April 30, 2018
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS
Vol. XLVIII No. 14
The House met at 1:30 p.m.
MR. SPEAKER
(Trimper): Order,
please!
Admit strangers.
Before we begin today, I would like to draw Members' attention to the
following: As Speaker, I am the guardian of the privileges of the Members of
this House, and of the House itself. I remind all Members that being elected
comes with great responsibility. We all have a duty to those we represent, and
it is vital that we maintain the highest standards to ensure that our conduct
does not bring the integrity of our office or of the House of Assembly into
disrepute. Given recent events, I thought it would be appropriate to remind all
Members of our legislated responsibilities with respect to our Code of Conduct.
In his report, Rebuilding
Confidence: Report of the Review Commission on Constituency Allowances and
Related Matters, hon. Justice Derek Green stated: “There is clearly a
requirement for a code of conduct that articulates such things as: ethical
standards and appropriate patterns of behavior; unacceptable business practices
and inappropriate business relationships … and the recourse available to those
who feel uncomfortable about possible violations of the code.”
Justice Green went on to note that many of the codes adopted are
expressed in general, aspirational language. The intent of the code is to set
standards by which the behaviour of parliamentarians can be assessed and, in so
doing, provide guidance to them so they can order their affairs on the basis of
principle, not expediency or self-interest.
Section 35 of the House of Assembly
Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act requires this House have a
Code of Conduct that: (a) provides guidance on the standards of conduct expected
of members in discharging their legislative and public duties; and (b) provides
the openness and accountability necessary to reinforce public confidence in the
manner in which members perform their duties.”
Our Code of Conduct was developed by Members of this House – the Standing
Committee on Privileges and Elections. It was passed by a resolution of this
House on May 26, 2008. Since then, every Member of this House swore or affirmed
to uphold this Code of Conduct when we took our Oath of Office.
This code is comprised of two commitments and 12 principles that include,
under the Commitments: “Members
of the House of Assembly recognize that we are responsible to the people of
Newfoundland and Labrador and will responsibly execute our official duties in
order to promote the human, environmental and economic welfare of Newfoundland
and Labrador.
Members of this House
of Assembly respect the law and the institution of the Legislature and
acknowledge our need to maintain the public trust placed in us by performing our
duties with accessibility, accountability, courtesy, honesty and integrity.”
Amongst the Principles of the Code of Conduct, I would remind all Members
that: They … “shall conduct themselves in accordance with the provisions and
spirit of the Standing Orders of the House of Assembly,
the House of Assembly Accountability,
Integrity and Administration Act, the
Members' Resources and Allowances Rules,
the Elections Act,1991, the
House of Assembly Act and this Code of
Conduct and shall ensure that their conduct does not bring the integrity of
their office or the House of Assembly into disrepute.”
It is a fundamental objective of their holding public office that Members
serve their fellow citizens with integrity in order to improve the economic and
social conditions of the people of the province.
Members reject political corruption and refuse to participate in
unethical political practices which tend to undermine the democratic traditions
of our province and its institutions.
Members will act lawfully and in a manner that will withstand the closest
public scrutiny. Neither the law nor this code is designed to be exhaustive and
there will be occasions on which Members will find it necessary to adopt more
stringent norms of conduct in order to protect the public interest and to
enhance public confidence and trust.
Members will not engage in personal conduct that exploits for private
reasons their positions or authorities or that would tend to bring discredit to
their offices.
Relationships between Members and government employees should be
professional and based upon mutual respect and should have regard to the duty of
those employees to remain politically impartial while carrying out their duties.
Members should promote and support these principles by leadership and
example.
This Code of Conduct has a continuing effect except as amended or
rescinded by resolution of this House of Assembly.
As noted in the Green report, “If a code of conduct is to be an important
element in a political system designed to foster public trust, it must be seen
to be more than merely aspirational; in short, there must be some mechanism for
achieving accountability.”
And further, “To achieve acceptability by the public, however, any code
of conduct that is adopted must be seen to be administered impartially and
independently of the political system to which it applies.”
To this end, administration of the Code of Conduct was assigned to the
Commissioner for Legislative Standards, who is an independent statutory officer
of this House and the accountability process for infractions of this code is
prescribed in legislation under sections 36 through 42 of the
House of Assembly Accountability,
Integrity and Administration Act.
I thank you for your attention.
I'd next like to welcome guests, and in the Speaker's gallery today I
would like to welcome Mr. Ches Crosbie. He is the Leader of the Progressive
Conservative Party of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Welcome to you, Sir.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
In the public gallery
today, I would like to welcome Ms. Shirley Boone. She's the Chairperson of the
Mount Pearl Seniors Independence Group, which will be mentioned in a Member's
statement this afternoon.
Statements by Members
MR. SPEAKER:
So today for Members'
statements we will hear from the hon. Members for the Districts of Mount Pearl
North, Lewisporte – Twillingate, Stephenville - Port au Port, Topsail –
Paradise, and Exploits.
The hon. the Member for Mount Pearl North.
MR. LESTER:
Mr. Speaker, I rise today
to acknowledge and thank the Mount Pearl Seniors Independence Group for the
valuable service they are providing to seniors in our community.
The group celebrated its 20th
anniversary in November of 2017 and during that time have expanded their
present membership to over 500 members.
The group offers many different age-appropriate programs and activities
which appeal to both men and women including crafts, exercises, summer outings
and a friendship club. These activities offer opportunities for the members to
develop friendships and to have fun; however, by far the most popular activity
is the weekly card game which often has more than 200 people in attendance.
The seniors also support the community in many ways by donating
handcrafted items to the Janeway and by undertaking food drives and other
activities to assist community agencies and those in need, even as far away as
Haiti.
I quote their chairperson, Shirley Boone: Our seniors enjoy and
appreciate all the programs the group offers. It gives them something to look
forward to and gets them out and about.
Please join me in recognizing and thanking the Mount Pearl Seniors
Independence Group for all they do for seniors in our community.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for Lewisporte -
Twillingate.
MR. D. BENNETT:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I rise in this hon. House to recognize Ms. Annie Peckford who recently
celebrated her 100th birthday.
Ms. Peckford was born on April 26, 1918, and lived in Comfort Cove until
she moved into the Lewisporte Health Care Centre four years ago. She has six
children, 13 grandchildren, 19 great-grandchildren and 11
great-great-grandchildren. On her birthday, staff and family members treated
Annie to a big party to celebrate her long, healthy and happy life.
Ms. Peckford was described by her daughter, Annie, who shares her name
as: A good, hands-on, stay-at-home mom. She kept her children in line and did
the best she could with what she had.
Annie attributes her mother's longevity to healthy living and her love
for the outdoors. Annie senior loved working in her flower garden and berry
picking. She was a hard-working woman, although she was not big in stature, she
made a big mark.
Mr. Speaker, I ask all Members in this hon. House to please join me in
congratulating Ms. Annie Peckford on her 100th birthday.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for the District of
Stephenville - Port au Port.
MR. FINN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I stand today to acknowledge Mark Felix from Stephenville. At a change
of command ceremony held at the Gallipoli armories in Corner Brook on April 21,
Lt. Col. Mark Felix became the new commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion of
the Royal Newfoundland Regiment.
It was an honour to join him, various dignitaries, members of the
regiment, as well as the Royal Newfoundland Regiment Band as he took over the
role from outgoing commander, Lt. Col. Kevin Bond.
Mark previously spent six years as the commanding officer of the Army
Cadets in Stephenville. However, it wasn't until 2007 that he joined Canada's
Reserve Force. In 2009, he became one of the oldest candidates to successfully
complete the Infantry Platoon Commander's Course at the age of 47.
In addition to Mark's involvement with the Regiment, he volunteers his
time with the Community Education Network, serves as the town councillor in
Stephenville and works full-time as an economic development officer.
I ask all Members to join me in congratulating Lieutenant-Colonel Mark
Felix on this prestigious appointment, as well as thank outgoing
Lieutenant-Colonel Bond for his service.
Thank you to all who serve and who have served our province and our
country.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
the District of Topsail - Paradise.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, the Swim for Hope is a 12-hour continuous swim relay, where
participants collect individual and corporate pledges.
On February 23, 2018, I attended the 22nd annual Swim for Hope at the
Conception Bay South recreational complex as the Conception Bay South Bluefins
took to the water for 12 hours to raise funds in support of cancer patients and
their families in the province.
Young swimmers, ages ranging from six to 18, are members of 11 Swimming
Newfoundland and Labrador clubs who, along with Community Challenge swimmers,
participate in the annual Swim for Hope in communities right around our province
and in Labrador.
The event is fun, requires athletic ability, involves young athletes
working as a team in an atmosphere of friendly rivalry against time constraints
and other competitive teams. Since its inception in 1996, over $2 million has
been raised through the Swim for Hope. And those funds are shared between the
Dr. H. Bliss Murphy Cancer Care Foundation and the participating clubs of
Swimming Newfoundland and Labrador.
Mr. Speaker, I ask all Members to join me in congratulating this great
event and very successful Swim for Hope, and we wish them another successful
year.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
the District of Exploits.
MR. DEAN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in this hon. House to congratulate the Calvary
Pentecostal Tabernacle of Bishop's Falls on their September 23, 2016 celebration
of 90 years of good works in their community. I had the pleasure of the
celebrating this milestone with the congregation, town leadership and friends
from far and near at what was a memorable evening of song and prayer.
Pentecostalism has long been a pillar of community support and fellowship
in our province. For over 90 years the Calvary Pentecostal Tabernacle has been
providing spiritual help and guidance to the community of Bishop's Falls.
Mr. Speaker, I ask all hon. Members to join with me in wishing the
Calvary Pentecostal Tabernacle congratulations on these 90-plus years, and
Godspeed on their continued march to centenarian celebrations.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
Statements by Ministers.
Statements by Ministers
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Tourism, Culture, Industry and Innovation.
MR. MITCHELMORE:
Thank you, Mr.
Speaker.
This past weekend the outstanding achievements of the Newfoundland and
Labrador arts community were honoured at the 33rd ArtsNL Awards Gala in Labrador
City, and the MHA for Labrador West certainly represented our Government of
Newfoundland and Labrador.
Our artistic trend-setters, talented performers and cultural
professionals were celebrated Saturday at the Labrador West Arts and Culture
Centre. I congratulate all the nominees and this year's winners, including:
Duane Andrews, Artist of the Year; Eric West, winner of the Arts in Education
Award; Beni Malone, winner of the ArtsNL Arts Achievement Award; Sharon Bala,
winner of the Emerging Artist Award; the Newfoundland and Labrador Credit Union,
winner of the Patron of the Arts Award; and congratulations to Jacinta Mackey
Graham, the 2018 inductee into the ArtsNL Hall of Honour.
Mr. Speaker, we have an enormous wealth of artistic talent that has
fundamentally shaped our cultural expression and identity in Newfoundland and
Labrador. That is why we are acting on key commitment in
The Way Forward and developing a new cultural plan in this province
this year. We will also launch an Arts Accelerator Program, in consultation with
artists, to help them enhance the management, promotion and development of their
artistic practice. These initiatives build on the work our government has
already completed with the Status of the
Artist Act, which formally recognizes the important contributions that
artists make to our province.
Our government appreciates how much provincial cultural industries
contribute to the social and economic well-being of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Working with our partners in the arts, culture and heritage, we will set themes,
priorities and key actions towards supporting and sustaining these industries
over the next five years.
Mr. Speaker, I ask all hon. Members to join me in congratulating all the
nominees and winners at the 33rd ArtsNL Awards Gala.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
the District of
Fortune Bay - Cape La Hune.
MS. PERRY:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I thank the minister for an advance copy of his
statement. Mr. Speaker, this province is internationally known for its
one-of-a-kind culture. Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are creative,
passionate, incredibly talented and always entertaining. The successes in our
arts community are a direct result of the energetic performers, producers
and creators who pour
themselves into their projects.
I congratulate those who were recognized at this past weekend's ArtsNL
Awards Gala: Duane Andrews, Eric West, Beni Malone, Sharon Bala, Jacinta Mackey
Graham and the Newfoundland and Labrador and Credit Union. These recipients are
just a small segment of the arts and culture community within our province who
promote our culture each and every day.
We, too, recognize the award recipients and encourage everyone to
continue supporting our arts community.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
St. John's Centre.
MS. ROGERS:
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
I thank the minister for an advance copy of his statement. Bravo to all
the winners and the nominees; what a stellar list they make. Each and every one
of them and all of them together are shining examples of the worth of investing
in our arts community. Every dollar invested in the arts returns money to the
economy many times over, whether government money or private. Also, it enriches
all of our people.
Thank you to all our artists who have given so much and who lead the way,
especially Duane, Eric, Beni, Sharon, Jacinta and the Newfoundland and Labrador
and Credit Union. Bravo to them all!
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
Further statements by
ministers?
The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and Land Resources.
MR. BYRNE:
Mr. Speaker, the 2018 forest fire season, which includes dry grass fires as
well, will be in effect from May 1 to September 30 on the Island portion of the
province, and from May 15 to September 30 in Labrador.
The coming season is anticipated to be especially challenging for forest
fires. With atypical conditions in many areas of the province, there may be an
increased risk of wildfires in these areas.
Mr. Speaker, people cause about 80 per cent of forest fires in our
province.
Residents should exercise extreme caution during spring burning and when
using vehicles or forestry equipment near forested land. A permit to burn is
required to burn brush on forested land or within 300 metres of forested land
during this period. Free permits are available from forest management offices
and the permitting regime serves to inform forest fire officials of a planned
fire event.
Once fire season begins, provincial fire danger maps will be posted and
updated daily on our department website throughout the fire season. This will
give people the ability to view daily fire indices in areas where they reside or
plan to visit.
Mr. Speaker, as people begin enjoying the outdoor activities that come
from warmer weather, I remind residents that we must all be extra vigilant to
prevent wild fires from occurring.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
Mount Pearl North.
MR. LESTER:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I thank the minister for an advance copy of his statement. As Members of
this hon. House, we are aware the recent dry weather conditions in this province
have indeed been atypical and it is concerning to know that wildfires are
expected to be more prevalent. I encourage everyone in our province to exercise
extreme caution and ensure that they use and adhere to regulations outlined on
required permits.
In Estimates we learned that this budget trimmed almost $200,000 from the
department's fire suppression and communications division, hoping we won't see
any negative effects from such cuts. It is my hope that the minister and his
department not only show concern on this issue with words, but take the
necessary action to ensure that the resource and the people of this province are
protected from any harm and kept from danger.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
St. John's East - Quidi Vidi.
MS. MICHAEL:
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
I too thank the minister for the advance copy of his statement. I join
with him in urging everyone to be extra vigilant when it comes to fire in our
province's forests. I urge people to understand not only the damage forest fires
cause but the risks to professional firefighters and the many volunteers called
out to fight these fires.
Maybe 80 per cent of fires are caused by people, but 100 per cent are
fought by the brave and dedicated individuals who put their lives in jeopardy. I
encourage people this summer to keep our forests fire free and safe.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
Oral Questions.
Oral Questions
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the leader of the Official Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, just minutes before the House of Assembly was called to
order this afternoon we learned through the media once again that another
minister in the government is no longer a minister.
I say to the Premier, the people of the province are watching very
closely. I ask him to give an explanation to the people of the province of
what's happening in his government.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I might want to ask for leave, if I get leave, if it's granted. But
certainly more than willing, as everyone in this province would know and the
leader of the Opposition would be made aware of, last week for the first time I
received an allegation on Wednesday morning. We dealt with it very promptly. We
put in place a review mechanism through the Commissioner for Legislative
Standards, Mr. Speaker, who can use outside resources that would be deemed
appropriate to address the allegations.
This morning I received complaints from MHAs about the minister that was
in question that we've taken out of Cabinet and out of caucus, Mr. Speaker.
We've addressed these promptly. We've met with our caucus to explain the
situation as best we could, always being mindful that we do so in a very
confidential way. I will say that these complaints that we received this morning
are not sexual or not physical in nature.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The leader of the
Official Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Premier's response, I can tell you, raises many, many questions. He's
taken a minister out; he hasn't named a minister yet.
Can he identify to the House who has been removed from Cabinet? Can he
tell us, what is the nature of the allegations against the minister?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I've made public comments that the minister under review is Minister
Kirby. I spoke with him. He's been replaced by Minister Hawkins to take on the
official role within the department. Anything specific, Mr. Speaker, I'm sure
the leader of the Opposition would understand that I will only respond to things
in confidence, not wanting to obviously expose any MHA that would have brought
those allegations forward.
We are not about sweeping those issues under the rug, what we've seen in
the past by previous administrations taking situations and have merely swept
them under the rug. We are not doing that. We are doing this; we are making
decisive actions doing what leaders should do in responding and making the
appropriate actions and decisions allowing for a review process that should
unfold in a very meaningful way.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The leader of the
Official Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I ask the Premier again – he said they're not sexual or not physical, I
accept that answer – what is the nature of the allegations against the minister?
I understand privacy, he doesn't want to breach privacy or who's involved, but
the nature of the allegations I think are very relevant.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The leader of the Opposition asked a question, and rightfully so, on this
particular issue. I've made it publicly known when I addressed the media
outside, these are not sexual by nature, they are not physical by nature but
they are about behaviour. They're about conduct, Mr. Speaker.
That is where they are, that's what the allegations have been expressed
to me this morning. Those are the allegations around behaviour and conduct.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The leader of the
Official Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Last week it became known that the former minister of Education had sent
an email internally to his own caucus where he said there was no greater
violation. He was referring to speaking out and making me aware of harassment
allegations.
Is it pertaining to that? Is this part of the reason why your minister is
finally removed? Has it taken you since late last week or the middle of last
week to respond to this inappropriate email that your minister sent out?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Mr. Speaker, we must
maintain confidence in the review process that we've undertaken. As I said this
morning, the allegations came to me officially this morning. That's what's
important here.
It's important that when all Members of this House of Assembly, Mr.
Speaker, as you, in your opening comments today about the Code of Conduct, this
review process is ongoing. I've notified the Commissioner for Legislative
Standards. He will be accepting and willing to take on the request that we put
to him. He has the responsibility and the jurisdiction to do so.
Mr. Speaker, the allegations that are being addressed today were ones
that were brought forward to me this morning.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the leader of
the Official Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
This email sent by the former minister of Education was sent last Tuesday
night after I raised questions in the House of Assembly, almost a full week ago.
Premier: Were you okay with that email? Because you still haven't made a
comment if you are okay with it, or are you not? Do you condone the email or do
you not?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Mr. Speaker, as the
Member opposite would know, that often during the role as a Premier, as role as
a minister, role as a caucus Member, often people will do things that would be
seen appropriate by some but not knowing what the full scope of what was going
through people's minds at the time, Mr. Speaker, I'm not here to pass judgment.
What I'm here to is commit to a review process that will be meaningful, will be
thorough, will be thoughtful, Mr. Speaker, and will come out the other end with
recommendations to allow this place to be a more safer place to work for all of
us that are involved.
Mr. Speaker, that's the commitment that I make. I'm not going to get into
the specifics of the allegation. I'm just not going to do that. We have an
established process. We've engaged the appropriate people, Mr. Speaker, and we
will see our way through this.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the leader of
the Official Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As recently as this weekend, Democracy Watch has spoken out very publicly
and stated that this email in itself was an act of intimidation. What I just
heard – I gave the Premier just now in my question to the Premier, was to stand
up and say the email was wrong and he's failed to do it.
Mr. Speaker, we seem to be having a growing problem in the government
across the way in taking several days to deal with something. He says he dealt
with it swiftly. This email was last Tuesday, Mr. Speaker – last Tuesday.
AN HON. MEMBER:
(Inaudible.)
MR. SPEAKER:
I remind all Members, I
will not tolerate any interruptions.
Please proceed.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
This email was last Tuesday.
Premier, why did it take you so long to respond to this terrible email
that was sent to your caucus?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Mr. Speaker, I'll tell
you one thing that's been terrible. I'll tell one you one thing that's been
terrible, it brings into question the integrity of what these issues are all
about. I'm trying, Mr. Speaker, to do my best not to overly politicize the
recent events.
Why the leader of the Opposition would sit on relevant information for
over two weeks, Mr. Speaker, which he admittedly said publicly that he had
direct and indirect involvement in, why would the leader of the Opposition
deliberately sit on such important information and stand in this House and
question a very legitimate process that I have put in place as Premier and as
Leader of this caucus?
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The leader of the
Official Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Mr. Speaker, our
government has a systemic issue here, a very significant systemic issue,
operating in a climate of harassment and intimidation that's simply not
acceptable, and he asked me why I waited for two weeks.
I ask the Premier: In October 2017, the Minister of Justice and Public
Safety was sent an email by a Member of this House where it said: I am trusting
that you will ensure that all Members of the Crown treat all MHAs with decency
and respect as per our Code of Conduct.
The subject matter of the email was concerns with bullying.
Are you okay, Premier, with your Minister of Justice failing to respond
to that since last October? My question is for the Premier.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Mr. Speaker, no, I'm not okay with that. We have encouraged people to come
forward with information and file complaints if it's deemed necessary to do so.
If they feel they have not been treated appropriately, well, I have encouraged
people to come forward.
Mr. Speaker, only a few weeks ago, a Member of the leader of the
Opposition's caucus blocked a doorway for me outside of this House and the
leader of the Opposition did not feel that was appropriate for him to do so. He
swept it under the rug.
We are taking these incidents and these allegations very serious and we
are doing something about it. We've put in place a very thorough review that can
use outside experts.
Why is it that you have refused to do and acknowledge what your MHA has
done outside this very House only a few weeks ago?
MR. SPEAKER:
Order, please!
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the leader of
the Official Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
We learned from the
Premier just now that he's not okay with the failure of the Minister of
Justice's responded email. Finally, after asking these questions for a week, he
just said: I'm not okay with it. That was his first words that he said.
I point out to the Premier, and I remind him of this because I reminded
him of it last night. On January 30, I wrote a letter to the Speaker, to the
Premier and to the interim leader at the time of the Third Party – not to name
her – and at the time I said, and I addressed the fact that our Code of Conduct
needed to be modernized, that our Human Resource Secretariat harassment and
discrimination policy, that we needed to do something here in the House of
Assembly.
I ask the Premier: Why did you not respond to that letter?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Justice and Public Safety.
MR. A. PARSONS:
Thank you, Mr.
Speaker.
I'm going to take the opportunity to answer some of the points that the
Member put out. I could talk about investigations that he authorized into law
enforcement and Members that dare to criticism him on social media, but what I'd
like to do is talk about the email and the fact that – I'm not going to get into
what was said in the email. I said I did not want to talk about the complainant
in that particular matter.
What I have said is I would love every opportunity to contribute to an
investigation to tell anything that happened, but in the email, which I believe
has been made public, I was not asked to do anything further and I comply with
that request from the individual who sent me the email.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the leader of
the Official Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We seem to be starting to go around a little bit in circles here because
they want to throw back, why didn't I do this and why didn't I do that. We have
an email we are asked to address with concerns of bullying.
I'll tell you what else the email said. He said: I thank you for your
time and attention, and trust that you will expect nothing less than fair and
equitable treatment of all districts by ministers of the Crown.
The Premier acknowledges today that that email was not acceptable. We
have a letter I addressed in January and I felt it appropriate to the climate
that was happening in the country today, to say that we have to look at
ourselves to find out what's happening. The Premier didn't respond. Here we are
a week later on this very same issue, when we had concerns about an email from
the Minister of Education and finally he's responding.
Premier: What's your plan to deal with this systemic issue that's
happening within the walls of your own government?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Justice and Public Safety.
MR. A. PARSONS:
Thank you, Mr.
Speaker.
Again, I have to address some of the commentary brought up by the Member
for Topsail - Paradise. He talks about an allegation from October that was sent
to me. You'll notice the first sentence in that email – again, I don't really
want to talk about this. I indicated this in the scrum outside that I'd much
prefer to do this through a process so that everybody's privacy is respected.
The first part of this email talked about a verbal discussion, and part
of that verbal discussion was me advising any Member that has an issue should
talk to the leader of their Party to address issues like this as well.
Again, I put that back to the Member for Topsail - Paradise.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the leader of
the Official Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
I don't see that anywhere
in the email, Mr. Speaker. It does say here to the minister, you said you've
never seen me so upset, and you're correct.
Mr. Speaker, it's clear that the seriousness of this was made to the
government. In the whole time when I asked the Premier last week when did he
become aware, he continued to give the same answer.
I'm going to ask the Premier again: When did you first become aware that
there were issues of conduct and behaviour by ministers in your own Cabinet?
Premier, when did you first become aware?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Justice and Public Safety.
MR. A. PARSONS:
Thank you, Mr.
Speaker.
I've indicated on numerous occasions that I don't prefer to have this
play out in the public. I don't think it's helpful to any of the parties
involved. Apparently the Member for Topsail - Paradise would rather go about it
in this process. I would love to get into the content of a verbal discussion
that I did have and anything else about it but there's a process and a place to
do that, and I think that's with an independent investigation. I think there's a
proper place to have this handled.
Again, I would refer to the email which talked about districts. I look
forward to having every opportunity to talk about any involvement I may have had
in this matter, where I was told that no further action was required.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The leader of the
Official Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I ask the Premier: When did he first become aware that there were conduct
and behavioural issues by his own ministers?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Mr. Speaker, last
Wednesday morning I was approached by an MHA. We dealt with that, as I just
mentioned. This morning, there were more complaints that came forward from MHAs
of our caucus. This is when I first became aware of the issues.
Mr. Speaker, I think when the leader of the Opposition just made mention
about acting on things, we acted on these things very promptly and put in place,
keeping in mind that all those involved needed to be or the complainants would
need to be very comfortable with the situation.
Mr. Speaker, I will tell you I've met with caucus on numerous occasions,
I've met with the MHAs involved on numerous occasions. Even last night at a late
hour, I reached out to the leader of the Opposition that he just made mention
to. I've also reached out to the Leader of the Third Party.
Respecting the workplace that we live in, Mr. Speaker, and work in – what
I'm committed to do is improving the working conditions of every MHA and every
public sector worker that we have in this province.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The leader of the
Official Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Mr. Speaker, the Premier
maintains he didn't learn until last week. He's had six days now since this was
first raised.
I ask the Premier: When did your staff first become aware of these
growing issues with the behaviour and conduct of his own ministers?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Mr. Speaker, I will go
through the sequence of events as they unfolded, just like I did when I answered
the question just a few minutes ago. As I said in my last response, on Wednesday
morning of last week I was approached by an MHA who filed a complaint about a
Member of our Cabinet and our caucus.
We took the appropriate action; we took prompt action, Mr. Speaker. By
the end of the day, decisions were made. Again, this morning when I was
approached with a complaint, we dealt with it promptly, making sure that the
proper review process is in place and allowing the experts that would need to be
involved, the outside expertise would be available to the Commissioner to make
sure we work our way through this, and come out the other end with
recommendations that will make this place a better place to work.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The leader of the
Official Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
To be clear, I'm not asking the Premier at which point in time a
complaint was received. My question to the Premier earlier in Question Period
was when did he first come aware. He talked about when a complaint was made. I
just asked now when did staff become aware. He's talked about when complaints
were made.
My question very simply for the Premier is this: When did his staff first
learn of issues, concerns pertaining to conduct and behaviour of his ministers?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Mr. Speaker, as I've just
said, is that the first official allegation was brought to me last Wednesday.
That's what I said. I said it openly, Mr. Speaker. And we've had public
responses to those that have been involved.
Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, our desire would be, I think, for considering
the confidence and the seriousness of the issues that we're dealing with, is
that we deal with this in the appropriate manner. That is why we've reached out
to the Commissioner for Legislative Standards who is in a position and has the
jurisdiction based upon one of the most pivotal reports that was done in the
history of this province, that being the Green report.
The jurisdiction lies with the Commissioner for Legislative Standards
that is outlined in the Green report.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the leader of
the Official Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I hear the Premier that official allegations were made first last
Wednesday. What I'm asking him is when did his staff first become aware of the
concerns about conduct and behaviour?
The Premier, for some reason, is refusing to answer the question, so I'll
ask him this: Before last Wednesday, were you aware of any issues pertaining to
conduct or behaviour of your Cabinet ministers?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Mr. Speaker, I'll answer
the question once again. I first became aware of the allegations, from an MHA,
last Wednesday morning. We are dealing with this promptly. We are dealing with
effectively, Mr. Speaker, keeping in mind that we must always maintain the
confidence of the individuals and the integrity of the process.
I will say it again: Last Wednesday, we started to take the necessary
steps to get through the thorough process.
Mr. Speaker, I got to remind the Leader of the Opposition though: Has he
had one conversation with his Member that sits behind him today about his
conduct outside of this very room just a few weeks ago?
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the leader of
the Official Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
So it's clear to me that the Premier well knew before last Wednesday that
there were issues with conduct and behaviour of his ministers.
My question for the Premier is: Why did you not stake any action before
last Wednesday when you knew there was a problem? Why did it take until official
allegations were made for you to make any response?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Mr. Speaker, this comes
down to a question of integrity and here we are standing in this House with
Members who were involved in this current process, Members who stood in front of
the media last week and made comments of when they first became aware of this.
Mr. Speaker, how is this ever going to improve the situation that we're
currently working in when we allow this type of conversation to occur in this
environment, when we have in place a thoughtful, meaningful, thorough review
process by the Commissioner for Legislative Standards?
We need to make sure that people are always comfortable in coming
forward. And I encourage people to come forward. And we will work our way
through this. We are not sweeping those issues under the rug; we are putting
them out there where they belong.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the leader of
the Official Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, there is growing concern about systemic issues that are
happening within the government and regarding complaints of ministers now that
have been taken out of their office.
I ask the Premier: Will these investigations be done strictly independent
of each other? But now we know we have a bigger issue. Will there be a more
systemic review or review of systemic issues within your own government, and how
do you propose for that to take place?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Mr. Speaker, the Member
opposite talks about systemic issues, and he asked the question what is
different. What is different today is the way we are dealing with them. What is
different today is the way I am dealing with them as leader of this province.
In the past, these issues were never brought forward, Mr. Speaker. They
were deliberately kept behind the closed doors of the previous administration.
That's the difference in what we're dealing with here today. The Commissioner
for Legislative Standards will have the necessary resources, will have the
necessary time to deal with this effectively.
So the difference, as I said today, is we are being very open, we are
being very transparent with the people of this province and we're putting it out
there and making people aware, not sweeping or hiding things from the public
review.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the leader of
the Official Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
So is the Premier saying the investigations will be made public? Is that
what he's saying, it's going to be open for public review? I'm glad to hear
that. But my question is that there seems to be a problem growing and mounting
evidence of a systemic issue within his own government. It's important to get to
the bottom of it and understand the systemic issue so it can be corrected.
So I ask the Premier: Will you allow for a larger umbrella investigation
into how these things are taking place and how your government is operating?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
What I said about the public comments was letting individuals, letting
Newfoundlanders and Labradorians know that I had received complaints. Once the
review process is finished and we come out of this with recommendations, Mr.
Speaker – I must always keep in mind the individuals, the families that will be
involved. It is my desire, as someone that will receive a copy of the reports,
to put them out there public. That is what I want to do. But I will only do so
in consideration of everyone that's involved. The appropriate thing to do, in my
mind, would be to get them out there, but I have to be mindful that other people
are impacted in these processes, Mr. Speaker.
We have been decisive. Within literally hours of hearing the allegations,
we had dealt with them, Mr. Speaker. We have not been sitting on them like the
Member opposite did for over two weeks.
MR. SPEAKER:
Order, please!
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the leader of
the Official Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Can the Premier confirm that another Member of his caucus in the Liberal
caucus is currently under investigation by the Commissioner for Legislative
Standards?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Mr. Speaker, other than
what I've said already about the two ministers that I've been talking about,
those are the only reviews that I'm aware of right now. As Members would know,
anyone – you do not have to be directed there by the Premier, but anyone – can
actually go and lodge a complaint with the Commissioner for Legislative
Standards.
As a matter of fact, Members can be encouraged to do so proactively. They
do not necessarily need to go through the Premier or to go through any other
Member here; they can actually go directly there. If there's a review on the go
and there's something you wanted me to check out, I'm more than willing to do
that as well.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The leader of the
Official Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
According to a complaint that I received, I was also advised that the
Premier and the Leader of the Third Party also received a copy of the complaint
filed with the Commissioner, that a Member allegedly provided false, inaccurate
and misleading information in an attempt to discredit a municipal council.
I ask the Premier: Are you aware of this complaint? What action have you
taken with the Member involved?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Mr. Speaker, I'll look
for the details on the question and get back to the House here. It's not
something that I have seen yet. I'll certainly go looking for that information.
Indeed, if this exists – I'm not suggesting that it's not – all these
complaints as they come forward, we will always take them very seriously, Mr.
Speaker. We will deal with them as they come forward.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The leader of the
Official Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Those are three investigations we know of right now that the Commissioner
for Legislative Standards is engaging in with Members of the Liberal caucus.
I ask the Premier: Now that there are three separate investigations, do
you think you can do this in a large way and finding out what's actually
happening within your government?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier for
a quick response, please.
PREMIER BALL:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I think it's important that we allow the current review process to
unfold. The Commissioner for Legislative Standards, when I met with him, felt
that he was well equipped to do this job.
As you know, I think, as the leader of the Opposition, the Commissioner
for Legislative Standards can come in without even a request from the Premier.
He can actually automatically come in because he has the jurisdiction to do
that.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
Thank you.
The hon. the Leader of the Third Party
MS. ROGERS:
Mr. Speaker, we
understand that the Commissioner for Legislative Standards is investigating
harassment allegations as a necessary interim process, and that the issue of
harassment may also be considered by the Management Commission of the House of
Assembly. In other jurisdictions, legislation is either in place or before their
Houses setting out anti-harassment procedures specifically for elected officials
and political staff.
I ask the Premier: Will he ask this House to direct the House of Assembly
Management Commission to develop a comprehensive, anti-harassment policy for
elected officials and their staff?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As people in the province would be aware, we have taken significant steps
around the harassment-free workplace policy within government. Mr. Speaker,
effective in June of this year, new policies would go in place – what I'm told
by the jurisdictional scan that we've seen is some of the best in the country.
I think the Member opposite would know that I reached out to her late
last night and have a meeting that will be scheduled some time this afternoon
about how we deal with the current policies that we have in place, making sure –
I believe that we need to improve the Code of Conduct. I think we make sure that
we put in better workplace safety legislation and policy, harassment-free
workplaces. I look forward to the meetings with both leaders later on today as
we work our way through this.
I agree that the House Management Commission is one area that we need,
that can play a very effective and meaningful role as we work our way through
this.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Leader of
the Third Party.
MS. ROGERS:
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
I would like to say to the Premier that, in fact, we need a specific
policy to deal with legislators, as Nova Scotia has done, as Ontario is in the
process of doing and as Alberta has done.
The Premier has indicated that the Commissioner for Legislative Standards
will undertake an investigation of the formal complaints by MHAs against sitting
MHAs. It is our hope the Commissioner will make public the procedure he will use
to do this work so both complainants and accused will know precisely what the
procedure will be.
I ask the Premier: Will he commit to providing any additional necessary
resources to both the Commissioner's office and the House of Assembly Management
Commission that they may need in order to do this work?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Absolutely, Mr. Speaker. I've already said to the Commissioner that the
necessary resources would be available to him. If he needs outside expert advice
or experts in this field that he can use them; absolutely, the resources will be
there.
Also, Mr. Speaker, we think it's timely, once again, to make sure we put
in proper training, sensitivity training and so on – all important to this
overall discussion that we currently are having within this House of Assembly.
Mr. Speaker, we must improve the working environment of this House of
Assembly and I am committed to make sure that this is a better, safer place to
work.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
St. John's East - Quidi Vidi for a quick question, please.
MS. MICHAEL:
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
I ask the Premier – it seems he took seriously the statement of Democracy
Watch calling the message from the Member for Mount Scio to Members of his own
caucus an act of intimidation.
I ask the Premier, because it wasn't clear from what he has said so far:
What exactly is the nature of the investigation that the former minister of
Education and Early Childhood Development is now undergoing?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Mr. Speaker, the specifics of the investigation – in my view at least – will be
dealt with more appropriately with the Commissioner for Legislative Standards.
This is not really a debate that should be had on the floor of this House of
Assembly.
Keeping confidence and integrity in the system and always encouraging
people to come forward, I think is extremely important that we allow the
Commissioner to do the work, to do the work on these particular complaints that
have come forward. He has committed to do so and the necessary resources will be
available to that office.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
St. John's East - Quidi Vidi.
MS. MICHAEL:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The current situation has created a chill and could discourage others
with a complaint of harassment or intimidation from coming forward.
I ask the Premier: What is he recommending now to individuals, whether in
this House or outside of it, who want to come forward but are uncertain about
what procedure to follow?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Mr. Speaker, I just mentioned this a few minutes ago. First and foremost, always
come forward. As I said in the past, silence is not an option. We continue to
encourage people to step up and to come forward if they feel that they have not
been treated appropriately.
There are two options that they would have available, at least from
within my caucus and, hopefully, if you have to deal with this with your staff
or someone else, that they can come forward to you, they can come forward to me
or they can go directly to the Commissioner for Legislative Standards.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
Oral Questions has ended.
Presenting Reports by Standing and Select Committees.
Presenting Reports by Standing and Select Committees
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
Baie Verte - Green Bay.
MR. WARR:
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 the Department
of Fisheries and Land Resources, the Department of Natural Resources, the
Department of Advanced Education, Skills and Labour and the Department of
Tourism, Culture, Industry and Innovation.
Mr. Speaker, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank the Committee
Members: the MHA for Exploits, the MHA for Fogo Island - Cape Freels, the MHA
for Fortune Bay - Cape La Hune, the MHA for Mount Pearl North, the MHA for
Harbour Grace - Port de Grave, the MHA for St. John's East - Quidi Vidi, and the
MHA for Stephenville - Port au Port.
I would also like to thank our Table Officers, and I'd certainly like to
show appreciation to Members who were able to assist as fill-ins when Members of
the Committee were busy with other House of Assembly duties.
I respectfully submit the report, Mr. Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER:
Thank you.
Further reports by Standing and Select Committees?
Tabling of Documents.
Tabling of Documents
MR. SPEAKER:
In accordance with
section 19(5)(a) of the House of Assembly
Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act, I hereby table the minutes
of the House of Assembly Management Commission meetings held on February 13 and
March 14, 2018.
Notices of Motion.
Notices of Motion
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
Fortune Bay - Cape La Hune.
MS. PERRY:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I move the following private Member's resolution:
BE IT RESOLVED that this hon. House support the introduction of a
Legislature-specific harassment policy, similar in principle to the policy in
effect in the Nova Scotia provincial legislature, where elected representatives
and their staff are held responsible for inappropriate conduct; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this hon. House, through the introduction of
a Legislature-specific harassment policy, recognize all forms of harassment,
including bullying, cyberbullying and intimidation of all forms; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this hon. House develop this
Legislature-specific harassment policy through the Privileges and Elections
Committee of this House in consultation with all Members and employees of the
House and with independent groups who have experience and expertise in handling
harassment complaints.
Seconded by the Member for Conception Bay South.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Opposition
House Leader.
MR. HUTCHINGS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The private Member's resolution read by the Member for Fortune Bay - Cape
La Hune is the one that we will debate on Wednesday, Private Members' Day, in
accordance with the Standing Orders.
MR. SPEAKER:
Thank you.
Further notices of motion?
The hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board.
MR. OSBORNE:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I give notice that I will ask leave to introduce a bill entitled, An Act
To Amend The Financial Administration Act, Bill 11.
MR. SPEAKER:
Thank you.
The hon. the Minister of Justice and Public Safety.
MR. A. PARSONS:
Thank you.
I give notice that I will ask leave to introduce a bill entitled, An Act
Respecting The Protection Of Intimate Images, Bill 12.
MR. SPEAKER:
Thank you.
Further notices of motion?
Answers to Questions for which Notice has been Given.
Petitions.
Petitions
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
Cape St. Francis.
MR. K. PARSONS:
Thank you very
much, Mr. Speaker.
School aged children are walking to school in areas where there are no
sidewalks, no traffic lights and through areas without crosswalks which put the
safety of these children at risk;
THEREFORE we, the undersigned, call upon this House of Assembly to urge
the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to ensure the safety of all children
removing the 1.6 kilometre busing policy where safety is an ongoing concern.
Mr. Speaker, this is a petition that I continue to bring to this House.
It's a very important petition to people in my area. I have schools in my area,
especially the new school in Torbay where it's right on the main road, and there
are 17,000 cars a day that travel along this route.
Mr. Speaker, there are no sidewalks. Now at this time of year it's not
too bad because there is a bit of room to walk but during the winter months when
the snow clearing is done, there's very little room. There are areas where
there's probably less than a foot that you can walk and this is very unsafe.
I call upon government to think about the safety of children. I
understand there's a policy in place and I understand the reason for the policy
but in some cases where there are high traffic areas and children are really at
risk, this is something that we need to address and I call on government to
address it.
Thank you very much.
MR. SPEAKER:
Further petitions?
The hon. the Member for Conception Bay East - Bell Island.
MR. BRAZIL:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
To the hon. House of Assembly of the Province of Newfoundland and
Labrador in Parliament assembled, the petition of the undersigned residents of
Newfoundland and Labrador humbly sheweth:
WHEREAS opioid addictions is a very serious problem affecting many
individuals and families in our province and the Bell Island area is no
exception; and
WHEREAS the effects of these problems have implications that are
negatively impacting many people old and young; and
WHEREAS support and treatment programs have been proven to break the
cycle of addiction and have helped many into recovery;
WHEREUPON the undersigned, your petitioners, humbly pray and call upon
the House of Assembly to urge government to establish a Suboxone methadone
treatment plan for Bell Island which would include a drug addictions counsellor
at the hospital and a drug awareness program in the local school.
And as in duty bound your petitioners will ever pray.
Mr. Speaker, this is probably the fifth time I've gotten to speak to this
and I have hundreds of these. That's how important this issue is, not only on
Bell Island as part of my district, but across this province of ours. We've had
multitudes of discussions and organizations weigh in on the issue here and
things that need to be done. No doubt, what's being proposed here is something
that could become a pilot that could be used in other jurisdictions within this
province, in other communities, in other regions to address that issue.
The particular issue we have with Bell Island is because of its
isolation, and while it has a hospital there that gives us the opportunity to
actually be able to offer onsite services because it has all the other amenities
and professional services, it just lacks an actual program where Suboxone and
methadone treatment could be put in play for residents on Bell Island who have
addictions issues, and also have an addictions counsellor at the hospital.
We have a multitude of staff there that come from various backgrounds:
social workers, nurses, doctors, LPNs, all the other specialists we have, but we
don't have a particular expertise to deal with another part of our health issue
that have some major challenges. Not only is it physical health, but it's also
mental health.
So what's being proposed here is to develop a plan. It's not overly
costly, because all we're talking about is developing a plan that can work
within the infrastructure of the existing system. The bricks and mortar already
exist. The supports that would be necessary would exist.
We just need a particular individual who has that skill set, who can help
coordinate all those efforts and ensure that the services that are necessary,
but the interventions particularly, would be offered in a timely basis,
in-house. That would make it more conducive to people being able to not be
reliant on drugs and be able to get the proper treatment and get into recovery.
While we're doing that, we're saving money. Because this becomes costly
when people from Bell Island have to travel to St. John's, taking away potential
recovery time and counselling time that could be used for residents here in the
Northeast Avalon.
So, Mr. Speaker, I'll have an opportunity to present this again, to talk
about some of the things that are trying to be done by the people of Bell Island
to address this. I do ask government to seriously consider putting something in
play.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER:
Further petitions?
The hon. the Member for Ferryland.
MR. HUTCHINGS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present the following petition on behalf of
the residents of my district.
Mutton Bay Bridge, located in Trepassey area, is approximately 50 years
old. In 2015, an inspection identified significant structural issues with both
the substructure and superstructure portions of the bridge. This inspection
urgently recommended replacement and rehabilitation for significant maintenance
and repair.
Therefore we petition the House of Assembly as follows:
We, the undersigned, call upon the House of Assembly to urge the
Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to immediately address the most serious
issues that impact the lives and safety of the travelling public and make it a
priority for the upcoming construction season.
Mr. Speaker, this is an issue I brought up before in this hon. House.
Speaking with the residents and messages I've received, and viewing the piece of
infrastructure with them, there are concerns that relate back to – the
inspection was done in late 2015, with a call for immediate rehabilitation,
specifically related to the base and guide rails of the piece of infrastructure,
with a view, within I think it was two years, to replace that piece of
infrastructure.
We have made representation to the current minister and to the department
in regard to immediate repairs, and as well a request has gone in from the
residents in regard to some signage and some other identification maybe on the
instability of the rails on the actual structure, to ensure that the general
public are aware of that and safety is of the utmost importance.
So that request has gone to the minister. We certainly hope they're going
to respond to that. The minister, as well, when they announced the Roads
Program, I also had a discussion with the minister. And while there was no
commitment, he did say that they would look at later in the summer, looking at a
possible tender to see what the cost would be, see if there was money there that
we could actually do the rehabilitation and actually do the replacement that's
required.
I do recognize that, but I certainly urge government and the minister to
deal with the immediate concerns that have been brought forward by the
residents, look at signage and what needs to be put there for the safety of the
general public. This construction season, let's move forward and replace that
for the safety and benefit of all the residents, and all the tourists that
travels through that section of the Irish Loop.
Thank you very much.
MR. SPEAKER:
Further petitions?
The hon. the Government House Leader.
MR. A. PARSONS:
Thank you, Mr.
Speaker.
Orders of the Day.
MR. SPEAKER:
Orders of the Day.
Orders of the Day
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Government
House Leader.
MR. A. PARSONS:
Mr. Speaker, I
move, seconded by the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board, that
the House resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole on Ways and Means to
consider a resolution relating to the advancing or guaranteeing of certain loans
made under The
Loan and Guarantee Act, 1957, Bill 6.
MR. SPEAKER:
The motion is that I do
now leave the Chair for the House to resolve itself into a Committee of the
Whole on Ways and Means.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
MR. SPEAKER:
All those against, 'nay.'
This motion is carried.
On motion, that the House resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole,
the Speaker left the Chair.
Committee of the Whole
CHAIR (Warr):
Order, please!
We are now debating the related resolution and Bill 6, An Act To Amend
The Loan And Guarantee Act, 1957.
Resolution
“That it is expedient to bring in a measure further to amend
The Loan and Guarantee Act, 1957, to
provide for the advance of loans to and the guarantee of the repayment of bonds
or debentures issued by or loans advanced to certain corporations.”
CHAIR:
Shall the resolution carry?
The hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board.
MR. OSBORNE:
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Today, we're bringing forward amendments to
The Loan and Guarantee Act, 1957 under which the Stephenville
Airport Corporation loan guarantee falls, and that's what we're speaking about
today.
The provincial government is actively working directly with community
partners such as municipalities and industry organizations to support greater
economic activity in all regions, and this includes the Stephenville Airport
Corporation.
The corporation currently serves commercial air traffic, provides
technical stop services and has two runways, a fuel farm and operations
terminal, a hanger and a cargo building. The summer season, which is quickly
approaching, is the biggest commercial traffic season for the airport with
seasonal flights programs offered by Sunwing Airlines, Porter Airlines and Air
Saint-Pierre, a year-round operator, as well as Provincial Airlines.
Mr. Chair, in January of 2018, we were pleased to learn the Stephenville
Airport would be getting $1 million worth of upgrades to its instrument landing
system from NAV Canada, a not-for-profit corporation that owns and operates
Canada's civil air navigation systems. The upgrade will allow Stephenville to
remain as an emergency or alternate landing site for trans-Atlantic flights.
Mr. Chair, myself and the Member for the Port au Port region just
recently met with the Airport Corporation in Stephenville and had a very
productive meeting. They're very optimistic about their future. One of the
valuable services that the airport provides is that it is an alternate landing
facility. For people who don't really know what that means, it means that if
we're receiving a flight in St. John's, they have to designate another airport
as an alternate landing site. Sometimes that's Gander or depending on the size
of the plane, for example, it may be Stephenville. If Gander is receiving a
flight, oftentimes Stephenville will be named as the alternate site, or Halifax
even, they'll name Stephenville as an alternate landing site.
Commercial airlines, any airline, whether it's military or commercial
airlines, need an alternate landing site in order to receive permission from NAV
Canada to land at the airport of their choice. Without an alternate site, Mr.
Chair, in the event of an emergency at the airport or in the event of some other
situation which prevents them from landing at the airport of choice, they need
an alternate site. So the value of Stephenville Airport to the province and to
Atlantic Canada is much larger I believe than what many people realize because
it is an alternate landing site for so many flights that are coming to this
province or even to Halifax.
Mr. Chair, in January of this year, Porter Airlines announced that it
would double its Stephenville schedule from 50 flights in 2018, featuring new
spring and fall services to Halifax. By extending the loan guarantee until 2019,
the provincial government is strengthening its commitment to supporting the
Stephenville Airport in the short term as it continues to work towards the goals
set out in its business sustainability plan, with support from the Town of
Stephenville.
Part of that plan is attracting new customers to the area. Part of that
plan, Mr. Chair, is servicing some of the military flights that they currently
service. A large part of the plan is providing fuel to flights that are coming
from the States and going overseas carrying military personnel.
Mr. Chair, it is a valuable airport to the region. It's a valuable
airport for the province. It's for that reason that this government has seen fit
to extend the loan guarantee, provide the loan guarantee in the first place but
to extend it this year.
Mr. Chair, the corporation has worked to diversify in areas of business
to remain viable. Recent contract extensions with Memorial University, the SERT
program and with NAV CANADA highlight their approach. They feel very optimistic
at Stephenville Airport that things are getting better for them. They're
becoming more profitable. With this loan guarantee, they've been paying on the
loan guarantee. They've had the ability to do that.
They faced some challenges last year, Mr. Chair, but they've overcome and
are continuing to overcome those challenges allowing them to continue to put
their plan in place to allow them to become more viable. Our focus remains on
working with community partners, such as the Stephenville Airport Corporation,
to drive sector and industry growth to better diversify the provincial economy.
Government is going to continue to work with the Stephenville Airport
Corporation and the Town of Stephenville to determine the long-term viability of
the airport going forward.
I look forward to support of this bill from my colleagues in the House.
As I said, it's a very important bill because it's important to the Stephenville
area, it's important to the economy of Stephenville. We're optimistic that the
measures that the Stephenville Airport Corporation are undertaking and continue
to undertake are adding to the viability of the airport.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
CHAIR:
The Chair recognizes the hon.
the Member for Ferryland.
MR. HUTCHINGS:
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm pleased to rise today to speak to Bill 6, An Act to Amend the Loan
and Guarantee Act. The minister just went through some of the intent in regard
to the loan guarantee related to Stephenville Airport. I'm somewhat familiar
with this. As the former minister of IBRD we went through this process as well,
in regard to approval of an extension of the loan guarantee.
This particular bill, Bill 6, will look at taking from today's date and I
think moving to March 31, 2019, in regard to the actual loan guarantee. I know
we debated twice, I remember in 2016 – I think it might have been the last time
we did in May and December. At that time as well, we certainly spoke in support
of a loan guarantee to the Stephenville Airport Corporation.
My understanding is the bill doesn't change the amount of guarantee; it
simply extends it, as I said, to March 31, 2019. I think the amount guaranteed
is for $900,000.
When we debated this first – back in 2016 we had debated it. We had a
discussion about the sustainability of the airport, the plan, different
activities that were being looked at, the ongoing review of the airport's
operations. Certainly, to look at the airport as a centre of training, safety
and emergency response training, the options and how we continue to advance a
significant piece of infrastructure, which has quite a history, but how again
today we can take total advantage – as we possibly can – of that facility.
There was some ratification made to this, as I said, over the years. Bill
6 is moving to extend the loan guarantee out to March 31, 2019. The amount is
not changing. Stephenville Airport will continue to be operational to pursue its
interests and try and expand on activities it has there. It's guaranteeing the
loans that are currently on the books, is my understanding. Should the guarantee
be called, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador will incur those
expenditures. That's the reason for this bill and for the piece of legislation.
The reason for this is, as I said, should it be called, the guarantee
would be called and the province would have to fulfill the actual payment.
That's what we're doing here today, making that commitment or extending the
commitment that already exists. That would have to go here to the House. That's
why it comes here to the Legislature for this particular act to amend the
Loan and Guarantee Act as there are
provisions in it for a specific time frame, and that time frame is up to elapse.
So this would allow it to extend, as I said, out to March of 2019.
The payment is what's often referred to as a statutory expenditure. It is
not contained – is my understanding – in the approved budget but would be paid
through a subheading in the Consolidated Revenue Fund, because actually it is
not a budget expenditure but there needs to be legislative authority to fill the
guarantee should it be called. That's why we do it here in the House in this
particular fashion.
Normally, we'd go through Estimates. The budget is debated here and it
would be voted on, but we're going through a process here in regard to a
legislative process. That's exhibited here through Bill 6.
This has gone through a couple of iterations in approving and recognizing
the importance of it to the Stephenville Airport to make sure that guarantee is
there, and this is a process to extend on that. It certainly is important to
Stephenville Airport and important to the region, the ability to remain open.
I'm happy to support and continue to enhance and increase their operations.
We know there have been some challenges in the past in regard to the
airport itself. Some of the challenges in operations dating back to when it was
first built. The American influence and trying to continue that and the service
it provides. It's certainly important. As I said, it's a significant piece of
infrastructure.
In 2016, I think the last time we had the debate here, there was some
discussion with the then minister of Finance. There were talks about a business
plan for the Stephenville Airport Corporation. I think that was completed. It
would be nice to hear some of the comments that were made in that report and how
the current government is moving forward to address some of those and I guess
support them; move a business plan and support it going forward.
There was also a discussion at the time about the use of the airport,
whether it was from a military perspective, innovation or other opportunities
that were there. I'd like to hear if any of those have been explored with the
corporation since that time, since we had that discussion back in the House of
Assembly and what some of the results were. As well, what some of the
opportunities that – we heard a lot about
The Way Forward plan, what's in there in regard to dealing with this sector
of the province, this piece of infrastructure and how it can be enhanced and how
does it fit into that plan.
As I said when I got up, we support this. It's a process we go through
every so often to look at supporting the Stephenville Airport. This loan
guarantee allows the operation to continue to function and, hopefully, through
initiatives of the private sector and through government creating an environment
for that facility to grow and expand, it's certainly what we'd all like to see.
On this side, we support the minister in regard to Bill 6.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
CHAIR:
The Chair recognizes the hon.
the Member for St. George's - Humber.
MR. REID:
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It's great to get up to speak on this motion here today in the House.
Although I don't represent the District of Stephenville - Port au Port where the
airport is located, the presence of the airport has an impact on the district
that I represent as well. So I just want to take a few minutes, I won't take my
full time probably, but I just wanted to take a few minutes to talk about why I
support this motion and why I support the airport and why I think it has a
future.
First of all, Mr. Chair, the infrastructure at the airport is second to
none. It's a very positive thing that this airport has going for it. As many
people will know, many people listening at home will know, this airport was put
in place as part of an American Air Force base during World War II.
It's one of the largest airports in the world; it can handle some of the
largest aircrafts in the world. The minister had talked about how it is an
alternative airport for many flights from Gander or Deer Lake, or St. John's or
Halifax, but many people may know that – just to give a sense of the scale of
the airport, at one point, it was an alternative landing site for the space
shuttle. It's one of the largest facilities in the world and the infrastructure
there is something that we have and we should make the most of, Mr. Chair.
I'm very encouraged that the airport board is looking at ways that they
can take advantage of this infrastructure that they have. One of the things
they're doing is they're looking at providing a place where fuel stops can
happen. Because they have the possibility to land some of the largest aircrafts
in the world, particularly military flights that are going across the Atlantic
can stop there, refuel and leave pretty easily. So they are pursuing those
possibilities in terms of military flights, and I think that's a very strategic
sort of approach to the future of the airport.
The other thing I think that's very positive about this airport and I
think part of the possibilities for the future of this airport is search and
rescue. I think the location of this airport provides a large scope of coverage
for any search and rescue operation that we are located there. I think that's
something we, as a province, and myself and the Member for
Stephenville - Port au Port are interested in pursuing. We've talked to people
within the department of industry, trade and innovation about as well.
That's another sort of positive aspect, another
reason why I think this motion here to provide the loan guarantee is important.
It allows the airport to explore some of the possibilities there.
Another reason for optimism about Stephenville
Airport is the training facilities that are already there and the possibilities
that other training facilities might want to locate there. If you look at the
SERT Centre, which is the Safety and Emergency Rescue Training Centre of the
Marine Institute, it's located at the airport there in Stephenville; it takes
advantage of some of the facilities that are available. I talked to people who
work at the centre and they're very positive about the future of the centre and
the type of training and type of work that they do there.
I think there are opportunities for further
development of military training there and maybe a possibility of other search
and rescue type
programs with the College of the North Atlantic as well. So I think there are
possibilities where the training that can happen at this centre is a possibility
as well.
The other thing why I think this piece of legislation and extending this
loan guarantee and allowing the airport to continue to explore other options is
I think we have a lot of possibilities in this area, the whole Bay St. George
South and Bay St. George area. I think that depends on having a package of
infrastructure there that allows us to take advantages of economic opportunities
that might be there.
We've got the former Port Harmon, which is also part of the American base
facility that was there. A new group has taken that over and they've rebranded
it the Port of Stephenville, and I think that, combined with the airport,
combined with some of the other infrastructure and transportation facilities
that are in the area provide a package that is attractive to investors and
businesses who are looking for somewhere to locate with those facilities. So I
think that's very positive for the airport as well.
So I just wanted to add my voice to those who are supporting this motion.
I've met with the Airport Authority a number of times and I've very encouraged
about their approach to the future of the airport, and I just want to say I
support this motion and I support the Stephenville Airport.
Thank you very much.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
CHAIR:
The Chair recognizes the hon.
the Member for Cape St. Francis.
MR. K. PARSONS:
Thank you very
much, Mr. Chair.
I'm just going to have a few words on this today. I know that we are
going to support this motion, and it's very important to the Stephenville area.
It's a part of the province perhaps that with a good business plan and a good
outlook that this airport can bring some new things to the region.
The Member who was just up a few minutes talked a little bit about what I
want to talk about. The airport itself has one of the largest runways and can
accept world-class planes. Sometimes if you look at some of the airports that
are around – the runway, I know St. John's just recently expanded theirs, but
there are some crafts, especially military crafts that can't land there. So
Stephenville would be a great spot to be able to – because anytime any of these
aircraft or anything is coming to the region it brings economics to the whole
area, whether it's fueling an airplane, whether it's servicing the airplane. It
could be something from food supply or anything at all. So the more impact we
can have to the Stephenville Airport, I'm sure that it will be great for the
whole area.
Right now, in the world today, I know there are some large military
crafts that have a problem landing here in St. John's. With an airport in our
area – I know the Member for the Stephenville area is there now. I don't think
you get as much fog and stuff as we do here in St. John's, so it may be another
reason why that airport could be used. I know Gander has a couple of long
runways also.
Search and rescue is always a huge part of who we are as Newfoundlanders
and Labradorians. I know, again, that would be another great area that we could
be able to use and expand what we have already in the province. I'm not too
sure, I know when we debated this back a little while ago – we debated it back
in, I think it was 2016, and we debated in May and December. There were also
talks back then about a business plan that needed to be put forward and what we
were doing in the area to make sure that we get the most and the best that we
can get out of this facility.
Mr. Chair, I had the experience of going out and looking at their
training centre. I had a son, actually, who went to school out in Stephenville
as part of SERT and training to be a firefighter. The facility out there, when I
looked at it, it was a fantastic area. It was second to none.
The training that's done out there is great, it's unbelievable. Mr.
Chair, I can remember back when I used to look up to the Torbay airport – and it
caused a huge amount of problems at the time. They had this big tank up there
they'd catch on fire and drive all this smoke up in the air and stuff like that.
We later learned down the road there were a lot of contaminants in that.
The solvent they were using to put out the fire was called p floss at the
time. That's caused a huge problem in my area because it caused contamination in
the ground; it went down to the ground. There's a huge issue right along the
airport fence over there now with this thing called p floss in some of the
rivers.
I saw the tank that they used out in Stephenville and it's massive. It's
pretty impressive when you look at what they do out there for training. I know
there are a lot of people interested in becoming a firefighter. I would imagine
the school is pretty well packed all the way through.
If you look today, I know young people that went out and did this course.
Some are hired in Alberta right now in different projects. I know young people
that are working at Long Harbour now and went and did this course at the same
time that I was out there. It's a great training facility. It has all the parts
to be a great training facility. Maybe that's another part that I know when the
Member for Stephenville gets up – maybe he'll discuss what the business plan is
out there.
Again, anything we can do to expand anything in the province – at that
time when I was out, I was very interested to know there were people from all
over Atlantic Canada that came to that training course, not just Newfoundlanders
and Labradorians. Actually, there was a couple there from Nova Scotia. The
facility itself, the certification out there is recognized I think right across
Canada as one of the top areas to do that.
Again, it's an important facility and we have to support it. It would be
great to see the things we can do to probably increase revenues at that airport
and make sure it is prosperous. I'm not sure, but I arrived in Deer Lake this
year and I was amazed by the amount of traffic that was in Deer Lake. I'm not
sure what the usage is right now at the Stephenville Airport and where it is,
but anything we can do as a government to promote any area of the province.
I'm sure the Members out in that area want to do what they can to
advocate on behalf of the airport to this government and to all of us here to
make sure the facility stays in place. Like I said, it's a world-class facility.
There are needs for it right around the world when it comes to military use or
search and rescue. It's a great area for search and rescue.
Any revenue that does generate through the airport has a trickle-down
effect. What it does, it'll trickle down to local businesses. It'll trickle down
– any time you see activity at a facility, you can always see there's going to
be – whether it's the fuel. The fuel may require that the truck comes and then
the truck needs service, too. So there are tires – anything that you can do.
It's very important that there's a good business plan put in place. It's
important that the airport is supported by this government, which we're doing
here today. I don't think there's going to be any Member or anyone vote against
this today because it's a good opportunity. That's really the thing that I hope
through the airport authority out there and whatnot, that we take advantage of
every opportunity that becomes available to this airport.
It's a region of our province; I know the Stephenville area. There's a
lot of activity there in Stephenville. I remember one time I went out to
Stephenville, I had to go to a hockey tournament. I was impressed with the
number of businesses that were in the area, and it offers everything.
Also, I know the airport is a major, major part of that whole area. So
it's important for any region of our province, when there is a facility like an
airport or anything in that area, that we support it and we make sure the
mechanisms are put in place so that it survives. It's important to every person
in that region. The trickle-down effect it has to businesses in the area is
amazing.
As an Opposition, I'm sure we will be supporting this motion. I just say
to the Member, when we did this debate before – and I can remember doing the
debate – we talked about a business plan and the importance of what that
business plan looked like so that people in the area would know the future
investments or anything else may come to the area, to make sure there is – to
understand: Listen, this facility is alive, it's well. It's important we show
the whole area that the airport has the confidence of government and its
officials to say that this area is going to be a place where business is going
to be done, and that government supports it and we all support it.
You know what, the big thing about anything like this, I'm sure all
persons in this province, we support each other and we're huge people that do
that.
So I think this motion today is going to be passed and the loan guarantee
extended to when it needs to be extended because it's an important thing for the
region and of the province. I know I will be supporting it and I'm sure our
caucus will too.
Thank you very much.
CHAIR:
The Chair recognizes the hon.
the Member for St. John's East - Quidi Vidi.
MS. MICHAEL:
Thank you very much, Mr.
Chair.
I'm happy to stand here today and speak to Bill 6, which is dealing with
the extension of the loan to the Stephenville Airport; something we first talked
about in this House in November 2016. I think we talked about it two years
before that actually, but the last time we spoke about this was in November 2016
when at that time, once again, we had a request for an extension with regard to
the loan, extending the expiry date. At that time it was to extend the expiry
date to March 31, 2018, and now it's to extend the expiry date to March 31,
2019.
I think it's extremely important that we support this bill. My colleagues
who've already spoken have made extremely good points. I think we really need
right now to be in this province doing whatever we can to support the smaller
communities, the rural communities to make sure economic development for these
communities is supported as much as possible by government as we can do. We know
we have a board out there in charge of the airport that is extremely involved in
finding various projects, various activities that can happen at the Stephenville
Airport and are being very creative in things they are coming up with.
The Airport Corporation is extremely important in the overall economy
there. When we first talked about this here in this House, some of us weren't
even here at the time. The House talked about the fact that the airport was on
the verge of bankruptcy and needed financial assistance at that time from the
government.
Studies were done, analyses were done. I understand the government hired
Ernst & Young to review the financial situation. They did recommend filing for
bankruptcy protection. Again, time to restructure, which the board did. They
certainly have put a lot of effort through their restructuring over the years
into finding ways in which to keep the airport alive.
I think it's extremely important that those efforts are recognized here
by this House. It has played an extremely important role in the past, in the
life of the West Coast, and I think the possibilities are still there for that.
We have to be looking for ways in which new employment opportunities are
created. I think that's extremely important in order to keep our younger people
here in the province and keep our younger people on the West Coast of the
province.
We have to stop the drain from different parts of the province to the
Avalon Peninsula. We have to make sure there are possibilities throughout our
wonderful province. I think certainly looking at the Stephenville Airport as
part of that development is more than warranted.
We may disagree on various political positions, but I think we all have a
desire to see our population grow, which it isn't doing right now. It's
shrinking. It's been shrinking every year for the past few years. We want to
look at employment growing, which it isn't. That too is shrinking. We want to
see unemployment shrink as employment grows, and that isn't happening.
Right now, in the documents that are part of the budget, the book called
The Economy paints a pretty
straightforward picture in our province right now. The facts come straight from
the Department of Finance that all the things that would be indicators of growth
in the province are actually going downwards as indicators. The things that
would be really bad for economic growth are increasing such as unemployment and
our gross domestic product going down.
We have so many indicators that really should concern us, negative
indicators. The things that we can do to help something like the Stephenville
Airport and the airport authority to come up with plans and projects that will
not only be good for the area – they just can't be things that are going to be
good for a small company, but not good for the overall area. They have to be
projects that are good for the people of the area, especially of Stephenville,
but there's a much larger area that depends on the economy of Stephenville.
Stephenville is a hub. Increasing that potential so that the people of
Stephenville, the businesses of Stephenville and the people and the businesses
that are part of that hub all benefit from what's going on is extremely
important.
Using this time, using right now the bill to speak to this is important
for us. It's important for us as a province. We don't have plans in place and
this is one of the things that bother me. Government talks about its
Way Forward but I still don't
see plans that are absolutely spelled out and showing how we're going to get to
where they say we're going to get.
While this is not part of a government plan, per se, and it
certainly isn't, it's an opportunity for government to show that it does care
about what's happening in rural Newfoundland and Labrador. It's an opportunity
for government to help an area that I absolutely believe continues to have
potential in this province.
There are so many businesses that could be put in place out
there. Just from the perspective of tourism and the absolutely beautiful natural
beauty that we have and the history of that area, the history of more than one
culture living together in that area over the years – several cultures living
together over the years – there's so much that could be done. Who knows in that
way, what, from the tourism perspective, could be done at the airport as well,
Mr. Chair.
Yes, I do support this bill. I'm happy to be part of voting
for the Stephenville loan being extended to March 31, 2019.
Thank you.
CHAIR: The Chair recognizes the hon. the Member for Stephenville -
Port au Port.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. FINN: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It's certainly a pleasure to stand and speak to this
important motion before the floor of the Legislature today.
Mr. Chair, as you noticed, I guess during the course of debate from the Members
opposite there were quite a few of my colleagues who came over to offer words of
encouragement to me. They know how passionate I have been about not only
Stephenville, being the Member and so fortunate to represent the residents of
the District of Stephenville - Port au Port, but also passionate about the
airport. I think many Members of our Cabinet are full-well informed of the
operations of Stephenville Airport Corporation and I certainly greatly
appreciate their support as well.
Mr. Chair, Stephenville Airport is a provincial asset. It is not just a
regional asset; it is not just an asset to the Town of Stephenville and to the
surrounding communities. Certainly it plays a very pivotal role in that regard;
however, it is a provincial asset.
I say that because, as was referenced by Members and my colleague from
St. George's - Humber, any time we see weather patterns that disrupt this
province, which we're certainly prone to, Stephenville and the West Coast, with
exception to some increased precipitation of snowfall in the winter, it
certainly tends to avoid the fog. From Gander on in, you'll often see when St.
John's has a bad weather, Gander will as well.
The Member for Ferryland actually did reference that. I believe that the
Member for Cape St. Francis did as well, and thank you very much to both those
Members for their support on this bill.
Stephenville is 97.5 per cent of the time fog-free. It's certainly
amazing to live in the Town of Stephenville, some-97.5 per cent of the time
fog-free. I'm just having a chuckle because I can see the smiles from some of
our Members opposite as they're living in the city and, of course, used to some
of the fog. But I will digress. That's certainly an important asset and an
important reason why it is considered an alternate. It's considered an alternate
for all of the airports in the province.
Mr. Chair, anytime an aircraft takes off it has to have two alternates.
One of them has to be what's called an achievable alternate. An achievable
alternate has to be a destination that is within 30-minute proximity of flying
time, and this is directly where Stephenville finds itself. I referenced before
when we debated this bill in 2016 in May, and again in December of 2016,
Stephenville is in a very unique position in terms of Atlantic Canada. If you
were to take a protractor and draw a circle, Stephenville is strategically
positioned to respond to emergencies, be it in Labrador, in Quebec for that
matter, and to our neighbouring provinces in Atlantic Canada in the south, Nova
Scotia, PEI, New Brunswick and even the upper part of the Eastern Seaboard of
the US – a very strategic position.
With respect to the operations, some of the things that the board have
been doing, the Members in the Opposition – and again, I thank them for their
support. The Member for St. John's East - Quidi Vidi just referenced it as well.
Certainly Members are keenly interested in some of the business plan efforts
with the Stephenville Airport Corporation.
What I can tell you, Mr. Chair, the history of Stephenville Airport puts
it in the position where it requires this financial backing. This financial
backing is a loan guarantee that ensures the operation can continue to be
ongoing. The reason it's in that position is due to the devolution of Transport
Canada. Transport Canada devolved itself of various airports all across Atlantic
Canada in the 90s. In doing so, Stephenville was one of these areas that were
affected. Stephenville survived for a number of years on its own and its own
efforts, and then did eventually require some government support – not unlike
other communities and other industries in the province.
But what I can tell you about some of the ongoing work, the increase in
military traffic has just been amazing. We have two retired colonels, one with
the United States Air Force and one with the Canadian Forces, who has been
serving as a special advisor in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Two of these retired
colonels have been providing direct assistance to the airport board and actually
recruiting some of the military traffic.
What's appealing to the military traffic, and I'm specifically talking
about C-17s and C-130s, what's very interesting about them is they enjoy the
landing in Stephenville due to the quick turnaround time they see. You can
imagine if a military aircraft landed here in St. John's this afternoon – St.
John's is a very domestically busy, commercial, passenger-traffic airport.
Stephenville on the other hand, while it does have commercial traffic and we
have seen some increases there, which I'll reference in a moment, the commercial
traffic and domestic travel is a lot less than that of Deer Lake, for example,
and St. John's.
So as a result, the military traffic prefer to stop in Stephenville, have
a quick refueling station, and move on. They've previously engaged in military
training exercises there. There are some great initiatives underway right now
with the Town of Stephenville's new economic development officer to increase
some of the military training capacity that we have in Stephenville.
So the military traffic is one thing that has increased as a result of
their business plan. We've also had some increased traffic with Porter Airlines,
who offered a Christmas service this past season for the first time. Porters
been around now about four or five years. Just a few months ago, they announced
that the due to the increased commercial and passenger traffic to the Halifax
market they've doubled their flights. They've actually just about over-doubled
their flights. They use to offer 23 flights a season; they're moving up to 53
flights this year.
MR. MITCHELMORE:
Hear, hear!
MR. FINN:
I heard support here from the
Minister of Tourism, Culture, Industry and Innovation. Certainly someone who was
very positive in receiving that news. The Minister of Tourism, Culture Industry
and Innovation, as well as the Finance Minister, as well as the former Finance
minister, as the Premier have all been actively engaged and have all directly
met with myself and the Stephenville Airport Corporation, the board members
there and the mayor. So that just, I think, speaks volumes to the support and
understanding of the ministers, their awareness and the significance of this
bill.
Mr. Chair, in addition to our provincial government support, the
municipal support has been extremely strong. The Town of Stephenville has come
onboard to assist with the purchase of some equipment. We've had some great
federal support, Mr. Chair. The federal government and the Member of Parliament
for Long Range Mountains, MP Hutchings, has worked with her colleagues in the
federal government to ensure that we'll have a brand new ILS system installed.
That is an instrumental landing system. That is something that is absolutely
integral and paramount to the ongoing operation of the Stephenville Airport.
Also as mentioned, the MUN school has a SERT team, emergency response
training system there. The Member for Cape St. Francis alluded to the fact that,
in fact, his own son had studied at the school there. The training is bar none
some of the best in the country and certainly the top in Atlantic Canada.
Recently, the Stephenville Airport Corporation renegotiated a lease for
an ongoing five years up to 2020, with a five-year renewal with Memorial
University for that particular place. The Airport Corporation actually just
reached a brand new collective agreement with its union members at the airport.
This is the first time since 2004.
In addition to that, NAV CANADA, actually, which operates in the
Stephenville Airport, has just recently renewed their contract with an increase
financially, I might add, as well. I think when you look at these entities to
that magnitude with respect to education, with respect to NAV CANADA, the
commitment from the federal government, a renegotiated union agreement with the
members there, all of these things speak volumes to the continued growth the
excitement and the passion that those entities have and the belief they have in
Stephenville and in the Stephenville Airport.
Mr. Chair, moving forward, I personally will continue to meet with the
board. I'll continue to fight for the Town of Stephenville. I'll continue to
lobby my government, my Members, the Premier and others involved. The Minister
of Finance, after having had his visit, is certainly looking forward to coming
back and seeing some of the measures that have taken place to increase the
traffic and to increase the capacity at Stephenville Airport.
Mr. Chair, with that, I will conclude. I notice I have a short moment or
two left. I certainly want to thank all the Members that lent their support to
the conversation today. I look forward to this bill passing unanimously.
On a personal level, as the Member representing the district, a sincere
thank you to all of you understanding the importance of supporting our
municipalities, no matter where they are located in this province. The
Stephenville Airport supports the entire Southwest Coast. For the Minister of
Justice and Public Safety, from Port aux Basques, air ambulance travels has
increased. We see folks that get airlifted in from Stephenville to St. John's
for various medical emergencies. Those numbers are increasing due to an aging
population. Individuals come from as far as two hours away from Burgeo, from an
hour drive to Cape St. George, an hour and 45 minutes down to Rose Blanche, Port
aux Basques.
Mr. Chair, this is strategically located to be an asset for the entire
Southwest Coast but, more importantly, an asset to the entire province.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
CHAIR:
Shall the resolution carry?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
CHAIR:
All those against, 'nay.'
Carried.
On motion, resolution carried.
A bill, “An Act To Amend The Loan And Guarantee Act, 1957.” (Bill 6)
CLERK (Barnes):
Clause 1?
CHAIR:
Shall clause 1 carry?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
CHAIR:
All those against, 'nay.'
Carried.
On motion, clause 1 carried.
CLERK: Be it
enacted by the Lieutenant-Governor and House of Assembly in Legislative Session
convened, as follows.
CHAIR: Shall the
enacting clause carry?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME
HON. MEMBERS: Aye.
CHAIR: All those
against, 'nay.'
Carried.
On motion, enacting clause carried.
CLERK:
An Act To Amend The Loan And
Guarantee Act, 1957.
CHAIR:
Shall the title carry?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME
HON. MEMBERS: Aye.
CHAIR: All those
against, 'nay.'
Carried.
On motion, title carried.
CHAIR: Shall I
report Bill 6 carried without amendment?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME
HON. MEMBERS: Aye.
CHAIR: All those
against, 'nay.'
Carried.
Motion, that the Committee report having passed the
resolution and a bill consequent thereto, carried.
CHAIR: The Chair recognizes the hon. the Government House Leader.
MR. A. PARSONS: Mr. Chair, I move that the Committee rise and report
the resolution and Bill 6.
CHAIR: The motion is that the Committee rise and report the
resolution and Bill 6.
Is it the pleasure of the Committee to adopt the motion?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.
CHAIR: All those against, 'nay.'
Carried.
On motion, that the Committee rise and report Bill 6
carried without amendment, the Speaker returned to the Chair.
MR. SPEAKER (Trimper): The hon. the Chair of Committees; the Member
for Baie Verte - Green Bay.
MR. WARR: Mr. Speaker, the Committee of Ways and Means have
considered the matters to them referred and have directed me to report that they
have adopted a certain resolution and recommend that a bill be introduced to
give effect to the same.
MR.
SPEAKER: The Chair
of the Committee of Ways and Means reports that the Committee have considered
the matters to them referred and have adopted a certain resolution and recommend
that a bill be introduced to give effect to the same.
When shall the report be received?
MR.
A. PARSONS: Now.
MR.
SPEAKER: Now.
On motion, report received and adopted.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Government
House Leader.
MR. A. PARSONS:
Mr. Speaker, I
move, seconded by the Minister of Health and Community Services, that the
resolution be now read a first time.
MR. SPEAKER:
It is moved and seconded
that the resolution be now read a first time.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
MR. SPEAKER:
All those against, 'nay.'
This motion is carried.
CLERK:
Be it resolved by the House
of Assembly in Legislative Session convened, as follows:
“That it is expedient to bring in a measure further to amend
The Loan and Guarantee Act, 1957, to
provide for the advance of loans to and the guarantee of the repayment of bonds
or debentures issued by or loans advanced to certain corporations.”
On motion, resolution read a first time.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Government
House Leader.
MR. A. PARSONS:
Mr. Speaker, I
move, seconded by the hon. Minister of Health and Community Services that the
resolution be now read a second time.
MR. SPEAKER:
It is moved and seconded
that the resolution be now read a second time.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
MR. SPEAKER:
All those against, 'nay.'
This motion is carried.
CLERK:
Second reading of the
resolution.
On motion, resolution read a second time.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Government
House Leader.
MR. A. PARSONS:
Mr. Speaker, I
move, seconded by the Minister of Health and Community Services, for leave to
introduce a bill entitled An Act To Amend The Loan And Guarantee Act, 1957, Bill
6, and I further move that the said bill be now read a first time.
MR. SPEAKER:
It is moved and seconded
that the hon. Government House Leader shall have leave to introduce a bill
entitled An Act To Amend The Loan And Guarantee Act, 1957, Bill 6, and that the
said bill be now read a first time.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
MR. SPEAKER:
All those against, 'nay.'
This motion is carried.
Motion, the hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board
to introduce a bill, “An Act To Amend The Loan And Guarantee Act, 1957,”
carried. (Bill 6)
CLERK:
A bill, An Act To Amend The
Loan And Guarantee Act, 1957. (Bill 6)
On motion, Bill 14 read a first time.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Government
House Leader.
MR. A. PARSONS:
Mr. Speaker, I
move, seconded by the Minister of Health and Community Services, that Bill 6 be
now read a second time.
MR.
SPEAKER: It is
moved and seconded that the said bill be now read a second time.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
All those in favour?
SOME
HON. MEMBERS: Aye.
MR.
SPEAKER: All those
against?
This motion is carried.
CLERK: A bill, An
Act To Amend The Loan And Guarantee Act, 1957. (Bill 6)
On motion, Bill 14 read a second time.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Government
House Leader.
MR. A. PARSONS:
Mr. Speaker, I
move, seconded by the Minister of Health and Community Services, that Bill 6 be
now read a third time.
MR.
SPEAKER: It is
moved and seconded that the said bill be now read a third time.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
All those in favour?
SOME
HON. MEMBERS: Aye.
MR.
SPEAKER: All those
against?
This motion is carried.
CLERK: A bill, An
Act To Amend The Loan And Guarantee Act, 1957. (Bill 6)
MR.
SPEAKER: This bill
has now been read a third time and it is ordered that the bill do pass and that
its title be as on the Order Paper.
On motion, a bill, “An Act To Amend The Loan And Guarantee Act, 1957,”
read a third time, ordered passed and its title be as on the Order Paper. (Bill
6)
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Government
House Leader.
MR. A. PARSONS:
Thank you, Mr.
Speaker.
I call from the Order Paper, Motion 1, the Budget Speech.
MR. SPEAKER:
Continuation of the
Budget Speech.
The hon. the Member for Conception Bay East - Bell Island.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. BRAZIL:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It's an honour again in this House of Assembly to stand and speak to the
2018-2019 fiscal budget that has been presented and we've been debating.
I have the privilege tonight to spend the evening with the Minister of
Health and his officials as we go through the Estimates on the Department of
Health and Community Services and get a real indebt understanding of the
particular programs and services, the dollar figures, the impact, positively and
negatively, they may have and changes that may have occurred from last night
year's fiscal to this year's fiscal.
For those who may not be familiar with the Estimates process, it's an
opportunity for Opposition parties, with their researchers, after going through
the budget, to go line by line with the minister, and the minister has all of
his key staff to ensure that any questions asked, particularly around the
financing of the budget line, are explained and outlined. If there are some
particular nuances that need to be clarified, that it can be done there. So
there's no misconception or misunderstanding of exactly what each line means and
what the differences are between what's been budgeted, what actually was used,
to what was the difference between last year's budget and why the changes take
place.
So it's a key opportunity for everybody in Newfoundland and Labrador to
get a full understanding of exactly what each dollar figure means. We get to the
exact amount that – the budget at the end of this whole process gets to be
adopted by the Members of the House of Assembly. I'll have that privilege
tonight, to sit down and go through the various funding sources.
Some of it is base salaries. Some of it is special project money. Some of
it is research money. Some is obviously in the Department of Health. For those
who may not be aware, the health authorities are obviously a big chunk because
while they're arm's-length from government, they all fall under the fiscal
responsibility of the minister and the department and all of the programs and
services they offer; all the specialists we have, all the doctors we have, all
the health professionals in every sector that are part and parcel, the
administration of equipment in most cases, and some of the other particular
partnerships that are developed there.
We'll have an opportunity this evening. I'm looking forward to discussing
that with the minister and his officials, and getting some better clarification.
What that does lead to is then over the next number of days there may be some
particular questions for further clarification that we can discuss.
Some of it then can relate to policy. The norm in Estimates is you don't
too heavy into policy. It's more about the dollar figures because it's
Estimates. It's about the financial bottom line and balance sheets in each of
the line department or each line heading. We'll go through that tonight.
I'm hoping it does generate some particular questions around policies and
how the amounts of money being invested are going to improve our outcomes when
it comes to, particularly, around health care. I'm looking forward to that.
We'll have that discussion, and no doubt over the next few days we'll continue
to have those types of discussions.
As I said, the last time I spoke to the budget, fair is fair and you give
credit where credit is warranted. You challenge where you think there's been
either let down on something or no due diligence. In this case, there are a few
areas here I've got to note that I think are improvements into how we address
improving people's lives in Newfoundland and Labrador. By the government taking
the monies they have and investing them in the right areas they get better
outcomes, particularly some of the ones here that I mentioned before.
I want to go back again because I think people need to be aware that
there are some positive things coming here. Particularly in the education field,
and more relevant to at-risk youth, particular support mechanisms for inclusion;
all the things that are relevant to issues to improving our education system for
all students, administrators, teachers.
All those who are involved in the education system, but particularly also
for peace of mind for parents. The ultimate is so that students themselves are
comfortable, have the supports and services they need. If it's not something
they need, it's something their friend or their classmate may need, or their
neighbour may need, or it might be one of their siblings need to better improve
the educational experience and their ability to move to the next levels in
education.
We had bantered back and forth over the last number of months on what was
going to happen with the recommendations from the Premier's task force on
education, which the 82 recommendations, all very fluent, all reflective of the
dialogue that people had, the written dialogues, the public dialogues that
people had. Some of the agencies or particular interest groups that wanted to
ensure their views or their issues or their recommendations were taken into
account. Obviously, the quality of the people on the task force was second to
none with their backgrounds. So it was easy for them to be able to take that and
put it in a proper presented mechanism that outlined exactly the different
things that needed to be done.
I was pleased to see at the end of it – there are three things that
change when you do any process here. One is accepting there's a challenge that
needs to be addressed; two, is putting in play the set of recommendations; the
third, and just as important, probably more important for the outcomes, is to
actually put the resources where necessary to ensure the recommendations are
obtainable and will have the desired outcome.
While it's nowhere near it, we all know in five or six line departments
in this government you could double their budgets and still be short in being
able to provide services that people feel are needed and in some cases are
instrumental if they're going to improve people's quality of life.
In education, there's no difference. We've touted here and sometimes we
banter back and forth about how much money was spent over the years.
I know the Member for Topsail had mentioned it last week in his statement
about at the end of the day what you don't hear any more is schools being shut
down in the morning because of mould, because of heating issues, these types of
things. They were a prominent thing for years. In the '80s, '90s, even early
2000s, until we said, you know what? There are ways of offering quality
education, and we have by far the best educators around. By far we have a
multitude of programs and services, but to be able to provide those in an
adequate setting that you get the best bang for your dollar, you have to also
have the infrastructure.
I'm not always a big promotor of bricks and mortar. I still think we have
enough out there in our society to be able to not reinvent the wheel or not
spend money on bricks and mortar but put it better into the resource that is
either the individuals that we need from a professional point of view or the
extra other supports through partnerships; but, when you invest in schools you
eliminate five or six of the big issues that you would have. The school can
become your centre where all the other programs and services can also congregate
to ensure the community has access to that.
Again, the first line of defence when we're dealing with young people and
our students is that they're in a safe, caring environment, and that's conducive
to learning. Well, we could do that. As we built new schools, we better used
technology that we couldn't do in previous years. We've also ensured that the
health of people in the school system was improved. And we also had the ability
then for administrators to be able to put the design in play that would give
them abilities to deal with any challenges that may be in their school system.
So over the years, we managed to invest hundreds of millions of dollars,
and I mean hundreds. At one point when I was minister of Transportation and
Works I think I did an assessment and we were up over three-quarters of a
billion dollars, just investing in infrastructure. I say infrastructure – bricks
and mortar in schools; repairs to existing schools; expansions; and building new
schools. So that's substantial when you talk about that.
While that was happening, we were also investing hundreds of millions
into new programs; new levels of training; new support mechanisms; new design on
use of technology in teaching methods and these types of approaches.
There's a benefit to be able to do that in education, and I think we've
come a long way. I think we're in a real good place. There's still a need for
some new schools in a few places. Not as relevant as they were a number of year
ago. But that will come over time. There's still a need there. That hasn't
changed.
I know in the last couple of years there has been a couple of schools
there that are noted, that will start progressing forward over the next number
of years. That's perfect, because they're in growth areas. They're in areas to
replace old schools. So that ensures that quality of education can continue.
So it shouldn't be segregated to one region or one populace or one
community that has a certain political affiliation. It has to be well rounded,
open to everybody and justifiable by number of students, the potential for
growth, the age of a school or the importance of being able to promote better
education by having a new facility. I will say that was always the former
administration's approach. I would be remiss to say that I haven't see that it
isn't this administration's approach also to ensure if there's an area that
needs an investment in infrastructure, particularly around education, that it's
put on the priority list.
So I'm happy to be able to say that, and tout that I see that as a good
thing in this budget. I also note here the investments that are going towards,
particularly, reading specialists. In my previous life in working with officials
from the Department of Education, one of the things that were noted that one of
our challenges is around reading, and from a number of points. From some of the
particular challenges that some students may have. Some of the areas from a
geographic point of view.
From a point of view of some of the supports, or unfortunate lack thereof
that they may have from a home environment, or other supports that could
complement that from a community point of view that reading specialists could
identify and work with particular students or groups of students, or even with
other teachers in the school system or other support mechanisms that are there
to provide services for the students to ensure, at the end of the day, we
improve our reading skills, that our literacy skills improve, that our outcomes
improve. If you have the reading ability, the skill set there and the confidence
at that level, the rest of it becomes much easier.
We all know – and we all were in class with people and we were probably,
some of us the same way – the biggest challenge was being comfortable in reading
in front of people, reading privately but particularly in front of people. Once
that's done, once you're comfortable with it and there are new techniques, new
ways of making that flow more fluidly, there are ways then of improving people's
confidence levels and that the rest of the education system or the learning
process flows well with that. I was pleased to see there was an extra $2 million
being allocated to do that over the next three years. That's a substantial
investment as part of what we're doing there.
Then $3.1 million allocated directly for reading specialists. The whole
$6.95 million is all part of that whole reading approach. That may not seem like
a lot but when you think of it, it's not every student that has a challenge
around the reading thing. It's about improving the general concept but then it's
having particular supports for those who may have some challenges, and
developing partnerships with some of the other supports that are in the system
to be able to enhance that a little bit more.
I was pleased to see that as it went forward. I was pleased again to see
after the challenges over the last number of years about the amount of money,
the $11.3 million for the Library Resources Board. Even after all the debate –
and I don't want to rehash it, but I do have to rehash it for one reason. The
one reason I rehash it is not to make a swipe at any government or any minister,
it's to say that when the people of Newfoundland and Labrador stood up for
something they believed in – and for what a lot of the populous didn't see was a
valuable resource because they hadn't used it. It had been something that
because they had moved on to other uses of technology or other approaches to
various levels of learning or various levels of engagement, that wasn't one of
the ones that they were familiar with anymore.
When those who do use it and those who advocate on behalf of those who
would need the service came out and started to outline the benefits, what it
means from a financial point of view in sustaining some communities and
enhancing what we do in Newfoundland and Labrador, then the rest of the society
says, you know what, for the amount of money we're investing there, it's an
unbelievable return. So that unified all sectors of our province here and
backgrounds. Even for those people who had no bearing, no understanding of what
services libraries offered any more.
Afterwards I talked to hundreds of them, as I crossed the province
dealing with some of the library boards and talking to some citizens, about how
people now have a better appreciation – people showed up who had never been in a
library in 25 years, now showed up and didn't realize there was other services
that were offered there. That it wasn't just the old days you go in, you check
out a book, you brought it home, you read it, you brought it back, those type of
things. So they realized libraries became a community centre and a community hub
for all kinds of support mechanisms.
That was a very positive thing that came out of what could have been a
very dark period when it came to literacy and sustainability, particularly in
some rural areas with the libraries that were slated to close at the time. It's
good to see that there's a commitment. That the anxiety that may have been with
all of these volunteer boards – when you think, you were talking 80 or 90 staff,
that has an impact financially, but you're also talking hundreds of volunteers
and thousands of users, and dozens of municipalities who use those libraries as
one of their key gathering centres and key ways of providing extra information
and getting information out to citizens.
The fact that that's sustainable there is great. I know with my
discussions with previous library boards keeping the core funding – keeping in
mind, the core funding today of what it was three or four years ago isn't core
funding anymore because the cost of overhead from expenses of salaries to
insurances to maintenance, all the other things related to it have shown that
this same amount of money now is probably 15 per cent or 20 per cent less. There
has to be an awareness there that while they won a battle to show the need for
libraries, the impact they have on people's lives, the benefit to all residents
in Newfoundland and Labrador, the next selling point is that they need to have
sustainable funding that addresses their needs to expand services.
If they expand services in one side, that obviously should be able to
take away some of the expenditures on another type of service that government
may be responsible for. I mean, we're all cognizant of the financial situation.
Even if we were at $150 a barrel of oil or we had other revenue streams that
were coming in, we still need to be cognizant of spending money where people
need services, not necessarily what they'd like to have because we'd all like to
have the Cadillac service but the services they need.
I'd prefer to have 50 services in a community that provide typical
services for people that may or may not be the standard ones everybody else
would have but would enhance their lives versus having half a dozen super
services that everybody says are trend leaders and are the best in the world.
Let's give people what they need, not necessarily what they want but what they
need to provide a good quality of life, a good education, reduce any anxieties
or stresses, give them a way to be more inclusive in their communities and then
I think, as a society, we're doing well and, as a government, you're investing
your money and getting a better return as part of that.
So they're the things that I saw as positive in here. I would have liked
to see a better tax regime to get back to putting money back into people's
pockets which, in turn, comes back into the coffers of the government, which
stimulates the economy, which gives government money and the ability then to go
back and spend again, and gives them an ability then to carve out exactly what
their expenditures will be for that period of time and, hopefully, allocate a
particular amount of money to start putting on the debt.
We need to show due diligence on the debt reduction as part of that
process. So that I didn't see and it's a bit alarming. My speciality isn't in
finances, but I do know at the end of the day you have to be cognizant of your
spending and you have to have a plan in play that generates enough revenues and
stimulates the economy.
You can generate revenue particularly easy by upping taxes for a short
period of time until people, after that, either lose their jobs and pay very
little tax or no tax, or leave the province and pay absolutely none. So you have
the balance there to make sure that things work properly.
That's one of the concerns I have. I'm looking forward to debate over the
next month here in the House to see now once the budget is adopted how, through
the Minister of Finance and some of the other line departments, Natural
Resources and those particularly that can generate some monies, that policies
and programs are put in play to be able to ensure that there's long-term
sustainability, and that there's a plan in play to address that the economy
grows, that people have faith in the economy.
I heard a disturbing note from the Small Business Association that small
businesses are not confident. They figure they're going to have no growth. As a
matter of fact, that they're going to regress when it comes to their ability to
generate revenues and employ people. That becomes a challenge for me because we
know small business, that's the heart and soul; it is what drives your economy.
So if you don't have programs and services that give them confidence and ensure
that the general public are going to buy or avail of their services then we got
some real troubles here.
The other one – I looked at it and I'm trying to get my head around it.
I'm not confident that it's going anywhere yet. It's about supporting
sustainable and inclusive communities. I say there's an old cliché: You must
spend money to make money. Sometimes you have to invest in some of these
communities so that you can help drive the economy, you can help give people
confidence.
One thing about Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, they have the
innovation, they have the work ethic and they have the ability to drive the
economy, create new jobs, creative approaches and stuff. But we need to have the
mechanism in play. Unfortunately, what we've seen mainly the last three years is
not putting the mechanism in play; it's putting restrictions in play. That has
had a detrimental effect on the small business community, the confidence of the
consumer and, in fact, it's had the impact that people don't stay in rural
Newfoundland because they figure their opportunities are limited because of the
limited investment.
So we need to go back to the balance here. We need to make a decision. If
we're going to sustain all parts of Newfoundland and Labrador, we have to give
them the infrastructure. We have to give them the support mechanism. We're not
saying invest millions or hundreds of millions of dollars. We're saying how do
we work with particular groups in a particular area that may have a geographic
draw, it could be tourism, it could be a particular mineral thing, it could be
something in manufacturing, to put particular supports that will enhance the
business community there, the citizens, coming up with a way of addressing that.
Mr. Speaker, I think further down I'll have an opportunity to speak to
the budget again. I look forward to that.
Thank you very much.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
Lewisporte - Twillingate.
MR. D. BENNETT:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It's always an honour to rise in this hon. House to represent the people
of the beautiful and scenic District of Lewisporte - Twillingate. This is my
first opportunity to speak to the budget.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. D. BENNETT:
As I didn't get an opportunity to speak last week, I just want to start off by –
as well know, April 15-21 was Volunteer Week and I just want to commend the
great work of all the volunteers in my district, from running sport
organizations to church groups, service organizations. A lot of things that
happen within our community would not be possible without the dedication and the
commitment of these volunteers. I just want to give a big shout-out to all of
those.
In my previous role, Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned before in the House, I
was the director of recreation and tourism in the Town of Lewisporte and I had
the honour of working with the people of Lewisporte for 25 years in that role.
During that time, I also had the privilege of serving as the president of
Recreation Newfoundland & Labrador and also on many other boards, both
regionally, locally and provincially.
Volunteers, in whatever capacity I worked in, always was a big part of my
job. I relied on them heavily for different events and activities that I
organized over the years and also the work that happened within our community.
As I said, they're invaluable.
During Volunteer Week, I had an opportunity to attend a couple of events.
First of all, there was a volunteer appreciation day in Twillingate. That was an
event where the staff recognized the volunteers from the Twillingate hospital
and the New World Island clinic. They had a sit-down supper where approximately
100 volunteers were present and acknowledged for all their contributions and the
work they do at both the clinic and hospital.
Then on April 21, the last day of Volunteer Week, I had the opportunity
to take part in the 40th anniversary of the Kinsmen Club of Notre Dame, the
building which is in Lewisporte. It was a great evening of fellowship. Some of
the founding members were there, Mr. Speaker, that got up and talked about how
the Kinsmen Club has been so involved in the community and the development of
different programs and initiatives, always there to help people in need
throughout the full region.
Every so often, every couple of years, the Kinsmen Club always unveil a
little plaque to show the contributions that they made within the community. At
this event in the 40 years that the service organization have operated their own
building, they have put back over $3.4 million back into –
AN HON. MEMBER:
How much?
MR. D. BENNETT:
$3.4 million in
the 40-plus years. That has helped a lot of people, a lot of families and a lot
of groups in need. I just felt it was important to identify them.
Mr. Speaker, also another volunteer group that had an event last Thursday
– that myself and the Minister of Tourism was unable to attend, but was able to
send our greetings on – the Durrell Museum, in the community of Twillingate,
unveiled a new display featuring the great auk. The great auk is a bird that was
extinct back in the mid-1980s. A gentleman by the name of Paul Summerskill who
originally is from Ontario but had a summer home in Twillingate, did 11 concrete
replicas of the great auk. Like I said, the display was unveiled this past
weekend. The work of this museum is all done by volunteers.
I do welcome my colleagues, and also anyone that's listening today, to
visit Durrell Museum and all the other great attractions in Twillingate and
within my District of Lewisporte - Twillingate for some of the great
attractions. You definitely will not be disappointed.
Mr. Speaker, I also serve as the parliamentary secretary to the
Department of Children, Seniors and Social Development. I've had the honour of
serving in that role for a little over two years. I'm going to talk about some
of the great things in budget 2018-19 that's happening within this department
that has been having a very positive impact on the lives of our residents.
Mr. Speaker, the investment in this year's budget speaks to our
government's continued commitment to building on our future. Our focus is on
stability and discipline when it comes to fiscal management, while finding ways
to invest in communities and services that the people of our province need.
For the Department of Children, Seniors and Social Development we have
focused on providing the valuable programs and services available from our
department. Building for Our Future
addresses our province's economic, social and fiscal challenges. It is a way
forward that is methodical, fair and responsible, and recognizes that all stages
of life are a priority of our government.
Budget 2018
reflects on our commitment to managing our fiscal situation, protecting value
programs and services, getting better outcomes out of our investments and
creating an environment which supports economic development and job creation.
Community groups are important partners in our delivery of services to
the people of our province. These organizations are often relied upon to deliver
a number of critical services to the individuals and communities they support.
I'm very pleased our operation of funding has been maintained for our community
groups in the 2018-2019 fiscal budget. This amounts to approximately $120.7
million for groups and community organizations for operational funding, as well
as support projects and programs that are delivered to the residents of our
province.
As we indicated in The Way Forward,
our government remains committed to implementing a multi-year approach for
community grants. Only last Tuesday, Mr. Speaker, I had the honour of attending
that announcement with our minister and the Premier where 22 organizations were
identified for multi-year funding. I had the opportunity to speak to three or
four groups after the announcement. I must say, the announcement was something
they felt was long overdue and it was very well received.
Mr. Speaker, the safety and protection of our children and youth is an
important focus of government. It is our goal that the advancements made in
child protection will help ensure children and youth are receiving the best
services possible. We are continuing the ongoing work of building a revitalized
child protection system that is responsible to the priority needs of our
children and youth, as well as continuing to make significant progress in
creating a culture of accountability, excellence and consistency across all
programs in all regions.
The protection and healthy development of our children is paramount to
the department and to the services that we provide. That is why we are always
monitoring and assessing our services. We know child protection is a critical
and a challenging area in its service delivery.
Every day child protection social workers in our province work to assess
the safety of children and to make decisions to ensure their protection. When
children in care are unable to return safely to their parents, those children
require another permanency plan which may include adoption.
Mr. Speaker, Budget 2018 will
provide $395,000 over the next two years to provide dedicated resources to
develop profiles of children and youth who are waiting to be profiled for
adoption and complete the matching and approval process. We want to ensure we
match children who are eligible for adoption with loving and supportive
families. Without an alternate permanency plan such as adoption, children and
youth may age out in care without a permanent connection with their family and
other great supports.
I want to also touch on a notable change we made recently. Last December,
we made recent amendments to the Child and
Youth Protection Act, which provides the legislative authority for the
reporting of critical injuries and child deaths to the Advocate's office, which
will enable the office to complete the work it is mandated to do. We work
closely with the Advocate to develop these amendments and ensure they fully
address the Advocate's role in the protection of children and youth.
We are also working diligently to update the
Child and Youth Care and Protection Act, which is important
legislation for our government. This update to the legislation will be based on
our consultations and policy reviews.
Mr. Speaker, we all recognize that improved health outcomes start with
healthier, more active lifestyles. In The
Way Forward, our government committed to increase physical activity by 7 per
cent, reduce obesity by 5 percent and reduce the province's smoking rate by 4
per cent by 2025. To help achieve these goals, $200,000 has been allocated for
the Carrot Reward program, which encourages Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to
increase their daily physical activity.
Mr. Speaker, this is a free app to promote healthy living. Since I've
been in government, I've been using the app. It's something you can put on your
mobile device. It tracks your steps. Also, it sends out healthy eating reminders
and questionnaires to evaluate your own health and your own outcomes.
Mr. Speaker, since the program that we started this past year, there are
over 36,000 users loyally using that app on an annual basis.
AN HON. MEMBER:
How many carrots
do you have?
MR. D. BENNETT:
I've got
approximately 8,000 carrots. Right now, Mr. Speaker, I'm only up to a little
less than 4,000 steps today, which my goal should be at least 10,000. So I got a
few more steps to take in today.
Mr. Speaker, we are investing $130,000 to the Eat Great and Participate
initiative which is designed to increase access to healthy foods and beverage
choices in recreation, sport and community facilities. As I referenced earlier,
my role with the Town of Lewisporte as recreation director, just before I left
and got involved with provincial politics, we implemented a healthy eating
policy.
Basically, Mr. Speaker, every time the Town of Lewisporte hosted special
events within the community, it's far too often common to serve hot dogs,
hamburgers, soft drinks and things like that. With our new healthy eating policy
in Lewisporte that we adopted, and which has also been adopted in many other
communities throughout the province, every time we have a special event in
Lewisporte, they offer healthy choices, whether it be fruit trays, milk, granola
bars. I think there's been a great uptake to it. I must commend the Town of
Lewisporte for continuing with that there.
Mr. Speaker, we're also investing $250,000 in smoking cessation. This
will build on the existing support for the Newfoundland and Labrador Lung cancer
Smokers' Helpline, the Alliance for the Control of Tobacco and the Provincial
Smoking Cessation Program for Individuals with Low Income.
Our government will also be providing $730,000 for the Labrador Travel
Subsidy program to offset the cost for teams to travel to provincial
competitions, and an additional $500,000 to support the Labrador Winter Games,
which will be taking place in Happy Valley-Goose Bay in March of 2019.
As I said earlier, Mr. Speaker, our government is committed to enhancing
the lives of people of our province. Improving the health and well-being of the
people of our province is a large component of this commitment. As outlined in
The Way Forward, our success in
Newfoundland and Labrador by 2025 will be measured by additional targets such
as: Breastfeeding initiation rates will increase by 7 per cent and an increased
rate in the consumption of fruits and veggies by 5 per cent.
We will increase awareness, introduce policies, practices and programs
and create environments which support healthy, active living starting at our
schools and our communities. Our healthy living action plan is currently being
developed and will address the actions and targets in
The Way Forward document. The plan supports a health-in-all-policies
approach and will require working together with our schools, communities,
community groups, health, recreation, sport and various other partners.
We are investing $852,000 in funding to support physical activity and
recreation programs, including physical activity and recreation initiatives such
as Participation Nation, Healthy Students Healthy Schools and Find Your Fit!
campaigns. Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, we will continue to support healthy living
initiatives through a number of investments which we know will have a positive
impact on the people we serve.
Budget 2018-2019 invests $1.79 million to support Community Healthy
Living Funds, including recreation facilities and infrastructure. Mr. Speaker,
I've been heavily involved in helping a number communities and recreation groups
in my district to help them develop applications for the Community Healthy
Living Fund.
Far too often, a lot of our communities, especially in the smaller rural
areas, rely totally on volunteers and lots of times they don't have the
expertise or resources, or even sometimes knowing which programs are available
out there. So over the past couple of years, I've met with the Towns of Brown's
Arm, Cottlesville and Embree and sat down with them and come up with some ideas
on what type of recreation, healthy programs they can put forward. I must say,
since that, it has been quite successful.
The Town of Brown's Arm, I must commend the firette group that has been
doing a fantastic job. For a small group, a small community, they do have a lot
of young people living in that community. Since they got involved and were able
to get some funding through the Community Healthy Living program, it really
changed the outlook and the view of the community. They're organizing more
community events, people are coming out and it's a real sense of community
within that town. I must commend them on the great work they've been doing.
They've had skating programs and bowling programs. Even through these
facilities are not in their own community, they travel to nearby communities
.They travel to Gander for swimming. So it's been a very positive outcome and
people in that community have become more aware of physical activity and also
healthy eating.
Just recently, I also met with the local service district of Bridgeport,
just a small community of probably a couple hundred people. They are very
interested in putting in some programs for their seniors and their residents.
I've been helping them and the community of Comfort Cove-Newstead have also come
forward. They have a lot of great volunteers in that community, Mr. Speaker.
We're just working together to put some initiatives in their community.
Mr. Speaker, competition has also shown to increase physical activity
rates across certain youth populations. This year, we have committed $571,000 to
support sport development initiatives and travel. Additionally, we have seen
that they are more than capable of competing nationally and internationally. So
we are committing $901,000 to support the Canada Games team and other
high-performance athletes.
Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity, in my role as parliamentary
secretary, this past summer to attend the Canada Games in Winnipeg. I have to
say, it was my first experience to a Canada Games and the work of the mission
staff and all of the volunteers who went there, they worked long hours and they
worked very hard. But to see the joy and the excitement on all the youth, the
athletes and that were there, it's a great investment that we're making in our
youth, Mr. Speaker. For many of those athletes, it may be the highest level of
competition that they will ever get to compete in. I'm quite pleased that I had
the opportunity to take part in that experience.
Mr. Speaker, I guess I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge some of the
accomplishments of some of other athletes, such as Liam Hickey, on winning the
silver medal at the Paralympics in para ice hockey. I had the opportunity to
meet Liam when we held a celebration here at Confederation Building. He is such
a great advocate for sport and also a true ambassador for our youth. His
accomplishment was recognized just a couple of weekends ago at SportNL where he
won Male Athlete of the Year.
Mr. Speaker, I would also like to make mention of Kaetlyn Osmond.
Although she's been mentioned a good many times here in the House of Assembly by
my colleague, I have to echo a lot of the things that he has said. I did have
the opportunity to see her skate in Marystown and I have to say it was quite the
treat. To watch her on TV versus actually seeing her live and up close and
personal skating on the ice, it's truly amazing. You can see why she is such an
accomplished athlete. She is just so graceful and effortless in all of her jumps
and all of her moves.
During that time that I was watching it, I did do a Facebook live post so
that people in my district that could not be there had the opportunity to also
view it. It was very well received and I think I probably got close to 10,000
hits from that. I just wanted to do a big shout-out to Kaetlyn.
Mr. Speaker, my time is drawing near, but I also wanted to recognize that
we are also committing $1.3 million this year to healthy eating and support such
groups as the Kids Eat Smart program, Food First NL and the School Lunch
Program. Mr. Speaker, I'm wearing a lapel pin today which is the 25th
anniversary of the Kids Eat Smart program. I just wanted to give them a big
shout-out for the great work they do. Every day, 28,000 people in our schools
receive a healthy meal because of this program. The work that they do – over
6,000 volunteers help on a daily basis. Our commitment of a little over a
million dollars to help towards that program helps to ensure that children are
getting a healthy start to their day.
Mr. Speaker, that pretty well concludes my time. I look forward to
getting up and speaking again and talk about some more of the great initiatives
happening with my District of Lewisporte -Twillingate. It is a great honour to
serve the people of that area and I continue look forward to working with them.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
St. John's Centre.
MS. ROGERS:
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
I'm very happy to stand and to speak once again to budget '18-'19. I
believe the last time I stood I spoke about jobs and how do we measure the
success of a budget. Mr. Speaker, I'm often accused of being pessimistic or
talking about the sky is falling. When quite contrary, I'm very, very optimistic
and I'm very optimistic for the people of the province. I'm very optimistic for
our province as we go forward.
But today, I do want to speak about some of the people in our province
who have been very hurt by the last two budgets, including this budget. This
budget has done nothing to mitigate some of the difficulties that were imposed
on some of our people in the province in the last two budgets.
I visited The Gathering Place on Friday. The Gathering Place, as many of
us know, is mostly volunteer. There are over 2,000 guests who are now going to
The Gathering Place. The Gathering Place provides breakfast and lunch to people
who are in deep, deep financial need; people who are unable to afford to buy
food on their own; people who are living in horrendous boarding situations,
boarding houses; people who are on the very edge of our society; people who are
falling through the cracks, and there are many.
So just in The Gathering Place alone – you can become a member; it's a
way to extend dignity to those who use the services of The Gathering Place. The
membership costs you $2 and that covers you for a lifetime. The Gathering Place
not only provides food, it provides a place to shower. It provides free
clothing; there's a clothing bank that they have there. They also provide
computer services if you need to use a computer, if you're able to. And they
provide a medical clinic twice a week.
We have doctors and nurses – a lot of nurses are volunteers there. Again,
these are for people who have so fallen through the cracks that they can't even
make an appointment to see a doctor in a private practice. They have a very
small budget. They raise money through philanthropy. They do receive money from
the provincial government to help them in the work they do, but it is certainly
not enough.
What has happened is that some of these folks have had really difficult
situations in their lives. Some of these folks live with very persistent mental
health and addictions issues. Some of them continue to use, whether they're
using alcohol, whether they're using illicit drugs, whether they're using
prescription drugs in an abusive way; people with severe addictions, people who
have been incarcerated, so have a criminal record which makes it very difficult
to work.
What we've seen, Mr. Speaker, is a widening gap in our province. We have
seen – even people who have jobs and people who are working in minimum wage jobs
in precarious employment or could only get part-time employment, we've seen
those who have so much, their incomes have grown. Their personal income tax rate
was decreased with the Conservative government of Danny Williams.
What we have seen in our society is that we did not see the salaries of
the average working person increase while we see the cost of living increase.
Then, particularly, people who go to The Gathering Place who need the services
of The Gathering Place – the other thing that The Gathering Place provides is a
sense of community. We know how difficult it is for people when people feel
isolated and disconnected. Many of these people do not have family members who
can provide wraparound services to them.
I was at The Gathering Place for about two hours on Friday, Mr. Speaker,
and I spoke with some of the people who work there. They have a very small paid
staff considering the amount of work they do and the number of people they
serve. They're talking about the growing number of people who come to them for
services.
There's nowhere else for these people to go. Particularly, because some
of the people are using, some of the people have a really hard time socializing
and people who are living in boarding houses. Mr. Speaker, some of those
boarding houses are in my district and their accommodations are paid for through
the Department of AESL. That's public money that is going to provide them with
shelter. The shelter is abhorrent. No matter how much I try to describe what
some of these boarding houses are like, Mr. Speaker, there is no way for people
to really, really conceptualize what they are like unless you go there yourself.
We also have a number of people who go to The Gathering Place who are
completely homeless. They may be sleeping in bus shelters. They may be sleeping
under balconies in the back alleys of downtown. They may be sleeping in parking
garages, and it's hard for us to imagine. It really is hard for us to imagine
that this is happening in St. John's, but it is. It's only when we truly face
the problems we have that we're able to come up with creative solutions to
address the problems. Because if we ignore the problems they only get worse,
they don't get any better.
I was fortunate enough to go on the Point-in-Time Count that was
organized by the Housing and Homelessness Network and St. John's Housing and
Homelessness. What meant is there are a number of volunteers, there were over
100 of us, and we went out into the streets of St. John's from 9 at night until
2 in the morning seeing if we could find people who were homeless or who were
precariously housed. We spoke to them. We asked them questions. That would give
us a bit of an idea about the rate of homelessness in a particular area in St.
John's.
It was mostly in the downtown area, in the area of St. John's Centre, and
it's surprising. Again, I don't think people believe because in Toronto, if you
walk downtown in Toronto, you see people who are sleeping over the grates where
heat comes up in the wintertime. They're sleeping on the streets. They're
wrapped in cardboard, they're wrapped in sleeping bags. We don't think that
happens here, but it does. Unfortunately, it does. At times it's so easy to
close our eyes to that.
Some of the ways that some of these folks have really been hurt by the
last few budgets is the cancelation of the Adult Dental Program. We have folks
with severe – you can imagine, if you don't have money, if you've been using
drugs for years in your life, if you've been incarcerated, you may not have
taken good care of your dental health. You may not have had the money to take
care of your dental health, and then it catches up to you.
We have people who end up at emergency. They don't have dentists. They
probably don't have doctors, and we all know how difficult dental pain is. So
they end up in emergency, and then they end up on really strong pain killers
because they're not getting dental intervention. Maybe they're told you can
appeal the fact that you don't have dental coverage.
Well, for some of these folks, unless they have someone to do that
process for them, that isn't going to happen. So we have folks maybe who have
been drug users, who may have been in recovery or who may be on methadone, who
then need to use really strong pain killers in order to deal with their dental
problems.
There are some folks we know who have died. They have died because of
their dental issues. Mr. Speaker, that's pretty hard for us to imagine, that
here at this time in our history, in our Province of Newfoundland and Labrador
where we are a caring province, where we are a culture of taking care of one
another, that there are all these people who so desperately fall through the
cracks.
One of the things The Gathering Place is attempting to do at this point
is set up a dental clinic in their facility. It means they're raising the money
to do that. To set up a dental clinic is a very expensive undertaking, but they
are so committed because they know how crucial this is, how crucial dental
health is to so many people in the province who can't afford it and can't afford
to go to a dentist.
They also want to expand their medical services. There was money put
aside through Eastern Health for a downtown health collaborative but that money,
for the past few years, they get two days a week. They said they could use a
medical clinic six days a week in their facility. They say the last medical
clinic day they had, there were over 200 people who came to see the doctor in
one day.
Again, these are people who don't have a doctor. These are people who
don't have bus passes. These are people who don't have money. These are people
who don't have phones, who can't even make an appointment. These are people,
some of them, with very persistent mental health issues or who are still using,
and their doctors – they can't get to a doctor; yet, they have some pretty
persistent medical issues.
The Gathering Place – and I want to keep saying their name, Mr. Speaker.
I want to keep saying their name because the work they do is life-saving work.
It's life-saving work for people who are so marginalized that they can't even
access the social safety nets that we do have.
So some of these folks again, prior to the cancellation of the Adult
Dental Program, prior to that, they may have been able to access dental care and
now they can't. And prior to the last few budgets, they may have been able to
access over-the-counter drugs for certain conditions that they have and now they
cannot.
We know that the amount of money that's available to someone who is on
income support is not enough to rent an apartment, is not enough to feed
yourself, is not enough to have a phone, is not enough to have a bus pass. It's
simply is not. Therefore, they become even more vulnerable and disempowered. So
we have to look at that. No matter what our economic situation is, we know that
poverty is more expensive than taking care of poverty.
Then, I'd like to talk about our seniors. We have the highest percentage
of senior women in receipt of OAS and GIS. That means – and I've stood up and
I've talked about this numerable times here in the House. For the most part,
they will receive somewhere between $12,000 and $13,000 a year. If that's the
case – and many seniors, I've visited them in their own home and their cheque
may be $1,100, a combined cheque, and they often pull out the envelope that
their cheques came in and they often write on the backs of those cheques. They
write: rent, $750; heat and light, $200 – that brings us up to $950 – phone and
cable, another $100. That's $1,050. That leaves them with $150 to $200 a month
to buy food, transportation, their over-the-counter drugs and their dental care.
We all know – we all go to the dentist because we can afford it and we
all have great dental programs with our health insurance here as Members of the
House of Assembly. We know that you can't get out of the dentist's office under
$100 just for a cleaning and maybe an X-ray. A cleaning and X-ray is probably
closer to $150. That would take the full amount of money that they have simply
for dental care. That means there's no money for food, there's no money for
clothing, there's no money for over-the-counter drugs, there's no money for
glasses, there's no money for transportation and there's not even any money to
buy your granddaughter a birthday card.
Mr. Speaker, I don't think that that's how we want to live as a province.
I can't imagine that anybody in this House is willing to accept that that's how
we have to live as a province. It's been a while since I've talked about these
issues and, again, I can be accused of being oh, look at her over there, money
tree, doom and gloom, but we're talking about people's lives.
We can look in Labrador and we can look in Happy Valley-Goose Bay at the
people who live in a certain wooded area right in town who also don't have a
place to live, who also don't have money for transportation, who also can't get
dental care, who also can't get glasses. It was amazing to be at The Gathering
Place – because it's a microcosm and hear the stories of people who haven't had
access to showers and what it meant to have someone see them in a medical
context with real respect and care to help them deal with problems they may have
with their feet, to help them have a shower and to make sure they have clean
clothes to change into.
Mr. Speaker, this is about human dignity. I beg the Minister of Health
and Community Services, I beg the Minister of AESL to visit once again at The
Gathering Place. We can all go together. This is not an ambush, Mr. Speaker. I
think we need to go and to really see what's happening. I know that a number of
the ministers have been there. I know that and they do care, but to see how this
has escalated. And it's not getting better.
Again, these are people that have fallen between the cracks. Even when we
do have social safety nets in place, they can't access them. We have asked, by
not doing justice to these people who have fallen so horribly through the cracks
– and again, even our seniors. Our seniors who just have subsistence incomes,
not even, and the humiliation that they feel because we're hearing from food
banks that many of our seniors are going to food banks. After having raised your
family, maybe your family is away, I've heard stories of seniors that their
children don't even know that they go to the food bank because they don't want
to be a burden.
I don't know how this has happened, Mr. Speaker. Like, how did we get to
this point? But I do know that there are solution. We know of people who
purposely get arrested because at least they have a roof over their head when
they're incarcerated and they get three meals a day. And it's much more
expensive to incarcerate someone; it's much more expensive to have someone go
through emergency and maybe get admitted to hospital because of their persistent
either mental health issues or dental issues that have made them sicker. It's
much more economical to do the preventative work, to do the work to prevent
people from ending up incarcerated, to prevent people from ending up in the
Waterford again, to prevent people from ending up in hospital.
Those kinds of solutions aren't solutions, they're band-aids and they're
far more expensive than really taking care of poverty. The same way we know that
it's much more economical to house someone than to deal with homelessness.
So, Mr. Speaker, I put that invitation out to the relevant ministers:
Let's go together once again to The Gathering Place to see the work that is
being done, and let's go on a Thursday morning around 10:30 when there are a lot
of guests coming to The Gathering Place, and let's hear their stories, and let's
see the services that The Gathering Place is offering. Let's see what we can do
as a province, what we can do for some of our most marginalized people. I
believe that we can. I know that we have economic challenges ahead of us, but
it's more expensive not to face these issues. It's more expensive not to deal
with these issues than it is to find solutions. Some of the solutions are
simple, some of them will cost a little bit of money, but it's money that's an
investment that will save us money down the road.
I would hope again – this is not in laying blame on anyone, but I believe
that together there is something we can do about some of these marginalized
folks who are in different pockets around the province. We all know that.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
Order, please!
The hon. the Member for Mount Pearl North, for what looks like his maiden
speech.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. LESTER:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Good afternoon. The first time I stood in this House representing the
people of Newfoundland and Labrador, I could not help but feel the power and
importance of the work that would be conducted within the Chamber. I can still
remember the smell of the new construction and paint that was present at the
time.
Mr. Speaker, that was 28 years ago. At the time, I was 17 years old.
Clyde Wells was premier and the actual sitting was still on the ninth floor. It
was 1990, and I was part of a Newfoundland and Labrador/Saskatchewan 4-H
exchange. I was proudly representing our province, showing some Newfoundland and
Labrador hospitality and pride touring local sites of historic significance with
the visiting members.
Signal Hill, I remember, was one of the sites on the tour. It was a
particularly daunting visit. Just imagine, we brought 20 farm kids who came from
the tabletop flat part of Saskatchewan, lacking any depth concept at all, to the
300 metre cliffs of Signal Hill. Thankfully, no one experienced a familiar fate
as the buffalo on Brunette Island.
Now 28 years later, once again, I've been honoured with the privilege and
responsibility to represent the people of Mount Pearl North and the Province of
Newfoundland and Labrador. While the smell of paint and plaster has long since
faded, the feeling of (inaudible) and the importance of it is more present than
ever.
When I graduated high school in 1990, provincial optimism was
particularly low. It was a dark time economically, to such a degree that 90 per
cent of my graduating class immediately left the province but in that darkness
the Newfoundland spirit burned on and we persevered.
Mr. Speaker, on November 21 I was sent a clear message, and I humbly
accept this message that I was given. I accept the message to stand up for
families in my district and make them a priority, to work constructively with
all Members of this House to address the issues and concerns I heard during the
campaign.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank all of those who made it possible
for me to be here today. Foremost, I would like to thank my family. My wife,
Michelle, and our children: Samantha, John and Caleb were an integral part for
enabling and supporting me in my political endeavours.
I would like to speak to the merit of my family. My wife and I are the
parents of three hard-working, bright, loyal children. Originally, my wife and I
worked together on my parent's farm back when Lester's Farm Market consisted of
an umbrella table and vegetables I carried to and fro in a wheelbarrow.
In 2001, we made the decision to leave the family farm and start our own
farm. We located a piece of Crown land, obtained the lease, parked the car on
the side of the road and we went to work clearing the land and developing our
own family farm.
Our farm now consists of a horticulture and livestock operation, the
province's first land-based tilapia aquaculture site, in conjunction with our
greenhouse organic vegetable production. Also included in our farm is what we
call our farm chalet. We host everything there from kid's parties to weddings.
Our whole family has toiled, sacrificed and committed every day to
working hard and honestly. My wife, she shares my passion for our farm, the
industry and family tradition, but has far too often sacrificed her own dreams
to enable me to pursue mine. For that I will be forever in her debt. In addition
–
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. LESTER:
In addition to my wife
and children, I must acknowledge my grandparents, Jim and Juanita Lester. I was
very fortunate and had the opportunity to spend time with my grandparents,
living and learning family tradition and lifestyle. Since my grandfather's
passing, my relationship with my grandmother has deepened. I treasure the
memories that she has shared with me of growing up in Elliston, Bonavista Bay.
Given the operation of our family farm has occupied just about every
waking moment in my last 20 years, the workload which I have bestowed upon my
family has been tremendous. My love and pride for them grows every day as I
watch them adjust to their new duties and responsibilities in my absence.
Mr. Speaker, potential opportunity within the industry for which I have
dedicated most of my life is only overshadowed by the need to improve our
provincial food security. Not only do we need to increase far more farm
production, we also need to increase more food produced in people's homes. If
every household in the province produced 400 pounds of produce in a garden about
the size of two parked cars, the resulting produce would rival that of existing
commercial production. Not only would this gardening increase the food produced
in the province, but gardening is a great activity which enables families and
communities to be active and involved.
The physical and mental exercise will improve overall health, and in the
long term will reduce health costs and increase the well-being of our people. I
would like to commend the initiatives of communities, interest groups and
friends in the establishment of community gardens and programs such as the
Little Green Thumbs classroom initiative.
One of my favorite activities has been to host on our farm, is school
tours, which I've been doing for over 20 years. Because of these initiatives,
the perception of farming and food production is continuing to evolve amongst
our young people. Recently, I was party to a conversation of two children. Both
were probably seven or eight years old. They were watching my youngest son milk
one of our cows. When their father pointed out that's where milk comes from, the
little girl spoke and said: I know, dad. She then proceeded to thank the cow for
providing us with milk. She then also thanked my son and I for being farmers.
Mr. Speaker, industries do not develop overnight. With the exception of
the supply-managed industry, agriculture production in this province has
steadily declined since Confederation. However, over the past 20 years, through
combined efforts of all governments, bureaucrats, interest groups and producers,
the agriculture industry is poised to reverse that trend. The current government
has been given the reins of an industry that has been in development for
decades. Food security of the people of the province is government's
responsibility, but when it comes to industry expansion it will be the consumers
who drive it and producers who put the plows in the ground.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the amazing and tireless group of
volunteers and supporters in both my nomination and campaign. I cannot express
strongly enough my heartfelt gratitude for the selfless team effort by all. I
would also like to acknowledge my campaign team from 2015. Their initial
coaching and guidance moulded me into a better candidate for 2017.
Next, I would like to thank the people of Mount Pearl North who have
faith in my abilities to represent them and their interests in the House of
Assembly. I had the pleasure and privilege of meeting many of the residents at
the doors. The opportunity to listen and talk with the people of the district is
my most amiable memory of the campaign. I was truly humbled by the level of
support I received in the recent by-election, and I certainly recognize with
such support comes a tremendous responsibility.
Having just experienced a very successful campaign and speaking with
people of all ages and backgrounds throughout my district, I can assure you the
people of Mount Pearl North expect their government to plan beyond tomorrow so
that our children will have the opportunity to live and grow in our great
province.
Mr. Speaker, MHAs, it's our responsibility to plan for the future and
it's very clearly the expectation of my constituents that we do so. Our
children's future should be taken into account with every expenditure and every
investment of our government today. I will lobby policy-makers to be more
effective and creative in program design so young families who are this
province's future are supported and encouraged to stay and contribute to the
economy and future of this place we call home.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. LESTER:
I must point out, that
the people of Mount Pearl North have been fortunate to have strong
representation in the House of Assembly for many years. Through the former MHA,
Steve Kent, who contributed more than 20 years to public life, Steve
accomplished a great deal for the people of Mount Pearl North in this province
and I congratulate him on a remarkable career.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. LESTER:
I would also like to
acknowledge the contribution of my junior high school principal, Mr. Harvey
Hodder. As an MHA and Speaker, Mr. Hodder also worked hard representing the
people of Mount Pearl in this hon. House. During my term in this House, I will
do my best to honour the precedent of service and representation set by both Mr.
Kent and Mr. Hodder.
Mr. Speaker, the councils of both Mount Pearl and St. John's have been
progressive and forthright. Both cities, through elected officials and competent
staff, have ensured the sustainable development and maintenance of
infrastructure throughout the District of Mount Pearl North.
I look forward to working with both Mayor Aker and Mayor Breen and the
respective councils and staff. I also look forward to working with the many
community organizations that are there keeping community support and spirit
alive. Be it a group helping a neighbourhood family in need or orchestrating and
executing events, such as the Frosty Festival or the St. John's Regatta, I
commend them for their efforts and look forward to being part of both.
Mr. Speaker, I am proud to say that I have deep roots in Mount Pearl,
starting by the immigration of my ancestor John Lester in the mid-1800s. He was
a 14-year-old young man who left his family and accompanied Captain James Pearl
in his efforts to establish the farm in Captain Pearl's retirement.
Captain Pearl had a passion for horses, and my ancestor was given the
noble responsibility of looking after those horses. That passion for horses has
been passed down through my own family's history. While most men who turn 40 are
looking for several hundred horsepower, I was satisfied with just two.
The landmark known as Mount Pearl was the central point of advantage of a
horse track constructed by my ancestor for Captain Pearl. Local dignitaries, the
governor and residents would all make an excursion to the country every Sunday
afternoon to watch them participate in the horse races. Today that hill, or
Mount Pearl, is part of the Atlantic Cool Climate Crop Research station, but I
will always remember it as the best tobogganing hill I ever rode.
Mr. Speaker, I'm proud to represent the people of my district. I'm also
proud to represent my ancestors who stood here before me. Through my upbringing
on the family farm, I was taught at an early age work is not necessarily
something you want to do, it's actually about what needs to be done.
Most importantly, what was instilled through my upbringing was a respect
for the land. I was taught as a farmer the land we farm for our livelihood now
was simply on loan from future generations. Hard work, consistent effort and
determination is how I have lived my entire life, just as my ancestors had lived
before me. I will apply these principles to my service as MHA for the people of
Mount Pearl North and the people of the province.
Since the 1990s, our province and its people have progressively changed
the national perception of our place in Canada. Far too long have we been
labelled the poor cousin in Canada, while at the same time our hydro power,
offshore fishery, mineral resources and our human resources have been exported
or traded off as a primary benefit to others rather than the Province of
Newfoundland and its people.
Since the '90s, we have rapidly changed that poor cousin image. This
change has been a result of consistent effort and a steadfast determination by
all political parties and the people of this province. Yes, there have been
plenty of stories in the news of fiascos and mistakes, but we all know that's
generally what makes the news. By and large, over the course of my adult life, I
have been able to hold my head higher as our province has evolved into a mature
partner in the Dominion of Canada.
Mr. Speaker, as of late, our province and its people, like much of the
rest of the western world, have fallen on an economic downturn driven by falling
commodity prices, a declining workforce demographic and uncertain political
direction evident in our biggest trade partner to the south. This latest test of
our mental resolve is only another storm we must ride through together.
I look to all Members of this House to stay strong, lean in and hold our
ground. Let us resound together and let the world know that Newfoundland and
Labrador, nor its people, are for sale. We will be the primary beneficiaries of
our resources, be it the water flowing in our rivers, resources in or below our
ocean, resources on or below our land and, most importantly, the pride of the
people.
Mr. Speaker, I am proud to be part of the Official Opposition. We are a
dedicated team who are here to serve the people and will work hard to meet the
expectations and needs of our constituents. That is what I promise to my
constituents of Mount Pearl North.
Once again, I'd like to extend my gratitude to the people of Mount Pearl
North for giving me this tremendous honour to serve as their Member of the House
of Assembly. During my term in this House, I will represent the interests and
reflect the values of all residents of my district to the best of my ability.
In closing, I would like to share a recent experience with you while I
was attending the Frosty Festival Princesses and Pirates Breakfast. My wife and
I sat next to a young family and the mother pointed out to her pre-school
daughter that she was sitting next to a very important person. She introduced me
as the newest Member of government and the owner of Lester's Farm. While I think
the little girl was more impressed by the latter, I was slightly embarrassed for
being introduced as such an important person. After a moment of reflection, I
spoke to the little girl and I said I was very pleased to meet her and I shook
her tiny little hand. I explained to her that I was no more of an important
person than anyone else sitting in that room, but as an MHA, I just have a very,
very important job to do.
I now ask on behalf of all the people of my district and the people of
Newfoundland and Labrador, that we get back to business and continue to
represent their interests.
Thank you all for your respectful attention.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
St. George's - Humber.
MR. REID:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It's great to rise today to speak in the budget debate. Before I begin, I
just want to say congratulations to the Member for Mount Pearl North for having
his first speech in the House. I can remember when I did my first speech in the
House and it's really a big event to introduce yourself. You had an opportunity
to tell us a bit more about yourself, and you did that and some of the things
that drive you as a person. So that's very important, very appropriate, and I
just want to congratulate you on doing your first speech in the House.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. REID:
As well, other people have
talked about Volunteer Week as they started to speak on the budget. Volunteer
Week was last week, but it's always a good time to congratulate volunteers and
to recognize the service they do in our communities. My district is no
different; we have many committed volunteers.
One group that always comes to mind are the volunteer fire departments in
my district. I have a number of them: Pasadena; Steady Brook-Little Rapids,
their combined fire department; Massey Drive; Stephenville Crossing; St.
George's; Flat Bay; Bay St. George South; and Codroy Valley.
I've always been amazed at how some of these fire departments manage to
put together a group of people with very little resources, sometimes very little
support in terms of some areas like the Codroy Valley and Flat Bay where they
don't have accompanying municipalities and things like that.
So the work they do and the service they provide with very little
financial assistance is very important to the community. But there are other
groups such as Lions Clubs, Rotary Clubs, the Bay St. George Status of Women –
many other groups within the district that come to mind. I just want to join
with the other Members who've congratulated volunteers in their district and
congratulate the many volunteers in my district and recognize the contribution
they make to social and economic life in the district I represent.
What we're doing here today is we're debating a motion on the budget.
Basically the motion is we in this House support the budgetary measures of the
province that were introduced by the Finance Minister a while ago in this House.
What we're looking at today is whether or not we support that piece of
legislation.
This is what we call a finance bill. It's a wide-ranging debate. It
allows us to talk about anything that we'd like to talk about, really, because
finance is a very inclusive sort of thing and we have an opportunity to talk
about our districts, talk about some specific things that government is doing
and to talk generally about where the province is and where we're going.
Also during this debate, if some people at home have been following it,
it's an opportunity – usually there's a traditional non-confidence motion, which
the Opposition comes forward with. Basically that's an amendment to the budget
motion. The amendment is that rather than approve, they amend the motion so that
it reflects that it's the will of the House to not approve the budgetary
measures of the province.
And of course, this is a non-confidence motion. If more Members vote
against the budgetary measures of the province than vote for it, then the
government falls. What happens is we go immediately to an election. So the
budget debate and the votes on the budget debate are very crucial in terms of
demonstrating where we're going as a province, and it allows an opportunity for
us to show our support for government as well.
Another part of the budget process are the Estimates committees. And the
Estimates committees is sort of like something happening in the background.
Although we do it right here in this House for the most part – in some cases,
they're done in other places. But the Estimates take place here in this House,
and what we do is we go through line by line the Estimates of how much we, as a
government, will spend this coming year on various programs and services that
government provides.
So it's an opportunity – usually the Opposition asks most of the
questions, but government Members sometimes ask questions as well, about why the
funds have increased this year, why the funds allocated last year weren't fully
spent, why in some cases they were overspent, and things like that. The budget
process is usually something that happens in the background; it doesn't get much
media attention. It's an important sort of process that we go through as Members
to ensure that we're monitoring the finances of this province.
The Estimates Committees then come back to this House; we have a vote on
whether or not we approve the reports –
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Oh, oh!
MR. SPEAKER:
Order, please!
MR. REID:
– of the Estimates
Committees.
There are other provisions as well in terms of looking after the
finances. For instance, there's the Auditor General's report. The Auditor
General looks at the finances of the province and how we've spent money, takes a
focused look at specific programs each year. We have the Auditor General's
report which comes out, which sort of points out some things that could be
improved and points out some problems that would need to be addressed usually.
Sometimes it confirms that okay, everything is going the way it should,
but usually what gets the focus of the media are the things that need to be
improved. So the Auditor General's report is another sort of measure that's in
place for looking after the finances of the province.
Of course, there's also the Public Accounts Committee. The Public
Accounts Committee is a committee of this House. Very often, the Public Accounts
Committee doesn't get a lot of attention in the media as well. Sometimes it
does. In the past, it has. But usually it just operates and it has the ability
to call people in, in the department, to look at how government spends its money
and how things are happening.
These are some of the provisions that this House has and we follow
throughout the years in terms of managing the finances of the province and
keeping a handle on how we spend our money.
I want to just take a few minutes to sort of talk a little bit about the
budget in general. Maybe later on, if I have time, I'll have time to talk about
things in the district, things that are specific to the district, but I just
want to have a few general comments about some of the challenges that we face
and some of the things that we've been doing as a government that are good for
this province and some of the things that will have a good impact on the
province.
First of all, I want to look at the state of the province when we came
into power in 2015. Mr. Speaker, where were we then? Where were we then in 2015?
What was it that this government faced when we came to power? Well, we were
looking at $2.7 billion in a deficit. Now, sometimes people confuse deficits and
debt, but deficit, basically, is the amount of money you spend each year over
what you bring in as revenue. So $2.7 billion – it sort of boggles the mind how
much more we were spending than we were bringing in, in revenue. That's
something that we faced.
Really, it was over $5,000 per man, woman and child in the province that
we were overspending in terms of the amount we brought in. It's a challenging
situation that we faced. We really didn't have any realistic plan to return to a
balanced budget where we would spend only the amount that we brought in. We
didn't have a realistic plan to return to a state of surplus or even a balanced
budget. Really, our finances were based on the hope that we would continue to
have oil at $100 a barrel. When that fell through, we were in a very difficult
situation when the price of oil fell.
The plan the previous government seemed to have was: Okay, we're going to
be fine because oil is always going to be at $100 a barrel. We don't have to
worry about the overspending, we'll just dip into that oil revenue.
AN HON. MEMBER:
Hope for the best.
MR. REID:
Hope for the best, as someone said.
That's the situation we found ourselves in. We also had something else.
If you look at the way oil revenue has impacted other countries or other
jurisdictions around the world, one of the things you find is that sometimes
places that discover huge amounts of oil have a big influx of revenue. They end
up, in the long run, worse off than places that didn't discover oil. Some
academics call it the paradox of plenty.
The paradox is we discovered a lot of oil but the impact it has on the
economy of the region, in the long run, is negative. Places that discovered oil
could end up worse off than places that never had any oil. I think this idea of
the paradox of plenty is something that should have been really a – something
that we recognized where we were going.
One of the things I brought in as a private Member's resolution was the
resolution on the legacy fund. It's similar to what Norway has done. Some
countries have managed their oil revenue well, and some haven't done so well in
managing their oil revenue.
I think we have a good future in oil and gas in this province. We luckily
will get a second chance to manage it right. I think we have to sort of learn
the lessons from other jurisdictions but also learn the lessons from ourselves,
what happened to us as we got this huge influx of oil revenue. The idea of the
legacy fund is something that I've been promoting, that I've been bringing
forward since I've been in this House.
If you look at other countries that discovered oil and had an influx of
revenue, one of the things they do is they often begin to embark on
megaprojects. The pattern here in this province fits that sort of pattern very
well in terms of what happened in other jurisdictions, what we didn't learn
from. But we went into Muskrat Falls, and we all know where that went. We all
know the story. We all know the problems it's creating for us, and it's a
problem we have to deal with, Mr. Speaker.
That was the situation we found ourselves in. Our approach since we came
into power is trying to manage the fiscal situation we're in, trying to continue
to deliver services and programs that are very important to the population of
the province. We've tried to grow the economy and create more jobs. Those are
things we've tried to do.
I just want to look at some of the things in the budget and how they
relate to the way we've been dealing with these problems. One of the things
we've been trying to do is work with the federal government to leverage more
funds in terms of waste water systems and community infrastructure. We've been
very successful in working with the federal government to leverage the money we
spend so that we get more for the communities in this province.
We've also been spending smarter. One of the things the Member for
Windsor Lake did when she was Finance Minister was look at zero-based budgeting.
I think that was sort of, I guess, something that changed the way we do
the finances in this province. Really, the question I ask is, why did it take so
long? Why did it take so long for us to start doing zero-based budgeting?
Well, zero-based budgeting is rather than
looking at what the government department or program got last year, what it is
we start from zero and we say: okay, do you need this expenditure? Everything
has to be justified. Everything from the bottom up has to be justified.
It's taking a look at everything, rather than
saying, okay, here's what you got last year and using that as a base. They start
at zero and look at where – everything has to be sort of justified over again,
which is an important thing because sometimes you get momentum within the
bureaucracy. You get programs that get established and the people are there and
they just carry on, sometimes carry on after the circumstances they were
designed to address don't exist anymore. So I think that's an important change.
Another thing this government has done, and it's
outlined in the budget document, is terms of leasing space. We've reduced the
amount of space we lease as a government. We use the space that government has
in a better way, in a more efficient way to save us money, save government
money.
Another thing the government has done is develop
the idea of a vehicle fleet. Government has a lot of vehicles. Each department
has their own vehicles. By pooling these together, we can reduce the number of
vehicles we need by about 10 per cent. Some departments need vehicles in the
summer, some need them in the winter and things like that. By doing this, we are
able to spend smarter and save about 10 per cent in terms of vehicles that we
have in this province.
Another few things is we've been able to
consolidate collections and reduce redundancies in having two offices. By
combining the collections, we've created an asset management framework which
allows us to dispose of things we don't need in more timely manners.
So that's something that's
been very positive.
In terms of social policy, I just want to comment on a few positive
things that I see there. I am very interested that in this budget we've talked
about mental health and addiction services. What's happened is this government
has moved forward and a part of this – I want to give credit where it's due – is
the All-Party committee that we have in this House and the ideas that were
brought forward.
We're transforming the way that we deliver these services. We're
decentralizing. We're investing in infrastructure in terms of the replacement of
the Waterford Hospital but we're also making services available in other places
around the province. We're expanding online or e-services in terms of mental
health.
Those are some things that we're doing. I could talk about the seniors'
income benefit, support for first-time homebuyers. I could talk about the
Premier's Task Force on Improving Educational Outcomes. I could talk about our
commitment to libraries in this province – something that is very important to
me. I could talk about our investment in post-secondary education and the
importance of that in terms of not just as social spending but an investment in
our future. I could talk about those things.
My time is running out, Mr. Speaker, so I'm going to take my seat and,
hopefully, I'll get another chance to have a few comments during the budget
debate.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
the District of Cape St. Francis.
MR. K. PARSONS:
Thank you very
much, Mr. Speaker.
Indeed it's an absolute pleasure to get up here today and, like I always
say, Mr. Speaker, as you know, to represent the beautiful District of Cape St.
Francis and the beautiful people in the District of Cape St. Francis.
Before I start on the budget speech today, this weekend was an important
weekend for our party. I have to say, Mr. Speaker, we had a great weekend and it
was nice. I want to congratulate the new leader of our party, Mr. Ches Crosbie,
for this weekend.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. K. PARSONS:
I also want to
congratulate Tony Wakeham for putting his name forward. Two of them, I have to
really say, Mr. Speaker, sometimes in politics things can get nasty and stuff
like this, but both ran great campaigns and represented our party. The two
individuals showed a lot of class while they were doing it. It was great to be
able to see what they did and get out to the people of the province our new
leader. I know our caucus looks forward to working with him and we look forward
to seeing Tony in the future also because I'm sure he will not be out of the
political picture too long.
But the weekend was a good weekend for me. I've been around the party for
a long while, Mr. Speaker. I'm not saying my age or anything but I can remember
going when my father was involved and I was youth candidate, around for Tommy
Hickey and lot of fellows down my way.
AN HON. MEMBER:
(Inaudible.)
MR. K. PARSONS:
I'm not telling
you how old I am.
Sometimes in politics you get to meet a lot of good people over the
years, and it was so nice to see some people there. There was one lady there
from Gander this weekend, with the party almost 60 years. It's amazing how long
that people are around and stuff like that. So for our party, it was a real good
weekend. I believe on Saturday we had around 400 or 500 people out to support.
It's good for politics in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Sometimes, Mr. Speaker, when you look at politicians and politics, in
general, the wrong name comes out. I know the party across the way, they have
their convention coming up in June and I'm sure there'll be a great crowd turn
out for them also. Basically, people were telling me all weekend thank you for
the job you're doing. No matter if you're on government side or Opposition,
sometimes it's really nice to be able to hear that people think that you're
doing a good job. No matter if you're from Grand Bank or if you're from Cape St.
Francis, when you go to your district and you talk to different people, it's
good to be able to hear the perspective from other parts of the province. I know
when I'm in my own district I hear a lot from people but they're usually my
friends and people I've known. But this weekend I had an opportunity to speak to
some people I haven't met in a long period of time. It's great to be able to see
that.
We have a province and we have a funny province sometimes because you'll
see there are diehard Tories, there are diehard Liberals and diehard NDPers –
and you can really pick them out in a crowd because, no matter what, they are
what they are. It's nice to see the way the people do enjoy their politics. Like
I said, we had a great weekend the weekend going down.
I also want to recognize organizing committees and stuff like this
because, in a lot of cases, most of this is done from volunteers. Mr. Speaker,
putting off what they did the weekend was great. I had the opportunity on
Saturday to say a few words on our leader and it was absolutely a privilege to
be able to speak about our Member here for Topsail - Paradise and the great job
that he's done for our party in the past, as our leader and everything else –
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. K. PARSONS:
– and as a former
premier.
Like I said, that man has done so much for not only his own district, not
only this party, but he's done a lot for the Province of Newfoundland and
Labrador, and I thank him for the great job he's done.
Mr. Speaker, I'm going to move on now a little bit but we had the maiden
speech day today from my good friend from Mount Pearl North. During his speech
today, I heard a lot about farming. Since he's sat here next to me in the House
of Assembly, I'm after learning a lot about farming and the importance of food
security and everything else, but I have to let him know that I did a bit of
farming myself.
Being the youngest son of four older brothers, if we had a choice – my
father at the time was fishing and he was also farming and everybody wanted to
go in the boat and go fishing. So there was only a scattered fellow that could
go in a do a bit of weeding or thinning out a few turnips. I always ended up
with the short end of the stick doing that. I remember one year we set 19 sacks
of seed. I don't know, we fed half of Flatrock that year with the potatoes that
we got out of it. It was interesting what he said about a garden, just two car
parking lots for 400 pounds, that's what you said there.
When I first moved into my own home, my next door neighbour had a little
garden and he used to grow some vegetables. So I got into it. One year I grew
potatoes, turnip, carrot. I had some cabbage and I grew onions. I always said –
I gave it up after a while because I just didn't have time to do it and whatnot
– for anybody who does it, you really feel good about eating Sunday dinner when
you know it's your own potato, carrot and turnip that's on the plate. It just
gives you a little bit different – that's what we see in Newfoundland and
Labrador. No matter if it's the fish you caught the first morning or it's the
vegetables that you grow and we eat, we do feel that sense of that's something
that I did. It's a great feeling.
I know that the MHA there, he's probably feeding half of St. John's and
Mount Pearl, but there is nothing better than our own vegetables. I know when
the time of year comes when potatoes first come out of the ground and turnip and
cabbage, when you cook a good feed, there's nothing better than the fresh
vegetables. I think it's important what he said today. I just want to applaud
him because he brings a different perspective to our caucus.
I went and had the opportunity, as a lot of people in this House of
Assembly, to knock on doors in Mount Pearl North and we heard different things,
but there was one thing I always heard about the hon. Member, and while he
talked today about the little one with the farm, everyone related to him is a
hard worker.
I can assure the people of Mount Pearl North that, so far, what I've seen
of him here in the House of Assembly and in our caucus, he's still a very, very
hard worker and a good Member of this caucus. I really want to thank him for
what he brings here to the caucus.
Mr. Speaker, we're talking about the budget today, and it's pretty
interesting comments that I've heard from across the way. I don't expect
government Members to get up and say anything negative about the budget or
whatever, but when the budget came down in 2016 there was a big turmoil in this
province. There was a big turmoil over across the way there, too. There were a
lot of Members across the way that felt really hard about the budget that was
brought in. They felt it when they went back to their districts and they felt it
throughout the province.
I can remember out in front of Confederation Building here with protest
after protest. There were protests with the libraries, there were protests with
the levy, there were protests with the insurance tax, there were protests about
all these fines and everything else that came in place. Gas tax was a protest,
and people were really, really upset. Now, we've moved into it two years later –
but I want to remind the hon. Members over across the way that these 300 fees
that were increased and the 50 new ones that were brought in are still there.
I spoke to people in my district and they said, Kevin, there wasn't much
in the budget. There was nothing in the budget, nothing like that. I said no,
there was nothing in the budget, but there were no improvements to what you were
all so upset about in 2016.
The hon. Member across the way mentioned a few different things in his
speech today. He mentioned about overspending and the problem of the previous
administration to overspend. If I'm correct, I believe the increase in spending
since 2016 has increased every year since. There's no reduction whatsoever in
spending. He talked about going to a balanced budget, but I think most of the
indicators that are out there right now show that we're going in the wrong
direction.
Mr. Speaker, I always want to talk about young people in my district and
I always worry about where we're going in the future. The name of the document,
this year's budget is Building for Our
Future. My concern is if we're building for our future, I think we should be
investing in our future and investing in our young people.
I know there are young families down my way and it's a major concern.
They're moving away. They're moving to Alberta and Ontario. I had a family this
week that moved to Nova Scotia. I know most people in the district are concerned
about what's happening with our economy.
What happens this time of year is you'll see there's a lot of seasonal
employment. I had a call this morning from a young gentleman in my district. He
said: Kevin, do you know anywhere where I'm going to be able to get stamps this
year, anywhere where I can get a job? He said I'll do anything.
He's a heavy equipment operator. He's worked all his life so far – I
think he's about probably, maybe 41, 42 years old. He said, you know what, the
problem is this summer coming it's not looking too good for the couple of jobs
he has down the road. He says construction doesn't seem like there's much on the
go. I said, I think there's a lot of people in the same boat that you're in.
Well, he said, I can't stay around this summer and just hope for it, either that
or I'm going to have to move away. That's what's happening in our society today.
Mr. Speaker, housing starts are way down. It's in this book, and it shows
that's what's going to happen. I spoke a little bit earlier today about the
Stephenville Airport and the trickling effect. I look at what happens when you
talk about housing starts.
I spoke to a couple of people that works at one of the larger supply
areas – in the area, actually, on Torbay Road. The guy told me this weekend, he
said: Kevin, b'y, there's not a lot on the go. There's nothing on the go
whatsoever. He said this time of year you would see fellows with subdivisions
and everything else starting up and they're really concerned because they may
have to have layoffs in a building supply store.
This is the time of year when you'll see people gearing up. I have a lot
of people in my community of Flatrock. There are three different companies that
do roofing and this time of year they're gearing up, hoping it's going to be – I
spoke to one of them and: Kevin, I got nothing lined up at all. That guy
probably employs 15 people through the summer, and they get their unemployment.
It's seasonal work. A lot of Newfoundland, and I'm sure out around in most
districts it's the same as the Town of Flatrock. They're relying on people to be
able to get a bit of work to be able to do this stuff.
When you talk of how our economy is working – over on the other side:
We're doing a great job. We're doing some good job on the economy. We're
building the economy, but all the indicators in your budget are showing the
opposite. The actual money that people are going to spend in our province this
year is way down. People are moving away. The decline in population, people are
going to move away.
I hate to be negative. I try to be positive all the time, but we got some
issues in industries in our province that are very serious. Like I said, the
construction industry, there are a lot of people that are in construction that
are really concerned. Now, we had some fantastic years. I know that in a
community like Torbay for example, probably four years, you look at 2010-2014,
I'd say Torbay grew by about 20 per cent. The housing starts and the
construction that was on the go in that community was unbelievable.
Flat Rock probably grew by about the same, and there were young companies
starting up, everybody seemed like – to get an electrician or to get a plumber
was unbelievable. It was hard to come by. People, you just couldn't get them.
But today I know lots of electricians and I know lots of plumbers that are
really concerned about what's going to happen to them. That's where you need a
plan in place. That's where you need to have government step up and be able to
put a plan in place so people can get some work.
Mr. Speaker, I know the hon. Member before me said about oil prices and
how we were relying on oil prices. We all know what the effect of oil prices did
to our province. Not only in Newfoundland and Labrador, it was Saskatchewan,
Alberta. There are other provinces that had similar effects on the oil prices as
we did.
I think our economy and everything else, we took a slam because there are
a lot of people that travel to – I know a lot of people in my area that travel
back and forth to Fort McMurray, and the effect of the oil sands and the economy
that was happening, whether you were an electrician or a plumber there were
great dollars getting made, good money getting made.
When you look today and you see that most of these people are home. Like
I said, they're willing to take jobs of any kind at all. I know that
megaprojects are slowing down. Muskrat Falls is slowing down, what happened out
in Long Harbour is slowing down, and there are a lot of projects that people
rely on. But that's the type of economy we had for years and years.
When it comes to oil prices I look every evening – I don't know about the
rest of you here; I'm sure most of you do that. I look at the business report on
the NTV News every evening. I'm like
most Newfoundlanders and Labradorians; I want to see that oil price go up. Now,
not too bad – I mean, I don't want it to affect my gas cost and stuff like that.
But I do realize how important oil is to our economy, and how important it is to
having some money to be able to spend. When you look at – I believe, I could be
corrected by the Minister of Finance – I think $1 on a barrel means about $22
million to our economy over the year. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of
money to be able invest in our schools and invest in education and invest in our
people and our young people, ensuring that we do have some money coming into our
economy.
So, Mr. Speaker, I know that we all in this House of Assembly are working
to make sure that people stay in our area. I know government is not an employer,
but we have to give the sense that our economy is doing well and we have to do
some investments. Government is doing some investments. We did some great
investments here ourselves over the years. I look at the investments in my
district with schools, roads and whatnot.
I understand but I just think that government sets the tone and sets
where we are. I believe the indicators that are in this budget are not where we
want to be. This is coming on three years now that this government will be in.
For the first two years it was all our fault, but it's time to take some
responsibility for our economy, making sure that our economy works and making
sure that our people and our young people have opportunities. That's where we
have to be. We have to have those opportunities for people to be able to work.
Mr. Speaker, I only have a few minutes left, but on my Budget Speech
today I want to just mention a few things. I want to congratulate my colleague
here on the side of me from CBS and, also, the Minister of Justice on the great
move they made last week in putting an RNC detachment in CBS. I know how hard he
worked for it. Congratulations, I really want to say that. Congratulations on
doing a great job for your constituents.
The new chief of police, Joe Boland, is a good friend of mine. I had the
opportunity to play hockey against Joe for years. I played softball against him
for years. He's from Logy Bay-Middle Cove-Outer Cove. When he was appointed, I
never ever had the opportunity here in the House to congratulate him.
He's a fine gentleman. He'll be a great asset as leadership for the RNC.
I know he spent a great bit of time with the police association and he came
through the ranks. He's come right through the ranks and he's done everything
right.
He comes from a great family. Their family are fantastic families. The
Boland family, they're all known down my way as a bunch of winners. Joe is a
winner himself and he's a great asset, like I said. I really want to
congratulate him and wish him really well. I know the people in Logy Bay-Middle
Cove-Outer Cove are really proud of him.
Also, from the same community is the new, I guess he's called
superintendent of Corrections – I can be corrected, I think that's the title –
Don Roche. Donnie also is around my age; he's a little older. I had the
opportunity all my life to watch Donnie and I watched him grow.
This is a guy who came right through the ranks also and is a class-A
individual. He was here in the House of Assembly when his appointment was made –
notice here in the House of Assembly. He had his wife and his son with him;
Matthew was out in Corner Brook and couldn't make it. He also had a very lovely
lady with him, and probably one of my best friends for a long, long time, Ms.
Mary Roche, his mom. I know how proud she was to be able to come here that day
and watch Donnie be recognized for the great job they did. Those are the two
individuals in my district who are taking major roles in this province and I
really want to congratulate them.
Mr. Speaking, in closing, while this budget, people just said there's not
a lot in it, but do you know what? We still have 300 fees. We still have the 50
new ones that are in place. Carbon tax is coming. There is very little this
government has done to put any relief to the people of this province. It's time
to think about the people in the province.
I didn't get a chance to say this, but insurance tax, taking off one
point now and one point there. You brought the whole lot of it in; you should
have taken it all off.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Government
House Leader.
MR. A. PARSONS:
Thank you.
Given the hour of the day, I move, seconded by the Member for Burin -
Grand Bank, that the House do now adjourn.
MR. SPEAKER:
It is moved and seconded
that this House do now adjourn.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
MR. SPEAKER:
All those against, 'nay.'
This House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 1:30 o'clock.
On motion, the House at its rising adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, at
1:30 p.m.