because I say, Mr. Speaker, that is a real good example of where a local family practice clinic working together with the regional health authority and the Department of Health and Community Services were able to attract two new physicians to that clinic and that region very recently. We have done that in other parts of the Province, I say, Mr. Speaker, very successfully, so we will continue to do some of the things we have done successfully in the last twelve months.

One of the other things that we have done this year, Mr. Speaker, we are increasing the enrolments in the medical school to be able to ensure that we have more Newfoundlanders and Labradorians entering medical school, because our history has shown us that they will, in fact, have a greater opportunity to stay and they are more likely to stay in Newfoundland and Labrador to practice.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. minister to conclude his answer.

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Put that together with the increased investment we have made in bursary programs in this past year, I say to the member opposite and to the people of the Province, stay tuned because I think we will see some great results in the future.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It does not help the people today in those regions who have to put their name on a list to see a physician.

In addition, Mr. Speaker, in Labrador West, the availability of physicians, or the shortage, has reached a crisis level in that region. None of the family doctors there are accepting new patients, and you know that there is a booming population in this part of the Province. In fact, the Iron Ore Company of Canada, in the last week, let six more contracts for the expansion of their mining operation.

I ask the minister: What is being done to deal with the critical shortage that currently exists in Labrador West, and will continue to grow in the next few months, as well over 100 to 150 new people move into the region to look for work?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Mr. Speaker, whether the member gets up and asks questions about Gander or Labrador City or Clarenville or St. John's, if the question is the same and the community just changes the answer becomes the same.

I have just laid out for her, in the previous two questions, some of the key things that we have done: (a) We have established a centralized recruitment office at Memorial University working through the medical school; (b) We have invested new money in bursary programs and we have had a full uptake on all of those bursaries we have offered, and those individuals have made a commitment to come back to practice in Newfoundland and Labrador as a result of our investment; (c) We have made a major investment to expand the medical school because we have had experiences that tell us that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who attend medical school in this Province will stay in this Province to practice and that is where we are putting our money, making –

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. minister to conclude his answer.

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

In addition to what the Regional Health Authorities and our department are doing today in the short-term, we are making some major investments in some foundational pieces of work that will hold us in the long stint.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Paramedics in rural regions of the Province are not unionized. Those in the St. John's are, however, unionized. Rural paramedics are typically paid forty hours per week. They often provide unpaid on call for another sixty-four hours per week for a total of 104 working hours, in some situations of paramedics that we have talked to.

I ask the minister: Will government move to establish a Province-wide working standard for paramedics within the Province?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: We must be getting near the end of this session, they are going back through Hansard and pulling up old questions. I think, about two weeks ago, I had that same question in the House, so we are going to run out.

What I said a couple of weeks ago - and let me repeat it - in this Province we have ambulance services provided by hospital-based services, community-based volunteer organizations and the private sector. The individuals who work at our hospital-based practices are part of one of our regional health authorities, and they generally would be members of NAPE or CUPE.

The other individual organizations in private sector, they have a contractual arrangement through the Department of Health & Community Services with our regional health authorities, to provide a service in their region. They hire their employees, they have to meet a certain standard, they have a level of training, they have standards in terms of equipment, the nature of their practice – but we basically have a contractual arrangement for those organizations to provide the service. We do not define –

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

With all due respect to the minister, it is the first time I have raised this issue in the House of Assembly because it is only in the last week I have met with paramedics.

Many of them in the Province feel that the emergency medical service system is a piecemeal system at best, and in different areas of the Province there are different standards of care. For example, if you need an IV, in one area of the Province a paramedic can do it, in other areas of the Province they cannot do it until you get to a hospital.

I ask if the government will commit to an independent, operational review of ambulance and paramedic services with the Province.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health & Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am glad the member raised that particular example about the IV, because what she is speaking to, Mr. Speaker, is a set of standards, a set of standards that typically, in that industry, would be referred to as medical control.

I am happy to report to the House and to the people of the Province, that in the recent past we have been successfully in recruiting a physician to work with Eastern Health, and that physician will take a full responsibility for ensuring that we have medical control throughout each of our services throughout Newfoundland and Labrador.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Mr. Speaker, in fact, before the arrival of this individual – because this individual will be charged with the responsibility to ensure it is Province-wide – there had already been a significant amount of work done on that particular piece of work. So, many of these services throughout the Province already had medical control in place; but it will become a standard for the Province.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

If I could get action like that on every question, well, we would not need thirty minutes, we could do it in fifteen minutes, I say to the minister.

Anyway, the minister talked about recycling questions, well, let me ask you this one, which is recycled from 2006, on a commitment that your government made.

There was evidence to suggest that people who live near and are exposed to transformers and cables are more prone to developing cancer. I raised this question in the House of Assembly in May of 2006, in reference to a story that was disclosed by Mr. Gerald Higgins, whose wife had died of breast cancer. Mr. Speaker, as a result he feels, and experts in this field feel, it was linked to transformers.

Mr. Speaker, at the time I ask government to investigate this issue.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member to pose her question.

MS JONES: Yes, Mr. Speaker.

I asked government at that time to look at this issue, to investigate it, and to report back. The minister of the day agreed to do that.

I ask you today: what action –

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

If there is a question, I ask that the member pose it now.

MS JONES: Yes, I thought I just did, Mr. Speaker.

My question again is: the minister of the day committed to look at this issue and I ask, what –

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Order, please!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: I do not think we would mind recycling questions from two or three weeks ago but raising an issue that her former party, and I think it was your former leader, had already discounted the notion that that had any real credibility, if I am not mistaken. I sat in this House, if I am not mistaken, and Mr. Grimes, the former premier, her leader, a member of her party, stood in this House and discounted that notion as being frivolous; it had no merit, if I am not mistaken.

I think, as she just pointed out, it was our government and a former colleague of mine who committed to undertake to look at that question.

I can tell the member opposite that I do not know exactly what came out of that evaluation that would have been done by my former colleague, but I will undertake to find out for you and advise you in due course.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

If the Minister wants to read Hansard, Roger Grimes asked those questions in the House of Assembly to John Ottenheimer, when he was the Leader of the Opposition, and I asked them to Tom Osborne when he was the minister.

Mr. Speaker, my next question is to the Minister of Finance.

Recently our office was contacted by a gentleman from Catalina, Mr. Sam Stead, who recently lost his wife to cancer. People in the community made small donations to help him cover the cost of this funeral. Mr. Stead is almost 70 years old, he lives on a small pension and has a disabled daughter. He was shocked to learn that $750 of his cost was taxes that were added to his funeral bills.

I ask the minister: how much money is generated by government on an annual basis from tax on funerals, and does he agree that such a tax on bereaved families is somewhat repulsive?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. T. MARSHALL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the hon. Leader of the Opposition for her question.

I will have to get the information as to how much of the HST, because it is the Harmonized Sales Tax that we would receive.

When the government of Newfoundland and Labrador, I believe it was in 1997, agreed to harmonize its provincial sales tax with the GST, along with Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the federal government, it was agreed by the government of the day that we would accept the tax base set out in the GST. Therefore, what is taxed, the items that are taxed, is set out in the GST and we are bound by that. The only way that can be changed is if there was unanimous agreement of the three provinces and the federal government to change the base.

Recently I was in Ottawa and had discussions with the Minister's of Finance of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. We had agreed to meet and have a discussion, and that was one of the taxes that had come up. There was another-

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. minister to conclude his answer.

MR. T. MARSHALL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Also there is a HST on certain aspects of home care that is a concern to me. We will meet and then, after we have had that discussion, we intend to approach Minister Flaherty and the federal government to address these concerns.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am pleased to see that the minister will begin a process to ask the federal government to drop their portion of the tax.

In the meantime, I ask if the Province would consider reducing the tax that they apply to funerals as well, your portion.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board.

MR. T. MARSHALL: Mr. Speaker, in terms of personal taxes we have just undergone a two-year review of the taxes in this Province and as a result of that we have given the biggest tax decrease in the history of our Province last year -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. T. MARSHALL: - $160 million, and this year by a further amount of $178 million. Also, the Premier announced on April 22 of this year the complete elimination of the hated 15 per cent tax on insurance.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. T. MARSHALL: Mr. Speaker, this government has certainly done more than probably any other government in history in reducing taxes in this Province. As our financial situation continues to improve hopefully we can do more in the future.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My next question is with regard to the gas tax.

As you know, since the election the price of gasoline has gone in some parts of the Province from $1.08 a litre to $1.38 a litre today.

I ask the minister: in addition to this high price in gas tax we also pay the highest provincial fuel tax on gasoline of any other province in Canada, and I ask if you would consider looking at reducing the provincial fuel tax on gasoline at this time?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. T. MARSHALL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I just indicated, we have conducted a review of all of our taxes and we have made major reductions in the taxes that we consider to be priority, and that was mainly personal tax and the tax on insurance and also the reduction in motor vehicle registration which is what the people of the Province told me when I did the pre-Budget consultations they wanted to see; motor vehicle registration reduced and also the tax on insurance reduced.

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the tax on gas, it is interesting that in many parts of the country, especially in British Columbia right now, they are actually increasing the tax on gas. They are bringing in a carbon tax. I think Stéphane Dion had mentioned that as well and I think Quebec is doing that as well. I think New Brunswick has indicated an interest in raising the taxes on gas and on heat higher, so that they can lower personal income taxes.

What we have done in this Province, Mr. Speaker, we are not raising taxes on gas but we still lowered income taxes.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We still have the largest tax in terms of a provincial fuel tax of any other province in Canada. We know that the high gas prices and the high provincial fuel tax is having an impact on people all over the Province; everything from the cost of food to the cost of a bus pass today.

I ask the minister: What measures are government looking at to help offset some of these costs to consumers on a go forward basis?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. T. MARSHALL: Mr. Speaker, one of the things that this government has been doing since it came into office is to continue to introduce new initiatives to help people on fixed incomes in this Province, especially our seniors. We have allowed seniors to split their pension income. We have brought in the low income tax reduction which has eliminated 20,000 people from the tax roles. We have increased the Home Heating Rebate, and 75,000 people now benefit from that. We have lowered the taxes on insurance. We have lowered personal income taxes. The list goes on and on of measures to put money in people's pockets to help them cope with the rising cost of living, in particular the cost of energy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Port de Grave.

MR. BUTLER: Mr. Speaker, requests were made by residents, media and individual councillors to investigate the operating of the Town of Portugal Cove-St. Phillip's. The Kelly report was commissioned in August of 2007 at a cost of $12,000.

I ask the Minister of Municipal Affairs: Have you and your staff reviewed the Kelly report, and if so what direct action have you taken to resolve the many serious issues which this investigation revealed?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We did have a report last year done my Mr. Kelly and then subsequent to that we had a review done by an independent lawyer to go over all of the details on that.

I can tell the hon. gentleman today, that the answer with regard to Portugal Cove-St. Phillips is eminent.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Port de Grave.

MR. BUTLER: Mr. Speaker, we know that the Kelly report states that the Town of Portugal Cove-St. Phillips has reached a point of requiring significant provincial intervention.

I ask the minister: What significant intervention will you be taking to address the many issues, more than 120 formal complaints, submitted to you by the residents of that town?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Mr. Speaker, we have to look at, when a town council is elected, they are elected democratically. They are not elected on party, they are not elected on platform; they are elected on their own individual platforms. At times there are situations where they do not agree.

In looking at Portugal Cove-St. Phillip's, Mr. Speaker, those issues that the member across the way mentioned, they will be addressed in the letter that will be sent out to the town very soon.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Port de Grave.

MR. BUTLER: Mr. Speaker, my final question to the minister is with regard to questions of conflict of interest and secrecy over financial decisions by council and staff as stated in the Kelly report that dominate the concerns of many residents.

I ask the minister: What action has been taken to address these conflicts of interest and the secrecy issues?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Mr. Speaker, the way the issue was dealt with, we had to find out what were the real issues in terms of what was happening there.

As far as the financial part of it, from our perspective, my officials went in and there were no issues with financial. The issues dealing with conflict of interest, they found that there was no foundation there at all.

What happens is that the explicit way the municipalities sent out - that clearly defines exactly what a minister can and cannot do. All I can tell the member across the way is that a letter will be going out to the town and giving them some directions on those issues.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My question is for the Minister of Finance.

Minister, in a recent media report – actually, this morning - there was reference to the Liquid Ice liquor transfer, license transfer, to another party. In the course of the interview it was mentioned that – and I believe it was an official of the Liquor Corporation who made the comments – there was a comprehensive review underway with respect to the liquor laws, and it was not specific.

I am wondering if you could shed any light on that. If there is, in fact, a comprehensive review underway, is it both the Liquor Corporations Act and the Liquor Act, and if that review is going to have public consultations involved in it.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. T. MARSHALL: Mr. Speaker, I don't know if a review from government would be the proper way of describing it, but essentially there have been a number of recommendations that have come forward from the executive of the Liquor Corporation to me, in my capacity as Minister of Finance, suggesting recommendations to the Liquor Control Act. Government will obviously consider those recommendations, and if it wishes to go forward then the legislation would be presented here in the House.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have asked a series of question this week about mental health issues in HMP, and in Labrador, and in the women's correctional facility in Clarenville. The Office of the Citizens' Representative noted in his investigation that there is a two-week waiting period upon requesting mental health services at the Clarenville women's correction centre. No counselling team, apparently, has entered the facility since 2006. The report recommended that a pilot project be put in place that ensures continuous availability of counselling.

I am wondering if the Minister of Health or the Minister of Justice can tell us if that recommendation has been moved forward.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

To answer your question directly, no, I am not aware, but I will undertake to find out the information for you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The shortest answer we have ever gotten from the Minister of Health. Thank you very much.

Mr. Speaker, for the Minister of Justice, again, the Office of the Citizens' Representative released a report, close to a year ago, which included recommendations on improving mental health supports for female offenders in Labrador.

The minister commented in earlier questions, in response this week, to the fact that there was a detention centre being constructed – and those monies have, in fact, been outlined in the Budget of this year – but the issue was, and the Citizens' Representative referred to the fact, that there should be a new, secure mental health unit in the Labrador Health Centre as opposed to a detention centre.

I am wondering if government has given any thought to that, and when that recommendation might be moved forward so that support is also in place for these people.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Again, I will try to be brief.

I am aware that recommendation was made, and I am aware that the health authority in question is looking at how they are going to accommodate the space within the current building and what renovations would be necessary; but, in terms of the progress towards that, I cannot give you an update today but I will undertake to do so.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My next question is for the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

We have had several inquiries, Minister, and we are aware that the Budget has come down for this year, and I understand that the communities in the Province who are involved in multiple-year funding projects have already been notified by the department as to what their projects are and which have been approved. Several communities, other than those multiple-year funding ones, have been inquiring when it is likely to be made public as to where their capital works projects stand for this year. They are concerned, of course, because the later they get the notification from your department, the shorter the construction period is for them.

I am wondering if you could give us an update on where that stands.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Yes, I can, Mr. Speaker.

The hon. gentleman, the answer to his question is that those notifications were sent out on Monday. What happens is that there is a letter gone with that explaining to the municipalities what it entails, what they have to do to report back to Municipal Affairs whether they accept the contract or not. That is in the mail, it is in the works, and I understand the question.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

MS MICHAEL: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, on April 26, the federal government announced amendments to the Patented Medicines Regulations to delay production of generic drugs. Ottawa did not consult the provinces and territories before they released the proposed regulations and then gave only fifteen days to governments to respond.

Mr. Speaker, these regulations could possibly result in delayed savings to provincial drug plans. This is especially troublesome for this Province since we have experienced an increased cost of 25.5 per cent from 2006-2007, the highest estimated annual growth rates for drug spending per person by a public program in the country.

Mr. Speaker, I ask the Minister of Health and Community Services if his department has engaged in this issue with the federal government because of the impact their actions will most likely have on the cost for the drug program in this Province.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: The issue raised by the member opposite is one that has been a topic of discussion over the last number of years, actually, between Ministers of Health and Community Services across the country together with the federal government. It is an issue, though, of some concern.

Obviously, any time there is an action by a regulatory body - in this case, the federal government - that will have a direct impact on the people of this Province and other jurisdictions around the country by driving up the cost of prescription drugs. So, it is an issue that we are engaged in a discussion around.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

MS MICHAEL: Mr. Speaker, I am aware that some provinces responded to the federal government when they made their release on April 26. Some asked for an extension of time, up to thirty days, which is the more normal time that people who have before responding to something from the federal government. I know New Brunswick and British Columbia have done that. I know that the National Union of Public and General Employees have made statements.

Has our government made representation to the federal government in responding to this latest decision?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Not directly in that same fashion, by asking for an extension, no.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

MS MICHAEL: Well, in what fashion, Mr. Minister? I ask you: Have you written a letter? Have you responded at all? Have you let them know that we are disturbed, as a Province, about this decision? Because we have to cover drugs for our people and this decision is going to benefit drug companies and really affect provinces badly, and therefore the people in the country.

In what way did the minister respond to the government?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: At the officials' level, I say, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Signal Hill – Quidi Vidi.

MS MICHAEL: I am sorry, I could not hear the answer; if the minister could repeat it for me.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

MR. WISEMAN: I was just too quick, obviously, Mr. Speaker, but let me rephrase it and extend it a little bit.

In response to the member's question: the manner in which we have responded in the Department of Health and Community Services have been at the officials' level, I say, Mr. Speaker, and they have corresponded directly with their counterparts in Ottawa.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Signal Hill – Quidi Vidi.

MS MICHAEL: Just for the record, Mr. Speaker - and this is not to get at the minister, it really is not, but for the sake of people here and for others in the room - I do have a hearing difficulty and so that is why I use this all the time.

Mr. Speaker, another question for the minister: Nova Scotia has reformed its means of procurement of pharmaceuticals and they definitely are saving money because of what they have done and B.C. has set up a task force to look into its spending.

What I want to ask the minister is: will this government create a provincial body of some kind to work on a pharmaceutical strategy, with the goal of delivering the best patient outcomes, more streamlined drug review processes and best value to the Province?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure that I would commit to creating a structure that I want to define now, but what I can commit to the member opposite and to others is, that as a Province and as a government we are committed to ensuring that we acquire, through our drug program, prescription drugs at the lowest cost possible. We are participating with other jurisdictions in mechanisms to do reviews of drugs before they enter the market, to look at their effectiveness, the efficiency and cost benefit to the people of the Province. We are having discussions with other jurisdictions through my counterparts around mechanisms where we can collectively look at how we purchase drugs and look at similar practices that larger buying groups might engage in.

On an ongoing basis, I say, Mr. Speaker, we are dealing with these issues facing our prescription drug program in the Province. I say, Mr. Speaker, we will, whether it is through that kind of mechanism or some other, achieve the same kind of objectives.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. minister to conclude his answer.

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The time allotted for questions and answers has expired.

Presenting reports by standing and select committees.

Tabling of documents.

Tabling of Documents

MR. SPEAKER: As the Chair of the House of Assembly Management Commission and in accordance with the House of Assembly Accountability Integrity and Administration Act, I hereby table two sets of minutes from the Management Commission, one from the meeting on May 5 and the other from the meeting April 30.

Further Tabling of Documents.

Notices of Motion.

Answers to questions for which notice has been given.

Petitions.

Petitions

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise today to present a petition on behalf of the parents in the Labrador Straits area of my district.

Mr. Speaker, it is regarding the government's new approach to allocating teaching resources within the Province and how that is impacting upon small schools, especially those in rural communities. Now this is not the only region of the Province in which I have introduced petitions like this in the House of Assembly but there are a lot of small schools around the Province that are in rural-based areas that have seen the transfer out of teaching units under this current formula. Mr. Speaker, in many cases we are going to see not just multi-grading of classes and children but multi-multi-grading; cases, Mr. Speaker, where you will have three, four and five grades all within the one classroom with one teacher.

It is unrealistic to expect that in today's society any teacher is going to want to be teaching four to five grades in one classroom and moving to remote areas of the Province to do so. I think in changing this formula and putting additional workload on these teachers not only are you sacrificing the quality of education that the students are getting but you are also, Mr. Speaker, running some high risk in terms of further recruitment problems down the road in trying to attract teachers to these regions of the Province.

Mr. Speaker, these particular parents are petitioning the Minister of Education and the government to reinstate teaching units in small rural schools and review the guidelines to find a solution that they can reorganize the unique needs of students in small rural schools.

I think it is a very legitimate request and although the minister says that they are not overall reducing teachers in the Province, what they are doing is they are transferring teachers out of small schools into larger schools in order to meet their own criteria that they have implemented on cap sizes within classrooms and it is not sitting well in a lot of the rural areas where you have small schools.

Mr. Speaker, I asked the minister to table for us, in the House, the breakdown of the teacher allocations in the various schools around the Province, but what we got was an allocation on a district by district basis, and that was not the information that we had requested.

Hopefully they will give some consideration to the people who petition the House on matters like this.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Port de Grave.

MR. BUTLER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.


I just want to take a few moments to, I guess, present – I had to go through the files today to find my last petition, hopefully, of this session. I will have to get more ready in the fall.

Mr. Speaker, it has to do with the road maintenance program. We hear from time to time about the depots that we are closing. Hopefully, over the summer months, Mr. Speaker - and this has nothing to do with the Capital Works Program that has been announced by the minister, it is just a road maintenance program. Many people in different areas are saying that they believe that by those depots being closed they do not get the same service in the summertime in getting the road maintenance done.

I just want to say, Mr. Speaker, to the minister, that there are quite a few areas, not only in my district but throughout the Province, where road maintenance has to be done. All I am saying to the minister is, over the summer months keep your hand upon the throttle, both eyes upon the road and hopefully we will see that the maintenance that needs to be done will be considered and hopefully done to everyone's satisfaction.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Further petitions.

Orders of the Day

 

Private Members' Day

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, it being Private Member's Day, I call Motion 1 as laid out by the hon. Member for Port de Grave.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Port de Grave.

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

It gives me pleasure today to stand on this private member's motion with regards to public sector pensioners, which has been seconded by my hon. Colleague for the District of Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair. Just for the record, Mr. Speaker, I will read the motion.

WHEREAS the Provincial Government retired pensioners have sought an increase in their pensions because increases in the cost of living have diminished their value and many pensioners live in dire financial circumstances; and

WHEREAS the Provincial Government had an established practice of granting a pension increase to coincide with or follow public sector pay raises, thereby creating a reasonable expectation that this would continue to be a feature of their pension entitlement; and

WHEREAS this practice was discontinued after 1989 due to the severe financial constraints at that time, thereby hurting all pensioners but especially those on low fixed incomes;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the House of Assembly urges the government to consider the advisability of resuming the practice of matching increases for public service pensioners to wage increases for public sector employees.

Mr. Speaker, as I said, I just want to take a few moments on this. I am not going to belabour the issue, but there are a few comments I want to make. I know, as the evening progresses we will have hon. members on both sides standing, and no doubt the members on the government side will be telling us about what has been done this year and in previous years for the seniors. That is true, Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt there are many issues that have come up from time to time that will help those people; but, Mr. Speaker, when it comes to the indexing of their pensions, it is another issue.

On May 1 we heard the Minister of Finance responding to some questions by the Leader of the Opposition with regard to issues that have been dealt with in reference to low-income tax benefits, doubling the seniors' tax benefit, improving the drug program, home heating programs, and more or less, Mr. Speaker, putting money back into seniors' pockets.

While members opposite were in Opposition, I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, they travelled this Province preaching how they would stand shoulder to shoulder with those people in supporting indexing of their pensions. I say, what a change has occurred. Just a little stroll across this House and the issue has come to the point now where indexing has been placed on the back burner.

On April 30, the Premier of this Province made a statement that public sector pensioners would not be getting any indexing or any further benefits on their pensions in the foreseeable future under his mandate.

Mr. Speaker, I guess that has been disturbing to those people, because we hear so much about the reference to the lower income tax benefits and we know that many of those people, Mr. Speaker, the figures that we have seen, some of them are trying to survive on as little as $10,000 a year.

We talk about the funding we have put into the drug program, and I know there are three or four different phases of the drug program and it is very beneficial to many people, but I can assure you, I have people in my district who just cannot afford to get all the medications they need. Some of them are to the point now where doctors are giving them samples that they have come from time to time, and that is very unfortunate. I am not saying that is what government wants to happen, but that is the position that many people find themselves in.

We talked about the home heating program - a good program, Mr. Speaker, let me assure you - and there are more people this year availed of that than in the past, and that is all wonderful, but I can tell you, many seniors, many people who are on fixed incomes, find themselves in a very difficult position. I have had people call me over this past few months, not only in my district but other areas as well, saying: I do not have an invoice to send in so I can avail of those funds because I was unable, in the last two or three months, to be able to buy the fuel. I bought it last winter, and there is still some of it there.

I have been in homes, Mr. Speaker, where those people and seniors have been unable to turn on their heat because it was either, from time to time, buying a drop of oil to keep the house warm or buying food from one end of the month to the other, Mr. Speaker. That is very unfortunate. Those people have served this Province well, Mr. Speaker.

I know recently that seven different groups came together - they are called Pensioners' Coalition 2008 - and those seven groups represent some 22,000 retirees. When you consider their family members, that figure jumps to about 60,000 people, Mr. Speaker, and their pensions have been frozen now for nineteen years.

I know this Administration has not been office for nineteen years, and I know it happened back in 1989, but that is immaterial, who was there. I think the time has come that those people have to be considered, and what better time to do it than now? We know that you cannot take every penny that the government has and just throw it to the wind. I think the issues that those people are asking for are legitimate, Mr. Speaker, and they include many different groups who have worked for this Province and for this government. We have the staff at Memorial University, penitentiary wardens, firefighters, police officers and teachers. I can assure you, from what they have in the paper, they were disappointed with the Budget – not disappointed with everything that is in the Budget, but the fact that they were not considered with the indexing of their pensions. The financial position that we find ourselves in today, I believe they thought, definitely, there was going to be something there for them. We also know that the various unions – I know NAPE has spoken out recently in favour of those people, because I guess many of them were members of that particular union.

Over a period of time – I know prior to the last election and since the last election - I had the, I suppose, distinct honour of meeting with those people; but, I am going to tell you, what took place in the meetings was something that I did not think I would encounter.

I remember meeting with them, up on the fifth floor, when they came in and explained to us what they are receiving now, what they could purchase for that amount of money back in 1989, and how they are left and what they can buy today, Mr. Speaker.

Some hon. colleagues here – I know the Member for St. John's East, the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi, and the Opposition Leader – we met with I think it was close to 800 of those people in Mundy Pond, and that is since the last election. When you hear the stories that those people had to put forward, I believed that, and I think they believed at the time, that something would come forward in the last Budget to help support them.

Mr. Speaker, I have read with great interest the provincial resolutions that were put forward by the Newfoundland and Labrador 50+ Federation, when they held their meeting back in 2007, and I believe they met with the Minister of Finance and presented their cases to him, and some of the issues that they had in their resolutions have been dealt with to some degree. Others have not, but the indexing of their pensions is one that - they feel today that something should be done.

We understand that the cost of living has increased since 1989 by 46 per cent. All we have to do, I guess, is think about it ourselves, if we were on a fixed income, knowing what the increase was over that period of time.

Mr. Speaker, we know, not only the price of gas, how it has gone up, but how it affects everything that those individuals have to deal with, whether it is when they go to buy their groceries, whether it is when they go to buy fuel to heat their homes, or even to buy their groceries, because we hear it on a daily basis, how things are increasing. These people, like I said, Mr. Speaker, have worked all their lives providing a service to the people of this Province.

I know one of the recommendations that they put forward at their convention, and I am sure the Minister of Finance is well aware of it, with regard to - I think it was resolution 14 - the retirement pensions' increase, and explained very seriously how they are suffering on many issues and how they have cared, whether it is teachers caring for the children, or other individuals here in the Province, Mr. Speaker.

Hopefully, as this day progresses, I know members opposite will stand and talk about all the good things that have happened, and that is true, but I hope when they stand that they will be able to relate the stories, just like I related, because we all live in Newfoundland and Labrador. Each and every one of us has constituents, and I am sure we have received phone calls from them asking us to plea to government and to urge government to consider this.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to conclude my opening comments just on one comment that I read recently in The Telegram. I guess you cannot believe everything you hear or see or read in our local papers or in the media, but the article was written by Mr. Russell Wangersky, and he concluded by saying one thing in that – his quote – he was referring to the relationship and how we feel about the deal that was promised us from Ottawa. In order words, in his article he is saying: A deal is a deal.

Those people, yes, they signed off on a deal when their unions agreed with what they would expect from their pensions, but he went on to say: How can you campaign on the grounds that unfair deals should be changed while refusing to change them yourselves?

In other words, what he is saying, Mr. Speaker, is that those people are in our Province, they are the people who have carried the burden of our residents for many years in providing the service, and what they are saying is: Yes, we know we are receiving what we agreed to at that time, but the time has come when that deal should be broken; it should be reconsidered.

Hopefully, as the evening goes on, Mr. Speaker, I will take my place and just listen to fellow colleagues as they make their presentations, and return later on to close debate.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER (Collins): The hon. the Minister of Human Resources, Labour and Employment.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SKINNER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to be able to stand today and speak to this motion, and I am glad that the hon. member opposite brought the resolution forward to give us an opportunity to bring forward some of the initiatives that have taken place to try and assist, as the motion refers to, provincial government retired pensioners who have seen the value of their pensions diminish in time. Some, in fact, do live in some dire circumstances. I am sure every member in this House could tell the story.

I have visited many seniors, many public service pensioners, who are having difficulty. A lot of them are struggling. It is an opportunity for us, as members, to be able to get up and speak to what it is that we are doing.

Make no mistake, Mr. Speaker, I do not care what side of the House you are on, this issue is one that every member of this House takes seriously and wishes to be able to do something to try and assist.

In terms of the public service pensioners, in terms of this government, we understand the difficulties that public service pensioners are experiencing. They are a smaller sub-set of the bigger population of seniors who I receive e-mails and calls and letters from every day. I go to visit them every day, who are talking to me about the challenges they face, in particular in the winter months when the cost of heating is something that is an onerous burden on them, a burden that they have to bear. I have been to homes where people tell me that they have to choose between turning on the heat or maybe feeding themselves, putting some food on the table, or maybe their car is broke down in the driveway, their only means of transportation. That vehicle is very important, not just as a means of transportation, but it is a means of social inclusion for them. It allows them to get out and go to the grocery stores, to go do a bit of shopping, to go see their physicians, to go see their family and friends, and it is broke down in the driveway, they do not have the funds to be able to fix it or to make it work.

Mr. Speaker, this government, I think, and all members in this House understand the challenges that public service pensioners are facing, but, as I said before, I believe we placed that in the context of they are a smaller subset of a larger group of older adults in this Province who are experiencing similar challenges. Our approach as a government has been to try and address the larger group, and by addressing that larger group the subset of public service pensioners will also feel some benefit from some of the initiatives that we have brought forward.

We understand that the public service pensioners have had an employer sponsored pension plan that they made contributions to. We understand that they thought there would be money there at the end of the day to be able to live a reasonable standard of life, but those decisions were made in some cases, Mr. Speaker, thirty or thirty-five years ago. It is hard to project what your needs are going to be and it is hard to project what your needs will be in five years let alone thirty-five or twenty-five years. We understand the quandary that people find themselves in, but we as a government, I guess, took a couple of approaches.

I was at some of those meetings that the hon. member referred to. I wanted to when I was campaigning - when I was originally elected as a new MHA I went to some of those meetings to hear the concerns of the public service pensioners. It was an issue that I felt I had to educate myself about, so I went and listened to a lot of those stories and what a lot of the people had to say. The first thing I heard, and the thing that struck me most, was, first of all those pension plans were in dire straits. Those pension plans were in a position where they may not be able to provide a pension to the people who rightly and who in good faith contributed to a pension plan that should be able to pay benefits to them once they retired. That message rang through to me loud and clear.

One of the first things our government did when we took office, when we had the privilege of being elected by the people of the Province, was we looked at those pension plans in terms of trying to put them on a bit more of a firm footing. I do not remember specifically which one, I think it was the Teacher's Pension Plan; it was only funded to the tune of 26 per cent, Mr. Speaker. We as a government had to make sure that we addressed that because if we did not the projection showed in 2003 when we took office that that particular public pension plan would run dry by 2012, four short years from now; would not be able to meet its obligations. Not only would the people who receive a pension from that pension plan be complaining about the fact that they were receiving too little to live on, there would actually be nothing left in the plan to be able to be funded out. This government had to take some drastic, serious action, and we did that. We put about $4 billion in total into the pension plans to make sure that they were given a more solid financial footing. In actual fact, we raised the level of funding from around 26 per cent up to about 80 per cent for these pension plans.

We further, in 2007, put almost $1 billion, $982 million, almost $1 billion, with a b, into the Public Service Pension Plan to raise it up. It again was around 28 per cent or 30 per cent funded and we had to make sure that the benefit was there for people on a go-forward basis.

There were things that needed to be addressed, no doubt, in terms of the Public Service Pension Plan. The immediate need as we saw it and as I saw it and as I heard it in some of the meetings I attended and as I heard it from some of the people I spoke to, was, make sure you sure up that pension plan. Funds were taken from that years ago - and we all know the story, I will not beat it to death - but funds were taken from that years ago by previous administrations to pay for infrastructure. They paid for hospitals, they paid for schools and they paid for roadwork. That money that people were putting away for their pensions was being used for purposes other than what it was intended for and that had to stop, and it has stopped.

We had an obligation as a government to address that liability. The first thing we did was address that liability by making sure that we put enough money into the pension plan to make sure that it was on firm footing so that the continuation of benefits was there, people would not have to go to sleep at night wondering, will my benefits run out in 2012, will I wake up one morning and be told by the provincial government there is no more pension money for you. We made sure that did not happen. That was the first thing that was done by this government, Mr. Speaker. We wanted to make sure that the unfunded liability was taken care of.

The second point that was made by this government, when we brought the unfunded liability up to the point where it needed to be, when we basically re-injected the funds that had been taken out - and that was done by an actuary. There was a calculation done and an assessment made as to how much money needed to be put into that plan. It was not just the amount that was taken out. It was the money that was taken out plus the estimation as to what the benefits would have been had the money been left in the plan. There was an evaluation done by a professional called an actuary who did that and said, here is the amount of money you have to put in. The amount of money that was taken out was put in as well as an allowance for how much money the plan would have made over the years. That was done and we are now about, as I understand it, 80 per cent, 82 per cent, funded in terms of those pension plans.

The second point that this government made, Mr. Speaker, was that we would not be able to look at any increases in the pension plans until they were able to fund it which meant that the plans had to be 100 per cent funded. We are moving towards that. We are hoping that we will be able to get there sooner rather than later, but there may be a day when we see that we will be able to do something in terms of increasing pension benefits when the pension plan allows for it. That is how you would normally do this. That is the normal process and the normal practice that will be followed, that you would take the extra benefits from the plan to be able to provide more benefits to those recipients of the plan. At some point, we hope that may be able to happen.

Mr. Speaker, I only have a short period of time to speak so I want to go back to the point I was making earlier about the public service pensioners being a subset of a larger group of people in this Province. One of the things that this government has been trying to do is trying to make sure that the benefits we have, the revenues that we have as a government, are used for the benefit of the most people possible. We have our low income drug program. I believe that it is over 90,000 people now who have been affected by that. Our home heating program, we have raised threshold on those. There are a whole bunch of initiatives that I could talk about in more detail but we have tried to make sure that we cover or encompass as many people as possible in the Province. It is not the will of this government, nor do we feel it is the right move to make, to go and target the Public Service pensioners in terms of trying to do something extra for them. We feel it is something that should be done for all seniors in the Province.

What we have looked at doing is, we have looked at the kinds of things that people are talking to us about. Just as an example, taxes were something I heard a lot about when I went around. People talked to me about taxes. Well, we have brought in the low income tax reduction measure, we have now raised the threshold level, so seniors who are receiving pensions, who are receiving $10,000, $12,000, $14,000 and $15,000 in pension money, who were paying taxes on that, we have now been able to make adjustments to our taxes so that they no longer have to pay taxes on that amount of money. We have done it for all seniors. We have not done it just for Public Service pensioners.

There are seniors out there, a great number of them, who are not in receipt of pensions, but they are the individuals who are paying into the revenues of government through our tax system and we feel they should receive some of the relief and some of the benefit of us using our tax money. By using this low income tax measure for all seniors, those that are Public Service pensioners are also positively affected by that.

As well, Mr. Speaker, we look at the home heating rebate. I can tell you, I have many, I would go so far as to say hundreds, of constituents in my district who I have spoken to who have benefited from the home heating rebate. I have personally delivered dozens of applications to people who asked if I would be able to drop it off and help them with their application. There have been hundreds, thousands across the Province. I do not know the number. When the Minister of Finance gets up, maybe he will give us more detail. I would speculate there are many thousands of people who have been helped by the home heating rebate.

A lot of those people who I have delivered these forms to are seniors living in their own home. Some of them are Public Service pensioners. We have done a number of things with the home heating rebate to make it beneficial for all seniors, and by making it beneficial for all seniors we have made it beneficial for the Public Service pensioners as well, because they are a subset of that senior group. We have increased the threshold in terms of the income threshold and we have increased the amount of money that has been paid out. You now can earn higher levels of income and be eligible for the home heating rebate. We have now made sure that the amount we give out is a higher amount, so it is on a graduated scale. It can be as little as zero if you are over the income threshold; it can go up to $400. We have also expanded the types of fuel. It is no longer just oil, but it is oil, it is electricity, it is propane and it is wood sources. There are a variety of sources that are being used.

The point I am making, Mr. Speaker, is that by addressing all of our senior population with some of these positive initiatives, which allow seniors to keep more money in their pockets - and ultimately that is what we are trying to do, we are trying to keep more money in people's pockets. We are trying to ease the financial burdens that they have faced. What has happened, Mr. Speaker, is that by addressing the broader group of seniors in the Province, we have, in fact, done some things for the subset of pensioners in the Province.

I want to talk a little bit about the Provincial Home Repair Program, which comes underneath my ministry as well. We have a higher percentage of people in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador than any other Province of Canada who own their own homes. A lot of the people I deal with through the Provincial Home Repair Program own their own homes, obviously, and they to reside in rural areas. The majority of people tend to reside in rural areas. A lot of them are on fixed incomes. Some of them are pensioners, some of them are not pensioners, but they have fixed incomes. They tend to have lower levels of incomes.

The Provincial Home Repair Program, Mr. Speaker, allows people to be able to fix up their homes, to stay there, to stay in the home where they raised their family. Their friends are there, all of their memories, all of the community work that they have done, their church, the places where they socialize, the Lions Club, the Kinsmen, whatever it may be, all of that is where their home is. That is why they want to stay in their home. They do not want to have to go somewhere else.

People now, who have homes that are aging and have incomes that are fixed or incomes that may be declining, are given some benefit through the Provincial Home Repair Program. Up to $5,000 can be given without any payback required by the person receiving it, under certain circumstances, to do work on their home. It might mean electrical upgrades to install heating systems, in might mean roof repairs so you stop leaks, it might mean windows and doors and those kinds of things, so you do not have the drafts that normally would come and cause people to have to put up their thermostats. There are all kinds of things that can be done there, Mr. Speaker, with that $5,000. It does not have to be paid back. You can actually get more than $5,000 to do that kind of work, if you want to enter into a loan arrangement where on everything over $5,000 you are given a very low interest rate.

Those kinds of initiatives that I have touched on are initiatives that are available for all seniors. The approach this government has taken is that by bringing in initiatives that raise it up for all seniors, we will, in effect, raise it up for the Public Service pensioners. We understand the difficulties that they are facing, we understand the challenges that they are facing, but we feel that we can address their challenges and their difficulties by making sure we do it for all seniors in the Province.

That is the approach we have taken, Mr. Speaker. We believe it is working, we will show that it is working in future budgets, and I thank you for your time.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am certainly pleased to rise and to speak in the debate today, on the motion that was put forward by my colleague, the Member for -

AN HON. MEMBER: Port de Grave.

MS JONES: Port de Grave.

There are so many of us over here, Mr. Speaker, we tend to lose track.

Certainly, the motion put forward by the Member for Port de Grave, Mr. Speaker, is a very important motion that actually impacts well over 20,000 people in our Province today.

Mr. Speaker, this is not an issue that has been taken lightly and we have never suggested that it has been taken lightly by any particular government or administration, but it is also an issue that needs to be elevated in the minds of those people who make decisions within our Province. The reality is, that people today who are public sector pensioners are living on incomes that are far less, Mr. Speaker, far less than they ever intended for them to live on in their retirement after giving service to the people of this Province for so many years.

We will hear, I am sure today, as government continues to speak to the motion, about programs like we just did from the minister opposite that are in place to help offset the cost of living to seniors in our Province, and we have never disputed that. We have never disputed the need to have home heating rebates, to have subsidization of drug programs, to be able to provide seniors' benefits to those in the Province who qualify, and we are certainly not advocating today that any of that should change.

Mr. Speaker, do not skew the issue, because the issue that we are talking about today has to do with a decade after decade old problem in this Province that has gone unattended to and unfunded appropriately. Mr. Speaker, that is not just a reflection on the government opposite but a reflection on governments going back to 1989 with the exception, I guess, of 2002 when there was a modest increase in indexing provided for at 1.2 per cent at that particular time. Mr. Speaker, I will be the first to recognize that the current rate of inflation at that time was still at 1.9 per cent, so even the indexing in 2002 at the 1.2 per cent fell short of what the actual inflation rate was in the Province at that particular time.

Mr. Speaker, we wanted to table this particular motion in the House of Assembly because we feel that it should be on the radar of government to be dealt with. We feel that the money that is available in the provincial coffers today is able to adequately address this problem like it has not been able to be addressed in the past.

For example, Mr. Speaker, when this program was created in 1965 it was done at a time when inflationary measures were not the kind of phrases and terminology that were being built into the contracts of that time. In fact, it was not until the 1970s, until Trudeau came to government nationally, that we started talking about escalation clauses in contracts and inflationary clauses in contracts. When these pension plans were set up, from the very beginning, they did not build in those measures. When governments say, through the years, and continue to say today, the government opposite, that they did not pay for any indexing program so therefore they should not get one, really, Mr. Speaker, if you look at the contracts and the time frame in which they were negotiated, inflationary language in those contracts was unheard of at that particular time. This is something that developed over time.

Mr. Speaker, in 1989 they did receive a 2.5 per cent increase. I did not go back to look up what the current rate of inflation was at that time but it was probably on par with what the inflation rate was, so it was bringing them to the current standard of living in that particular year. Again, as I said, in 2002 there was a 1.2 per cent indexing that was granted; but, Mr. Speaker, the Bank of Canada themselves estimate that the cost of living has risen over the past eighteen years by 48 per cent, and this has had a detrimental effect on seniors all across the country, not just in our Province.

Mr. Speaker, while we look at broad-ranging programs that affect seniors and support their initiatives we deal with a specific case, and that is the pensioners of the provincial Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, who they have served with for twenty-five and thirty-five years, Mr. Speaker, making this government their former employer and therefore the only place that they can turn to look for some kind of redress on their pensions over that period of time.

Mr. Speaker, we have listened to what the public pensioners have said. We have listened to their president, Mr. Langdon, who talked about how the dollar for pensioners has eroded over the years. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I think at one point he said that what most pensioners receive today is only providing for 50 per cent of the cost of living in today's standards as to what it was when they actually accepted those pensions and took their exists from government.

Mr. Speaker, this is the reason that we have wanted to elevate the issue. We feel that government is in a position to address it. The minister has informed me that for every 1 per cent that you would give in an indexing increase in the pension plan it would cost the government about $40 million a year annually. Yesterday, I did not have the actual numbers to look at what the full cost might be –

AN HON. MEMBER: Forever (inaudible).

MS JONES: Forever. Oh, 1 per cent is $40 million forever.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MS JONES: Okay.

So, let me correct that, Mr. Speaker, because it gets better. It sounds better, too, I say to the minister. It sounds better, and maybe we should be advocating for more, but anyway the 1 per cent means it will be a $40 million cost to the government over the course of time to index the pensions for the retired public service employees.

If you look at that cost, which would be $40 million, and then you look at what it would take to bring them up - and we are not advocating that government should be going out now and giving a 48 per cent increase to public pensioners. What we are saying is that you are in a fiscal position to be able to address this problem like governments before you have not been able to.

For example, when the minister brought down the Budget this year he has already forecast a surplus for next year - a surplus, at that time, which would have exceeded over $500 million. That was based on the oil prices per barrel at $87. Mr. Speaker, if you look at where the price of oil has gone per barrel since March, or April, when the minister introduced the Budget, it has climbed to $120 a barrel. It may even have exceeded that on occasion, but it has climbed that high. That would indicate to us automatically that with the amount of production that is out there, with the price at the level that it is, not forecasting to take a dip any time soon, that the government's own numbers, in forecasting a surplus for the next fiscal year, are way low. Instead of looking like $500 million, Mr. Speaker, at the rate we are going now, it will again be a surplus of well over a billion dollars.

We know that when governments make decisions to invest money, especially in programs and in those kinds of indexing and wage increases, that they have to be able to budget for it and sustain it over a long period of time. We certainly understand that. In that understanding, we also realize that there is still room for government to move on doing something for public sector pensioners. We are asking today that it be put on the radar of government, that you give it strong consideration, and you look at what needs to happen here to bring them in line with a more reasonable rate of return as a reward for their service to government than they are actually getting.

Do not bog it down with terms of contracts, because those arguments do not hold weight in today's society. We can dig out many contracts that have been signed by governments in the past that did not build in inflationary clauses or escalator clauses that today we would never dream of negotiating without having that kind of terminology into it.

Mr. Speaker, the public sector pensioners have formed a coalition in the Province, actually formed it within the last month, and it does involve the Public Service Pensioners' Association, the Retired Teachers' Association, the Memorial University of Newfoundland Pensioners' Association, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Association, the St. John's Fire Fighters Retirees' Association, the NAPE local and the Retired Penitentiary Warders. So, Mr. Speaker, they have already collectively formed a group as a coalition, not necessarily to take on the government but to work with government, to work effectively with government so that you understand the issues that they are faced with and the circumstances that they are faced with, things like my hon. colleague from Port de Grave already talked about, the hardship that many of these people face every day in their lives because they have insufficient amount of monies as a pension to be able to live on.

Mr. Speaker, the other piece to this is that every single year we are not seeing things go down; we are seeing things go up – everything, from the medical benefits that they receive, which we have seen increases in the premiums that we pay for medical benefits in the Province, so have they. They have seen increases in everything from food products, and every day we are identifying a new product because of the global impact of war around the world. It impacts things like oil prices and food prices, and all the rest of it, and these things are felt right at home, by people like ourselves and people like our pensioners who have to pay more money.

Mr. Speaker, we feel that there is not a need for government to continue to belabour this or provide a rationale for not doing it. We think that the Budget surpluses themselves and the fiscal position of the Province speak to its ability to be able to address the problem, and this particular coalition wants to work with government to ensure that these problems are addressed. They do not want to accept no as an answer, but rather they want to work to achieve a compromise that at the end of the day will help relieve the financial burdens that many of them have been faced with.

Mr. Speaker, the other issue that needs to be dealt with is the issue of how the federal government claws back pension benefits as well; because, once these individuals qualify for Canada Pension benefits they tend to enter into a phase whereby the federal government claws back a certain amount of their money.

I have not really been able to get into the discussions around that aspect of it, to understand it more fully, but I am sure that the minister would have probably already provided some details with regard to that particular issue but it is one that I have received a number of e-mails on, in terms of how the percentage rate works and how the clawback works. Maybe there is something that can be done to address that particular issue as well that would be able to probably lessen the burden, at least, on some of the people who receive this benefit, and how they are impacted.

Mr. Speaker, I know that many of the people who are going to talk today are going to say that this is an issue that other governments could have addressed and did not address. The reality is that many other governments in the past were not in a fiscal position to address it. Even those that were not necessarily in a fiscal position tried their best to address it, such as the government of 2002, when they looked at indexing at 1.2 per cent for pensioners at that time. As small as it was, it was a reflection and an understanding that there was a problem and it was a problem that should be dealt with within the fiscal realities of any government to deal with them.

This government does have the ability to be able to address the problem, to be able to bring some relief to the 20,000-odd public sector pensioners in this Province, Mr. Speaker, who feel that they should be considered for indexing, especially when you look at the rate of inflation and you look at how the cost of living has risen in the Province over the last eighteen years.

Mr. Speaker, we certainly hope that government will not just provide excuses or talk about universal programs that affect seniors, but we would like to know directly, as the employer and the former employer of public sector pensioners in this Province, when you are going to put them on the radar, when you are going to consider giving them something substantial in terms of indexing at a time when the Province can well afford to be able to do so.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. T. MARSHALL: Mr. Speaker, thank you.

It is a pleasure to stand here today to take part in this debate.

I can assure the people of this Province that the Williams' government is certainly cognizant of the adverse effects that the rising energy prices have on the people of this Province, especially those who are on fixed incomes, especially those who are on low incomes, and especially our seniors. I can assure you that it is something we take very, very seriously, and I can assure you that it is something that I know the Premier and all members of this government and I am sure all members of this House watch very, very carefully.

We want to help our seniors. I do not think there is any group in the Province that all of us would like to help and like to show respect to, than our seniors, but we have an obligation to help all of our seniors. That is why the Williams' government has taken a number of initiatives to ensure that all of our seniors are helped, initiatives that will put money in people's pockets.

Realistically, Mr. Speaker, I think if you look at the initiatives that the Williams' government has put in place since 2003, and especially in this year's Budget and last year's Budget, the increases in those benefits that are going to all seniors certainly would be larger than a 2 per cent or 3 per cent ad hoc increase in the pension benefits that our retired civil servants do have.

Mr. Speaker, the position of the government is that we have to help all seniors, and that will include our retired civil servants but not just our retired civil servants. Indeed, it is all seniors, because that is the way to be fair and that is the way to be equitable.

Mr. Speaker, it is important to note that, based on the latest figures we have for the year 2006, there were 72,400 seniors over sixty-five who filed income tax returns. That would include people without income, but who would file returns to access government benefits. Of those 72,000 seniors, Mr. Speaker, 46,000 of them did not have an employer sponsored pension. These are people who rely entirely on the benefits they receive from Ottawa, and the benefits they might receive from the province government. Of the approximately 26,000 who do, those over sixty-five, 10,000 are public sector pensioners, and the 46,000 who had no employee sponsored pension would have an average income of about $15,000.

Mr. Speaker, it might be helpful for the purposes of this debate – and I commend the Member for Port de Grave for raising this in the House, because it is important that we all discuss this, and I know that all MHAs, as we go around our districts in the summer, will run into retired civil servants who will want to discuss these issues with us – it is important to note that, of the public sector retirees, the average pension income is $16,700. This is in the public sector pension plan. For those who have served longer, because obviously a public service pension will increase the longer you have worked and the greater contributions you have made over time, the retiree with twenty-five years of service would have a $24,000 pension, and a retiree with thirty years of service would have $26,300 pension.

Obviously, the longer you contribute to the plan the bigger the pension would be. Obviously, someone who would retire at fifty-five, who would retire early, would not have as large a pension as someone who would stay and retire at sixty or sixty-five.

With the Teachers' Pension Plan it is higher; the average is $30,000. For those who stay for twenty-five plus years the average would be $32,200, and for those of thirty years the average would be $34,000.

Mr. Speaker, it is said by many that the first pillar of retirement, the one we consider, are the benefits that are provided to all senior citizens by the Government of Canada. That is the first pillar of retirement, and that would include, of course, Old Age Security, it would include the Guaranteed Income Supplement.

The Old Age Security, I understand, this year is about $6,000. It is payable to everyone over sixty-five. The Guaranteed Income Supplement, I am advised, is about $7,500. Someone who does not have a pension other than the OAS and the GIS would have, in total, an income of $13,500 a year. Those benefits are subject to full indexing every quarter and, in addition, there are some supplemental benefits such as a spouse allowance for a spouse who is sixty to sixty-four, whose husband or whose wife is qualified for both the OAS and the GIS. There is also a survivor's allowance for someone who may have lost their spouse, someone who is sixty to sixty-four.

In addition, the next pillar would be the Canada Pension Plan, which is a plan that everyone can contribute to, who is employed in this country. The maximum benefit under the Canada Pension Plan is $10,500. Obviously, the amount that one would receive or qualify for would be based on how much you have contributed and how long you have contributed, because that is the way pensions work. The more you contribute and the longer period of time you contribute is so important. I know many of us, when you talk about retiring and you look at retiring, the experts tell you that the earlier you start contributing and the longer you contribute will add, in a major way, to the amount of retirement benefits that you receive.

Mr. Speaker, the next pillar would be what I will call employer sponsored pension plans. For those who do not have those, they would be Registered Retirement Savings Plans. Those who have had the advantage of being a member of a defined benefit pension plan, it is a plan where the benefits are certainly set out. Whereas, in a defined contribution pension plan, or a money purchase pension plan, you do not know what your pension is going to be. You are going to contribute to the plan, your employer is going to match those contributions, and how well you do depends on how smart you are in choosing the investment manager that is going to manage those funds.

At the end of the time, when you are ready to retire, you get a lump sum of money, and then you use that to buy a life annuity or to buy a RRIF, and it is what it is, but in a defined benefit pension plan, the benefits are set out, the benefits are known. While you are an employee, you know what the benefits are going to be, because there is a formula that is used, and of course it depends on what your contributions are, and it depends on how long you have been a member. The benefits of the plan are, in fact, known at that time.

Under the plan that the retired pensioners have, under the defined benefit plan of this Province, indexing was not part of the plan. When the benefits are set out, what would happen, an actuary is hired and the actuary would look at the benefits and then cost those benefits, and then the contributions to the plan would, of course, be based on what the actuary says. If indexing was to be part of the plan, then obviously, that would have been costed as well, and the employees and the employer would make the contributions.

Indexing is expensive, full indexing is very expensive, but that was not part of the pension plan. Therefore, the contributions were not made. Of course, what is happening now is that the benefits that our employees are receiving are the benefits that were set out in the plan. The benefits that our retirees are receiving are, in fact, the benefits that their contributions are paying for, even though the plan certainly has an unfunded pension liability.

The plan is not funded enough to pay the benefits that are actually being paid out, and I think that is why when the inquiry was set up in 1989 or 1990 – I think it was called the Cummings Inquiry – the recommendation was that there should not be any more ad hoc increases, that there should not be any more until the benefits that are being paid out now are fully funded, and that if any enhancements were to be made in the future to those benefits, that those enhancements will be fully funded as well.

Mr. Speaker, when the Williams government took office in 2000 –

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I remind the hon. member that on a number of occasions now he has referred to the government by using the name of the Premier and that is not appropriate in debate, so I would ask him to refrain from doing that.

MR. T. MARSHALL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

When the present Premier and his government took office, I remember reading in the Auditor General's report that there was an unfunded liability of about $4 billion, and I remember thinking, will any government be able to deal with that, ever get to that, to correct that problem. The teachers' pension was only funded to the tune of 26 per cent. It was forecast to go bankrupt in 2012. Government worked very hard to deal with this, and after the Premier negotiated the $2 billion from Ottawa, from Prime Minister Martin, then the government had to decide what should we do with this $2 billion? There were many people who wanted that $2 billion into programs that they thought were important. The Premier said, no, we are putting the money, the entire amount of money, into the pension plan because we have to secure the pension plans for the future and for the benefit of our retirees. That was done and in addition to that, in addition to the $2 million going into the – that is $2 billion, I should say, going into the teachers' plan, there was just under another $1 billion that went into the public service sector plan to get those plans up to, I think it was around 86 per cent funded, so that they would be secure for the future. That was done. Now, they have fallen back a bit because there were bad investment results last year. I think the average now is about 77 per cent.

Now you have $3 billion in the funds, in the plan, that hopefully as investments improve will grow, so that hopefully some day those plans will be fully funded, even go into surplus and out of that surplus enhancements can be paid to our pensioners. We certainly look forward to that day.

Mr. Speaker, the motion is that government consider the advisability of resuming the practice of matching increases for public services pensioners to wage increases. Now, that is the ad hoc increases which the commission that was set up by the Wells government in 1999 rejected. The commission recommended that this ad hoc indexing be discontinued and that any formal indexing should be properly funded by both the employees and the employers through contribution increases.

Mr. Speaker, an ad hoc increase of 1 per cent would increase the plan liabilities by $40 million. An ad hoc increase of 8 per cent would obviously increase the unfunded pension liabilities of $320. So, these increases in the deficit of the plan, or in what is called the unfunded liability of the plan or the debt of the plan, would totally undermine the efforts that the government, under the Premier, the efforts that put money into the plans to reduce the unfunded pension liability. This recommendation would ask us to go back to increase the unfunded liability which really would undermine the efforts that have taken place not only by this government but there were also payments made by previous governments into the fund.

In spite of the efforts made by former governments, in spite of the efforts made by this government, in spite of the $3 billion invested into the pension plans, the plans are still under funded to the tune of about $2 billion. I know the Leader of the Opposition talked about indexation, the cost of full indexing of all employees from the date of retirement would require the contribution increases to increase by 1.55 per cent for the Public Service Pension Plan and 2.35 per cent for the Teachers' Pension Plan, and in addition, the total unfunded liabilities would increase by $1.8 billion.

Now, this increase in unfunded liability for these massive amounts would not be as high if the indexing was just from age sixty-five. It would be more just under three-quarters of a billion dollars as opposed to $1.1 billion. The increase in these unfunded liabilities would have to be paid for by all taxpayers, including seniors who are not receiving a pension and including workers who are not members of the pension plan. It would be unfair to use the taxes of all of our citizens just to benefit one group of seniors. Surely, if we are going to protect our seniors we have to protect all of our seniors, including our civil servants, but not just our civil servants. This is the position that government is going to take. If government is going to use tax dollars to help senior citizens, then we believe that all senior citizens must benefit.

Mr. Speaker, we have, as I said earlier, brought about a number of initiatives. I met with retired teachers and I met with retired public servants and they have given me their advice as to things that we should do to help them cope with the rising cost of living. We increased the threshold for the Seniors' Benefit. We pay a Seniors' Benefit each October. Fourteen thousand seniors received that benefit who were not getting it before last year. This year we doubled the benefit from about $400 to $800, just under those amounts. There are 31,500 people who were not getting those benefits before who are going to get a cheque of just under $800 since October.

We also eliminated - and this was the advice from the Retired Teachers' Association - the 15 per cent tax on insurance. We made amendments to the low income tax reduction which eliminated 20,000 people from the provincial tax rolls. We allowed seniors, starting in 2007, to split their pension income resulting in tax savings. We eliminated the 15 per cent on insurance. We enhanced the Home Heating Rebate from $100 to $300, from giving the benefit to 11,000 people to giving the benefit to in excess of 75,000 people this year. All of this puts money back into people's pockets.

Last year we had the largest tax cut in the history of the Province, $160 million in reduction in fees and taxes; this year, a further $178 million. It is amazing that this year the people of this Province are paying $340 million less in taxes and fees than they did two years ago. That is something that should be applauded and celebrated in this Province. We have reduced motor vehicle registration fees. Retired teachers told me that is something we should do, and we did it in this Budget.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I remind the hon. minister that his speaking time has expired.

MR. T. MARSHALL: Thank you, if I might have leave just to warp up?

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

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the member by leave.

MR. T. MARSHALL: Mr. Speaker, I could be here for another hour, going through the list of the things we do.

I am looking at the lower rental rate for senior tenants that the Minister of Human Resources mentioned, the $6 million - the $24 million over six years, to more than double the funding to the Provincial Home Repair Program - I always call that the RRAP program - and that will eliminate the housing list.

I know the hon. Member for Port au Port told me about $7,500 going to seniors who were disabled, to help them to put ramps and lifts in their homes; $27.5 million for the Newfoundland and Labrador Housing's Modernization and Improvement Program.

When I went door to door, Mr. Speaker, in the first campaign, when I first entered public life, I ran into a number of widows, in particular, in the age group between fifty-five and sixty-four, who were concerned about the cost of heat and the cost of drugs. They said to me: Which do we pay, the heat or the drugs?

That is why we brought in - we expanded the new drug program. That, I think, we are more proud of, something that the Premier did, than any other program: to provide the drug card to 97,000 people, to make sure that no one has to pay more than 4 per cent or 5 per cent of their income on drugs. I am extremely proud of that. At the same time, we took that home heating program, to deal with the heat aspect, and took it from $100 for 11,000 people to $300 for over 75,000, and $400 in Coastal Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, we will continue to be cognizant of the costs that our seniors are facing, and as our financial position continues to improve and we can do more, we will have more initiatives, we will continue to bring forward initiatives that will help our seniors cope with the rising cost of living, and we look forward to that, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Signal Hill–Quidi Vidi.

MS MICHAEL: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

I am very pleased today to be able to stand and speak to this motion put forward by the Member for Port de Grave, and I am very glad that the member put this motion on the Table and is giving us, because of that, an opportunity to speak to the needs of the pensioners.

We are dealing with a special group of people. We are dealing with the public service pensioners and the motion, as I read it from when the notice was given, is that the House of Assembly urges the government to resume the practice of matching increases for public service pensioners to wage increases for public sector employees.

I am struck by what I have heard a couple of the ministers say today, and when I went back over Hansard and looked at answers to when I had raised similar questions in the House to a former Finance Minister, I am struck by the commonality of one of the things that they are saying. I guess it is the position of the government, so they are all saying it. I am not sure that the ministers today used this term - but it was, I think, and when I read Hansard it was used - but the concept was still the same: that the pensioners are a subset of the group of seniors in our Province and, while they may have a particular issue, the large group of seniors is the group that government has to be responsible for, and they are going to be taking care of that large group and not treating a subset of that group differently.

That is what I would like to speak to first, because when we are talking about the public pensioners we are talking about a group of people who are in a very particular situation. They worked for government, directly or indirectly. They were public service sector workers. From that end, they had a system that they were part of, a financial system that they were part of, and part of that was the pension system.

As the Minister of Human Resources, Labour and Employment said, we do not want to beat to death the history of the pension plan, but going right back to 1965 when it first started, and for about the first fifteen years of that plan, it wasn't only that government took from it; government did not even pay into it initially, although that was the initial agreement. It should have been paid into; the funds should have been built up and invested. We know none of that happened. I do not want to go back over that but I do need to mention it to get at the point that I want to get at, that the pension plan was part of the expectation of public service workers. Yes, as pensioners they are seniors, but because of the particular situation they were in there may be things that need to be done for them in justice because of their context of having been public service sector workers.

What we have here, and we have reference to it over and over, is that when the plans were put in place they were not indexed. That was the situation; that was it. That is what happened and we accept it.

What I hear the pensioners saying back to us - and we have all met with the pensioners. Ministers have met with the pensioners from the various sectors or divisions of the public service sector. The Official Opposition have met with them. I have met with them. We have all met with them, and I think I have had at least five or six meetings with different groups of public service sector pensioners since I first came to this House in 2006. So in less than two years I have had, I think, about six meetings with different groups, some groups more than once.

In spite of everything that the Minister of Finance has said, what they are still saying, to me anyway, and I see communication from them that comes not just to me but to all of the people I have just mentioned - in whatever roles we all find ourselves, we are all getting the same communication - they are telling us that they are not ready to accept the situation.

They understand the situation. They understand that decisions were made back at a time when the reality of today was not even thought about. They understand that, but what they are saying is that government has a moral responsibility to look at their situation and to look at their request for indexing of the pensions. That is what I stand behind. That is where I support them. I think government does have a moral responsibility.

One of the communications that I have recently had, and I know that at least one minister has received this, is very interesting, because what the pensioner who sent this to me, and also sent to one of the ministers as well as to the Leader of the Official Opposition, what this pensioner does - and I understand from this pensioner that this is not an original thought on his part; a group of them, I think, have come up with this analogy - they look at the analogy of the Upper Churchill deal. Now, this is not coming from me; this is coming from a group of pensioners. What they are saying is that the Upper Churchill deal was a deal made when it was made, and we recognize now that it certainly was not a deal that was good for Newfoundland and Labrador. We continue to think that we should be able to convince the other partner in that deal, the Quebec Government, that it should do the right thing. We have had that said. We have had it said by government. We have had it said by many people in this Province. You would think that even on a moral basis Quebec would say: Let's renegotiate before the end of the deal. We know Quebec has never seen it that way. We have criticized them for it and we know that we are going to have to wait until the end of that contract before any changes are going to be made.

What these pensioners are saying, that just as the Premier would say it is only moral to take another look at a fairer deal with regard to the Upper Churchill, it is moral to look back at when the contract was put in place, when the agreements were made about the public service sector pensions and to say that was not right, we have to make a change, that we owe a responsibility.

What I am saying is, recognizing the particular rights and needs of the public service sector and treating them justly, yes, it is dealing with them as a particular group of people, but it is a particular group of people who had a particular situation. They had a pension plan. A senior who does not have a pension plan, and may be living in the same situation of poverty as a pensioner, also has to have his or her needs met, and government has to find a way to meet those needs also. They were never part of a pension plan, so doing it through indexing of a pension plan is not going to work for them. Government has to meet their needs in another way, but meeting the needs of the pensioners through their pension plan, through indexing, is just absolutely logical.

If we remember, what is being asked for in the motion that is put on the floor today by the Member for Port de Grave is to resume the practice of matching increases for public service pensioners to the wage increases for the public sector employees. That used to happen. That used to happen actually under the Smallwood government, where every time there was – generally, it was more or less parallel - whenever there was an increase in the wages of the public sector employees there was an increase in the pensioners income. It seemed very logical. I think that is very just, actually. It makes all kinds of sense. What this is saying is, let's get back into that practice.

As a worker, they had an expectation of being able to negotiate and being able to improve their lot whenever they had a new collective agreement. Why is it that all of a sudden, when you become a pensioner, that is taken away from you? Expenses are the same, expenses do not go away. As a matter of fact, expenses increase. For example, a basket of goods that cost $100 in 1989 - when this practice changed, was in 1989 - a basket of goods that cost $100 then would cost $148 today. That is a 48 per cent increase in inflation in 18 years. We did not even contemplate that back in the 1980s, and certainly we did not contemplate it in the 1960s and 1970s, that inflation would move in the way it did in this world. We are light years away from where we were forty years ago, in terms of the cost of living, and yet we have people who are living on the same pension that they went into ten years ago, fifteen years ago, twenty years ago for some of them.

They are looking to us. With me and with others, they are trying to use moral persuasion. They are trying to get us to say, and I think we should be saying, it is just to do this, let us do it and find a way to make it financially work. That does not mean that the government then ignores other seniors. The government still has a responsibility to other seniors, but this is just using the system that these workers were part of, and recognizing that this system is not working for the workers who were part of this system.

Yes, they are a subset of the group of seniors, and they have a particular situation and particular expectations as that subset and so you deal with it. You do not ignore it, you do not say, too bad, you do not say, as has been reflected back to me from a couple of seniors, you do not say what they felt they heard the Premier saying at the time of the Budget. They felt what he said was cold, it was callous. One of them even called it icy and uncaring. Those are the words that have come to me. They were not impressed with the notion that this is never going to change, and you might as well accept it and put up with it.

When we are saying that to people who are trying to live on $10,000 a year, that frightens me. It bothers me, that we have that attitude that we can look at somebody earning $10,000 a year and say, tough. Tough! Yes, we have to help everybody who is on low income. There is absolutely no doubt about it, and I will not deny all the things that the Minister of Finance has listed off that have happened, but as I have been saying in this House, we have certain programs, government programs, that in and of themselves create cracks in the program. There are places where people can fall through.

You know, I have mentioned the drug program, our drug card, and that is a program that is so important to low income people and so important to pensioners. A lot of them are probably on it because their income is so low they qualified for it. That program creates cracks that people fall through. Our home care program is not even a program, it is faulty, it has so many cracks, so many people fall through it. Some of them are probably pensioners, but like I said a minute ago maybe the pensioners do get it simply because their income is so low.

The pension plan itself, the fact that we have this pension plan that has no indexation is a major crack. Nobody should have worked for this government, no matter what their job was, and now be living in poverty; nobody. We are not going to and nobody should. If we have worked for this government in whatever form, I do not care what it is, teacher, public servants in this building, a uniformed service, it does not matter, in the health care system, in the University, if we have worked to provide services for the people of this Province - people who provide those services, we know how hard the work is that most of them do - not one of them should be living in poverty. You should not spend your life working in service to the people of this Province, doing the hard work that many of these workers did, and live in poverty. It is unconscionable, it is not acceptable and it is pensioners in all of these papers I have here who are saying to me that it is not moral. It is not Lorraine Michael standing and saying it or the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi standing and saying it or the Leader of the NDP standing and saying it, it was not like a couple of weeks ago when I used the word immoral in this House around the Budget, well these are the ones, these are the people who are using that word.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I remind the hon. member her speaking time has expired.

MS MICHAEL: If I could just clue up, Mr. Speaker, please?

MR. SPEAKER: Does the member have leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: To clue up.

MR. SPEAKER: Leave to clue up.

MS MICHAEL: Thank you, and it will be a cluing up, just to say that I am not using a financial argument here. We could get into that and get into numbers, and I have decided not to do that. What I am using is, what I was asked by some seniors to do, to use the argument of moral persuasion. Let us decide that we have to fix something that is wrong and then find the financial way to make that happen.

Thank you, very much, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Conception Bay South.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. FRENCH: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I know this afternoon is unusual. Wednesday is Private Members' Day, but I know today we have a couple of bills to clue up the session, so I am certainly not going to take up too much time.

I thought there were a couple of issues that I wanted to point out, in particular some of the initiatives that we have taken for seniors. I know we had the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board get up and explain some of the financial pieces. I know we had the Minister of Human Resources, Labour and Employment, get up and talk about the Poverty Reduction Strategy, and many of the strategies that are geared to seniors in particular, but certainly not specifically in some cases, and outlines that.

As most of the people here in this House know, and certainly most of the people in Newfoundland and anyone who is connected with social groups throughout the country will know, the Poverty Reduction Strategy that we have put in place over the last number of years is certainly heralded by many and actually used across the country as somewhat of a model.

Just to talk about a couple of issues, I know one of the members earlier talked about an issue that is on our radar. Well, I cannot speak for everybody in this House. I know we have talked about many issues for seniors and retirees and pensioners in caucus. It is certainly on my radar. I can honestly say that my closest neighbour is a retired nurse. Next to them there are two retired teachers who live there. Just up the street from them, there are another two retired teachers, all a stone's throw away from my house. They have been friends of mine for a long, long time. I am very well aware of their concerns and their issues and, as a matter of fact, have spoken to them on several occasions on the whole issue.

Like I said, when I knocked on doors, obviously I ran into a number of people who were seniors. I know the issue and it is one of the things that we have all, here in caucus, brought back to the table. One of the things, as a group and as a government, we decided to do was to make initiatives that apply to all pensioners – I should not say all pensioners, but certainly all seniors.

Seniors have taken a very big priority with us. The current Minister of Health and Community Services actually went around this Province and held, in his role when he was parliamentary secretary, literally dozens – fifty-one rings a bell with me – of consultations he had around this Province. I think there were over 1,000 people attended these consultations and presentations, so we did do quite a bit.

Mr. Speaker, to say that this government is icy and is non-caring, I certainly cannot agree with that. Like I said, with the initiatives that we have taken, that is not a road that I could even consider, considering how much the people around our table fight for the causes, for social justice, and in particular seniors around this Province.

I heard the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi talk about our drug program. That is an initiative that we put in place for all seniors, Mr. Speaker. She talked about the home care, and little did she mention that we are now working on a whole long-term care strategy.

Mr. Speaker, the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi gets up and talks. She doesn't like to talk about numbers. She just actually got up and said that - I don't like to talk about numbers – so maybe it is time that we put the NDP addition clock up again, so every time she talks the Minister of Finance can run numbers for us to see exactly how much she would spend with no conscience whatsoever.

This is the reality of it with pensions, and I remind the hon. Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi of this, the real issue here is that there was no money in the pension plans when we took government. From 1989-2002, the whole funds were raped and pillaged to build roads, because people thought that was a good thing to do.

Well, Mr. Speaker, here is the reality of it, and here is what we have done. The Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi is right, we do have a moral responsibility, and that is exactly why we took these initiatives.

Mr. Speaker, $1.9 billion in 2006 was paid into the pension plan. Again, we have a moral responsibility to make sure that pensions are there for the people who worked for this Province, and will always be there for those who retire and have given their service to the people of this Province. That is exactly why we put in $1.953 billion in 2006.

We put in $788 million in special payments in 2005, Mr. Speaker. Again, we have a moral responsibility to ensure that there are pensions available to the people of this Province who work for the provincial government.

Mr. Speaker, that is total special payments of $2.74 billion so far we have paid into the pension plans in this Province. So, Mr. Speaker, to say we have forgotten, we are as cold as ice – we know we have a moral responsibility. We know that we want to make these plans – keep their existence; because, as the Minister of Finance said earlier, I think the teachers' pension was going to be bankrupt by 2012, certainly not a place where we want it to be.

Again, Mr. Speaker, $982 million in special payments we made in 2007; $470 million, another special payment in 2007, for a total of $1.45 billion in 2007 to these funds, the pension funds, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, this government has, in total, spent $4.22 billion in the pension funds in this Province. So, to say that we do not have a moral responsibility is not quite true, Mr. Speaker. We more than have a moral responsibility; we realize that governments previous to ours had raped and pillaged the pension plans, and it is this government that is keeping it afloat and keeping it alive. Mr. Speaker, that is the reality of the pension plans in this Province.

Mr. Speaker, I did not want to take up too much time, and I have probably gone on a bit longer than I thought I would, but I really wanted to talk about what has happened since 2003 in the Department of Health and Community Services, and a direction that this government took right off the bat. It was a part of our Blue Book commitment in 2003. Mr. Speaker, it was all about addressing the needs of seniors in this Province.

When we talk about pensioners, certainly we talk about seniors. The very first thing that was done, there was a ministerial council struck on seniors in this Province, and that ministerial council was headed up by the Minister of Health and Community Services. It had the Minister of Education on it, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Tourism, Culture, Recreation, and several other ministers. So, right off the bat, what we did as a government, we brought the issues of seniors right to the Cabinet table with a group of ministers engaged in seniors' initiatives.

Again, Mr. Speaker, Health and Community Services, under the guidance of Minister Wiseman now was responsible for that department. As well, Mr. Speaker, besides that, there was an interdepartmental working group put together, meaning top bureaucrats from all these different departments met on a regular basis to ensure a cohesive combination between the ministers and between top civil servants within each department, to make sure again that seniors' initiatives were highlighted.

Mr. Speaker, what came out of that, I guess, was the establishment of an Aging and Seniors Division that was placed in Health and Community Services and, Mr. Speaker, that has become, and the idea of it was to become, a centre of expertise on seniors' initiatives.

I know that right now we have a staff, I believe, of seven or nine people. They are consultants. Actually, the lady who heads it up right now is doing her doctorate in this field, so we are certainly well-informed on seniors' initiatives and a number of the initiatives that they have carried out.

Besides that, Mr. Speaker, and actually I only attended a meeting last month or a couple of months ago – there is another one coming up this month, actually - for a Provincial Advisory Council. Mr. Speaker, that is made up of seniors from across this Province who meet, I will say, four or five times a year, who come together. I have the privilege of sitting on the committee, on behalf of the minister. We have a chairman and, like I said, a number of members. Mr. Speaker, they bring seniors' issues to the table every single meeting that we have. Of course, this is another avenue for seniors' issues to come through an avenue to get into the department with myself there and with some of the top people in the department who are part of the seniors and aging division. Then, Mr. Speaker, we translate it to the minister or refer it to the minister. Mr. Speaker, there is a constant pipeline now of seniors issues in this Province.

Mr. Speaker, once we formed the government, like I said, the current Minister of Health and Community Services was actually the Parliamentary Secretary. What he did was go around the Province holding consultation meetings. Like I said earlier, I believe it was certainly dozens. I cannot recall the exact number, but I know it was dozens of meetings across this Province where he saw over 1,000 seniors, Mr. Speaker, 1,000 seniors with a variety of issues that kept note of, and from that there was a public policy developed for seniors in this Province.

Mr. Speaker, being it late and I could go on - because of those consultations we ended up with a healthy aging policy framework. There were six priority directions, twenty-eight goals and 172 actions. Mr. Speaker, that is just to outline some of the things that we have done for seniors. I know there are many things I could get into and go on and elaborate on some of those initiatives. I know there are many things that I could go on and talk about, as to what we have done for pensioners and seniors as a group, inclusive.


Mr. Speaker, I just want to remind the public out there that we have not forgotten about pensioners. We have committed significant dollars to the pension funds to make sure they remain healthy and viable. Mr. Speaker, not only that but we have done a number of initiatives which the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Human Resources, Labour and Employment outlined earlier.


Mr. Speaker, on that I will sit down. I know we have some other business. I believe my friend from Port de Grave will clue up debate on this motion. I can assure the seniors of this Province they are far from forgotten about.

Thank you very much.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member from Port de Grave to close the debate.

MR. BUTLER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Before I begin with my closing comments, I want to, I guess, correct something that I read into the record when I was here, but the real private member's motion is what was read into the record by my hon. colleague on Monday past. I guess I have the old copy here, but when we placed it before our Table Officers they advised us that there was some grammar that we should change.

The one that I read in was the one that was clarified and changes made by the Table Officers. The correct resolve there, Mr. Speaker, is that, therefore be it resolved that the House of Assembly urges the government to resume the practice of matching increases for public service pensioners to wage increases for public sector employees.

In my closing comments, I want to thank each and every individual who stood today in their places and made their comments. I reference first the Minister of Human Resources, Labour and Employment, who is also responsible for many other duties, and the Member for St. John's Centre, where he mentioned in his comments about how the government put funds into the pension fund so that down the road there would be a pension there for the individuals. He mentioned very clearly the programs outlined by his department and other departments for all seniors and residents of this Province, Mr. Speaker.

I want to thank the member for Cartwright–L'Anse au Clair, the Leader of the Opposition, who mentioned many issues that are relevant to her not only in her district but throughout the Province. Through her speech, she got some feedback from the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board, when he mentioned that the cost on a yearly basis would be approximately $40,000,000. Mr. Speaker, when I look at the surplus that we have this year and what we are anticipating down the road – pardon?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. BUTLER: That is with one per cent. It would be $40,000,000.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. BUTLER: Okay. Even with $320,000,000, Mr. Speaker, I think for the people we are referencing here, with the surpluses that we have, it should be considered by government, this particular private member's resolution. It affects 20,000 families, we know, in this Province, Mr. Speaker, and they deserve better.

I want to reference the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board and thank him for his comments, the Member for Humber East, when he outlined some of the amounts that people receive in the public service sector. He mentioned people who receive in the vicinity of $16,700 and others who are in the $23,000 bracket. We know, and we have debated this here, when we talk about poverty in this Province, those people with those figures, Mr. Speaker, are below the poverty line. He outlined the various programs, that if you pay in for a longer period of time I guess your benefits will be that much better. We understand that, Mr. Speaker.

I want to thank the Member for Signal Hill – Quidi Vidi, on her comments with regards to the issue of moral responsibility and how we are trying to eliminate poverty here, and here we have a group of individuals, some of them, as she mentioned, receiving as low as $10,000 per year. I have to say, I know that to be a fact because I am sure I am not the only one who visits constituents who find themselves in those positions.

I want to reference and thank the Member for Conception Bay South for his comments about how government put the funds in to protect the funding of this particular program.

I have to say that I did not stand here today or bring this motion forward with regard to saying that the government is not caring or if they are caring. Mr. Speaker, this is about listening to our constituents, listening to the concerns that they have and bringing them forward to the floor of the House of Assembly.

Mr. Speaker, since we came here today, just to give you an example - and I guess you could stand here all day and relate incidents - but I receive an e-mail and probably other people did, since we came here today, about one lady who e-mailed us and said her sister never worked all her life. She worked for thirty years and her sister receives more benefits than she does. That is an injustice, Mr. Speaker, that we should not tolerate in this Province of ours now that we are in the financial position that we find ourselves in. This is about justice for those people.

I mean, what was done or whether they had a plan or whatever, we should not shut the door that is saying, no, we cannot look at this or look at it now or in the future. We hear too often about the deal that we struck on the Upper Churchill many years ago and how on a yearly basis we are trying to correct that with the Government of Quebec but we do not get anywhere. This is a situation here, even though there is a plan in place, where those people are receiving what they were told they would receive. Now we have the opportunity, right here on the floor of this House of Assembly, to stand, each and every one of us, and say, yes, we can open this door, we can look at what those people are asking for.

Mr. Speaker, many of those people retired with very small pensions. They have continued to erode over the years, and I can tell you and members here know that they are suffering, Mr. Speaker. They carried this Province through very trying times, very trying circumstances for very low wages, and I say, Mr. Speaker, they deserve better. We can talk all day, Mr. Speaker, but we have to visit those people, we have to walk in their shoes.

I challenge, in closing, each and every individual in this hon. House, each and every one of us, Mr. Speaker - and I will read again the quote from the Premier on April 30: public sector pensioners will not be getting any indexing or any further benefits on their pensions in the foreseeable future under his mandate. I say to each and every individual, this is a free vote, Mr. Speaker, and I challenge all my colleagues to listen to their constituents, what they have said to them, because they listened to each and every one of us when we went banging on their doors in October. We listened to them and that is why we are here.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank each and every individual who took part in this debate and I ask all my hon. colleagues to speak on behalf of their constituents today and support this private member's motion.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER (Fitzgerald): Order, please!

Is the House ready for the Question?

AN HON. MEMBER: Ready, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the House of Assembly urges the government to consider the advisability of resuming the practice of matching increases for public service pensioners to wage increases for public sector employees.

All those in favour of the motion, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against the motion, 'nay'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: The motion is defeated.

Motion defeated.

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, although it being Private Members' Day, we still have further business that we would like to deal with, by leave, this afternoon. I understand it is mutual agreement; we have leave from the Opposition.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I would like to call Motion 4 from the Order Paper, third reading of a bill, An Act Respecting Registered Nurses. (Bill 3)

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Is it the will of the House that leave be granted for government to conduct ordinary business during Private Members' Day?

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. PARSONS: Yes, Mr. Speaker, it is.

MR. SPEAKER: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion that Bill 3, An Act Respecting Registered Nurses, be now read a third time?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay'.

The motion is carried.

CLERK: A bill, An Act Respecting Registered Nurses. (Bill 3)

MR. SPEAKER: Bill 3 has been now read a third time and it is ordered that the bill do pass and its title be as on the Order Paper.

On motion, a bill, "An Act Respecting Registered Nurses," read a third time, ordered passed and its title be as on the Order Paper. (Bill 3)

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, I further call third reading of a bill, number 3 from the Order Paper, An Act To Amend The Energy Corporation Act. (Bill 35)

MR. SPEAKER: Is it the pleasure of the House that Bill 35, An Act To Amend The Energy Corporation Act, be now read a third time?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: The motion is carried.

CLERK: A bill, An Act To Amend The Energy Corporation Act. (Bill 35)

MR. SPEAKER: Bill 35 has now been read a third time and it is ordered that the bill do pass and its title be as on the Order Paper.

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The Energy Corporation Act," read a third time, ordered passed and its title be as on the Order Paper. (Bill 35)

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding that we will continue with House proceedings and do Royal Assent on bills, so I assume we will take a break for a few minutes and prepare for that procedure?

MR. SPEAKER: This House will now stand in recess for the arrival of the Administrator.

The chimes will ring when we ask members to come back to the House for Royal Assent of the bills.

This House is now in recess.

Recess

 

MR. SPEAKER (Fitzgerald): Order please!

SERGEANT-AT-ARMS: Mr. Speaker, His Honour the Administrator has arrived.

MR. SPEAKER: Admit His Honour the Administrator.

SERGEANT-AT-ARMS: All rise.

[His Honour the Administrator takes the Chair]

SERGEANT-AT-ARMS: It is the wish of His Honour the Administrator that all present please be seated.

MR. SPEAKER: Your Honour, it is my agreeable duty on behalf of Her Majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects, Her Faithful Commons in Newfoundland and Labrador, to present to Your Honour bills for the appropriation of Supply and Supplementary Supply granted in the present session.

CLERK: A bill, "An Act For Granting To Her Majesty Certain Sums Of Money For Defraying Certain Additional Expenses Of The Public Service For The Financial Year Ending March 31, 2008 And For Other Purposes Relating To The Public Service." (Bill 13)

A bill, "An Act For Granting To Her Majesty Certain Sums Of Money For Defraying Certain Expenses Of The Public Service For the Financial Year Ending March 31, 2009 And For Other Purposes Relating To The Public Service." (Bill 25)

THE HONOURABLE CLYDE K. WELLS (Administrator): In Her Majesty's Name, I thank her Loyal Subjects, I accept their benevolence, and I assent to these bills.

MR. SPEAKER: May it please Your Honour, the General Assembly of the Province has at its present session passed certain bills, to which, in the name and on behalf of the General Assembly, I respectfully request Your Honour's assent.

CLERK: A bill, "An Act Respecting The Cost Of Consumer Credit Disclosure." (Bill 4)

A bill, "An Act To Amend The Access To Information And Protection Of Privacy Act." (Bill 6)

A bill, "An Act Respecting Architects And The Provision Of Architectural Services." (Bill 5)

A bill, "An Act To Amend The Members Of The House Of Assembly Retiring Allowances Act." (Bill 8)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Support Orders Enforcement Act, 2006. (Bill 9)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Student Financial Assistance Act. (Bill 12)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Fatal Accidents Act. (Bill 17)

A bill, An Act To Repeal The Bulk Sales Act. (Bill 10)

A bill, An Act To Amend The City Of Mount Pearl Act, The City Of St. John's Act And The Municipalities Act, 1999. (Bill 15)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Forestry Act. (Bill 16)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Loan And Guarantee Act, 1957. (Bill 19)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Lobbyist Registration Act. (Bill 14)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Liquor Control Act Respecting A Licensee Levy. (Bill 18)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Labour Standards Act To Provide For Leave For Reservists. (Bill 1)

A bill, An Act Respecting Embalmers And Funeral Directors. (Bill 11)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Pension Benefits Act, 1997. (Bill 21)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Law Society Act, 1999. (Bill 22)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Labour Relations Act. (Bill 23)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Mental Health Care And Treatment Act. (Bill 24)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Income Tax Act, 2000. (Bill 26)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Health And Post-Secondary Education Tax Act. (Bill 27)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Retail Sales Tax Act And The Tax Agreement Act. (Bill 28)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Members Of The House Of Assembly Retiring Allowances Act, The Provincia1 Court Judges' Pension Plan Act, The Public Service Pensions Act, 1991, The Teachers' Pensions Act And The Uniformed Services Pensions Act, 1991. (Bill 20)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Partnership Act. (Bill 30)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Legal Aid Act. (Bill 29)

A bill, An Act To Provide For The Protection Of Personal Health Information. (Bill 7)

A bill, An Act To Amend The House Of Assembly Accountability, Integrity And Administration Act. (Bill 32)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Provincial Court Act, 1991. (Bill 31)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Judicature Act. (Bill 34)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Liquor Control Act. (Bill 37)

A bill, An Act To Amend The Child And Youth Advocate Act. (Bill 33)

A bill, "An Act To Enable The Issuance of Water Rights To the Energy Corporation Of Newfoundland And Labrador For The Lower Churchill River." (Bill 36).

A bill, "An Act Respecting Registered Nurses." (Bill 3)

A bill, "An Act To Amend The Energy Corporation Act." (Bill 35).

THE HONOURABLE CLYDE K. WELLS: In Her Majesty's Name, I assent to these bills.

The Administrator leaves the Chamber.

Mr. Speaker returns to the Chair.

MR. SPEAKER: Please be seated.

The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, if I may I just want to take a few moments as we wind up this session of the Forty-Sixth General Assembly to thank everybody, to thank all members on both sides of the House for what has been a very productive session. I think it went on a little longer than we thought and that is a good thing. We started in March, we have gone now through to a part of June and I think that is worthwhile, taking into consideration, of course, that we did not have the opportunity to sit in the fall. I think, as everybody knows, it was an opportunity for government after the election to sort of get in position, to get ministers in place and to give us an opportunity to be ready for the spring session. So, that has all worked out very well.

I want to commend the Opposition in a very warm way and a very sincere way. There are four of you and you have done an outstanding job, an exceptional job.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: It is not easy. You know, we were there with much greater numbers and there were days of course when the Opposition was reduced to the same number as you but there is an extremely heavy workload and you have carried the ball very well. You have kept us on our toes, as a government. You have asked very good questions, and we have tried to respond to the best of our ability and give you the answers. They were not always the answers that you might have wanted to hear, and sometimes some of us may have gone on a little long, longer than others, but still there was a good atmosphere in this House. There were very few moments where it got very heated, and there was a good sense of co-operation from that perspective. Obviously, the Opposition has a job to do, and the government has a job to do, but I thank all members.

I certainly welcome all our new members who had an opportunity to get on their feet for the first time and speak, and performed extremely well. They seem to have gotten their feet wet and gotten their sea legs in the House, and I think that is a good thing and it bodes well.

The most recent bill, of course - the most recent bills we just passed, but particularly the energy bill, I think it was a real sign of democracy in action and an opportunity for us to co-operate on what we all considered to be an extremely critical piece of legislation, an important piece of legislation.

As I have indicated to government officials, Cabinet and caucus, and as well to Opposition members and leaders, we do not consider this bill to be concluded. This bill will be a work in progress. What we can do to refine this bill and make it an even better piece of legislation as we move along, with the suggestions of any of our caucus members, our Cabinet members, members of the Official Opposition and the Leader of the New Democratic Party, and others, people who feel that we can make this the best possible piece of legislation, because at the end of the day it is about doing what is right for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, and I think we all feel that really very sincerely and from the bottom of our hearts.

So we will be having a look at this legislation, taking into consideration again a lot of the comments that have been made, and seeing if there are ways we can improve it, trying again to get the best possible advice and even additional legal advice that we can get to make sure that we are going to try and we can, in fact, accomplish the goals that we have set out to do.

I think it is the beginning of a new era where, if we can come out of here with the best possible legislation, that not only bodes well for this government but that bodes well for this Assembly of the Legislature, and it also bodes well for future governments. So I think, in the spirit of co-operation, as we move forward, we will attempt to make that the practice rather than the exception, especially with critical pieces of legislation like this.

I want to congratulate our House Leaders on making this run so well – the former House Leader, the Member for Baie Verte-Springdale, who did an exceptional job of carrying us to where we got; and, of course, then our new House Leader, the Member for St. George's-Stephenville East, who is doing a great job as well.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: As well, the Opposition House Leader and the Leader of the New Democratic Party, and the Opposition parties generally. You know, it is not easy to make this work. There has to be co-operation. The public does not see it, but behind the scenes there has to be some give-and-take, and a lot of co-operation, to make it work. I think the fact that the rules were opened up over the last few days to allow freedom within the rules to debate, I think that again shows that we need to get the truth out; we need to get the message out. We need to make sure that we get as much information out, in this Assembly, to make sure that we achieved, again, the best possible results. So, I want to thank the Opposition House Leader and the Leader of the New Democratic Party and in particular, of course, our new House Leader, the Member for St. George's-Stephenville East.

I want to thank the Speaker. We just finished hanging the last Speaker and your day will come, Mr. Speaker, and you will get a chance to be hung as well, but you have done a great job. You have certainly kept decorum within this House. There is obviously certainly a respect for you in that Chair. There is a respect for your seniority as a politician but also your seniority as a parliamentarian, and I commend you on the way you have conducted. There has certainly been fairness. I do not think there is any indication whatsoever that there has been any evidence whatsoever of any partisanship or inequality between both sides of the House, and again that bodes well for future sessions of the Legislature so I commend you. Enjoy some time off this summer. It can't be easy on the back, sitting in that chair all day long, but thank you very much for what you have done for us.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: The Deputy Speaker. I ask you - and I won't go any further - to keep the Deputy Speaker in your prayers. The Deputy Speaker is going through a difficult time, at this point in time, so remember Jack Byrne in your prayers over the next few days.

I want to thank, as well, the Chair of Committees who just recently, actually, left to go on holiday with his family on the basis that he had his vacation already booked a few days ago. So, in all fairness, that is the reason why he is not here.

I want to thank the Sergeant-at-Arms for again sitting there and listening to all of this, day in and day out.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Imagine what it is like to have to sit there and listen to all of it every single minute, but still she does it very graciously and admirably. She is a great addition to the House and we certainly thank you very, very much, as well as the members of the RNC, of course, who from time to time give you a break to go out and stretch your legs.

As well, the Pages who again are wonderful. I get a wave over there. Fellows, if you could just stand up.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Thanks very much; you are great. You certainly adapted to the position very well. You keep our glasses full, you keep us full of information, you distribute the material, and it is a very important function. It is also a great lesson in life for you, the chance to be here in this Assembly and to hear the good, the bad and the ugly. It is good, though, that you see democracy in action. You see us get a chance here to make legislation. When I was in here as a Deputy Clerk - around your age, actually - I have to tell you, I can remember pretty well all the bills that went before me; because you do remember the action, you do remember some of the discussion, and hopefully that will help you later in life when you can someday sit in here as members of the House.

As well, to the unsung heroes, the people behind the scenes: the staff at Hansard, the Broadcast Centre, and our Library staff. I want to thank them for making things run tickety-boo like clockwork and providing us with an accurate transcript every day after we have a chance to speak in the House. Sometimes we don't like to read what we have said but the truth is there and that is the way it is. They record it accurately. They do it very well, given the different dialects and the way we speak, and how fast some of us speak, present company included. I tell you, it can't be easy to capture it sometimes but they certainly do an admirable job.

Finally, of course, I want to thank the media. They have a job to do and we have a job to do and that can be difficult at times. I think they have a true appreciation for the job that we have to do, they recognize our role as a government, they keep our feet to the fire and that is important. They also have a respect for the Opposition and understand what the Opposition has to do, that they provide a service to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador by questioning the decisions of government, asking the right questions, following through, and again keeping our feet to the fire. That can only be done with the cooperation and the respect and the acknowledgement by the media that these roles have to be played. I want to thank them. From time to time we might get a little bit edgy, present company very much included, but you know sometimes the pressures of the job cause us to react. We respect their role and we thank them very much for their patience, we thank them for their coverage and we certainly hope we do not let them down in the future.

The final group, as well unsung heroes, are the Clerk and our Table Officers, who again - I have sat at that table, I know what it is like. I remember in the old Frank Moores days we had a lot of good laughs at that table, but it was a little more freewheeling than this. It was not the same as it is now where people sit kind of quietly. In those days, it was pretty rowdy, I can tell you, but there were a lot of good moments. We certainly appreciate it. You know the rules, you obviously assist the Speaker; and our new House Leader, as she was setting up and going through you were providing invaluable assistance to her and to us as a government. We certainly respect the role that you play and we thank you very much.

It is not exactly summer vacation because we all go back to work tomorrow. It is just that this is the public part of the job we do. We go back and roll up our sleeves and, apart from the business that we do, we also get an opportunity now to get into our districts and do what are some of the nice, very social things during the summer: attend some of the festivals and get out and talk to the people and meet the people, and again hear the good side but also hear some of their concerns. I think that is a great opportunity for us.

The nice thing I find about the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, they will always treat you with respect. I can count maybe a couple of fingers where somebody has confronted you with a situation in a public circumstance. That says a lot for the people. They have a lot of concerns out there, a lot of legitimate concerns, but they never embarrass public officials in public. The opportunity is there, even during elections or by-elections, but as well during these festivals, the chance to get out and mix, and talk to people and find out at the ground level, from the grassroots, what are the things that are really important to them and make sure that we never lose sight of them, as MHAs.

I certainly wish you all well and I certainly wish everybody a good summer. Of course, we will be obviously in contact and there will be some to-and-fro throughout the next few weeks and the next months, until we get back again in the fall.

Thank you, everybody, for your contribution to a very worthwhile session where we passed some 37 bills, I understand. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We certainly share in the comments that the Premier has espoused this evening, especially in acknowledging and thanking the people who work within this Chamber and outside of this Chamber, to ensure that the parliamentary process works and runs effectively on a day-to-day basis.

Mr. Speaker, every time I hear the Premier talk and offer up compliments to the Opposition I find it somewhat worrisome and I start to wonder how effective we really are in doing our job.

On a more serious side, our job really is to be the voice of people within the Province who oftentimes have had adverse perspectives or opinions than those taken by government. Our job is to raise the profile of issues that are important to them and to elevate them at a level within the parliamentary process so that they can be seen and dealt with in a very different perspective, that they themselves, on an ordinary basis, do not have the opportunity to do.

Mr. Speaker, we also see our job as an opportunity to not just be critical of government, but to applaud government when they do well, when they make decisions that are in the best interests of people and can help move our Province forward, not just at the present time but into the future.

Mr. Speaker, we feel that our job is to strengthen the policies that they bring forward in ways that they can be, and I think we have tried to do that over the past session of the House of Assembly on a number of bills, where we have looked at amendments, where we have had discussions and where we have been able to offer up suggestions.

I think, Mr. Speaker, what we have seen - and in my time here I have certainly seen in this session of the House of Assembly a session where we have probably turned a new page, and a page that does not just deal with raw, rhetorical politics, but deals with real policies that are strengthened and based on factual and informative debates that can be there to serve the greater good of the public; not that it has not been done in the past, but I think it has been done in this session with a lot less political rhetoric than it may have been done in the many sessions that I have sat in, in previous years, no doubt.

I certainly want to thank all members in the House of Assembly, and especially to thank my colleagues who have been a tremendous support. As you can well imagine, with such a small Opposition, our job is very challenging every single day, not only in just bringing forward issues that are informative and factual, but in trying to identify which issues need to be given profile and should be elevated. It is always a challenge for us, and I certainly thank them for the support that they have given me.

Mr. Speaker, as we all leave the House of Assembly, I know that despite what people often think when this Legislature closes that we all have extended holidays and vacations, it is never the case. I know that many members have very busy summers planned within their districts and their ridings, looking after the affairs of their constituents and those that elected them. I also know that ministers will be busy as well looking after the business of government and the business of the Province. In the midst of all of that, I hope that everyone will find an opportunity to enjoy the many events that are offered within our Province, to celebrate the culture and the history of this place that we are all so proud of, and to take an opportunity to spend a little bit of time with our families and to relax, so that when we do come back in the fall we are all refreshed and ready for many more long days and long hours of debate of public policy in the interest of the people in the Province.

To the new members of the House of Assembly, I remember what it was like when I was a new member coming here for the first time. Sometimes, it can be an intimidating process, but after the last few months I know that you have all found your own bearings in this place and have certainly contributed to the debate in a very meaningful way. I hope that, as time goes on, we can certainly engage a lot more, each of us, in bringing forward those issues that are important to the people that we represent.

I will not single out everybody individually, Mr. Speaker, but for certain to thank you for the fairness that you have shown in this Assembly and for conducting the House in the manner that you have. I have certainly seen a tremendous level of decorum in this place in the last number of months and hopefully a level of decorum that we can continue into future sessions of this Parliament.

I wish all members well and I certainly thank government for their cooperation over the past number of months.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

MS MICHAEL: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

I am really pleased to stand this afternoon, following my two colleagues, the Premier and the Leader of the Official Opposition, and to join my voice with theirs.

Thank you, Mr. Premier, for the words that you spoke earlier.

This has been historic. We have used the word historic a number of times with regard to this session, but I think one of us has to name a reason why it has been historic. You have two leaders of Opposition Parties women. We started the session with that and we now also have the House Leader in the party as a woman. I think this is a historic moment for us in this Province.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS MICHAEL: Everything that we do, let's hope that we are modelling for young people in the Province, men and women, a way in which this Assembly can work.

I want to, before I say thank you's, talk about what was really important for me during this session. The Premier has referred to it, and I think so has the Leader of the Official Opposition. The way in which we worked together with regard to Bill 35 in particular, I think, is really something for us to learn from, as a group.

We do have common interests, and we have so much expertise and knowledge in this room that whenever we work together on something it can only be for the better. I think we have all acknowledged that changes that were made to Bill 35 were changes that enhanced the bill. I was delighted to hear the Premier say publicly, this afternoon, his awareness that there is still work that needs to be done, that there are still things out there that are not totally satisfactory yet, and government has publicly said now that it wants to continue looking at that bill and to listen to the issues that were put forward that did not get fully resolved. I would like to think - and I challenge all of us in saying this - I would like to think that we may be able to use what happened around Bill 35 as a model for continuing working together in the House of Assembly.

Many of the Legislatures in this country do have standing committees that just do not work during Estimates time, that take difficult pieces of legislation and work through them as committees and, as committees, openly have the experts come in and meet with the committees and work on the pieces of legislation.

I am not saying that has to happen with every single piece of legislation, because some of them are just housekeeping pieces, but when we have difficult pieces of legislation that are substantial pieces of legislation, maybe we can not just let it happen because it has sort of happened in an ad hoc way, but maybe we can start planning how we can continue working together in the way we did, because I think it was extremely important that we work together that way.

The other thing, from a personal perspective, that I would like to share with all of my colleagues and all of the staff is that I felt a difference in the House this time, from my perspective, as the lone person from my party, and as the leader of my party. That came, I think, as a direct result of the Green report, and I really want to thank everybody for the recognition that was given to myself, personally, in the role that I play. You all know that I take that role very, very seriously, and I really felt, throughout this session, that I was treated as an equal, and I think that is the way we all should be in the House of Assembly. I want to acknowledge that and say I think it is something that we should all be proud of, in this House.

I join with the Premier and with the Leader of the Official Opposition in thanking all of the individuals who have been thanked, both the MHAs and the staff. I would like to recognize also, even though they are in the background - and it is not just Hansard who is in the background, or the technicians down in the Broadcast Centre - but the little staff that I have is in the background, just like all of our staffs are in the background. They worked very hard to enable me to play the role that I have played in this House, and I want to recognize them because they have to work long and hard to help me do what I do when I stand here, which is the same for all of us, so I recognize all of our staffs who are there in the background, who are sometimes sitting up looking at us, who don't miss a word that we say up in the offices, and are really ready to help us meet our goals.

The final thing, I would just like to join with the Premier in wishing all the best to Jack Byrne's family. He certainly will be in my thoughts. What can we say? I send out my wishes to his family.

So, everybody, have a wonderful summer. I am sure we will all bump into each other as the summer goes. It will not be quite as mad as a campaign summer, but I am sure we will be bumping into each other at various events.

Thanks to everybody.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I certainly will not repeat anything that the party leaders had to say but I wholeheartedly endorse the comments of all of them, but I would be remiss as Opposition House Leader if I did not say a thank you to yourself and all the staff who make this place operate, and to the members for the very productive session that we have had this time around.

I would like to say, as well, a comment strictly to the Government House Leader. I had a great deal of respect and admiration for the former Government House Leader, and albeit the current Government House Leader I have only been dealing with for a short time, I can say that she is absolutely top shelf when it comes to dealing with matters. This place works because there is co-operation between the House Leaders, to a large extent, and I appreciate the co-operation that she has extended. We have had a great working relationship, and I look forward to having the same when we return in the fall.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The Speaker will be very quick and recognize and say thank you, before we adjourn, to all members of the House for the courtesy that you have shown me, especially the House Leaders on both sides and the Leader of the New Democratic Party. While I have been here for a while, it is the first time that I have sat here and I have had lots to learn myself.

I wish all members well as they go out and do their summer duties; the real work of a member of the House of Assembly. It is a time when we get Cabinet ministers out to our districts, and we have lots of requests to fill. I have had three requests for the Minister of Health and Community Services, and I have refused the three of them. I do not have that much time. I say to my neighbouring colleague, he doesn't mind when I get up and cut him off, he expects that.

I thank all members for their co-operation and I wish you all a safe summer and look forward to your safe and sound return in the fall.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

The hon. the Government House Leader.

The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Just before the Government House Leader has the final word, I just ask special leave of the House for one final unanimous resolution and that is: Go Danny, go! Do you think we can support that? Danny Cleary! Danny Cleary!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: It is obvious that nobody wants to leave here.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MS JONES: Mr. Speaker, as long as we are clarifying that it is Danny Cleary, the Opposition is wholeheartedly behind him and we are ready to wave the flag too, I say to the Premier.

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, before I do the last motion for this session, I certainly would like to thank everyone as well. I have been the Government House Leader now for two weeks, and certainly, coming into this session, did not necessarily expect I would be the government House Leader.

I really want to thank everyone sincerely for their co-operation, all of the members of the House of Assembly, the staff at the House of Assembly, the Table Officers, and certainly the Opposition, and everyone's co-operation to make this session to be as successful as it was.

I just want to say, for the record, that it is certainly my honour and my privilege to be the first female Government House Leader in the history of Newfoundland and Labrador.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS BURKE: As a government, as we want to advance the status of women in Newfoundland and Labrador, to make sure that we have women in leadership positions is very important; and to be part of the history is certainly, as I said, Mr. Speaker, my honour.

Mr. Speaker, I certainly look forward to further sessions of the House. As the members of the House of Assembly know, I have no problem with sitting as many days as possible and as late hours as possible as well. I certainly look forward to that.

Mr. Speaker, it is moved and seconded that when this House adjourns today it stands adjourned to the call of the Chair. The Speaker, in his absence from the Province, the Deputy Speaker may give notice and thereupon the House shall meet at the time and date stated by the notice of the proposed sitting.

It is moved that this House do now adjourn.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the adjournment motion?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay'.

This House now stands adjourned until the call of the Chair.

On motion, the House adjourned to the call of the Chair.