May 18, 2010                        HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS                  Vol. XLVI  No. 23


The House met at 1:30 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (Fitzgerald): Order, please!

Admit strangers.

Today the Chair would like to extend some special welcomes to visitors in our gallery. The Chair would first like to welcome Kaitlin Strong from Heritage Collegiate in the District of Bonavista South who has been selected as Newfoundland and Labrador's 2010 Lester B. Pearson Scholarship winner. Kaitlin is accompanied by her parents, William and Suzette Strong.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The Speaker would also like to welcome ten students representing the Beachy Cove Elementary Student Council from the District of Conception Bay East & Bell Island. The students are accompanied by their teachers Joe Day and Roxanne Roberts.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The Speaker would also like to welcome the 50 Plus Group of Swift Current-Black River and Garden Cove from the District of Bellevue. The group is accompanied by founder Shelly Borthwick, Lorraine Smith and Linda Eddy, as well as the vice chair of the Swift Currant-Black River local service district, Mr. Bruce Mercer. I understand Pastor Rowe is part of the group, and the bus driver, Mr. Victor Romaine.

Welcome to the House of Assembly.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair would also like to welcome His Worship, Mayor Eric Skinner from the Town of Harbour Breton.

Welcome.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

Statements by Members

MR. SPEAKER: The following members' statements will be heard: the hon. the Member for the District of Grand Falls-Windsor-Green Bay South; the hon. the Member for the District of The Straits & White Bay North; and the hon. the Member for the District of Bellevue.

The hon. the Member for District of Grand Falls-Windsor-Green Bay South.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HUNTER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, and my fellow hon. Members of the House of Assembly, I rise today in this hon. House to congratulate Miss Grand Falls-Windsor, Erynn Linehan, for being named Miss Teen Fitness at the 2010 Miss Teen Newfoundland and Labrador Pageant.

Erynn is a Grade 11 student at Exploits Valley High and is involved in basketball and volleyball. She states that sports are her forte and the competition for Miss Teen Fitness included such things as 310 squats and sixty push-ups.

Erynn, special thanks for representing the District of Grand Falls-Windsor-Green Bay South. I ask all hon. members to join with me today to congratulate Erynn Linehan for being awarded the Miss Teen Fitness 2010.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of The Straits & White Bay North.

MR. DEAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise in this hon. House today to congratulate the Grade 12 graduating class of Harriot Curtis Collegiate in St. Anthony. I had the honour this past weekend to attend the graduating ceremony of Harriot Curtis Collegiate, and was very pleased to watch as forty-eight students received their graduation certificates. A moment I am sure that will be forever etched in their memory.

These graduates are our future and I want to commend them for staying the course and achieving this wonderful goal. The valedictorian at this year's graduation was Ms Kathryn O'Rielly, a title I am sure she well deserved. The theme for the graduation was: Whatever Tomorrow Brings. My wish for these students is that tomorrow will bring them success in whatever path they choose, whether it be to further their education or to enter the workforce.

Mr. Speaker, I ask all members of this House to join with me in congratulating the Grade 12 graduating class of Harriot Curtis Collegiate and to wish them well in their future endeavours.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. PEACH: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise in this hon. House today to recognize the 50 Plus Club from Swift Current-Black River of Placentia Bay. This club is a newly formed club, only holding their charter meeting in 2010.

Mr. Speaker, the Swift Current-Black River 50 Plus Club is partnering with the youth of their community and have organized an active and healthy living program for their community of Swift Current and the neighbouring communities of Garden Cove and North Harbour.

I would like to recognize three very special women of this group the founders: Ms Shelly Borthwick, Ms Lorraine Smith, and Ms Linda Eddy. It is their hard work and dedication that has brought forth the formation of this 50 Plus seniors group. These individuals are actively promoting the Province's active and healthy living program initiatives in the Swift Current area.

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all hon. members join me in wishing the Swift Current-Black River 50 Plus Club all the best in their future endeavours.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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!

MR. KING: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise in the House today to congratulate the winner of one of the largest scholarships awarded in the Province. Teachers and students at Heritage Collegiate in Lethbridge have a lot to celebrate today, because Kaitlin Strong, a student at the school, has been named the winner of the Lester B. Pearson Scholarship.

Ms Strong, a sixteen-year-old Level II student, was selected on the basis of both academic achievement and the quality of her character. She is involved in a variety of school activities, from concert band to volleyball and softball, and is editor of the student newspaper. Ms Strong is also a member of the school's winning robotics team which will represent this Province at the international robotics competition in Hawaii in June.

Outside of school, Mr. Speaker, she is a proficient downhill skier, scuba diver and piano player. Truly, her parents, William and Suzette Strong, have a lot to be proud of.

In September, Kaitlin will travel to Pearson College and together with 100 other students selected from more than eighty countries around the world, she will spend two years studying at the college and graduate with the prestigious International Baccalaureate Diploma. This is a pre-university course of study designed for highly motivated high school students which offers a comprehensive international curriculum.

Pearson College, Mr. Speaker, located near Victoria, British Columbia, is one of the thirteen United World Colleges. These colleges are dedicated to the promotion of international understanding by creating an environment in which students are brought together to both study and to serve the community.

The provincial government is proud to support this renowned scholarship program with a $35,000 annual investment which goes directly to the college to fund the education of two students from Newfoundland and Labrador. Mr. Speaker, in September, Kaitlin will join Brandi O'Keefe from Ferryland, who received the 2009 scholarship.

Mr. Speaker, providing funding for students' education and future is one of the most important investments governments can make. To that end, we provide approximately $254,000 in scholarships annually to high school students alone. This is an investment we are pleased to make because it is an investment in our future.

On behalf of the hon. House, Mr. Speaker, I offer my sincere best wishes to Kaitlin and I hope that in the years to come, she returns to Newfoundland and Labrador to contribute her skills, her knowledge and her determination to the betterment of our great Province.

Thank you.

Congratulations.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of The Straits & white Bay North.

MR. DEAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to first of all thank the minister for an advance copy of his statement, and certainly we would like to join with him in congratulating Ms Strong today in the wonderful accomplishment. It is a wonderful once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for sure.

Not only is the scholarship itself a unique scholarship; it is something that has been on the go for many years. I believe since 1974 this scholarship has been offered, and the Province and has partnered with the college to do this. To see that our Province has such dedicated and such disciplined and committed young people to participate in such a scholarship program is a wonderful thing. I trust that the funding will continue as further years come upon us and we will see more inspiring people from our Province participate in the same thing.

I would like to also mention, of course, there are other scholarships, as the minister would be aware of, and I think a couple of our students from the Province just received the TD Scholarship, Cody Dunne from Booth Memorial, and also Katie Flynn from Mountain Field Academy in Forteau.

Certainly, all that participate in scholarships again, I would acknowledge and congratulate, and a special congratulations to Ms Strong and her family today that are here.

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, too, thank the minister for an advance copy of his statement, and I am delighted to stand and pass along my congratulations to Kaitlin Strong and her parents. Kaitlin is obviously an extraordinary student and will certainly benefit from receiving the scholarship to Pearson College.

The International Baccalaureate program really is a fantastic program, allowing students to take university level courses, and at the same time receive intellectual stimulation, which is wonderful, but also doing community service work and being able to take part in a creative, artistic and physical component – that is also part of the program. We can see from the description of Kaitlin's activities that this will suit her wonderfully. The IB program graduates are well-rounded young citizens who want to be leaders.

The program is actually offered in St. John's at Holy Heart of Mary School; it does cost around $1,000 per student. I really encourage the minister to look at how we might be able to increase the number of students who actually do the program here in Newfoundland and Labrador, and see an investment that would allow more students to be able to benefit from this wonderful program.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Further statements by ministers?

The hon. the Minister of Innovation, Trade and Rural Development.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SKINNER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, today's youth are the building blocks of our Province's future.

As reflected in the Speech from the Throne, Budget 2010, the Youth Retention and Attraction Strategy, and the actions of all provincial government departments, supporting the development of the Province's youth is a high priority.

The youth-related initiatives of the Department of Innovation, Trade and Rural Development are largely based on the long-standing Getting the Message Out program, and Innovation Newfoundland and Labrador: A Blueprint for Prosperity.

We are motivated by the goal of developing future leaders in business, academia and the public service. We believe that it starts by fostering an innovative and entrepreneurial spirit among youth at the junior high and high school levels.

Today, I am pleased to stand in this hon. House to announce the launch of a province-wide youth innovation and entrepreneurship initiative – the Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Teacher Resource Manual that will be delivered to junior high and high school students as part of their curriculum in fall 2010.

The manual is an extension of the Getting the Message Out program's classroom material that has been delivered by teachers to students as part of their curriculum for the past five years. Materials included in the manual will highlight for students how innovation can be leveraged to create entrepreneurial opportunities, how it benefits our local communities and how it strengthens the provincial economy.

To best capture the interest of students and stimulate discussion in the classroom, the manual includes a series of case studies that profile local entrepreneurs who have experienced success in a wide range of industries such as manufacturing, tourism and advanced technology.

In an increasingly competitive, knowledge-driven business climate, the need to reach out to students is great. The need may be even greater to help create awareness of the possibilities that exist in Newfoundland and Labrador and to instill an entrepreneurial spirit among youth for the long-term success of our Province.

Achieving our goals and opening the eyes of youth to what is possible in Newfoundland and Labrador requires hard work and extensive collaboration.

This new manual would not have been possible without the ongoing collaboration between teachers and the Departments of Education and Innovation, Trade and Rural Development.

I would like to acknowledge the important role that the staff of the Department of Education played in this initiative. Their work ensures that the new material is presented in an easy-to-use format and consistent with the objectives of the existing curriculum.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of The Straits & White Bay North

MR. DEAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would, first of all, again like to thank the minister for an advance copy of his statement.

I would acknowledge that this is a good initiative. We all know that if we capture the imagination of the youth while they are young then we have them forever. His first statement: Today's youth are the building blocks of the Province's future - that is the way we look at youth, but I would also ascertain that the young people are not only our future but they are our present and supporting them through their education process with different initiatives certainly is very important. This program to show young people of the Province that you can stay in our Province and still be successful is key, and the way that you can catch them before they make the life changing decisions to leave the Province because we know it is very difficult to bring them back.

Entrepreneurship is not just a spirit, it is an attitude and it is a way of looking at the world, a way of life. Whether you are bottling water or you are doing something different from that and so on, it takes that entrepreneurial drive. So the earlier it is learned, the more likely it will stay with them throughout adulthood.

Again, thank you, and I would trust all of our young people will involve themselves in these types of programs.

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

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

I, too, thank the minister for the advance copy of his statement. I am delighted with the initiative that he has told us about today because I, too, see the future of this Province and the young people of today, and I see a bright future for us in this Province. That is why it is important to teach young people of all the opportunities that they can use as they move into post school life.

I would hope that this manual will profile not only local entrepreneurs and individual entrepreneurs but also talk about the whole co-operative spirit, and how people with entrepreneurial spirits working together also create wonderful businesses in this Province and how that has been part of our history. I, too, hope - and I look forward to seeing the manual to see what is in it, but I, too, hope that the manual will also show young people the great strides that have been made by working people joining together in labour organizations to better the working conditions of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

I applaud the manual that the minister has told us about and I look forward to seeing a copy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Further statements by ministers?

The hon. the Minister of Environment and Conservation.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS JOHNSON: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the provincial government is delighted to partner once again with the Newfoundland and Labrador Lung Association to support projects and programs that both reduce greenhouse gas emissions in our Province and contribute to a healthier environment. With a contribution of $50,000 from my department, the Lung Association will work toward advancing activities in the area of climate change and air quality.

Through our partnership, a variety of programs have been delivered such as Tire Pressure Information Clinics; Idling Awareness Campaigns for vehicles, with a particular emphasis on school buses; and a Retire Your Ride program aimed at reducing the number of older, high polluting vehicles on our roads. All in all, Mr. Speaker, the combined outcomes of these projects is estimated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in this Province by more than 2,300 tonnes annually.

Mr. Speaker, I had the pleasure of joining the Lung Association and the Western Newfoundland and Labrador School District in Corner Brook for the launch of their anti-idling campaign. The initiative is aimed at reducing idling around schools and educating drivers on the health and environmental implications of their actions. I witnessed first-hand, Mr. Speaker, the commitment that these young people have to environmental sustainability. These children even had violation tickets to issue to their parents, family and friends who may potentially idle their vehicles in their presence, and they spoke passionately about how idling affects us all. I am pleased to report, Mr. Speaker, that all schools under the Western School District are now idle free. Initiatives like this one are made possible through our support of the Lung Association and their dedication to healthy living and a healthy environment.

We recognize that these initiatives are extremely instrumental in increasing awareness around the issue of climate change and its effects on our Province. Partnerships with organizations like the Lung Association also add to the successful implementation of our Climate Change Action Plan. Furthermore, in the recent Speech from the Throne, Mr. Speaker, we committed to consultations on climate change and the development of a discussion document on a climate change policy.

Mr. Speaker, we look forward to maintaining supportive relationships with community partners such as the Lung Association, as we continue to educate the people of the Province on climate change and the health benefits that are derived from environmental stewardship.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. 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 are pleased to see government working with the various organizations throughout the Province, and in particular the Lung Association.

There are a couple of comments I would like to make with regard to Mr. Thomey and the Lung Association. I know there are other initiatives, and I am just wondering if the minister has decided or made any decision on the smoking ban that those people are fighting for within cars where children are also aboard the vehicles.

Mr. Speaker, another issue, we talk about the Retire Your Ride program, the idling of older cars. I know in my area I have been after the Department of Transportation and Works to put an extension on a parking area out there where 100 cars park each day, so there will be less cars and vehicles and emissions going into the air, Mr. Speaker.

The top one all together, is last year at the Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador Convention they put a motion forward against the use of pesticides for cosmetic reasons. I know the City of St. John's put a motion forward the same way. The people who are involved here, Mr. Speaker, are the Canadian Cancer Society, the Lung Association, The Newfoundland Medical Association, the registered nurses, the Canadian Association of Physicians.

So I ask the minister - I know we have not heard anything from her yet on whether that is going to take place or not, but we hope that issue will be brought forward. I say to the hon. members opposite, she just made her statement and rather than me asking her, she should have had it in her statement.

Mr. Speaker, I say to the minister, I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. BUTLER: – and, Mr. Speaker, hopefully the government will continue to work with great organizations like the Lung Association.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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 am really glad to hear about these awareness campaigns because they are very important, especially around schools or in the whole school district for getting children involved and for reducing pollution around a vulnerable segment of our population. I am glad to hear about all the schools in the Western School District now being idle free.

Mr. Speaker, we need more than awareness and incentive programs. We need to develop and enforce much stricter vehicle emissions limits as has happened in other jurisdictions such as British Columbia, and in a State in the U.S. like California. We need to have regulations that ban idling outside of all our public buildings in this Province in order to eliminate the problem because awareness programs have not been effective and they will not work without regulation.

Government must also act more to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions. We must install scrubbers at the Holyrood Generating Station. Imposing a gas flare tax to eliminate the pollution being created in our offshore is something else that would help with greenhouses gases. The alternatives to flaring are more expensive, so the industry has to be required to do them; they will not do it voluntarily. Our children will thank us for doing much more than just awareness programs if we put some of these regulations in place.

Thank you, 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.

Mr. Speaker, on the Open Line program this morning in responding to a private member's motion that government has on the Order Paper relative to the energy corporation's decision out of Quebec, the Minister of Government Services and Lands indicated that it was perfectly acceptable to debate a motion and vote on it even though he had not read the material relative to the issue.

I ask the minister: Is this how you run your department in making decisions based on what you are told, never reading the information or the material for yourself?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister Natural Resources and Deputy Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition is right in that we put forward a motion to be debated in private members' day tomorrow with regard to the Régie ruling in Quebec.

Mr. Speaker, when we got that decision last week we invited members of the Opposition to a briefing provided by Nalcor to explain the gist of that ruling. Subsequent to that, the Leader of the Opposition asked for an English translation. We had hoped to have it by now and have it in their hands earlier this week. We do not have it, Mr. Speaker. It is not going to be available today. We do not expect members of the Opposition to debate a resolution without all of the relevant information, therefore we have withdrawn. We will put it back on the agenda again, Mr. Speaker, as soon as the English translation is available.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Mr. Speaker, since the Deputy Premier has risen to speak for the Minister of Government Services and Lands on this issue maybe she will answer the other questions as well. She is right; she did inform us late this morning that they would withdraw the motion this afternoon. However, Mr. Speaker, I have to question why two backbenchers in the government would bring forward a motion that they had little or no information regarding, Mr. Speaker, and why would the Minister of Government Services and the Minister of Business go to the public airways and defend the fact that government would make this decision without proper information?

I ask the minister: Is it standard practice within her government to make decisions on the blind?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Deputy Premier and Minister of Natural Resources.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, this is a very significant issue for this government and we do not rely only on the English translation to get our information. Our Cabinet has been briefed on a regular basis on this issue, on the grounds before we laid the complaints with the Régie, on what happened during that whole process of the hearings. Mr. Speaker, they were briefed when we got the results by Nalcor and by Nalcor's legal team.

Also, Mr. Speaker, within our departments we have the capacity to translate ourselves the documents that came out of the Régie. The official translation requested by the Leader of the Opposition and promised by the Premier is not yet available, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I do not put a lot of credence into briefings, I say to the minister opposite. We got briefings from your government on Abitibi as well, and then we find out you expropriated a mill and liabilities around the environment which we were told were not part of the deal, Mr. Speaker. So forgive us if we want to see the information and read it ourselves.

I ask the minister again, Mr. Speaker: When that motion was being tabled in the House of Assembly yesterday I was receiving an e-mail on my BlackBerry from the Premier's office telling me there was no English version of this available. Why would you even bring a motion to the House of Assembly to be voted on when you had no English copy of the information to be circulated for the debate?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Natural Resources and Deputy Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, talk about accuracy of information that is presented here in the House. When we expropriated the mill in Grand Falls-Windsor, even though we did it inadvertently, we did not take on the remediation responsibilities for that site. That has been pointed out to the Leader of the Opposition a number of times, and had she been familiar with legislation that was probably brought in under your own Administration, you would know that to be the truth. They did know it when they were in power, Mr. Speaker, they certainly do not know it now.

With regard to the other issue, Mr. Speaker, we did not have it when the phone call was made yesterday looking for it. We hoped to have it yesterday. It is not available. A decision was made this morning, Mr. Speaker, to withdraw this motion in the House.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It just goes to show that this government makes decisions on the blind. They make it based on what they are told, not what they actually have in their hands, Mr. Speaker, and that is the kind of law-making decisions that we are seeing in this Province today.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday in the Budget Estimates Committee, the Minister of Natural Resources advised that there is currently no capacity to transmit extra power to the Avalon Peninsula with our current transmission infrastructure. Using our current lines, power from hydro projects such as the Exploits can only be transported as far as Sunnyside. This came as somewhat of a surprise to me, Minister, since I have heard your government talk about, on a number of occasions, reducing the amount of power generated at Holyrood with clean energy.

So I ask the minister today: What is the issue that currently prevents excess power from being shipped onto the Avalon Peninsula?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Deputy Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, again we have further evidence of the knowledge that was held by these very people who sat in government. The situation we have with the infrastructure coming on the Avalon Peninsula did not occur in the last seven years. This has been the situation with regard to our infrastructure and with regard to Holyrood for a number of years.

Yes, especially when we talk about development of the Lower Churchill, we talk about bringing clean, green energy to the Avalon Peninsula, and we will no longer require the facility at Holyrood. Until we make a decision, Mr. Speaker, on the Lower Churchill project, we will not be making significant and expensive repairs to the infrastructure because we do not need them at this point in time, and we are not going to spend good money after bad.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

She has not told us what the problem is, so I do not know if she does not know or she just does not want to tell us.

Mr. Speaker, we do know that with the closure of the Abitibi mill in Grand Falls-Windsor there is eighty-four megawatts of electricity going into the grid. The minister confirmed yesterday that there is extra power available at Bay d'Espoir, but they are spilling water because of no demand and flat industry growth.

I ask the minister: As a result of the power from the Exploits, how much extra capacity do we currently have at Bay d'Espoir's generating facility?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Deputy Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, it depends on the drawn down on the load, the time of year and so on. I do not keep monthly statistics in my department on the draw down of power coming out of Bay d'Espoir.

Mr. Speaker, the Exploits River does not have a reservoir system, so there is no way to store power. When the electricity is generated on the Exploits River, it is put immediately into the grid. What happens in our facility in Bay d'Espoir then, power is stored because water is stored in the reservoir. Sometime over the summer when demand has been low - we have had two pulp and paper mills shut down, Mr. Speaker – it has caused us to spill water because there has not been a great demand.

That is simply it, Mr. Speaker. I have talked about it a number of times publicly and here in the House of Assembly.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We know that there is extra power available at Bay d'Espoir. We know that the government opposite allowed two paper mills to close on their watch, and we know that we cannot transmit that excess power onto the Avalon Peninsula.

I ask the minister if she can give us some answers in terms of have you looked at what kinds of infrastructure upgrades are required. Have you put any cost on being able to run this power into the Avalon grid, and if that is something that is in the plans for Nalcor or government?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Deputy Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, usually we are under criticism from the Opposition about how much time we spend around energy and particularly the development of the Lower Churchill, any investment in that project.

Hours and hours are spent in terms of addressing the energy needs that we have here in the Province, in discussions around the elimination of fossil fuels being used in the generation of power, particularly as it relates to Holyrood, and, Mr. Speaker, planning to deal with the Holyrood situation.

We are very blessed in having green power for the majority of our needs here in the Province, but to be a totally green Province is our objective.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to ask the minister: If there were upgrades made to the transmission capacity on the Avalon Peninsula, how much clean hydro power could we transmit to this region of the Province, and would oil consumption be reduced at Holyrood resulting in lower cost of electricity for the consumers of the Province?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Deputy Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS DUNDERDALE: Of course, Mr. Speaker, the answer is yes. Nalcor has costed out the infrastructure that is going to be required to bring in the right number of megawatts of electricity to serve the Avalon Peninsula with the elimination of Holyrood. That is a stated goal of this Province. It is one of the major reasons why we are so focused on the development of the Lower Churchill, Mr. Speaker.

All of the infrastructure that is going to be required to bring the power onto the Island part of the Province, transmit it across the Province and eliminate Holyrood, and also create a subsea line to Eastern Canada and through to the United States is all part of the planning of the development of the Lower Churchill.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The minister talks about the Lower Churchill transmission line, we are talking about using the water that we are spilling today to provide cheap, clean energy to people on the Avalon Peninsula, Minister.

After the mill in Stephenville closed, the government put $10 million in place to offset electricity costs to industrial customers.

Now that we have less industry demand to draw on this money and no forecasted industry growth at this stage, I ask the minister: What is the balance of this account?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Deputy Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is nice to know that she pays some attention in Estimates, some more attention than she normally pays here in the House, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, we have a Rate Stabilization Plan in this Province that helps even out the cost of fuel for our industrial customers. When Abitibi in Stephenville closed, they left a deficit in the Rate Stabilization Plan. As a result of that, government made an investment, a deposit into that plan of $10 million so that our other industrial customers in this Province did not have to pick up Abitibi's debt with regard to that deficit.

Mr. Speaker, the Rate Stabilization Plan now has a surplus. I will be happy to give her the exact number. We are in a position to withdraw that $10 million now and apply it in a different way.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As we know, this money was intended to ensure a stable price for the industrial users of the Province while oil prices moved up and down. We know now that with two less paper mills in the Province that there is no longer a demand.

The minister talks about withdrawing the money, and I ask her today: Is there any reason why you would not now invest that money into a Rate Stabilization Plan for residential customers in this Province so they do not have to go through a rate increase this year?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Deputy Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Again, she demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the Rate Stabilization Plan and what it is used for. Mr. Speaker, the plan from time to time has deficits, and actions are taken to correct those deficits. Mr. Speaker, at other times the plan has surpluses and they are dealt with as well.

In terms of this current surplus, with regard to the $10 million we put in to smooth out the closing of the Abitibi mill in Stephenville, that portion of the money is going to be removed. Decisions have still to be made with regard to the remaining surplus. We will take that under consideration with Nalcor and our other industrial customers, and there may very well be a solution as she suggests, to do something for residential customers.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Mr. Speaker, what I do know is that government is prepared to put millions of dollars into rate stabilization for industrial customers, but yet Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro today is going before the PUB looking for a 2 per cent increase in everybody's light bill in this Province as a part of rate stabilization.

I ask you minister, you have millions of dollars sitting in this fund: Why are we going to allow consumers in this Province to pay more this year when you can easily transfer the money you had for big business into small households in this Province so they do not have to pay the differential themselves?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Deputy Premier and Minister of Natural Resources.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out to the Leader of the Opposition that the industrial customers make the deposits to the Rate Stabilization Plan, not the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. We did in that initial instance because we were trying to shelter our other industrial customers, like the refinery, Mr. Speaker, like Corner Brook Pulp and Paper, Mr. Speaker, because we were trying to protect them from having to pay a bill that they did not incur.

Mr. Speaker, the Government of Newfoundland subsidizes electricity users in this Province in our isolated coastal communities. Mr. Speaker, we are developing a project in Ramea that will hopefully allow us to really minimize, if not eliminate the use of fossil fuels in our isolated communities, and, Mr. Speaker, the people of Newfoundland and Labrador subsidize isolated communities in the Province.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am happy the minister raised the rural communities and the isolated diesel customers. Right now, while this millions of dollars sits in this fund the business community, Mr. Speaker, the small businesses, the one and two family owned businesses on the Coast of Labrador, the north and south coast, pay nearly twenty cents a kilowatt hour for power compared to the five cents kilowatt hour in places like Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

I ask the minister: Why will she not consider subsidizing those small business, commercial operated industries on the Coast of Labrador so that they have a competitive playing field with places like Happy Valley-Goose Bay?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Deputy Premier and Minister of Natural Resources.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, this government made a commitment to residential electricity customers in Labrador under the Northern Strategic Plan. We provided an extra subsidy to keep their rates in line, in the lifeline block, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we have continued to do that in each subsequent year. Mr. Speaker, again, she displays a fundamental misunderstanding of the Rate Stabilization Plan. It is under the purview of the PUB, Mr. Speaker, and that is not government's money, with the exception of the $10 million, Mr. Speaker. That was money put there by industrial customers to make their own cost more predictable.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

On April 26, the Minister of Education advised the public of a $5 million overpayment to employees at the College of the North Atlantic in Qatar. He stated at that time that an external review would take place. We asked questions in this House on April 29 and May 5 but the minister stated that the consultant had not yet been selected.

I ask the minister: If you have now been in a position to hire the consultant? If so, who that individual might be, and would you release the terms of reference of his hiring?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KING: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member opposite is correct. As everybody would recall, we did discover an overpayment, an error of some $5 million made by the college with respect to the Qatar operations. We did, as a government, and I as the minister, disclose that to the public through a release, and I did meet with the media and spoke in this House on any number of occasions about the process that we would follow and the expectation that we would have to have a process put in place where there was an external review, external to the college system, to get to the bottom of what happened, what transpired, and what was needed to rectify the situation. We have started that process, Mr. Speaker. We are finalizing the contract details now with an individual who will oversee the process. In the meantime, the work and the collection of data have commenced and I will be in a position within a day or so to release further details to the member opposite.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I ask the minister, Mr. Speaker: Will you be prepared to release the terms of reference that you are hiring that consultant?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KING: I think I have already indicated, Mr. Speaker, just a few moments ago, that it is our expectation that the terms of reference will include a complete review of the process, what the circumstances and the decisions made that led to the error in overpayment and the error in billing of the administration fee to the State of Qatar. I think I have also indicated, Mr. Speaker, that we will – part of the terms of reference will include a review of what exactly the amounts we are talking about are. As I remind the member opposite, and folks who are listening today, that we said $5 million is an estimate based on what we have been provided by the college.

All of those questions, Mr. Speaker, will be part of the terms of reference, and as I said a few moments ago, we are going to be open and transparent on the process. When we have the details finalized around the consultant, we will release all those details to the public and I will be prepared to answer any questions at that point in time.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I appreciate the minister's undertaking, and we certainly would like to have a copy of it. We like to have the written documentation wherever possible so we can read it before commenting on it, necessarily.

I am glad the minister mentioned about – in his first answer he talked about disclosing, and there is no doubt, Mr. Speaker, that he did disclose the incident, but I say to the minister, there is some issue with disclosing the details and the facts surrounding this incident.

Mr. Speaker, the minister committed in this House on April 29 that he would gladly share information related to this issue with the public. He said again today, he wants to be open and transparent. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, his actions say something completely different. We submitted an Access to Information Request to the minister's office, to his department, requesting information on this issue and he sent us a bill for $345.

I ask the minister: If you are truly open and accountable on this issue, why would you continue to put roadblocks in the way of releasing this information?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Education.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KING: Mr. Speaker, I realize members opposite are not in the habit of stating the facts, but I want to correct the member opposite, I did not submit a bill to the Opposition. As a minister of a department, I have no engagement whatsoever in that process.

As a minister of a department I have no engagement whatsoever in that process, but I remind the member opposite that there is ATIPP legislation in the Province that outlines the process that individuals can follow if they want to seek information.

I also remind the member opposite that the bills and the Estimates that are provided are based on the piece of work that is required, the amount of time that is required, the amount of human resource time that is required, the amount of effort and photocopying and gathering materials; it can be quite extensive, Mr. Speaker, depending on the nature of the request.

The correspondence that the member opposite would have received would have been based on an analysis performed by someone in my department and responded appropriately.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I say to the minister, Mr. Speaker, you talk about open and accountable out of one side of your mouth and then we are told we have to pay $345.

Minister, if you are truly open and accountable on this issue and you are prepared to be up front with the public, will you release the information or do we have to cut the cheque first? Let's see how open you truly are.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Education.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KING: Mr. Speaker, I am certain, on live TV and in front of these good people in the gallery, the minister is not looking for political favours to contravene a process put in place by government for the public protection of information.

Mr. Speaker, if the hon. gentleman would like to listen, I will give him an answer, if he is prepared to listen; if he is prepared to listen -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Opposition House Leader asked a question. I ask members for their co-operation in listening to the answer.

The hon. the Minister of Education.

MR. KING: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

For the interest of people listening, let me just state this for the record: I have explained to the member opposite the process for ATIPP, but let me remind the member opposite that perhaps before he starts criticizing this side of the House, go back to his own staff; because on May 7 a detailed message was left in the office of the Opposition asking that they call the Department of Education to clarify the nature of their request so that bill could be adjusted accordingly. No call was returned to our department, Mr. Speaker, (inaudible).

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

MR. BUTLER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, residents of Terra Nova are very upset with what they see as a broken promise by this government, to pave the road to their community. The residents say the promise was made quite clearly by the Minister of Business and the Member for Trinity North during last fall's by-election in the region. Roadwork for Terra Nova district was announced yesterday, and there was nothing allocated for this road.

I ask the Minister of Business: Will you confirm that you made this commitment? Why was such a commitment made during a by-election? Was it only a means to buy votes during a by-election, Mr. Speaker?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Transportation and Works.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HEDDERSON: As the former Minister of Transportation would say: Foolish, is it? How foolish can you be, to get up in the House of Assembly and talk about political favours and promises when, in actual fact, what this is all about is that there is a certain amount of road money that is set aside, there are priorities that are set, and my job as minister is to go down through those priorities. Unfortunately, that piece of road did not get in the priority that it –

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. HEDDERSON: I am not talking about promises. I am talking about basically that we are moving forward a strategy, Mr. Speaker, and over time I am sure that the priorities, that being one of them, will get done.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Chair is about to recognize the hon. the Member for the District of Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

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

Mr. Speaker, the government announced on May 7 the resumption of the Iron Ore Company of Canada's expansion plans. This decision was wonderful news for Labrador West; however, for those residents struggling to find affordable housing in this area, this good news adds great anxiety to their inability to find places to live.

Mr. Speaker, I ask the Premier if this government will recognize the urgent need for affordable housing and put more money into the Newfoundland and Labrador Housing Corporation budget to build housing units in Labrador City.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Transportation and Works, and the Minister Responsible for Newfoundland and Labrador Housing.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HEDDERSON: Mr. Speaker, again, when it comes to affordable housing, this government has certainly demonstrated over the last number of years that we are trying to meet the need, that we are putting dollars into affordable housing, and that we are moving forward with a strategy.

Mr. Speaker, with Lab West, as with other parts of the Province, we hope that we can get to a point where we can achieve the goal, which is to provide affordable housing for all.

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 point out to the minister that, in spite of the money that went into this year's Budget for the NLHC, it is money going into refits and other renovations that are absolutely needed. There are only four new units in NLHC's program for this year, and they are in Nain.

Mr. Speaker, while continued recovery of mining operations will help to ensure future growth, economic development and employment benefits in Labrador West, the cost of housing has more than doubled or tripled in the past few years, negatively impacting low- and middle-income people.

So, Mr. Speaker, once again I ask: Will the Premier direct Newfoundland and Labrador Housing Corporation to look for housing stock in Labrador West to develop into social housing units?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister Responsible for the Newfoundland and Labrador Housing Corporation.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HEDDERSON: Again I say, Mr. Speaker, obviously we do identify the needs that are throughout this Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The stock that we have, for example, in Newfoundland and Labrador Housing, we have over 5,000 units that we are looking at - some of these that are fifty or sixty years old - and before we move out into new construction and that sort of thing we have to make sure that we are taking care of the stock that we already have. That is why part of our strategy is to go back and repair these fifty-year-old and sometimes sixty-year-old units, and not only to repair them but also to reconfigure them so that we can have more units.

Again, as well, this government has moved forward with an increase in subsidies so that we can go into areas where we do not have units, and provide assistance to our tenants so that they can have affordable housing.

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.

The situation we are talking about in Labrador West is one of great urgency, Mr. Speaker. We have heard from people who are under tremendous stress and who cannot afford the high cost of shelter. Women are stuck in abusive, violent relationships - I have an example right here on my desk of one - and cannot leave those situations because they cannot afford to pay rent on their own, even if they have jobs. People are couch surfing. Mobile trailers are renting for $3,000 per month.

Mr. Speaker, I ask the Minister Responsible for NLHC if he will meet with concerned stakeholders in Labrador West to try and do something about the urgent lack of housing, and come up solutions that will deal with the present and not in ten years' time.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister Responsible for Newfoundland and Labrador Housing Corporation.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HEDDERSON: Mr. Speaker, when we put together the housing strategy two years ago there were extensive consultations with the very people the hon. member is referring to. Having said that, though, Mr. Speaker, and I hear the member coming back, but having heard that as well, I have no difficulty in meeting with any group that want to express concerns, because I think it is very, very important that we as a government get out, listen to concerns, and respond appropriately. So, again, I would welcome any sort of a meeting with these people.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

Presenting Reports by Standing and Select Committees.

The hon. the Minister of Business, on a point of order?

The hon. the Minister of Business.

MR. WISEMAN: Mr. Speaker, I was reluctant to have done this during Question Period, but Question Period is now over.

I want to go back to a question posed by the Member for Port de Grave with respect to the Terra Nova district. I just want to remind the member opposite that when they left power, none of that road was done at all. Our government has actually paved about 75 per cent of that road.

I say, Mr. Speaker, the point of order –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

If there is a point of order -

MR. WISEMAN: There is and I will get to it, Mr. Speaker -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

If there is a point of order, I ask for the hon. member to make it now.

MR. WISEMAN: I think it is important in this House, Mr. Speaker, that when we make statements, and when we make comments about other members, that they are accurate. You cannot stand in this House, with the protection of the House, and make comments that cast aspersions on members opposite.

I say, Mr. Speaker, the member opposite has suggested that I have done something that is illegal. In fact, I made a commitment - I made a promise to buy votes. Buying votes is illegal, Mr. Speaker.

I ask the member opposite to stand and apologize and withdraw that accusation that I was, in fact, buying votes. So, apologize, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask members for their co-operation. If members have a difference of opinion here and want to talk personal, I ask that they take their conversations outside and their differences outside.

There is no point of order.

Presenting Reports by Standing and Select Committees.

Presenting Reports by Standing and Special Committees

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HARDING: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Resource Committee have considered the matters to them referred and have directed me to report that they have passed, without amendment, the Estimates of expenditure of the following departments and agencies: the Department of Business; the Department of Environment and Conservation; the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture; the Department of Innovation, Trade and Rural Development, the Newfoundland and Labrador Research and Development Corporation and the Rural Secretariat; the Department of Natural Resources, the Women's Policy Office; and the Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take the opportunity at this time to recognize and thank the members who served on the Resource Committee. They were: the Members for Burgeo & La Poile; Grand Falls-Windsor-Green Bay South; Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair; Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi; The Isles of Notre Dame; The Straits & White Bay North; Labrador West; and Lewisporte.

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to beginning the concurrence debate on these Estimates within the next few days.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Further reports by standing and select committees?

Pursuant to section 214 of the Elections Act –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Order, please!

Pursuant to section 214 of the Elections Act, I am tabling the report of the Chief Electoral Officer on the by-election in the District of Topsail.

Tabling of Documents.

Notices of Motion.

Notices of Motion

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

MR. HARDING: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask leave now to withdraw a motion.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Does the hon. Member for the District of Bonavista North have leave to withdraw a motion to present a new motion for Private Members' Day on this Wednesday?

AN HON. MEMBER: Leave.

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

MR. HARDING: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I move, seconded by the Member for Labrador West, that the private member's motion put forward by me as the Member for Bonavista North on Monday, May 17, 2010 be withdrawn.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Further notices of motion?

The hon. the Government House Leader.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, you may have already received leave, but just to clarify, we had leave to withdraw a motion and we are also now going to ask for leave to put forth another private member's motion for debate on tomorrow.

MR. SPEAKER: Further notices of motion?

The hon. Member for the District of Lewisporte.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. VERGE: Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the Member for Baie Verte-Springdale, the following private member's resolution:

WHEREAS the provincial government has engaged post-secondary students since 2003, and to demonstrate that this government is listening to students, it has implemented a suite of initiatives to improve access to post-secondary education in Newfoundland and Labrador, including a multi-year tuition freeze at Memorial University and College of the North Atlantic and significant improvements to the student aid program benefiting current students and graduates;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that this hon. House applauds the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador for its outstanding national leadership on student aid and post-secondary accessibility, as demonstrated by its many actions including, most recently, the elimination of interest on the provincial portions of student loans, effective August 1, 2009, and the extension of the tuition freeze at Memorial University and College of the North Atlantic for yet another year.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Further notices of motion?

Answers to Questions for which Notice has been Given.

Petitions.

Petitions

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

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

It is like the old song: The twenty-fourth of May and we gotta get away. So, Mr. Speaker, I present another petition on behalf of all the individuals throughout the Province, petitioners from Smith Harbour, Burlington, Middle Arm, Stephenville, Seal Cove, King's Point, Hare Bay, Dover and the Eastport area.

So Mr. Speaker, I will read the prayer of the petition exactly as it has been recorded:

WHEREAS we, the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, have always built cabins or tilts away from our homes for hunting, fishing, berry picking or just spending time up in the country or places around our shores, sometimes just to get away from the stress of everyday living, a place to relax and enjoy the great outdoors; and

WHEREAS your government has come down hard on the thousands of cabin and trailer owners that are out on our land with eviction notices and forcing them to move without providing them with an alternative; and

WHEREAS Kruger Inc. has timber rights to approximately one-third of all forested land on this Island and is refusing the vast majority of applications for cabin development;

WHEREUPON your petitioners call upon all Members of the House of Assembly to urge government to have compassion on the citizens of this fair Province and allow them the right to enjoy what is rightfully ours. We were born on this land and should have the right to enjoy it.

And as in duty bound your petitioners will ever pray.

Mr. Speaker, before I go into the few comments I want to make on this petition, I have to go back to the speech yesterday by the Member for St. John's South, where he got up and he ranted and roared about all the good things, and about how the Liberals will be going knocking on doors and asking for your support next election. Well, Mr. Speaker, I had three phone calls after that yesterday. They said: You ask that gentleman - they did not know his name and did not know his district. They said: Ask him to speak to his colleagues in the House of Assembly - and said, yes, when they come knocking on our door, we are going to say: How come you never stood for us with our petitions about camping in the gravel pits or whatever with the cabins?

Mr. Speaker, one gentleman I heard from lived in the community of Dover, and he told me there are ninety of them, ninety individuals go to, I think it is called Greenspond Road every year, camping. It costs them $50 to travel there and $50 back. He said: We cannot afford to move back and forth every weekend. One of the town councils out there even called government to support them because they know anywhere from $100,000 to $150,000 comes into that community from the people who camp in that area. He told me, he said: Look, we are getting mixed messages. We were told we cannot go back there, not even for a short term, not even allowed on the site. Whereas other people are being told they can go somewhere for a short term.

So, Mr. Speaker, I call upon government again, call upon government to sit down and consult with those individuals because they are saying we are going back to that site on the twenty-fourth of May weekend. We are going back there, and God help the people who come to take us out of it. That is the feeling and that is not fair.

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Verbatim.

MR. BUTLER: That is verbatim. Those people are saying to government: sit down and consult with us before something is done that we do not want to do.

Mr. Speaker, I present this petition on behalf of those residents and hopefully the government will consider their decision.

MR. SPEAKER: Further petitions?

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I stand today to present a petition from the people in my district who are calling upon the government to look at paving the section of highway between Goose Bay and Red Bay. Mr. Speaker, this is just one of many petitions that I will present in the House of Assembly on this particular issue.

Mr. Speaker, I am sure that if you were talking to a lot of these people today in different regions of Labrador they would be happy just to get a little bit of roadwork done today in many of their communities.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Chair is reluctant to interrupt, but the Chair has made a ruling here on a previous sitting of the House that there are two things that must happen when members stand to present petitions. Number one, the prayer of the petition must be read right from the beginning. Number two, their petitions must be vetted through the Table of the House of Assembly. I do not know if the hon. member vetted the petition to the Table but she certainly has not read the prayer of the petition. So I ask the hon. member to at least read the prayer of the petition and in the future, whatever petitions are presented, to put them through the House of Assembly prior to standing here in the House for petitions.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I do apologize for not reading the prayer; however, I was told by the Clerk that the petition is in order.

Mr. Speaker, to the hon. House of Assembly of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador in Parliament Assembled, the petition of the undersigned residents humbly sheweth:

WHEREAS the residents of Red Bay to Goose Bay use a section of the Trans-Labrador Highway that is unpaved and in poor condition; and

WHEREAS this road is no longer suitable for the traffic volumes that travel this route; and

WHEREAS government will not commit to provide funding to even begin paving for Phase II and Phase III of the Trans-Labrador Highway; and

WHEREAS the residents of this region deserve a similar standard of road as the Island portion of the Province;

WHEREUPON the petitioners ask the House of Assembly to urge the government to provide funding to pave the road from Red Bay to Goose Bay;

And as in duty bound your petitioners will ever pray.

Mr. Speaker, that is the motion before the House of Assembly, and I guess this stems from the fact that in an interview one morning by the Minister of Labrador Affairs, which indicated that this paving was not a priority for government, that they were going to focus on paving the section between Goose Bay and Labrador City before they looked at paving of other sections.

Mr. Speaker, we know in Labrador that this paving project will be contingent upon federal money and that in order for us to secure that money with the federal government there needs to be a proposal submitted by the provincial government asking the federal government to partner with us, to invest money to do this. To say, Mr. Speaker, that this could be ten or fifteen years out is unacceptable. I think that any time there are issues like this raised by the public, it should be a concern for those who are elected to represent them. Those issues should be brought forward, Mr. Speaker, to the government.

Right now, today, Mr. Speaker, we have hundreds of kilometres of road in Labrador that are unpaved. Today, if you were driving from Mary's Harbour down to Red Bay, you would be driving on one of the worst pieces of gravel road that you have ever seen in your entire life. I drove over it on Sunday, Mr. Speaker, and I bet I could not find a place that I could measure with a ruler that did not have a pothole from one distance to the other. There were so many potholes in that road it was unbelievable.

I received calls yesterday, Mr. Speaker, from people telling me that the potholes in the road are so bad that they cannot even drive over it any more. Yet, Mr. Speaker, we have to transport people by ambulances over these roads. We have people who commute every day to work. We have kids today who are being bused over those same gravel roads up to twenty, thirty kilometres in these communities to attend school.

Mr. Speaker, we are asking the government to give some priority to this issue, and don't just sit on it and wait ten years or fifteen years before acting because that is not acceptable to the residents who live there. In fact, Mr. Speaker, if I was to talk about paving, the section of road between L'Anse au Clair and Red Bay in my district, which is a paved road, has more potholes than you would often find in some gravel roads.

In fact, over the weekend I had eight different cases presented to me of people who lost tires and rims off their vehicles because of potholes in the paved roads. That is how big they are, that is how bad that section of road is, and not even any signs to indicate where these big potholes are. This is costing people a lot of money because of the wear and tear on their vehicles. If you are losing tires and rims every other week because of potholes in the paved roads or in the gravel roads, well then that is something that government needs to be concerned about and look at doing something about. So far, we have not seen any action, Mr. Speaker, and that is why people feel they need to bring their concerns through a petition to the House of Assembly, and we will be bringing forward many of these petitions in the days to come.

MR. SPEAKER: Further petitions?

Orders of the Day.

Orders of the Day

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, I would like to call from the Order Paper, Motion 1.

MR. SPEAKER: Motion 1, the Budget Speech.

The hon. the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS WHALEN: Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to stand in this hon. House this afternoon to highlight our government's continued commitment to the people of this Province and investments announced through our Budget 2010.

First of all, I would like to start by acknowledging the leadership, the vision and the commitment of our approximately 3,500 elected officials and staff in the Province. Municipal governments work diligently to secure the many essential services that affect our everyday lives and they play a vital role in strengthening our communities throughout Newfoundland and Labrador for today and for future generations.

The Budget supports our government's vision to secure our future and benefits all Newfoundlanders and Labradorians through strategic targeted investments to improve the lives of our residents throughout our wonderful Province. Municipalities are the backbone of our Province and we remain committed to investing in communities and people to ensure that residents have access to reliable, effective and efficient services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS WHALEN: I would like to reference some of the positive investments announced in last month's Budget and some impacts that it will have on our municipalities.

Government's intention to produce a balanced Budget was impacted by the needs of some specific groups, especially municipalities. Significant funding for municipalities will focus on two areas this year, the capital infrastructure and the solid waste management.

Our government will continue our aggressive infrastructure strategy and invest $1 billion to strengthen the infrastructure in 2010. The provincial government infrastructure strategy is unprecedented and will introduce $5 billion over the next several years.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS WHALEN: Provincial spending in support of municipal infrastructure projects in 2010 will be $135.5 million. The Province will leverage an additional $53.4 million in federal funding provided under the various federal-provincial cost-shared agreements for a total municipal infrastructure program budget of $188.9 million, an increase of $34 million over Budget 2009.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS WHALEN: With municipal contributions factored in, the total investment in municipal infrastructure in the Province in 2010-2011 is anticipated to be the largest in history at approximately $225 million, Mr. Speaker. This funding will enable the department to maintain the current enhanced cost-shared ratios, enable projects scheduled to be tendered this year to proceed, and enable the department to offer a Municipal Capital Works infrastructure program, continuing with the enhanced cost-shared ratios.

The review process for 2010-2011 Municipal Capital Works applications is almost completed and we expect to be in a position to approve funding in the coming weeks. An investment to strengthen the administrative support and the engineering resources will focus on improving administrative functions related to building Canada and MRIF programs and the department's multi capital works and its Municipal Capital Works programs.

Target investments are underway to improve water quality issues Province-wide. Our government has committed to a minimum of $6 million annually for water quality, and another $4 million annually to waste water treatment. Following an application and consultant's review, twenty-three communities are committed to installing the potable water dispensing units. An additional fourteen communities are further assessing this option. The tender has been issued for the probable water dispensing units and we expect installation of these units will begin in the coming months.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS WHALEN: In partnership with municipalities, government is supporting the capital cost through provincial funds and through the federal gas tax program for the Provincial Solid Waste Management Strategy. This is a financial benefit that few other jurisdictions enjoy, and a direct saving to municipalities and their residents. Since we announced the implication of the strategy in 2007 we have spent $65 million, and in 2010 we have budgeted $26 million in support of initiatives associated with the strategies.

Investment in Fire and Emergency Services Newfoundland and Labrador speaks to our government's support for local and regional fire protection and demonstrates our continued support for the more than 6,200 volunteer firefighters across Newfoundland and Labrador. Budget 2010 commits the Province to a $10.1 million investment over the next four years to support the provision of fire protection services by municipalities and the volunteer fire service; $2.5 million will be provided to assist municipalities to acquire and/or replace fire trucks. This represents an increased in capital funding by $800,000 for fire equipment. To help address the high demand for new vehicles, a total of $7.6 million will be provided over the next four years.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS WHALEN: Funding allocated to assist municipalities acquire other critical firefighting equipment has doubled from $500,000 in 2009-2010 to $1 million in 2010-2011. This is a part of an investment of $2.5 million over the next four years. Funding will be allocated with particular focus on firefighter safety, and will be used to assist municipalities to ensure volunteer firefighters have access to proper personal protective equipment and self-contained breathing apparatuses.

We continue to support members of the volunteer service to approximately $175,000 annually paid out for workers' compensation premiums for volunteer firefighters, and accidental death insurance premiums at a cost of $41,000. We look forward to a continued partnership with the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Fire Services, and the Province's many volunteer firefighters to make further improvements to the fire service across the Province.

We have committed to investing in our communities, and ensuring that residents have access to reliable and efficient services, and working with our municipalities to make our communities stronger and enhance the lives of residents throughout Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, my background is in municipal politics - when I started out - and I have to tell you, I have great appreciation for every elected member and staff, and this government has great appreciation for the many hours they put in, in volunteerism, and in most cases none of them receive stipends. They do it with the goodness of their heart, to look after their family and friends and to strengthen their communities.

I just recently attended a Gander symposium where I met with almost 300 people – it was the largest turnout ever – and, I have to tell you, I received very positive feedback from what this government has been doing for municipalities. The cost ratio of 90-10 was one of the things that they have already expressed their gratitude to this government for.

We will continue with our municipalities; we are committed to them. One of the things that I have been talking to the municipalities, as well, is looking at regionalization. I think there is a need for municipalities out there to cost-share with their neighbours and look into getting dialogue on about sharing services and making affordable taxation for their citizens.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS WHALEN: I am happy to say that some communities have contacted the department. We are not forcing regionalization, but Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador just recently wrote a paper, on which they are going to be consulting with their membership about regionalization. I do believe it is going to be the way of the future, particularly in rural Newfoundland where the population is decreasing and there are a lot of people on fixed incomes.

I am encouraging all of the municipal leaders out there to indeed look at regionalization for their citizens, and start that dialogue with the many councils that surround them, their neighbours, because there can be benefits for all concerned.

On that note, Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to stand here and address the Budget.

Last, I would be remiss if I did not thank the Premier, my colleagues, and everyone who wished me well in my recent illness. I would like to thank them for all of their well wishes, and I am glad to be back here in the House of Assembly again with all of my colleagues.

Thank you so much.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER (T. Osborne): The hon. the Member for the District of The Isles of Notre Dame.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DALLEY: Mr. Speaker, it is certainly a pleasure to stand today, and a great pleasure to follow my colleague, the hon. Minister of Municipal Affairs. It is good to have her back at the helm, and in good spirits and looking great. I am sure that I speak for all of the House, and indeed the people of the Province, it is certainly great to have her back.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DALLEY: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity today to have a few words about Budget 2010. Each year we go through a budgetary process and the minister gets an opportunity to travel the Province. We, as MHAs, get a great opportunity to engage with members of our district - whether it is unions, or towns, or groups, or individuals – to give us some direction, some feedback, and help government make its plan, its annual plan, for the expenditures of the Province.

Now, Mr. Speaker, through this whole process in the last few years that I have been able to be involved in this, it is important to recognize that through one Budget we are not able to solve all the problems; we are not able to reduce all the debt. We have a responsibility, and it is important that through the Budget we are able to continue the government's direction, the vision and plan, continue to be able to make strategic investments, continue with progressive investments, continue to be able to make decisions that are sustainable for the future. This particular Budget, Budget 2010, the hallmark of this Budget is: The Right Investments For Our Children and Our Future.

Mr. Speaker, this Budget is an unprecedented $7.1 billion, and two of the biggest Budget expenditures are in health care and education; $2.7 billion in health care and $1.3 billion in education. Mr. Speaker, as a government, we recognize the importance of health care and education, not only to our communities but indeed to the future growth of our Province, and we are going to invest in our Province and invest in our children. There is no better way to invest than right into health care and education.

Today, Mr. Speaker, as I speak about the Budget, as many of my colleagues have stood in this House and will continue to do so today and reference the numbers and the decisions that have been made by government, I want to preface some of my comments today with references to rural Newfoundland and Labrador. We hear so much from the other side, condemnation about our government's treatment of rural Newfoundland, the rural-urban divide. We hear terms used very loosely; terms like leadership and legacy just thrown out there on a whim. Mr. Speaker, I want to address some of that today.

Mr. Speaker, I sit here sometimes and I consider all the things we are doing in the Province, and certainly what we are doing in my own district. We get comments sometimes that suggested that perhaps they are the only ones who know anything about rural Newfoundland, or the only ones who have any interest in rural Newfoundland. Mr. Speaker, nothing could be further from the truth.

I have had an opportunity all of my life to live in rural Newfoundland and work in rural Newfoundland, in places like Springdale, Twillingate, Fleur de Lys, La Scie, Baie Verte, Brent's Cove, Summerford, and, Mr. Speaker, I represent thirty-seven rural communities. We all understand, those of us who live in rural Newfoundland and grew up in rural Newfoundland, those of use who have family and relatives in Newfoundland, we know the special quality of life that it offers. We know the importance of neighbours supporting neighbours. We understand the importance of our volunteers in our fire departments, our Lions Clubs and our town councils. We know that health care and education is sacred, and, Mr. Speaker, we know that the economy is deeply rooted in the fishery. We know through our rural way of life, Mr. Speaker, that we can raise our children with a great sense of security, where we live, where we are proud of our culture and our heritage.

So, Mr. Speaker, when I hear some comments about rural Newfoundland and what our government is doing, it is frustrating. It is to a point, Mr. Speaker, when I hear - as a government, we have to make tough decisions, we had to support rural Newfoundland, we had to make decisions in the best interest of the Province and when we do, members opposite are very quick to throw the blanket over rural Newfoundland and make this tough decision into a generalization that rural Newfoundland is going to die. We are responsible for the demise of rural Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, personally, I do not like the criticism, I think it is unfair. When we hear comments from the other side, like: our government has washed their hands of rural Newfoundland and Labrador. I have heard comments from the other side to say that: it is clear that our government has failed the people with its stated agenda. Mr. Speaker, I have heard comments from the other side: government suffers from disconnect from rural ways and rural people.

Mr. Speaker, nothing could be further from the truth. I want to take an opportunity today to talk about my district and the Province. Quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, I do not think the people of rural Newfoundland are fooled by the rants or the insinuations from the other side because I think the days of taking advantage of rural Newfoundland and Labrador and the people are long, long gone, and we respect that as a government.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DALLEY: Mr. Speaker, rural Newfoundland, we have a $5 billion plan in this Province's infrastructure plan. This year alone there is a billion dollar infrastructure plan, Mr. Speaker, and if I look at - we have all heard reference to the municipal affairs, the plan for 90-10. That has obviously been a great decision by our government and great for the people of rural Newfoundland and Labrador, where we know we need the support, we need to recognize the needs and do what we can to improve the quality of life in these areas.

Mr. Speaker, I can go to places like Joe Batt's Arm, where I met with the people of Joe Batt's Arm. They were waiting over twenty years for the next phase of water and sewer and they had some serious water and sewer issues in areas like Brown's Point. Well, Mr. Speaker, I am proud to stand today and say they do not have that problem any more. We have delivered on that.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DALLEY: Mr. Speaker, I go out to a town like Crow Head in my district, they were on a boil order for five years. Working with the council, the tenders are about ready to go so we can address those water problems. Mr. Speaker, this is not washing our hands of rural Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, I can speak about the roads. Hundreds of millions of dollars have gone into roads; $177 million this year of our provincial road share. In my district alone, The Isles of Notre Dame, the last three years we have benefited from this roads money up to the amount of $8 million, and my district is as rural as it gets.

I can go into Change Islands where they told me they were waiting thirty years – thirty years - to get their roads paved, Mr. Speaker. Those roads are paved!

AN HON. MEMBER: How many years?

MR. DALLEY: Thirty years, Mr. Minister.

I can go on to Route 340 into Twillingate and New World Island, Mr. Speaker, one of the most popular tourism destinations in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Well, we have paved those roads for the benefit of residents and we have paved those roads for the benefit of tourism.

Mr. Speaker, we go into Summerford and Cottlesville, an area where we have a fish plant with 200 people commuting daily. Their roads were almost impassable. Well, not any more, Mr. Speaker. We have delivered on that, we have paved those roads.

Mr. Speaker, we go into an area like Bayview where they have been promised election after election after election that they are going to get their roads paved. Well, when this summer is done they will drive on new paved roads in Bayview. Mr. Speaker, we have not failed the people of The Isles of Notre Dame and we certainly have not failed the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, another important area for my district is ferry services. We could go down to the South Coast or to Bell Island, or other areas around the Province, but in my district, Change Islands and Fogo Island have a great dependency on ferry services. It is critical, it is essential, it is so important, Mr. Speaker. We know the condition of the ferry fleet in this Province. It is our government, through significant investments in Budget 2010, some $70 million that we will invest in new ferries, we will invest in upgrading terminals and we will invest in refitting the vessels that we currently have.

Mr. Speaker, a part of that investment is a commitment to the people of Change Islands and Fogo Island that we will build a brand new state-of-the-art ferry that could be in the range of $70 million or $80 million, a nice reinforced ferry that is long overdue; because we recognize that the economy on Fogo Island is growing, we recognize the vibrant fishery on Fogo Island and Change Islands area and the rapid growing tourism industry. We want to support that, Mr. Speaker. We are going to make that commitment to the people of Change Islands and Fogo Island and our ferry investments, our commitments to the people of rural Newfoundland and Labrador. Surely, Mr. Speaker, our actions, our investments, our commitments is certainly not a sign of a government who is disconnected from rural ways and rural people.

Mr. Speaker, we have made significant investments in education as well, and I am sure we will get an opportunity to follow up on them tomorrow. Our $5 million investment in tuition fees so that Memorial University has the lowest tuition fees in the country, outside of the residents of Quebec, and our College of the North Atlantic ranked second in the country. Mr. Speaker, these low tuition fees, supported with the elimination of interest on a provincial portion of student loans, is making education more affordable and more accessible in this Province.

Mr. Speaker, being a rural educator and a parent of two children, I realize the importance of education and the importance of post-secondary education. I see these kinds of investments particularly important for rural Newfoundland and Labrador because I have always felt our education has a higher cost due to travel, due to accommodations and so on. We will reap the biggest benefit from these investments, Mr. Speaker, again, significant investments to the people of rural Newfoundland and Labrador.

Budget 2010, Mr. Speaker, we saw an investment of $1.2 million to put an extension on New World Island Academy so that we can address some of the programming needs and the capacity needs of the school.

Mr. Speaker, as was alluded to yesterday by the Minister of Education, who started to list off some of the investments, particularly in and around the city that we are making in education, I would like to follow up on that today because I, too, have had much discussion with my colleagues about education and many of them have lobbied hard for their districts. As a result, Mr. Speaker, of that work, as a result of listening, as a result of setting our priorities we have made significant investments in education in this Province.

I ask all members of this House, and certainly the people listening today, just listen to the list of investments that our government has made this year and in recent years: a new school for Happy Valley-Goose Bay; a new school for Baie Verte; a new school for L'Anse-au-Loup; a new school for Placentia; a new school for Port Hope Simpson; a new school for Port Saunders; a new school for Torbay; redevelopment of the school in Flower's Cove; renovations completed to the school in Wesleyville; an extension on a school in Clarenville; an extension the school in Witless Bay; an extension to a school in Kelligrews; a new school for Carbonear; a new school for St. Anthony; extension to a school in Gander; a $1.2 million extension on New World Island Academy; redevelopment of schools in Grand Falls-Windsor; new MUN residences; and an academic building in Corner Brook.

Mr. Speaker, that is what is on our list today, some $400 million.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DALLEY: Mr. Speaker, a $400 million commitment by our government right out into rural Newfoundland that protects the education and, in my mind, protects our communities.

Mr. Speaker, it demonstrates our government's commitment to our youth. It demonstrates our government's commitment to education. We have not failed the youth of this Province, and to the members opposite, we have not failed the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, the list goes on. There are so many initiatives out there in rural Newfoundland. We have millions of dollars going into Shorefast for job creation on Fogo Island. We have millions of dollars going on the Northern Peninsula for development of a pellet plant operation to support the forest industry. We have millions of dollars being invested in the South Coast in aquaculture. We have millions of dollars being invested on the West Coast for health care, long-term care facilities and hospitals. We have millions of dollars being invested in Labrador on roads and schools and hospitals – so many initiatives, Mr. Speaker, out in the rural areas.

In addition to that, we have so many initiatives in our government that is putting money back into the pockets of the people in this Province: reduction in personal income tax; improvement in the provincial drug program, adding drugs to that program. We have seen an increase minimum wage; fuel rebate programs; free textbooks; increased senior subsidies; wage increases of 20 per cent for the public sector. Mr. Speaker, one initiative after another and the list goes on and on. That is not a sign of a government who is disconnected from the people of this Province, and that is why I take exception to it.

Mr. Speaker, we all live in reality too. We realize we are not perfect. We have many challenges. We always have, and we will continue to have challenges. I contend today that we are not done. We are quite prepared to roll up our sleeves, listen to the people, and do the work that needs to be done and improve the quality of life in our communities and continue to make the right decisions to support the people of this Province.

One particular area that I want to mention, obviously, is the fishery. We know we have challenges in the fishery, Mr. Speaker, but I do want to compliment our Minister of Fisheries who has been out front, very open in discussion, and quite engaged with the industry and what is taking place in this Province in our fishery. He has been quite available to me and I certainly appreciate – his door has been open for many of my constituents who wanted to have a discussion about the fishing industry.

Mr. Speaker, our government is supporting and driving the MOU process where we are going to engage with the processing sector and the union to ensure that we get this fishery on a solid footing, to make the decisions that need to be made, to co-operatively work together to try and deal with the uncertainty in this industry.

Mr. Speaker, as a government we have been very open and very supportive of the fishing industry, but our minister has been clear and we have been clear. We are not prepared to invest in this problem, but we are quite prepared to invest in the solution, and that is where our government is trying to get to. We want to make the investment in the solution.

Now, Mr. Speaker, having said all of that and outlining so much of what we are doing in rural Newfoundland, it certainly begs the question why do we always get these comments, the criticisms about rural Newfoundland, how they throw the blanket over everything. Mr. Speaker, somewhat predictable, we look back and we listen to them - I am sure it will ramp up. They have a leadership convention going on soon. We are heading towards an election. Once again, Mr. Speaker, I think they will try to stand up and exploit rural Newfoundland and take advantage. If we sit here and we listen to them and we look at the times that they referenced rural Newfoundland, and they referenced leadership, they referenced legacy, the reality is, what kind of vision are they offering – it is probably a vision of the past, as was referenced yesterday. Maybe they want us to go back to ignoring the poor conditions of our roads, ignoring the conditions of our hospitals and schools. Perhaps we want to get back to ignoring the condition of the ferry fleet. Perhaps we want to get back to ignoring our massive debt. Mr. Speaker, that is the vision that we hear. Perhaps we should go back to where we were. Dwell on the problems and not dwell on the solutions, Mr. Speaker.

Well, Mr. Speaker, I want to point out something about leadership today, and I am not sure if it is arrogance or ignorance – someone else can make that decision. When I hear comments like, do not wait twenty years to do something, or they will make the comment, it is okay to speak up for the Province, but sometimes you have to deliver. What a comment to make for our Premier and this government, Mr. Speaker.

I will not get into the polls, I will not get into what the people are saying, but let me point out some qualities of leadership and the people can decide. We have two leaders on the other side and one on this side. Let me see, understanding the knowledge of the past, vision, capacity, inspiring and motivating, ability to capture an audience, practical, accepts responsibility, mental toughness, energy, passionate and strong conviction, intelligent. Mr. Speaker, those are qualities of leaders, and I do not need to compare the two. All I can say, the more they reference leadership, the more they draw the comparison. I say good luck to them in trying to find a new leader that can lead this Province the way that this government and this Premier has done in the last seven years.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DALLEY: Now, Mr. Speaker, they have referenced legacy in this House. Let's talk legacy for a minute. The legacy of the previous Liberal governments and Liberal leaders - I could go back to the first one, and maybe the legacy is Confederation, Mr. Speaker. Well, rightfully so, but we cannot help the legacy is also the Upper Churchill. What a great legacy to leave this Province, the Upper Churchill.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. DALLEY: We could go to the next Liberal leader, Mr. Speaker, and we can talk about legacy of slash and burn and stress and fear in the minds of so many of our public servants.

We could go to the next leader, Mr. Speaker, of the Liberal government. The Liberal government, what did they do? Well, there was a period of time in this Province where we had debt that was out of control, and bottom line is that leader basically used the Province for his own agenda. Even the Liberals would say so. Then we get into the last leader, Mr. Speaker, they had and what did we see? Almost $1 billion deficit annually in this Province - that is a legacy, Mr. Speaker.

If we want to talk legacy, and they use the term loosely, what is our legacy going to be as a government? What is our Premier's legacy going to be? What are we going to leave behind for the people who are coming in the future? Maybe it will be the $2 billion cheque, Mr. Speaker. We remember him coming down the escalator: We got it! We got it, were the words. That was after the Liberal leader in Ottawa said: Take it or leave it. No, we did not take it or leave it, Mr. Speaker.

Maybe the legacy of this government is going to be the oil royalties and all the money that is coming into this Province. Well, Mr. Speaker, I was there the day when our Premier stood up in a hotel downtown talking about Hebron. When he said: At long last, the day for which we have worked so hard has finally arrived. Ladies and gentlemen, we are in the oil business. What a legacy, Mr. Speaker! What a legacy!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DALLEY: Where do you think $4 billion in health care and education comes from? Where do we know that we can give 20 per cent pay increases? How do we put a $5 billion infrastructure plan in place? Mr. Speaker, the oil royalties are reaping its benefits for all of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, maybe our legacy will be the Poverty Reduction Strategy. Maybe it is going to be the fact that we are the governments that finally got maximum benefit of our resources. Mr. Speaker, maybe the legacy of this government and this Premier is that through all of our collective efforts we have been able to change the hearts and minds of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. Maybe our legacy is that we now have a Province that is confident, proud and steadfast in our determination to become self-reliant, masters of our own destiny.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DALLEY: Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, as for leadership, the people of the Province will decide leadership. As for legacy, Mr. Speaker, I just referenced a number of things but I think the reality is, and I think they know it; the best is yet to come when it comes to a legacy of this Province, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DALLEY: I do want to say a final comment, Mr. Speaker, we have not washed our hands of rural Newfoundland and Labrador. We have not been disconnected from rural ways and rural life, and I can assure you we have not failed the people of rural Newfoundland and Labrador. We have not failed the people of The Isles of Notre Dame. Mr. Speaker, we are making the right investments, the right investments for our children and our future.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of St. John's North.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. RIDGLEY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As many have commented over the past few weeks, Mr. Speaker, each member of the House gets an opportunity to speak once on the main motion and it is a pleasure to take my turn and to do that.

As we begin, I would like to welcome the two new members who were recently elected, the Member for Terra Nova -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Chair recognizes the hon. the Member for the District of St. John's North.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. RIDGLEY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is nice to have such an enthusiastic response when you stand to speak.

I would like to also welcome, Mr. Speaker, the Member for Topsail. I would like to wish them well in their careers here in the House. I know they will do well. I know they will stay grounded and I know that they will keep the attitude that the people of the Province in their districts sent them here on their behalf as employees of the people in the district.

Mr. Speaker, over the past few weeks we have listened to Budget Speeches by most of the members in the House. Of course, because there are so many on the government side we have heard very many positive things being spoken about. So much so that The Telegram, Mr. Speaker, commented in an editorial of all the positive things that were being said about our government and about our leader and so on like that. The Telegram seemed to be almost bored by the process and said: Don't worry faithful readers, it is only another few days and it will be all over.

Well, Mr. Speaker, that is why we are here. It is our task to point out the positive things that this government is doing, the positive aspects about the Budget. I was particularly delighted, Mr. Speaker, to hear the rural members, the Member for The Isles of Notre Dame and the Member for Terra, speak so positively about rural Newfoundland. So often we hear the phrase that rural Newfoundland is dying, Mr. Speaker. I think we have to recognize the fact, it is quite obvious that it is changing, but I do not think it is dying, Mr. Speaker.

It was so good to see the Minister of Municipal Affairs here this afternoon. I would like to commend her for her courage, her fortitude, her dignity and the dedication that she is displaying at this time in her life and in her career.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. RIDGLEY: Mr. Speaker, there are times when we are challenged. The Minister of Municipal Affairs spoke so positively today about how rural Newfoundland and its small communities are finding creative ways, as rural Newfoundland is changing, to continue and to survive.

Mr. Speaker, the Opposition, of course, has its duties to do as well in this Budget process. It is their task to point out the deficiencies that they may see in the Budget. They have had to stretch and look hard to find them, but that is their task to do. It would be a boring place in here, Mr. Speaker, if everybody was on the same note. So we have to have three or four people on the other say that this possibly might not be as good as everybody is saying.

In my remarks this afternoon, Mr. Speaker, I would like to focus on two things. Number one, the role of the Opposition and the approaches that the Opposition Parties have taken, and to focus a little bit on the philosophy of the New Democratic Party more than anything - the socialist party, if you will - because there is a stark difference between that philosophy and the philosophy of this government.

As a part of pointing out that difference, Mr. Speaker, and the difference in philosophies, I would like to say as well, and point out in my remarks where I think this government is not spending enough money. Now, some may be alarmed and surprised at that and say: What is a government member doing that for, pointing out where the government is not spending enough money? Mr. Speaker, I would like to tie that into the difference in philosophies of the two parties.

On the Opposition side, Mr. Speaker, we have four Liberals over there. I would like to say at this point, I sat through the 2003-2007 period when there were probably twelve or thirteen of them over there. Actually, I think that the four who are over there now are doing a better job than the twelve or thirteen did three or four years ago. Now, that may be, Mr. Speaker, that the fewer of them there are the better job they do. I am not quite sure if there is a direct relationship there or not, but we will see what we can do in 2011 to maybe make them even better, reduce their numbers smaller and then they can do an even better job.

The remarks, Mr. Speaker, and the approach of the Opposition is not always well researched. We saw a stark example of that yesterday when the questions related to the hon. Minister of Environment and why she did not do this and did not do that. Of course, they got that from the radio, and just because it is on the radio or in the newspaper it does not mean it is true, but they went with that in Question Period. Of course, CBC this morning spent most of the morning apologizing and retracting. I expect somewhere along the way maybe the Opposition will do the same thing.

I would like to commend them though, Mr. Speaker, because from the first four years that we were here we found the Leader of the Opposition undertaking a lot of personal attacks. I have to say that this Opposition has not resorted to that, although there was one point when the Leader of the Opposition, in her two- or three-hour speech, in her long speech, did focus on a number of the members of the government side, but it was more in terms of policy and positions that those members have taken rather than personal attacks.

I was amazed when we first came here, Mr. Speaker, to watch the then Leader of the Opposition and you could count five or six personal attacks on the Premier at that time. I thought, Mr. Speaker, it was unbecoming. That is not why we were sent here. We were sent here to represent the people of our districts and not to be as schoolyard children.

Mr. Speaker, the other Opposition over there is the member for the NDP, and her approach to Opposition is a constant and consistent message; it is totally a socialist message, Mr. Speaker. The situations that she brings – and she referenced in passing today a situation with a lady who is a victim of violence, or something like that – she brings real situations to the House, there is absolutely no doubt about it, but her approach and the solutions that she offers, I have to say, are devoid of any semblance of reality. She brings a real situation, but the solutions and the approach that she brings do not relate in any way, shape or form to realities of financing.

Mr. Speaker, I make these remarks not to disparage the hon. Leader of the NDP, because I think her remarks are coming from a position of sincerity. She means well, she does her research, and she brings an enlightened approach to the House, but not always connected to reality, Mr. Speaker.

The philosophy of the NDP, Mr. Speaker – and I think it is important to understand this, and the Leader of the NDP referenced it in her own speech - she said: The reason that I am doing a written speech, Mr. Speaker, is that I want to lay out very clearly where we come from as NDP when it comes to economic analysis.

I think she did lay it out clearly. She laid out very clearly the stark difference between their party and the governing party. There was a reference down in the Leader of the NDP's speech, and she said, "It is the job of elected government to create systems that work for everyone, not just for some." They work for everyone, not just for some.

She went on to say, Mr. Speaker, "It is the job of elected government to make sure that the communal pot is shared so everyone is living in a healthy and nurturing society." An ideal, Mr. Speaker, worthy, I suppose, of us pursuing, that everyone would share equally from the communal pot.

We remember the days of Communism, Mr. Speaker, and I suppose, if you want to pursue that, it may be a worthwhile ideal that we are all equal, but I do not think, in reality, it is a realistic philosophy for the society in which we live. It is not a share and share alike. There is no element, I suppose, of Robin Hood in it: rob the rich and give to the poor.

I suppose we should, at this point, commend our own Alan Doyle for his worthwhile work in Robin Hood as Allan A'Dayle, but that is not an approach, Mr. Speaker, I do not think, that we can apply to economics of governing. At the same time that the Leader of the NDP paints this picture of communal living, and everybody sharing equally from the same pot, she paints the dark picture of this government as being closely related to the extremist reform party Conservatives as they are in Ottawa. She ties us to that reform party and says that we are, in fact, carrying out the exact same policy. She throws in, in her speech - and I do not know if she wrote the speech herself or if it was written for her - words like Rolls-Royce, to link us with the elite of society.

She references, Mr. Speaker, tax breaks for the rich. I quote from her speech, "It is not enough for this government to say that it is reducing poverty by bringing the minimum wage up to $10 an hour while at the same time giving tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals." She would paint us, Mr. Speaker, as an elitist government, a government that wants to only look after the rich, give tax breaks to the rich.

I remember a couple of years ago when the pathologists were clamouring, Mr. Speaker, for more money, making their case that they deserved to be paid, and they were threatening to leave the Province. The Leader of the NDP spoke in the House at that time and said: I do hope that this government is going to pay these pathologists what they are worth.

Now, their salaries are up in the range of $200,000 or $300,000 a year, I cannot remember exactly, but she said: I do hope that the government will pay them what they are worth so that we can keep them here in the Province for the benefit of our citizens.

Then, when a Budget was brought down some time later and our government removed the surtax, which was a tax on higher-paid individuals, the Leader of the NDP says that this surtax should never be removed; these rich people should be taxed because where else are we going to get the money?

You cannot, Mr. Speaker - there is an expression for it, and I will use the, I suppose, more dignified expression - you cannot inhale and exhale at the same time. You cannot do both, Mr. Speaker.

The phrases, Mr. Speaker, of the Leader of the NDP, the philosophy that is there, I will repeat it: It is the job of elected government to make sure that the communal pot is shared so everyone is living in a healthy and nurturing society.

Through her speech, Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the NDP used the word "imagine" eight or nine times, phrases such as: Imagine if the money from the increase in equalization…. Imagine the benefit to people…. Imagine the benefit to government…. Imagine what would happen…. She goes on to say: Imagine what would happen if government had a vision. Imagine if the custodians of Nalcor….

As I sat down that day, Mr. Speaker, and listened to the NDP Leader speak, and heard all of these words, "imagine", I could not help but think of our dear departed friend, John Lennon, who wrote Imagine. I will quote from that, Mr. Speaker, if you do not mind: Imagine no possessions; I wonder if you can, no need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people, sharing all the world".

Mr. Speaker, this is exactly –

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. RIDGLEY: I am being encouraged to sing, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps in another venue, at another time, when we are feeling more jovial I will undertake to sing it, but not at this point, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. RIDGLEY: I relate that to – doesn't it sound exactly like the same thing, the philosophy of the NDP? We are all gathered around the communal pot, all sharing the same time.

Mr. Speaker, the NDP Leader referenced in her speech a $308 million increase in equalization and offset revenues that came to this Province, and in her speech, Mr. Speaker, she spent it at least two or three times.

She says: Imagine if the money from the increase in equalization and offset revenues were used to start a child care program. Then she goes down to say: Imagine if $75 million of that $308 million were to be used to – we could do away with revenue from the VLT machines and use that $75 million.

Now your $308 million is down to $233 million, but then she goes on to say: Imagine the benefit to people of our economy if some of the extra revenue - this same revenue that we spent on child care, and with the VLT reference - imagine if this went into fully meeting the need for affordable housing, instead of just putting a Band-Aid on our housing crisis. So now with the money we are going to fully meet the needs of a fully funded affordable housing program, Mr. Speaker. So, we have spent it on child care - the same money - we spent it on doing away with the VLTs and offsetting that revenue, and now we have spent it on meeting the needs in affordable housing.

Mr. Speaker, on April 26, the Leader of the NDP rose and spoke about the budget – and she referenced it here again today – the $1.2 million that was spent to build four housing units in the community of Nain. Her phrase in reference to that, Mr. Speaker, was that these four new units were a pimple on an elephant. Now, Mr. Speaker, that was $1.2 million. So if the Leader of the NDP wants to put a complete rash on that elephant from head to toe and trunk to foot, how much would it cost to put a rash of pimples on that same elephant? There is no connection to reality. You make an effort to do things, you make an effort to build four units, but it is never enough.

Mr. Speaker, I reference, in the same day, the Leader of the NDP spoke about the fact that Newfoundland and Labrador Housing is doing some much needed repairs and maintenance to their properties. There was almost a touch, a connection to reality, because the Leader of the NDP said: I appreciate that it is difficult for government to do it. Now imagine, she almost touched the reality. You cannot do it all, she said, it is difficult. She recognized that fact, Mr. Speaker. She goes on to say: We have to look at priorities, and affordable housing must be a priority. Well, that was probably on a Tuesday. On a Wednesday, then we have a home care as a priority, we have to do that. Then, on Thursday, we have child care as a priority, and we have to have a completely funded drug program.

Mr. Speaker, a budget has to appreciate the difficulties that are in society. You cannot simply do it all, you have to look at priorities and you have to make choices within those priorities. So, more so than the reference to John Lennon's Imagine, I think that the Leader of the NDP is taking us down a long and winding road to strawberry fields where nothing is real.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. RIDGLEY: You have to make choices, Mr. Speaker. You have to make choices. There were some 200 groups who brought their needs in the pre-budget consultations. They are listed off here - I do not actually have time, Mr. Speaker, to read them but there is a full range, 200 different presentations to the Minister of Finance that say these are our needs.

Had the Leader of the NDP been there, it would have been yes of course, yes of course and yes of course. When you are governing, Mr. Speaker, you have to make choices from within those groups. The Leader of the NDP spoke about the investments, as we call them, she said: They are not investments; they are necessary expenditures. She said: They are expenditures that must be made to meet the needs of our society. Must be made - so each of these groups who came, we must spend money on what they have asked for. You cannot do it; that is not government, Mr. Speaker.

Where are we not spending enough money, Mr. Speaker? I said I would say we are not spending enough money. We are not spending enough money on education. Every teacher, every principal, every student, every parent in this Province will tell you that they could use more teacher assistants, more teachers, more custodial help in the schools, more maintenance of their schools.

We are not spending enough money, Mr. Speaker, on health care. We have spent $2.7 billion of the $7.5 billion on health care. Mr. Speaker, we are not spending enough, the wait times are too long –

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I will remind the hon. member that his speaking time has expired.

MR. RIDGLEY: By leave, Mr. Speaker, just to clue up?

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

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's North, by leave.

MR. RIDGLEY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We are not spending enough money on housing, Mr. Speaker. Of the 5,000 or so Newfoundland and Labrador Housing units in the Province, St. John's North has about 780-800 of them. We have the most in the whole Province.

Every day, every week my office deals with the needs in Newfoundland and Labrador Housing. I have been in homes which are despicable, I have been where the mould is there, I have seen rodents crawling around, and I have seen leaks coming down in kitchens and bedrooms.

Mr. Speaker, we are not spending enough money on housing. The simple fact is, Mr. Speaker, we do not have enough money to do it all. We have to make choices.

I would say to the Leader of the NDP, in conclusion - and I do not want to sound like the former Premier of the Province, Mr. Peckford, to say that someday the sun will shine and the have not will be no more. The have not will always be there, Mr. Speaker. I would say we are doing it, we are getting there gradually. Mr. Speaker, the ice is slowly melting; here comes the sun.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

Mr. Speaker, it is certainly my pleasure to be able to speak today regarding the Budget because there are a number of initiatives within this Budget that are very important for the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and in particular for the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services.

Mr. Speaker, before I speak about the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services I would certainly like to take a few minutes to talk about some of the investments in this Budget or in previous Budgets for that matter that affect the District of St. George's-Stephenville East. Mr. Speaker, that district is one since I have been elected as the MHA that has had significant challenges. In particular, I remind people back to the year of 2005 and what happened in that particular district. At that time, we had a flood in the Town of Stephenville that basically affected 150 households and people who lived in those houses. Mr. Speaker, within months of that, we also had the announcement that the Abitibi mill would be closing and therefore a number of people lost their jobs in Stephenville.

So there were days, Mr. Speaker, when it seemed almost overwhelming with some of the bad news that we had in Stephenville, but if you saw the community today and what happened following those events in 2005, you would certainly understand why Stephenville and the surrounding area is such a vibrant area and very rich in many ways. Certainly, that is a testament to the people who live there and the community leadership within Stephenville and the whole Bay St. George region, for that matter. I certainly, as the MHA, make a point of working very closely with the town councils and the local service districts in the area. We have town councils in St. George's, Stephenville Crossing and Stephenville who certainly work diligently to ensure that their areas were not left behind with the closure of the Abitibi mill.

Mr. Speaker, some of the investments that we have seen in the district that are certainly welcomed by the residents would include, for one, the announcement that we are going to be replacing the bridge at Crabbes River, and that is on the T'Railway. Mr. Speaker, that actually goes over a salmon river in Bay St. George South, and last year the bridge collapsed into the salmon river, and that will be replaced at $1.6 million. So it is a significant investment but, Mr. Speaker, that is a very important link to the T'Railway in that area and very important for tourism. There are many entrepreneurs in the local area who have invested in their businesses because of the T'Railway and the salmon rivers and what it means to have those bridges that are in our area.

We also, through last year and again this year with the continuation of work, have seen or will be seeing significant investment into our highway infrastructure.

Mr. Speaker, we will be replacing the bridge at Fischell's River on the Trans-Canada Highway. We will also be replacing the bridge at Middle Barachois and Robinsons River as well, and we recently have seen the bridge on the Trans-Canada Highway over Flat Bay replaced as well. So we have one bridge completed and there are three in the works, Mr. Speaker, and that is significant investment for roadwork in our area.

In addition to that, we will also see the Trans-Canada Highway upgraded from Fischell's River to Crabbes River, which is basically the distance of Bay St. George South. Mr. Speaker, when we think about the investments that we have made in roadwork since we took government in 2003, there have been significant advancements in my District of St. George's- Stephenville East.

When I became the MHA, Mr. Speaker, the speed limit between Fischell's and Flat Bay on the Trans-Canada Highway had to be reduced from 100 kilometres an hour to fifty kilometres an hour. That is what I inherited, Mr. Speaker, because the roads had been neglected for so long, that the Trans-Canada Highway actually had to be reduced to a speed limit of fifty kilometres an hour. I remember travelling that road many, many days in 2003, I was brand new at politics and visiting the district day after day, and to have to drive over that highway at fifty kilometres an hour was certainly incentive to know that we needed a change back in 2003 and we needed to invest heavily in our infrastructure, and in particular the roads in St. George's-Stephenville East.

Mr. Speaker, there are also a number of other investments that were made in this year's Budget that certainly benefit the people of the district, or the entire area of Bay St. George. One is the increase in funding of 5 per cent to the women's centres, and you might say: Well, 5 per cent is not a lot of money. Let me explain, Mr. Speaker, what goes behind that.

When we were first elected in 2003, I was the Minister Responsible for the Status of Women at that time and the women's centres in Newfoundland and Labrador were funded by the provincial government to the tune of $50,000 a year, which was not sufficient to cover their needs. In our first Budget in 2004, despite all the difficulties we faced as a government and the challenges, that was also a time when we were able to increase the funding to our women's centres when no other entity probably was getting an increase in funding but we recognized immediately the importance of our women's centres. Mr. Speaker, I made a commitment that while I was the Minister Responsible for the Status of Women I wanted to double their funding from $50,000 to $100,000. In our first mandate, Mr. Speaker, we were able to do just that.

In our Blue Book, in 2007, we also made a commitment that from that point on we would increase funding during this mandate by 5 per cent a year. So this is now another year where we are able to - not only have we doubled the funding to the women's centres, we have also increased it by 5 per cent.

Other investments that have certainly benefited the district would include a new fire truck for Bay St. George South. Mr. Speaker, I remember going to a firemen's ball in Bay St. George South one evening - and it was a couple of years ago, probably three years ago - and Lloyd Harnum, who was involved with the fire department and very much a leader within the community, indicated that over ten years they were going to try to raise enough money to purchase a new fire truck. I thought at the time: Well, I probably will not be the MHA to see this new fire truck through. I thought: How much are they going to be able to raise over ten years? After ten years, how much is the price going to be gone up again? So maybe at the end of the day they would never be able to reach their goal.

Mr. Speaker, when we noticed and recognized and addressed the fact that infrastructure for municipalities and local service districts, the funding formula was just not adequate, we changed the formula to a 90-10. That meant communities and local service districts, like Bay St. George South, were able to purchase new fire trucks. Mr. Speaker, within one year of the change they were able, as a community, to raise the amount money that they needed to pay their portion for a new fire truck.

Mr. Speaker, there are also many other grants, and sometimes not a lot of money, but certainly significant amounts of money that make a real difference in the infrastructure in our rural communities. That would include being able to have a $15,000 grant for the seniors club in the Codroy Valley to help put a new roof on that building, because that community depends heavily on that infrastructure for many social gatherings in the community.

We recently announced funding for the seniors club in St. David's so that the seniors in that very rural area of our Province would be able to be more physically active. Year over year we have been able to offer grants to the library in the Codroy Valley so they are able to purchase new books. Mr. Speaker, as I said, not large sums of money but certainly being attentive to the needs of our communities within our districts.

We have also seen the establishment of many affordable housing units in Stephenville. If you go down in the area behind the HRLE office down there, you will see at least three new buildings which include affordable housing. In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, there have been some new social housing units constructed by Newfoundland and Labrador Housing Corporation in Stephenville, and these new units replace the units that we lost during the flood of 2005.

Mr. Speaker, another thing I would like to draw people's attention to is that in the Budget this year there was also an announcement that there be an additional two correctional officers at the West Coast Correctional Centre. That is a centre that provides custody for provincial and federal offenders in Newfoundland and Labrador. When we look at the report that was commissioned, it is called Decades of Darkness, in the Department of Justice. It spoke about the centre in Stephenville and compared it to other centres. There has been significant work gone into that centre by the staff. That report noted the advancements and where they are compared to some of the other institutions in the Province. I would like to commend all the staff there for their hard work to be able to be the shining star in that particular report, Mr. Speaker.

We also had funding in this Budget to continue to do some work on St. Michael's Elementary School in Stephenville Crossing. That includes the recapping of the roof and window replacements at that particular school.

Mr. Speaker, there is a real reawakening of Aboriginal issues in the Bay St. George area in recent years. They are at a point right now where the Qalipu Nation is being formed. There is a real excitement in the local area regarding Aboriginal culture and the future for people who will become members of the Qalipu Nation.

Mr. Speaker, this government has worked with the Newfoundland Aboriginal Women's Network. This group of women are working very diligently to advance the status of Aboriginal women in the Province. They are in their formative years as well, but I know that we support them and their efforts. They do some tremendous work, as well, Mr. Speaker.

One thing Bay St. George is well noted for, and the Stephenville area, is post-secondary education. Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform people who wouldn't otherwise know, that there are five campuses of the College of the North Atlantic between Stephenville and Stephenville Crossing. We have the Martin Gallant Building in Stephenville Crossing; we have the visual arts school in Stephenville, as well as the Fowlow Building, which is the main campus; we also have the L.A. Bown Building and we have the Heavy Equipment school out near Whites Road.

Mr. Speaker, a number of people go through these campuses in the run of any academic year. We are more aware of it these days because of people graduating and moving on. Of course, in September we will welcome many new students in the Stephenville area.

Mr. Speaker, when we have this number of colleges and students, it brings to mind, as the Member for The Isles of Notre Dame mentioned, some of the investments we have made in post-secondary and how important that is for people across Newfoundland and Labrador, but specifically for the Bay St. George area because it makes these campuses more accessible to people.

Mr. Speaker, to think that we have been able to have a tuition freeze since 2003 is the envy of other Provinces. We listened to students and we were advised by students what they felt would be the appropriate investments for us, as government, to address the needs of post-secondary. Mr. Speaker, one of the things that they certainly spoke about was the interest relief, which is now no interest on the provincial portion of student loans, and also the introduction again of the up-front, needs-based grants.

Mr. Speaker, we have many schools and young people in our area and they continue to benefit from the fact we have eliminated school fees and we have introduced free textbooks. Recently, I have had the honour, I guess, and the privilege to attend a speak-off at Our Lady of Mercy, the 100 celebration of the Girl Guides, their rally on Saturday, a Sea Cadet Review, and I have attended a couple of the graduations recently. I also want to acknowledge, and I guess we will acknowledge it on Thursday, that there will be students from Our Lady of Mercy in St. George's who will be attending Question Period here in the House of Assembly.

So, Mr. Speaker, I could go on and on about the district, but I also want to make some comments about the new department. I was quite pleased that the theme of this year's Speech from the Throne, as well as our Budget Speech, had the theme of youth and children in Newfoundland and Labrador because they certainly represent our future. More importantly, I guess, from my perspective is the fact that we have the new Department of Child, Youth and Family Services. We have put quite an emphasis and focus on this department and our Budget allocation was $167 million, which is significant in our first year to help us get our services set up.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk a bit about the services and our set-up, but there is something I really have to clarify and I guess it is a history lesson for some people who are watching the House of Assembly, but more importantly it is also a lesson for some people here in the House of Assembly who may not understand the set-up and where we are as a department and where we have come from.

Mr. Speaker, in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, child protection services used to be delivered through the former Department of Social Services. The Department of Social Services was dismantled in 1997. In April of 1997, the Department of Social Services stopped being. At that time, the Income Support Program of the Department of Social Services moved into the Department of Human Resources, Labour and Employment. At the same time, the social programs, which would include child protection, moved out of Social Services and under Health and Community Services and were therefore then administered by the regional health authorities.

Mr. Speaker, I need to make that point because in the House since this session, while talking about the new department, the Leader of the Opposition had indicated that when I took the opportunity to visit all of the offices last year, once we formed the new department, she indicated that I visited all of the offices with the exception of twenty-two that they closed down – she indicated they closed down because they no longer exist. She said: They shut these offices, Mr. Speaker, when they came into power – twenty-two offices they closed up. Mr. Speaker, I need to clarify that at no time since we have been in government have we closed any office that delivered Child Youth and Family Services, or child protection services in this Province.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Chair is having some difficulty in hearing the member that is recognized to speak. I ask for the co-operation of all members.

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, for the record and to make sure that people understand correctly that the child protection services that existed in the former Department of Social Services were removed when that department no longer existed in 1997, and were then delivered under Health and Community Services.

I visited areas, Mr. Speaker, that included Ferryland, Conception Bay South, Bay Roberts, Whitbourne, Botwood, Gambo, Harbour Breton, Bonne Bay, Burgeo, Deer Lake, Piccadilly, Stephenville Crossing, Cartwright, Natuashish, Forteau, Sheshatshiu, and I also would have visited Fogo although there was no staff there last summer. There was no need to go down and talk to myself down there.

Mr. Speaker, all of these communities that I listed are communities where the HRE offices no longer exist. To think that we have to have a debate in the House to clarify what happened over the years, I guess I felt was unnecessary, but a very important point to be made. So, as we move forward and we bring legislation in that address the services of Child, Youth and Family Services this history lesson is very important because we still have people talking here in the House of Assembly, and, in particular, the Leader of the Opposition who seems to feel that offices of Child, Youth and Family Services that deliver child protection were in some way closed by this government, and, Mr. Speaker, that is absolutely not the case. We are talking about two different departments.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity to visit fifty of the fifty-two offices last summer. As I indicated, the two offices I did not get to visit were Fogo and Conne River. The only reason why I did not visit those offices is because there is only one social worker staffing these offices and those positions were vacant during the time that I was visiting. I will certainly make it a priority to visit those offices, Mr. Speaker.

When I went to the offices I had the opportunity to meet with all of the staff, and then I would meet specifically with social workers because I felt there were significant concerns that needed to be addressed whether I look back to the Turner report or the clinical services review. Mr. Speaker, there were three emerging themes that became very evident within the first couple of meetings. As I moved through the fifty visits, it became obvious that these were themes that needed to be addressed.

One was the IT system certainly needed to be updated, and that the social workers felt the system was not meeting their needs, it was time consuming, repetitive and needed to be replaced. Mr. Speaker, we were able to announce in this year's Budget that we will be replacing the IT system in the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services.

We also had information and concerns that the social workers on the front line felt that they did not have access to a supervisor and in many decision points, when they are working through a particular case, they absolutely need access to a supervisor in order to move on and take action. Mr. Speaker, as we roll services from Health and Community Services to regional health authorities into the new department, we are very cognizant that our organizational chart has to provide the supports to the front line that they need, which means that the front line needs access to a supervisor. So supervisors will need to supervise a certain number of social workers to make sure that the social workers have access and the supervisors' jobs and roles and descriptions certainly put the focus back on the front line where it needs to be.

The other situation we ran into, Mr. Speaker, was the fact that social workers are spending a significant amount of time doing non-social work duties. Since 2006, this government has invested over $24 million in Child, Youth and Family Services and have created over 200 positions, but for some reason, the efficiencies or the effectiveness that we were looking for in the service delivery were not there. Therefore, we made a very deliberate and conscious decision to bring Child, Youth and Family Services into a line department, so that we would certainly be able to monitor to get the results that we feel are absolutely necessary in service delivery.

Mr. Speaker, I will have significant time to talk more about the department during this session, as we introduce our legislation for Child, Youth and Family Services, for that department, and Mr. Speaker, we will address the concerns then.

I certainly want to acknowledge that this is a new department. There are no series of quick fixes that are going to set up this service or service delivery as we need. It is going to take a significant amount of work and dedication from the staff, the executive and from this government. It is also going to take critical analysis as we move forward to make sure we understand the issues and we address them to the best of our ability. Mr. Speaker, certainly, there are no absolutes in this type of department and service delivery. Social work is something that is based on human behaviour and the social environment, and we have to make sure we provide a service that does due respect to what social work is really all about.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of St. John's West.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS S. OSBORNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

First of all, I would like to say how happy I was this afternoon to hear the Minister of Municipal Affairs speak on the Budget Debate 2010. It is so great to have her back with us.

I would like take this opportunity as well to congratulate our newest member, the Member for Topsail. Incidentally, today we have the by-election report from Topsail from the Chief Electoral Officer and I notice that out of a total number of ballots of 3,353 that he received 2,737. So I would say that is a clear testament to his ability and also to the work that is being done by our leader and by this government.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS S. OSBORNE: It is my pleasure today, Mr. Speaker, to have a few words on the Budget. I was elected in 1997 in a by-election and for the past thirteen years it has been my privilege to serve the residents of St. John's West. Shortly after I was elected, I guess it was probably about eighteen months after I was elected, in February 1999, there was a general election. There were a lot of issues on the floor at that time; there was housing, social issues. I think charges were being made for school supplies. I am delighted to say that most of those issues have been addressed since 2003 when this particular Administration took over.

One of the most pressing and consuming issues in my district at that time, Mr. Speaker, was the high school in the west end of St. John's. The school reform vote in August, 1997 had seen the transfer of the denominational system to government run schools. At that time the Avalon School Board, as it was known then, was charged with the task of realigning students from the denominational schools to schools that would be all run by the government. Included in that school, under Avalon East School Board, was the St. John's West high school. At the time there was a perfectly good high school in St. John's West known as Beaconsfield High School, but it seemed that part of the plan of the school board was to convert Beaconsfield into a junior high school. Mr. Speaker, this was going to cause great - not only inconvenience to the residents of St. John's West but great expense to the government because the reconfiguration to fit junior high school students as opposed to high school students, the expenses were great.

Now, I will go back to the summer of 1997, when people were asked to vote in the referendum on education reform. They did so with the understanding that reform meant that students would be able to attend their neighbourhood schools. It did not say - it was regardless of religion. It just meant that schools would be inaugurated into the neighbourhood but it did not say - the government of the day, the Liberal government, did not say that that would be just primary students and just junior high school students. In all the ads around reform, the argument the government pushed hardest and put foremost in people's minds was that reform meant students would attend school with their neighbours and with the friends who they otherwise associated with in the after school hours. At no time, Mr. Speaker, did the Liberal government say that high school students were to be excluded from this concept.

Now, if they agreed with the concept to close the high school in the west end of St. John's, as was the plan, they would thus deny the students the right to a neighbourhood school, which they already had with Beaconsfield, and the government would demonstrate that their argument for education reform was unfounded – perhaps even a little bit fraudulent for the government of the day.

Let me now go back to – I would like to speak again of the election in February, 1999 and tie it all in. Premier Tobin and the Liberals set out in that election to annihilate the Opposition Progressive Conservatives and they thought that they might wipe us off the map. There were to be no Conservative seats left in the Province, Mr. Speaker, after that February 1999 election, but then the Premier, Premier Tobin at the time, started to sense that residents from some of the districts, including the District of St. John's West, were not happy with how restructuring after education reform was unfolding. Of course, the rumour was out there, Beaconsfield was still a high school but it was being threatened by this new reform.

So, Premier Tobin, sensing that some of the districts were not happy, issued a press release on February 8, 1999, one day before the February 9 election. I guess it was a desperation release. In it he said, and I quote: If a genuine consensus of the community is not reached at the end of the consultations - and he was referring to the Avalon East School Board consultations - then government will take steps to slow down or, if necessary, shelve reform process. He went on to say: We will act accordingly to ensure that there is, at the end of the day, a community consensus. What he was saying, if the majority of people were not happy he would intervene and put a halt to the direction that Avalon School Board were taking; the direction that they were taking with the realignment of the schools if the people in the districts were not happy.

In spite of this election promise, Mr. Speaker, and in spite of numerous petitions from thousands and thousands of residents of the west end of St. John's that I presented on their behalf in this House of Assembly, and in spite of student protests – and I remember one particularly bitterly cold day out on the steps of Confederation Building, there were thousands of students and their families protesting the removal of the high school from the west end of St. John's. In spite of figures that demonstrated that the west end of St. John's was actually a growth area with an increasing population of young families who would obviously have to attend school, in spite of all this the Liberal government reneged on their promise to intervene if there was a consensus against the realignment. The high school was still removed from St. John's West.

I have heard people say along the way that there were very political reasons because the district that the schools, that would be affected otherwise if the high school was to remain in St. John's West, were of a political persuasion of the government. I have heard that - talk was going around out there for a long while. Whether that is accurate or not I am not sure, but I guess we can read into that what we want to.

So, with the closing of the high school we were faced with students who had been promised neighbourhood schools now having to travel by bus out of their neighbourhood to the other end of the city. This, Mr. Speaker, was a drastic step backwards and it flew in the face of the meaning of school reform and neighbourhood schools. They once had a neighbourhood school, a perfectly good high school, Beaconsfield High School in St. John's West, but now they were travelling by bus to a high school in another part of the city.

This busing presented another myriad of problems. Firstly, and I suppose more importantly, the students were denied the ability to participate in any extracurricular activities that they previously enjoyed in their neighbourhood school. There was no holistic schooling. They could not take part in basketball, school council involvement, and hockey. They had no access to the resource centre after school because the bus was at the school promptly at closing time, and they had to get on the bus and be bused home. So, they were denied all of this activity which really was a reversal in the good education that they previously enjoyed in Beaconsfield High School.

Secondly, and this was for their parents, there was the added expense of families paying for the busing. Many families in the west end of the city had more than one student attending high school, so this posed, certainly, an unnecessary problem on them and an unnecessary expense.

At this point, Mr. Speaker, I am happy to say after much lobbying, hounding and embarrassing the Liberal government by myself, that the students of the west end were at least given free busing, giving them busing equality with the rest of the students in the Province. Not that that was much of a trade-off for losing their school and losing all the extracurricular activities, but at least it was something.

Mr. Speaker, our present government in Budget 2010 has provided $6.2 million for spending on new infrastructure projects in the K-12 system. This government has listened to the members speaking on behalf of their people. I will refer now to the Member for St. John's South and the Member for Kilbride who have made representation to the government, have drawn attention to the fact that an injustice was done. Our government has taken the necessary steps to recognize that injustice and, in Budget 2010, has included in the allocation $500,000 to begin planning a new high school for the west end of St. John's. The residents of the west end of St. John's including, as I said, Kilbride, St. John's South and my District of St. John's West, which I am proud to represent, thank you and look forward to their new school.

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to being around to cut the ribbon when that new school is open.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER (Kelly): The Chair recognizes the hon. the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS POTTLE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise today to provide my hon. colleagues with a response to Budget 2010. First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to say to the family of the late Sarah Jararuse that my thoughts and prayers are with you.

Sarah lost her life in a house fire on May 8. Family and friends in Hopedale will be laying her to rest today. Due to unfavourable weather conditions on the North Coast of Labrador, the airlines were unable to fly in and out of our isolated communities therefore delaying her body to be returned from Happy Valley-Goose Bay after her autopsy was completed. Now, after ten days, she is being laid to rest and family and friends can bring some closure to this tragedy. She is now in the loving arms of our Heavenly Father.

Mr. Speaker, despite some of the unique challenges we face in my district including the weather conditions and the disruption it plays in our lives with regard to air travel, I still believe that I can brag that I, indeed, have the district with the most spectacular beauty.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS POTTLE: The most pristine waters and the most magnificent mountain range, the Torngat Mountains. My District of Torngat Mountains was never known to the world's stage as it is finally today, thanks to the spectacular tourism ad that the Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation have developed. The magnificent Torngat Mountains is now being shared with the rest of the world.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS POTTLE: Mr. Speaker, an employee of Parks Canada in our Province, actually up in my district, once said to me that his colleagues in other provinces are envious of us. He is envious because our Province is helping to showcase our national parks and we do it with pride. They only wish that their provincial governments would do the same.

During my Toronto visit last month, Mr. Speaker, with Aboriginal ministers and the National Aboriginal Organizations many participants there commented on the great work that we are doing in promoting our Province and how it is world-class. I have no doubt that this ad, the Ancient Land ad, will be another award winner, and I commend my colleague for the superb work of his department.

Mr. Speaker, I had the privilege of flying over the Torngat Mountains for the very first time when I joined the Premier on our visit to the resettled Inuit community of Hebron this past summer where we unveiled a plaque to honour those who once called Hebron home. I am honoured that the beauty of this part of our Province has now been shared with the rest of the world. I would encourage all of my colleagues and indeed all residents of our Province to visit this magnificent part of our Province.

Mr. Speaker, the Torngat Mountains district encompasses the five Inuit communities of Nain, Hopedale - my home community – Postville, Makkovik, Rigolet, and the Innu reserve of Natuashish. I would like to thank my hon. colleagues who have taken time out of their busy schedules to visit these Aboriginal communities to see first-hand the challenges we face with our geographic isolation.

Mr. Speaker, there have been many initiatives of the Williams government which will bring tremendous benefit to the people of my district. In Budget 2010, Mr. Speaker, $50,000 was provided to the Aboriginal Sport and Recreation Circle to promote physical and athletic development for Aboriginal youth. Sport and recreation is very important to our youth, and indeed, our communities. Just this past week, youth travelled to Nain for a volleyball tournament. They came away proudly wearing medals and telling stories of the great time they had.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS POTTLE: In 2008, for the first time, Aboriginal youth from my district and from the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador were able to travel to Vancouver to participate in the North American Indigenous Games. These youth were successful and brought medals home. The next North American Indigenous Games are scheduled for July 7-11, 2011, and I am confident that the work of the Aboriginal Sport and Recreation Circle will enable youth from my district, and indeed, Aboriginal youth from across our Province to once again participate in these games. By supporting the work of the Aboriginal Sport and Recreation Circle, our government is helping to address health issues in our Aboriginal communities.

Mr. Speaker, this Budget also announced $5 million to maintain and upgrade ferry terminals and $12.5 million to refit existing vessels in our Province. This has a huge impact on my district. In addition, new containers and reefers are in the process of being purchased to assist in the delivery of goods to the isolated coastal communities in Labrador. These important terminal upgrades, the vessel refits and container purchases are imperative to my district. Our communities are only accessible by air travel, winter trails and ferry service. We depend on the vessels to bring in bulk shipments, such as groceries, fuel, building materials, movement of heavy equipment, et cetera. Keeping our facilities and ferries in good working order is crucial to us.

Our government, last year, Mr. Speaker, invested $135.5 million and leveraged $53 million in federal funding for Capital Works projects. Combined with a municipal contribution, this initiative allowed the approval of an important project in my district, the Trouser Lake project in Nain. This project will provide the growing community of Nain with an enhanced water supply and will allow for the expansion of building lots in the area of the current water supply. This is greatly needed, Mr. Speaker, in a community that is growing and has great opportunities to continue to grow.

While speaking to the needs in Nain, Mr. Speaker, this government also recognized the huge housing need in that community. This Budget committed to building four new Newfoundland and Labrador Housing units in that community. This investment will make a vast impact on the housing shortage and overcrowding in our most northern community.

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleagues; the Minister of Education recently announced in this House additional housing improvements in my district to support the housing for teachers in two communities, in the community of Rigolet and the community of Postville. I am very pleased and commend my hon. colleague for recognizing the need to address housing for these professionals. The $600,000 committed to the Labrador School Board, which is providing accommodations, is a key factor in recruitment and retention of teachers in our remote, isolated and northern communities.

In addition to these units, the government also invested in new accommodations for teachers in Makkovik, another community in my district, and for the community of Cartwright, which happened over the past two years. The recruitment of teachers is essential to ensure that we continue to offer quality education for students in Coastal Labrador.

Something that was not in the Budget, Mr. Speaker, but that I really want to mention, is a firewood project that we did in partnership with the Nunatsiavut government. It was firewood that was cut from the construction of the Trans-Labrador Highway. All the stored firewood would have been left there to rot but instead we were very creative and very supportive in getting this firewood moved to the communities in Coastal Labrador that desperately needed it. When you have to travel up to thirty kilometres to get a load of firewood by snowmobile, the communities truly, truly are very appreciative, especially the seniors and the low-income families that it went to.

Mr. Speaker, I have risen in this hon. House and have previously stated the issues that support - Aboriginal women are very important to this government. I am very proud to be an Inuit woman and have the distinct honour to sit as a Cabinet Minister so that I can bring forward the voice of Aboriginal people, and especially Aboriginal women. This government reconfirms the work they are doing to end violence against women and girls in our Province. This work of our government has impacted the Aboriginal women and girls within my district.

In Budget 2010, under our Poverty Reduction Strategy, we are also providing $125,000 over two years to develop and offer, in partnership with the Inuit women, workshops in the five Inuit communities on the North Coast of Labrador. This initiative will better guide Inuit women so that they can make the most out of provincial initiatives, such as the Poverty Reduction Strategy, Victims Services, Aboriginal Training Initiatives, and economic activities.

In Budget 2010, this government also provided a commitment of $250,000 in operating funding to support the operation of a new women's shelter in Rigolet, and $100,000 so that the Nain shelter could expand its operations and support staff.

Earlier, in 2009-2010, the Women's Policy Office provided the Rigolet Shelter Committee with $60,000 in violence prevention grant funding to support the development of this shelter in this community. I can tell you the women there truly, truly appreciate it.

Mr. Speaker, I have had the privilege of visiting all three of these shelters and several of my colleagues were able to visit the new Rigolet shelter with me to see first-hand the important role these shelters provide to women living in isolated communities.

During the Easter break, Mr. Speaker, I used this opportunity to visit communities in my district. While visiting Rigolet this Easter, I went again to their shelter. A group of approximately twelve women from Rigolet and Nain were participating in a workshop called Making Our Shelter Strong: Training for our Inuit Shelter Workers. These women are very much engaged in these facilities and each community has an active group providing guidance and guidelines for the shelter's operations.

Mr. Speaker, the Violence Prevention Initiative, through the Aboriginal Women's Violence Prevention Grants, has enabled Aboriginal groups to host workshops and a variety of activities to educate and empower communities to end violence against Aboriginal women. In my district, there have been a number of positive initiatives funded through the Aboriginal Women's Violence Prevention Grants.

The Nunatsiavut government received $22,500 to deliver four projects. The first project provided capacity to Nunatsiavut to plan and deliver a series of workshops designed to empower women by building leadership and business skills and fostering greater participation in their community and the Canadian economy. The second project was to provide support for a retreat for Inuit women to gather on the land in an environment that was safe to participate in an activity that reflected the strength of the Inuit culture that promotes well-being, violence prevention and support to others. The third project was to provide a start-up fund for women interested in forming a women's group. By having a group in each community, women would be able to connect and establish a network of women's groups.

Mr. Speaker, over Easter, again, I met with three Inuit women in my community who were very committed and devoted to providing services at the Hopedale shelter and in establishing a women's group there, but they were struggling. They talked about some of their issues and concerns. When I came back after the Easter break I discussed some of these issues with Women's Policy and together we were able to give them some guidance, some comfort, some strength and encouragement to continue. What they did within three weeks, Mr. Speaker, they gathered five more women to join their group. So a total of eight women came together to support and bring forward issues of women in Hopedale. They have also since then advertised for a position to help provide some support there for them. I am very pleased with their accomplishments and I do wish them well.

The fourth project that was provided to the Nunatsiavut government was to provide sexual assault crisis presentations for the Inuit communities.

Mr. Speaker, in addition to the safety of our women and children, this government also recognized the need for increased policing in the community of Postville. I had the opportunity to travel to Postville this past January, joined by my colleagues, the hon. Minister of Justice, the hon. Minister of Transportation and Works, and the hon. Minister of Labrador Affairs. We had an open meeting and community leaders and residents voiced their issues and concerns.

Mr. Speaker, residents spoke passionately about their safety issues, communities echoed their concerns and this government listened. This government invested an additional $378,000 to enable the RCMP to increase their presence in the isolated community of Postville. I also had the opportunity to visit the community of Postville over the Easter break and I can tell you that this news was well-received and they do appreciate it and send back their gratitude.

Mr. Speaker, in addition to increased policing, this government has also invested in community constables in the communities of Nain and Hopedale. This is in addition to the existing community constables in the communities of Makkovik and Rigolet. These positions are vital to these communities as not only does it provide RCMP with additional manpower, it provides the important cultural links between members and residents.

In some cases, these community constables are able to provide interpretation services and bridge the language and cultural barriers. It provides the communities with a consistent link with the RCMP to offset gaps from staff turnover. These community constables also provide the Inuit Community Government with an avenue to enforce their municipal bylaws.

Mr. Speaker, I attended the Northern Lights forum in Montreal this past winter. When touring the booths, I was delighted and very proud when I stopped at the RCMP booth which was being manned by two RCMP officers who are residents of my district - they come from the community of Postville. They were recruited through the Aboriginal recruitment program a few years ago. Having these RCMP members, and now these new community constables, encourages our youth to pursue their dreams to enter law enforcement should they choose to do that.

Mr. Speaker, in March of this year I had the distinct honour of representing the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador along with my colleague, the hon. Minister of Labrador Affairs, as we took part in the announcement of the Labrador Aboriginal Training program. The Labrador Aboriginal Training program with its four partners: the Nunatsiavut government, the Innu Nation, NunatuKavut and Nalcor Energy, along with the federal and provincial governments, will be an effective and essential tool to assist Aboriginal peoples throughout Labrador to take advantage of future employment possibilities.

This is indeed a proactive approach in light of developments being placed in Labrador and the resulting opportunities that will occur as a result of these developments. The Labrador Aboriginal Training program is another opportunity for Aboriginal people from my district to obtain training and secure funding.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I just would like to thank the hon. Premier and my colleagues in this hon. House for recognizing the needs of Aboriginal people and for making them a priority in our government.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. BUCKINGHAM: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and certainly a thank you to my colleagues in the House.

Budget 2010, The Right Investments For Our children and Our Future - one of the benefits of this part of the process, Mr. Speaker, is that we can speak as much as want on the Budget. It is also an opportunity to go off on our tangents and speak of the things we want to. So, over the last week or so I have made note of relevance a couple of times and, as I am sure you already know, you are off the hook for any sort of relevance in this kind of a speech today.

It is an opportunity for us, as members, to get up and, I guess, freewheel a little bit, to talk about some of the things that are on our minds. With that, I will start off by saying I very much support the Budget and hopefully some of the comments that I put forward this afternoon will back that up.

Before I begin, I would like to certainly make mention of the members who have been up prior to me today, the Member for Conception Bay East & Bell Island, certainly it was great to see her back in the House and in fine, fine form as she brought her perspective on the Budget, and certainly the perspective from her department to the floor today and by the medium of television to the people of the Province. To the Member for The Isles of Notre Dame, he certainly, very passionately, brought forward the perspective of the rural member.

Now, it is very difficult to ignore when rural members stand up in this House and they talk about the good and positive things that are going on in their districts. It is very hard to come to the conclusion that rural Newfoundland, as some would portray it, to be falling by the wayside or to be heading down some inescapable vortex or black hole that we will never get out of.

As I will say throughout my remarks today, it is up to each individual to listen to what is being said. If anyone who is in a rural district believes that their member is misrepresenting the situation that is going on then they have a duty and an obligation, and they will have that opportunity in seventeen or eighteen months to let that person know that they do not appreciate the way that they are representing them. However, I suspect, judging by the full breadth of the programs that we see here, and the way individual rural members go about the business of making sure that their particular constituents are represented, that this black picture of rural Newfoundland is certainly one that will be inaccurate.

To the Member for St. John's North, certainly, his comments were very much appreciated. It is very possible that his VW van is parked in my parking spot, as he invokes the sixties and seventies, but nonetheless, we certainly appreciate his perspective that he brought here to the House.

Mr. Speaker, what is a budget? A budget really is little more than a plan. It is not carved in stone. It is not an absolute. It is a beginning of a process by where the government makes plans as to how it will spend this money throughout the coming year. It is a plan that is put forward to let people know the directions that this government is going in, and certainly is made up of a number of different elements. Now, first and foremost, I think we should look at the components that comprise the standing commitments that have to be made.

As anyone can tell you, whether you are dealing with a small organization, whether you are dealing with a household, whether you are dealing with your own salary, whether you are dealing with a Province, there are certain inescapable costs that you cannot get away from. Therefore, inescapable - I guess that would make sense.

There are certain things like salaries, heat and light, insurance. There are things like maintenance, different programs that you committed to. These are things that are very quantifiable and very, very known. We can tell you exactly how much we are going to have to pay in interest this year because all you have to do is the math on it. So you roll that into what you need to spend. The question of what you have to spend, Mr. Speaker, is not the question that defines a government. The question that defines government is what you choose to spend your money on, and this is where the Budget comes into play.

Back in October of 2007, we put forward a bluebook, and in that bluebook was an outline of the types of things that we want to do, the things that we believe that the people of Newfoundland want to see us move on, and so we presented that, and obviously, it was judged favourably, as we won as many seats as we did.

Now, from there the question becomes: Well, did we do everything? Mr. Speaker, at the end of four years, it will probably not be the case that we have done everything we committed to do. Certainly, we do not have the benefit of full foresight to be able to predict how things will be impacted, whether it be through economic situations, whether it be change in government funding, whether it be change in social situations, whether reports will come out that will change the assumptions that were made as we go forward. That is the very nature of four-year plans. It is not a carved in stone commitment, but it is a statement of intention of how we plan to conduct ourselves, how we plan to bring ourselves forward and how we plan to govern the people of the Province.

In keeping with that, the Budget is very much a part of that plan. It articulates every year what it is we want to do to put forward our agenda, to create the programs, to create the situation that makes Newfoundland and Labrador a better place in which to live.

Some of the things, in terms of the discretionary funding that you can talk about, is whether we look at programs that exist and are we going to increase those programs? Are we going to roll them back a little bit? Are we going to eliminate them all together, or are we going to see that it is maybe the best thing since sliced bread and we really had not anticipated how good it was going to be, and so consequently we increase it?

The decision to do these types of things in many cases is based on success and what has worked. What is needed? What do people subscribe to? There are a number of programs where you put it out there anticipating that maybe 800 or 900 people, maybe wanting to do this. They might find that this is a good match for the situation. Yet, when you roll out the program and you advertise it, as well as government should to let everyone know that this is available, people might look at this and say: Do you know something? This is something that really fits into a particular set of needs. The program gets oversubscribed, twice as many, four times as many people subscribe to the program. As a government you react to that. You do not turn around and say: hold on a second now, we only budgeted for 200 people, we are stopping it right there. If you can make a case that 400, 600, 800 people will make good advantage of this program, then it only makes sense that you augment it.

The question becomes within a particular Budget year, you have made a plan upfront. In many cases if you follow through with that plan, you might not be able to turn around on a dime and say: program A, which is now oversubscribed three or four times than what we expected, we would love to expand it but the money is just not there. If it is not there, it is not there. That is the reality of it. We see it in our own households; we see it in our personal finances. As much as we would love to get more of a good thing, the question is: Do we have the money to do it?

However, as with all Budgets, Mr. Speaker, there are some plans that you may make that do not come to fruition in that particular year. This was brought forward very clearly in the Estimates committees that many of us attended, where the Opposition – let me just run through the Estimates process very, very briefly, if I just might. The government presents a fairly thick book, aptly named Estimates, and in it each department puts forward how it is they plan to spend money. Under questioning by the Opposition, and sometimes from the government members but mostly from the Opposition, they defend not only what it is they plan to do with a particular amount of money, but they also defend what happened in the previous year.

Many of the questions that happen come with - along maybe some of these lines. Mr. Minister, last year you budgeted $200,000 for this particular line item, why is it that you did not spend anything at all? In many cases the minister will go back to it and say the assumptions were there or items that we thought we may be able to purchase were not available or, as some of my hon. colleagues will say from time to time, I am not quite sure exactly where it comes from but the water on the beans have changed.

So, they go forward with that. Then in the other case perhaps they did budget $200,000 last year and this year it is $400,000. Again, the question becomes: Why? The ministers, very often with their officials on hand to back them up, but in my experience the ministers are very, very capable in terms of knowing what is going on in their department. Much to my surprise, and I really do not know how they do it in a lot of ways, they demonstrate a level of knowledge and the lowest, the smallest levels, the smallest details that constantly amazes me. When you have a Budget of $12 million, $14 million, $15 million, even as high as a couple of billion dollars, the fact that the minister can get there and comment on very small line items and where it came from, just speaks to the amount of work and dedication that they must have in preparing for these Estimates.

Again, I appreciate that this is often an opportunity for us here in the House to educate some people who are listening as to a lot of the process that goes on. I am holding in my hand a copy of the Budget Speech – and again, Mr. Speaker, if I am using props here, if I am out of line, please do not hesitate to let me know. This is a Budget Speech, and if you go through it, this is pretty much verbatim what the Minister of Finance stands on his feet and reads off. Now, he may or may not have a pair of new shoes. Sometimes the shoes are his; sometimes they are very, very small, such as this year's but that is where it is. Now, on the heels of that are some press releases that are given to the media so that they may accurately report what is in the Budget and go forward with a concise message that advertises what is there.

This is a householder, Mr. Speaker, that was brought into every single household. This is the Highlights of the Budget, and for anyone who is interested, they can go through this and really have a good, good understanding of the breadth and the depth of the type of items that we deal with here every day in government. Again, if you have this and you have time to read through it, it is very, very worthwhile to have a quick look at it.

Framing all the decisions and all of the information that goes into this is a publication entitled The Economy. In this, the Department of Finance puts forward the economic environment that exists. Whether it is local, national or international, we talk about the type of influences that affect the decisions that we make. Is there a downturn in a particular industry, such as mining or lumber or fisheries? Is there a change in the dollar? Is there a change in the oil prices? Is there a change in anything that makes the business of running Newfoundland different? Have the water on the beans changed? So through this we get a very good synopsis of the framework in which the decisions have been made.

To go along with the Estimates, as I referenced earlier - and this is my last one, Mr. Speaker, so if I could have a bit of indulgence - this is the salary details. In here are the breakdowns of how every department sees itself staffing itself throughout the year. What are some of the positions that it is going to take on? How many are permanent? How many are temporary? How many employees will be on a contract basis? Also, how many positions are there? What is the salary for those positions? All of those are very, very quantifiable. They are numbers that can be brought forward, in particular with regard to the permanent employees who are in place.

Now, Mr. Speaker, when you go through the Budget you need to understand a lot of the other things that go on. Everyday we in government are provided with requests, whether it be for small programs, large programs, for individual needs, community needs. All of those things are funnelled through the MHAs and through the ministers. We ask for feedback. We ask questions. We ask the questions to the stakeholders, to individuals. We provide opportunities for people to come out and give us a bit of a sense of what it would be that they would like to have.

I remember my first Budget consultation, Julie Bettney came forward with a request that the government look at introducing new digital mammography machines. Twelve was the number that was put forward. In her comments was: We ask for twelve, we think twelve is what is required, do we know if we will get twelve? Probably not. Do we know if these are even going to come forward at all? Again, no real assertion was made that it would be done or it should be done but again the request was put in.

I was very impressed, Mr. Speaker, that in the following Budget twelve digital mammography units were put in place. A request had been made, whether it had been made in private, whether it was the only request made in public but all of that put together was part of the influence that is played when requests that are made sensibly, made soundly, made in the framework of a holistic approach to whatever problem is put forward, these requests are very much considered. Now, are they all acted on? The answer is probably no. In fact, the answer is no because we know we cannot do everything for everybody – that is the realm of the NDP.

Now, Mr. Speaker, if I could, with my remaining time I would like to talk a little bit about some of the health care investments that have been made. I do not believe the Minister of Health sits in his office on high and dictates how everything should be. I do not believe that as a former criminal lawyer, he fancies himself to be the all-knowing medical person who will tell everyone how things should be. He relies on his staff, he relies on the regional health authorities, he relies on the practitioners, on the nurses, on the health care providers, on the long-term care, all of these groups to come forward and say, here is what we see as our particular problems. Now, the question becomes not do I address your problem and your problem and your problem, but the question becomes: How do we address all these problems in an integrated, efficient way that minimizes waste, that increases the efficiencies, and that provides the best alternatives, the best solutions to our health care needs?

I was very heartened, Mr. Speaker, to find out that over $790,000 was put into the insulin pump therapy program. I have a number of individuals in my district that, once they hit the age of eighteen, came off that program, and I had not really thought a lot of it until one person sat down with me one day and laid out the costs that they were expected to put out every day for this. I was quite surprised by the costs. So the fact that this has been extended to young people up to age twenty-five really is a positive step.

Now, Mr. Speaker, as the title of the Budget says: The Right Investments For Our Children and Our Future, and perhaps we are talking about one and the same thing. Let's look at some of the ways that this is done. Mr. Speaker, we have an obligation to deal with our children's needs for today, for the present. A lot of these things are addressed in the Budget. When you look at what we are doing in terms of children's health services, we are making sure that if anything happens to our children, if they become sick, if they get injured, then we have a health care system that addresses their need better than we ever have before. Perfect? No. In fact, perfect – never. Nonetheless, better than it was before. One only has to go, and we may, with an enviable eye, look toward somewhere like Alberta with the money that they have, and say surely, they must have all of their problems solved, but one only has to scan a Calgary paper or an Edmonton paper or look on a few Web sites to understand that many of the social problems that we see, that we think maybe only happens here because we do not have the right amount of money to take care of it, does, in fact, happen up in places like Alberta or other jurisdictions that may be perceived as having an excess of cash. So, we are certainly making great strides and great progress.

Mr. Speaker, a society is a multi-faceted, diverse, integrated system which moves and grows some aspects while leaving other aspects to lie fallow, to go by the way of history and trivia. The dynamic nature of a society requires its government to have the openness to accept change, courage to promote change, and often to have the foresight to push society in a direction of positive change because, as a government, it is our obligation to look at society in general, to look at where we can be, to look at what we can become, and to, perhaps, bring us in that direction even though those particular requests might not have gone out.

Mr. Speaker, do you know something? It is not just that we sit here. We make these decisions based on the feedback. We make these decisions based on the social groups that come forward and say here are some of the inequities we see; here are some of the visions that we have for what could happen in the future. When they share those visions with us, when they share those goals of where we could be, it very much influences us.

I had a conversation with a woman from one of the environmental groups - I will not say which one. She spoke one evening of how their efforts had influenced government policy. She touted her group and the groups that she was associated with, how they have gone in and lobbied MHAs, how they had gone in and lobbied ministers, and how they had made real changes to some environmental issues that they thought were very important. Once those issues were brought forward and the ministers did change their mind, or the government did change its mind, then they came to a point and said: Look at what we did.

Mr. Speaker, absolutely, it was the lobbying of those groups, but here is the flipside of it. I went up to her afterwards and I said: Do you know something? You have just reinforced my belief that this parliamentary system we have is a good and positive way to go because the flipside is if you do not have access to the politicians, if you do not have access to the ministers, nothing gets changed. What she demonstrated to me in a very, very clear way, that politicians are open to these types of conversations, that we do listen, we are willing to change and that –

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I remind the hon. member that his time for speaking has expired.

MR. BUCKINGHAM: By leave, Mr. Speaker, to clue up?

MR. SPEAKER: By leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: Leave.

MR. SPEAKER: Leave to clue up.

MR. BUCKINGHAM: Leave to clue up - thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, just to clue up, this past weekend there was a movie on television called The American President starring Michael Douglas and Annette Bening, and it is actually a movie that I have seen a number of times, mostly because I like the politics of it and my wife likes the romance of it, so it is one of those movies we both enjoy very much together.

One of the things that happened, Mr. Speaker, was that the President came forward after having gone through a whole bunch of gyrations and watering down legislation and trying to pander to numerous interests and he sort of felt that he had lost his way. One of the striking comments by the President in that movie was this: I was so busy trying to keep my job I forgot to do my job.

Mr. Speaker, I think we have the exact reverse with this situation. I often think that this government is so good at doing its job it sometimes forgets that we have to keep it. Mr. Speaker, I invite everybody who is listening, everyone who reads the paper, everyone to look at what this government does, what this government says, and to judge what it is we have to say, look at what the other side has to say, and in seventeen or eighteen months, you will be asked to make the decision. I invite everyone to ask themselves a couple of questions: Am I comfortable with what is being done? Am I better off than I was four years ago? I suggest the answers will be yes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: It is the pleasure of the Chair to recognize the hon. Member for Fortune Bay-Cape la Hune.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS PERRY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It gives me great pleasure to rise in this hon. House today and speak to the people of this great Province about our investments as a government – investments that are leading the way to self-reliance and creating opportunities to bring our people home, not just to bring our people home, Mr. Speaker, but also to enable our people to stay. In the past, there often was no option and this government, through the measures and policies we have introduced, are affording that option for the people of this Province. I do not just mean the opportunity to stay or move back to urban Newfoundland; they are moving back home to rural Newfoundland and Labrador as well.

First though, Mr. Speaker, let me thank the people of my District of Fortune Bay-Cape la Hune for their encouragement and support as we work together to try to improve the social and economic well-being of our region.

Due to an unfortunate mishap on my way to the House of Assembly for the very first time, I never got to do my maiden speech. Looking back now, I am quite honoured that the very first time I ever spoke in this hon. House, it was to Bill 35, An Act To Amend The Energy Corporation Act. I thank the Minister of Natural Resources for leading us to prosperity in this sector.

When I decided to run for politics, I was driven by a strong desire to advance our growth potential, and to bring our local voice to the table so that strategic investments could be made which are in line with my people's priorities and local industry needs. I am thrilled that our government, and our Premier, recognize the golden opportunity we have in the Coast of Bays and are very committed to working with us to achieve new job creation and improved infrastructure.

I would also like to take this opportunity to welcome our two newest members for the Districts of Terra Nova and Topsail. I am going to talk a little bit now today about identifying and addressing issues.

As I get into what we have achieved in just two short years, I am going to talk about the challenges and what we are doing to overcome them. For most, if not all districts, health care, education and roads are among the key issues that we are trying to resolve and improve. There are many priorities that my people want to achieve, and while I recognize that we will not get everything overnight, as your MHA, I intend to persevere and work with my colleagues and constituents to accomplish as much as we possibly can.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS PERRY: I am optimistic that the future will bode us well, and am very pleased with the investments that have been made in my district since 2007 - in health care, seniors, youth, education, municipal infrastructure, recreation, roads and industrial development, to name but just a few.

It sure was a great feeling on Budget Day when we announced that the coverage for insulin pump therapy for children with diabetes would extend until the age of twenty-five. Everyone I know who are affected by this situation are just so very happy. On Budget Day my constituents were calling thanking us, staff were thanking us, and we were thanking them. It was truly the result of a team effort where we all worked together to try and improve the policies for the betterment of our kids and our people.

Another great accomplishment we have made, in response to the people's identification of priority issues and concerns, is increasing funding to the not-for-profit community-based ambulance services. We have significantly enhanced their funding, raising it from $101,000 per year up to $171,000 annually by year four of the new contract. This has enabled additional emergency medical responders to be hired throughout my district and throughout the Province to better serve the public, and it has reduced a great deal of stress from the volunteer based boards for day-to-day operations. We have also made repairs to the clinic in Rencontre East, with more to come.

Mr. Speaker, this government has also brought back the importance of education, with $1.3 billion allocated for the current fiscal year. We are capping class sizes up to Grade 9, increasing the number of hours for student assistants, freezing tuition at Memorial University and the College of the North Atlantic, yet again, expanding program offerings and conducting necessary repairs. In my District of Fortune Bay-Cape la Hune, specifics include repairs to the schools in Rencontre East and Hermitage, as well as the introduction of a new high school skilled trades program at English Harbour, Harbour Breton and Bay d'Espoir.

Since 2007, over $5.5 million has been invested in roadwork in Fortune Bay-Cape la Hune - and there is about at least $50 million needed - and in due course, it will all get done, one section at a time. In the meantime, our roads are certainly a serious concern - and I probably drive over them more than most, I really know what they are like - and I encourage the public to call me, send me an e-mail, or report the road conditions that you see to myself and the highways depot in Pool's Cove to ensure that we can do the best maintenance possible while we are waiting to get all the new pavement done. We must work together here, and we know the roads are bad, so be sure to slow down and drive safe.

I am delighted that this year we will see the St. Josephs Cove section of paving completed, as well as improvements for Milltown, and we are starting the much needed repairs between Hermitage and Harbour Breton. In addition, we are also doing six kilometres of the Bay d'Espoir highway. It has been a great budget year for Fortune Bay-Cape la Hune.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS PERRY: In the past two years, we have paved 5.5 kilometres from St. Albans to St. Josephs Cove, and ten kilometres along the Bay d'Espoir highway. We have removed the large rock blocking visibility to the entrance of Pool's Cove, and replaced culverts near Southeast Brook, Little River, and near the Pool's Cove junction.

Mr. Speaker, I am thrilled to report that we are making substantial headway with clearing back the alders, spending over $250,000 in the last two years on alder clearing.

I am also delighted that we have been able to support new streets for François, with funding from the Capital Works Program as well as the Community Enhancement Program, creating work and repairing essential community infrastructure all at once.

We have even announced five new ferries for the south coast, Mr. Speaker, and I am very pleased to say three of those new ferries will be in my district.

Other challenges our government is assisting us to overcome include the need for industrial infrastructure, particularly were the fishery and aquaculture are concerned. I worked in Community Economic Development for over twelve years prior to politics, and it was quite a battle to get the necessary support and investment from the government of the day. However, our government has delivered. We now have financial commitments for a state-of-the-art fish health facility starting soon. Four new bio-security wharves, a loan guarantee program to attract new investors, and training programs to upgrade the skills of local residents, both men and women, I am proud to say.

We have over 1,000 people employed, directly or indirectly, in the aquaculture industry, Mr. Speaker. That is something quite significant for a rural remote area like the Coast of Bays. We have spin-off activity that is reaching even beyond the Coast of Bays, across the Province as a whole, and there are more new opportunities to come. Housing starts are on the rise in rural remote communities like mine and people are moving back home, Mr. Speaker.

Where the fishery is concerned, we are assisting fishers committees with wharf repairs in St. Jacques, Pool's Cove and Sandyville. We are working through an MOU to chart a course for the future, and helping to bridge the financial impact of the global economic downturn that has left most fisheries around the world struggling. I am confident that we will get through this hurdle, as we all work together to find solutions and adapt to a changing industry.

This fall, nearly $800,000 was invested to the special fishery CEP to create jobs in Rencontre East, Belleoram, St. Jacques, Coombs Cove, Hermitage, Harbour Breton, McCallum, Gaultois, Seal Cove, François and Bay d'Espoir.

I say to you, Mr. Speaker, I am so very full of pride for the great work that they have done. In fact, I had people tell me that they felt like the projects they worked on were 100 per cent meaningful; things like seawalls to protect roads and homesteads, widening municipal streets, repairing community centres and fishermen's sheds. We are spending the money wisely, Mr. Speaker, creating much needed work, while at the same time, assisting communities with essential infrastructure improvements and repairs that will have a lasting impact for all residents to enjoy.

In the forestry sector, we are investing in road upgrades such as Goodyear's Resource Road, the Swangers Cove road, and Godaleich Road. Pre-commercial thinning is being done at Swangers Cove and the Tailrace, and there will be tree seedling planting in Cold Spring Pond this summer.

Mr. Speaker, we are also committed to addressing the social issues, with the Poverty Reduction Strategy providing much needed support for local families, children and seniors. Since I became elected two years ago, the Community Youth Network has expanded to now include Harbour Breton, Bay d'Espoir and Pool's Cove. The latter of these two have come about since my election in 2007. I consider them to be among our greatest achievements as they are enjoyed by young and old alike.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS PERRY: We are also providing a grant for the operation of Building Blocks Quality Child Care in Harbour Breton and funding a position for a youth employment related services and information officer - young Danielle Parrott is doing a great job for us in this capacity.

In addition, the St. Alban's Community Youth Network recently received $18,000 for the Artistry in Motion program, the Harbour Breton CYN received $25,000 for a cable entrepreneurship program and the Belleoram council received $15,000 for a youth conference.

In addition, Mr. Speaker - and there is just so much good news about what is happening in the Coast of Bays, I know I am going to run out of time before I can get to it all, and I will not be able to scratch the surface of what we are doing provincially. We are providing support to older workers through the Targeted Initiative for Older Workers program - the acronym is TIOW - with some $200,000 invested last year for Heritage Carpentry in Harbour Breton to create much needed employment and new skills.

This year we are receiving an additional $375,000 for another TIOW in Harbour Breton, as well as nearly $390,000 for one in Gaultois. I thank the hon. Minister of Human Resources, Labour and Employment for her fantastic support to our region. We are also receiving $141,000 in job creation partnerships funding announced today for six new positions to assist organizations throughout the Coast of Bays.

In terms of community recreation, over $60,000 in grants has been invested for the Belleoram Community Centre, the arena at St. Alban's, Harbour Breton's new Cardio Fit enterprise and Conne River's recreation facilities. Each summer we provide annual operating grants to the various community recreation committees. As well, $3,000 was invested in playground equipment at Milltown, $1,000 in Morrisville and $2,000 at English Harbour West.

This summer, for the first time ever, the region is receiving $10,000 from the Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation to host summer games for the youth, and it will be held at Milltown. I certainly encourage all of our young athletes to get out and get involved.

I want to speak now, Mr. Speaker, a bit about the municipal infrastructure investments, and there are plenty. For example, St. Alban's received $170,000 for a water supply pumping upgrade; Gaultois received $260,000 for water improvements and another $175,000 for bridge repairs; McCallum has acquired over $30,000 for water boxes; and there are a number of significant water and sewer projects for this coming year yet to be announced.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS PERRY: Pool's Cove received $190,000 to pave the Pond Road. Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, each and every year, the municipalities in Fortune Bay-Cape la Hune receive over $1 million in Municipal Operating Grants.

In my district, we are privileged to be home to the Miawpukek First Nation of Conne River. Since becoming a reserve, they have been strongly connected to the federal government, but when I ran, I pledged to strengthen the relationship with the Province, and again, Mr. Speaker, we are delivering. The Williams government has invested over $50,000 in tourism initiatives, including funding for a visitor information centre, money to develop Aboriginal programming at the Miawpukek Discovery Centre, and assistance for a marketing study. We have contributed $2,000 to assist in bringing in George Chuvalo to speak to the youth there; $15,000 for a women's cultural club; and as I already discussed we are investing $15,000 in their recreation activities as well.

In terms of fire and emergency services, Mr. Speaker, my district is faring well, with one of only ten new pumper trucks for the entire Island in Hermitage – a $220,000 firefighting tool complete with foam. Other investments include: $3,000 for Francois; $11,525 for a space cap and $5,400 for bunker suits in Milltown; $6,000 to Rencontre East for an eighteen horsepower portable pump; $10,000 for a breathing apparatus in St. Alban's; $13,600 for suits in Seal Cove; and $10,848 for portable fire pumps in English Harbour West.

Mr. Speaker, I am going back into issues again a bit and I want to talk a little bit here today about the RV camping issue. This is a major concern for the people in my district, but I am proud to say we are working through it. The Opposition likes to raise it – members opposite – as an issue of concern, but I look at it as a real opportunity to strengthen the environment, to strengthen our adherence to the law, and at the end of the day, we are going to all be much better off for the efforts which are taking place.

Random campsites without proper sewage disposal, as seen in the past, cannot be continued, but this myth that we cannot have RV camping any more – there could be nothing further from the truth. People still very much can take their trailers, and I certainly look forward to next weekend when I am driving home seeing trailers in tow as people do go out for the weekend, but they are also going to have their trailers in tow when they go back home on Sunday, Mr. Speaker.

There is another solution as well for those people who want to stay in an area for the summer. There are solutions and I want people to know about this because the members opposite are portraying it as there is nothing we can do - there is. We can establish camping associations. In this case everybody wins. The environment is properly managed; there is proper land ownership and septic treatments while campers can continue to enjoy the great out of doors surrounded by family and friends in remote settings.

In my district, a great deal of effort has been expended by myself and the campers affected to obtain the necessary approvals on site designs. At the end of the day, it will be well worth it. We had some growing pains learning the process. Certainly, we have gone through it once, and I look forward to other groups in my area doing the same. I thank the Minister of Environment and Conservation for her fantastic support and guidance. It is an example of how, by working together, the people and government can make a difference for the better.

I am going to talk a little bit now, Mr. Speaker, about our team. As a government, we are strongly committed to addressing the concerns of our people. There is another myth I would like to dispel if I may. The Opposition likes to tout us as having no voices, but I can assure you we certainly do. The Premier is one of the most open-minded, intelligent people I have ever met. He always invites and welcomes our input as we endeavour to improve the Province. Yes, I can assure Newfoundland and Labrador that our caucus voices are not only listened to, they are considered and acted upon. I thank the Premier and his Cabinet for their respect and consultations with us all.

The Williams government has the responsibility for the running of this Province. In asking for this mandate, a commitment was made to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to always hear their concerns and govern in the best interests of the Province as a whole. One of the most significant ways our government does is through our MHAs - all of us. We are able to bring the economic and social concerns as well as the aspirations of our constituents to the table for consideration and implementation in policy and programs. I feel very fortunate to be part of a government where it is understood that everyone in our caucus has a role and everyone brings value to the table.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS PERRY: Before I clue up, Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk a bit about our investments in the Province as a whole, particularly the investments that are helping rural Newfoundland. I assure you, Mr. Speaker, this government is very committed to rebuilding rural Newfoundland and Labrador.

Among some of the measures we have introduced include: historic tax cuts that support low-income earners and all classes of seniors; developing a competitive tax regime for small businesses; introducing programs to help enhance workplace skills so we can stay competitive in a global economy; eliminating the sales tax on insurance premiums; developing and implementing the Youth Attraction and Retention Strategy; continuing the Home Heating Rebate Program, and so much more. My colleague from The Isles of Notre Dame spoke earlier today about how sometimes, you know, the Opposition like to exploit rural Newfoundland, and I would like to add to what he had to say, Mr. Speaker. We are much more intelligent than that in rural Newfoundland. We do not fall prey to playing politics any more. We have intelligent minds and we vote for the best person who is going to represent us and the best person to lead us to prosperity.

I am going to run out of time today and I will not even get through one-tenth of the initiatives that we are doing for the Province as a whole, but I look forward to getting back a little later and speaking to them more.

In closing, I will just say that I feel very, very, fortunate that I am able to live in rural Newfoundland and Labrador, and I will continue to work hard for an even brighter future. I understand that we cannot achieve everything we need overnight, but I fully intend to persevere until we reach our goals. Through the governance and leadership of the Williams team, Newfoundland and Labrador has reached an historic milestone. We are finally - we are truly - masters of our own destiny.

It certainly has been a pleasure for me to speak on the Budget here today, Mr. Speaker, and I thank you for your time.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER (Fitzgerald): Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Business.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is my delight today to get up and have a few words about this year's Budget. The Budget came down on March 29, so we have had several weeks now of a debate around the Budge itself. We have had some attempts to amend the Budget, by the Opposition. We have had some sub-amendments to the Budget, all with a view of trying to extend debate on the Budget, so we have heard lots of commentary about this year's Budget, Mr. Speaker.

I want to just preface a couple of my comments by a couple of points I want to raise. As a Minister of Business, in our department we are trying to attract new investment to the Province. We are trying to encourage indigenous companies to invest in expansion and growth of their industries, so it is always nice, Mr. Speaker, to look at who we are. What is it that we have to offer Newfoundlanders and Labradorians? What is it we have to offer prospective investors in the Province?

I look to a couple of things. I stood in this House a couple of weeks ago and I read a statement that talked about the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. They have a survey that they do - it is a business barometer - and they said that Newfoundland and Labrador is the second highest in the country above all the Canadian averages when it comes to the level of optimism that businesses have for the opportunities in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Then, when you look at Stats Canada, another agency, a federal government agency, Mr. Speaker, who starts talking about population changes, and starts looking at what is happening in Newfoundland and Labrador, they tell us that the population of Newfoundland and Labrador is increasing; we are seeing population growth as a result of new in-migration, Mr. Speaker. We are seeing people returning to Newfoundland and Labrador. We are seeing people who are returning as expatriates of Newfoundland and Labrador coming back to the Province. We are seeing people looking at Newfoundland and Labrador as a place to live, as a place to pursue a career.

Mr. Speaker, when we start talking about budgets, and I know this debate today is about this year's Budget, one of the questions that I would pose to the Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, and a question that I pose to my colleagues here in the House of Assembly: When you look at this year's Budget as being the seventh – this is the seventh Budget delivered by this government; so, if you think for a moment and reflect on the last seven budgets - why is it that the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, in their survey, why is it their membership is telling them that there is a higher confidence in the business climate in Newfoundland and Labrador than it is in many other parts of Canada? Why is it that ex-Newfoundlanders and others are deciding to move to Newfoundland and Labrador?

Because this is a quality place in which to live; this is a quality place in which to pursue a career; this is a community and a Province where you want to invest money because you see business opportunities, you see an opportunity for growth, you see prosperity, and you see a bright future, Mr. Speaker. That is the reason why.

I want to talk about this year's Budget but I want to talk about all seven of our budgets. Just look at what we have created in seven successive budgets, Mr. Speaker. In seven successive budgets, our government has taken this Province from the brink of bankruptcy, having near billion-dollar deficits on an annual basis, a massive accumulated debt, to where we are today. Let's look at that picture, Mr. Speaker; let's look at where we are today. Let's look at the kind of climate that we have created.

If you look at Newfoundland and Labrador today, I think on June 7 or 8 the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council is going to be here in St. John's and they are going to be talking about some of the major capital investments that are taking place in Newfoundland and Labrador. I am going to be very proud to be a part of that process where we are going to highlight - and, in fact, they are going to highlight - some of the significant achievements in Newfoundland and Labrador; because they are going to be talking about the increase in capital investment that is in existence in this Province - looking at what growth we had in capital investment last year and the growth we had in capital investment this year - a prosperous place in which to live and work

Of all the capital projects on the go in all of Atlantic Canada, Mr. Speaker, we hold the distinction in Newfoundland and Labrador as representing about 50 per cent of the dollar value of all of those capital projects.

If you look at the other kinds of things we have created through our budgetary process, all seven of them, today, not only are we one of the most prosperous places in all of Canada but we are definitely the most prosperous place in Atlantic Canada in terms of a place to invest, an opportunity for economic return. We also boast the lowest tuition fees in our post-secondary education institutions. We also boast the best student aid program in all of Canada. We also boast being one of the leading provinces in the country in terms of our personal income tax rates.

This is why people want to stay here, Mr. Speaker. People see this as a place in which they can pursue a career because there are employment opportunities. People want to raise a family here because our government, through seven budgets, have eliminated all of the fees that we had in our education system. We now have free textbooks in our education system from K-12. We eliminated all of the fees associated with going through our schools. We have put a cap on class sizes, Mr. Speaker. We have invested in our student aid program, because we believe in families. That is why this year's Budget is titled: The Right Investments For Our Children and Our Future. We believe in our future. We believe in our children. We believe we have a prosperous future, and that is why we are supportive of families.

It was our government who introduced the Parental Benefits Program, Mr. Speaker, because we recognize that if you are going to stay in this Province to pursue a career, we want to make sure that you have appropriate tax regimes so that all of that prosperity and all of that income is not taxed at excessive rates. We want to make sure that you feel comfortable in raising you family here, by making it affordable. We want to make sure that you have quality education for your children, and that is why we have invested in our K-12 system, Mr. Speaker, because we have created a climate here. We have created a climate, through our seven budgets, to ensure that people want to live here, want to pursue a career, and they want to invest their money. That is why I say, Mr. Speaker, today we have agencies like the Canadian Federation of Independent Business talking about the benefits and the virtues of investing money in Newfoundland and Labrador, and as being one of the best places in Canada to invest because you will have a rate of return because we have a prosperous future. That is why people are moving here, Mr. Speaker, when they start looking at the opportunities that are here.

That is why a couple of years ago we recognized that if we are going to have that kind prosperity, if we are going to attract that kind of investment, we better make sure that those companies have the skilled workforce that they need to be able to provide the continued growth and the impetus in driving their businesses, Mr. Speaker. That is why a number of years ago we put in place the Skills Task Force. We wanted to better understand the workforce. We wanted to better understand the opportunities that existed, but we also wanted to understand the gaps that exist between the demand for a skilled workforce and the current workforce. So that gap in between, that is what we needed to address. We have done that. Through those seven Budgets, we have made significant investments in providing opportunities for investments in education. Go to my own district, the College of the North Atlantic a couple of years ago, as a part of that process to address the gap in that skilled workforce, the College of the North Atlantic campus in Clarenville, in my own district, invested close to $1 million to revamp the pipefitting program, to revamp the shop so we had first-class technology in that shop. We had first-class facility to be able to train people in that particular trade, and that is just one example. I can walk through the entire Province, Mr. Speaker, and go into other campuses of the college, look at other initiatives that our Department of Education has undergone with the Marine Institute and with the College of the North Atlantic and with Memorial University to respond to that same issue.

That is the kind of climate that we have created. We have also recognized that if we have a future, the future is ensuring that young people want to stay here and that is why we have introduced our Youth Retention and Attraction Strategy because we recognize that our future is our youth, Mr. Speaker, so we put our money where our mouth is. We put $15 million into a Youth Retention and Attraction Strategy.

So, if you take each one of those pieces of work in isolation, you can talk about them in a Budget like this, and as members of the Opposition have got up and said this Budget contains these, these and these items, but they also have pointed to the shortcomings in this year's Budget. When you start speaking to the shortcomings in one particular Budget, what you are doing is you are taking one particular document in isolation and not looking at it as a part of an overall strategy of government.

When we started looking at this government's strategy, it all started with our first blueprint. In 2003, we came to the people of the Province and we said: We have a blueprint here; we have a blueprint here for the future. We have a blueprint that is going to take us into the next eight years. Now, we have delivered seven Budgets and we have delivered on those commitments, Mr. Speaker. We have delivered on those commitments in those seven Budgets. So, as a result of the last seven Budgets, here we are today with the Budget 2010-2011 putting one more layer on all of the commitments we have already made. Now, when we start talking about what our future looks like and what we have done in the past it was a part of a master plan, Mr. Speaker.

We have heard some criticisms in this House by members opposite about this government having strategies. I think there was one cynical comment one day in this House as we talked about this year's Budget suggesting that this government was all about strategies and not about substance.

I say, Mr. Speaker, unless we understand where we want to be, unless we understand what the future will look like, how are we going to actually guide ourselves toward that? Yes, we develop strategies. We develop strategies on a number of fronts because we recognize that we need to have a plan for the future. The strategy gives us that road map. It guides us in a certain direction, a desired direction. It gives us the tools in which to measure our progress so we are able to know whether or not we have gotten where we want to be. Are we on track? So, when we develop an energy plan, for example, it tells us what the potential is for energy development in this Province; it will tell us what elements of that strategy we need to be working on. It gives us a road map so we can follow. We know what our potential is and we want to make sure we develop that potential to the maximum benefits of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

When we start talking about our Youth Retention and Attraction Strategy, again, it talks about where we want to be, how we are going to get there, how we are going to measure our progress so we will know when we have gotten there, when we have achieved that success.

Each one of these things that we talk about here, Mr. Speaker, whether it is a commitment to be competitive from a tax perspective, both personal income tax and from a corporate tax perspective; whether we start talking about a skilled workforce and having the kinds of talents that we need in this Province to propel us well into the future, that was a part, again, of a strategy; whether we are talking about seniors, our Healthy Aging Strategy mapped out where we want to be as a Province and the kinds of things we need to do to respond to an aging population. All of these things were carefully orchestrated, they are well-planned.

I say, Mr. Speaker, this year's Budget is one more piece in that overall process that we mapped out back in 2003 when we said to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador: Give us eight years. We said: Give us eight years and we will deliver to you a Province that is revitalized and re-energized. That is exactly what we have done, Mr. Speaker.

Do you know something, Mr. Speaker? I say to the members opposite, we will continue to develop strategies to lead us into the future because we believe that unless we have some vision of where we want to be, some vision of where we see this Province having the potential to go, and unless we have a map that helps guide us there, then we will be like a ship without a rudder, Mr. Speaker. We will be like the Opposition. We will be like the Opposition then, Mr. Speaker. We will be like a ship without a rudder. Any argument is a good argument – not focused on what we want to try to do as a government.

Mr. Speaker, I have been in this House now for ten years. I have sat on this side of the House and I have sat in Opposition. One of the things about Opposition parties, Mr. Speaker, they have a significant role to play. They do have a real key role. One of the things that separate us from the current Opposition is that we are a government with a vision. We have a plan, and this year's Budget is one more plank in that plan.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: As an Opposition, they should be presenting to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador an alternative to some day replace us. That is one of the key things, Mr. Speaker. That is one of the key things that separates us because they do not have a vision, Mr. Speaker, they do not have a sense of where they want to be, they do not have a plan mapped out, nor do they have a direction mapped out that will take them some day to this side of the House. I say, Mr. Speaker, that is the critical thing that separates this party from the party opposite.

I know I am running out of time. The day is drawing near.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. WISEMAN: I only have a few more minutes to conclude my comments on this year's Budget. I just want to wrap up, Mr. Speaker, by saying clearly, very clearly, this Budget is a great Budget, but it is only one piece, Mr. Speaker. It is only one piece of a master plan. This is one more plank in the eight-year plan that we laid down back in 2003. We will be back in next year's Budget, Mr. Speaker, to lay down another plank for the future eight-year Budget –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: – because it is our intention as a government through this Budget, through future Budgets, to make sure that Newfoundland and Labrador achieves the maximum potential it has, because we believe that Newfoundland and Labrador has a tremendous future and with strong leadership we are going to be able to capitalize on the opportunities that exist for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. WISEMAN: I want to take this opportunity to thank the Minister of Finance for delivering, what I believe is to be a great Budget, a great Budget for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, a great Budget to help us map out the future for this Province, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Next week when the Government House Leader stands and calls on all of us to vote on this year's Budget, I say, Mr. Speaker, I will stand proudly to support this year's Budget because this year's Budget is again another plank in a great plan that we brought in, in 2003.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: On that note, Mr. Speaker, I think I am pretty well out of time and I am pretty confident the Opposition will not want to stop the clock for me to continue to speak this afternoon, but this is one of these Budgets that you can go on and talk for hours about because there are so many great things. I have not even started to scratch the surface to talk about the great things that are embedded in this Budget. I have not even started to talk about the great things that this Budget does for the District of Trinity North and the people that I represent, Mr. Speaker.

I say, Mr. Speaker, on those points, I will conclude because I think we are at the end of the parliamentary day. Thank you for the opportunity for these few words.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS BURKE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, with that, I move, seconded –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Government House Leader.

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board, that this House do now adjourn.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The motion is that this House do now adjourn.

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

This House now stands adjourned until 2:00 o'clock tomorrow, being Private Members' Day.

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