March 25, 1991                HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS            Vol. XLI  No. 15


The House met at 2:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Before proceeding to the ordinary business of the day on behalf of all Members I would like to welcome to the House of Assembly twenty-seven Level 11 students from Bishop O'Neil School, Brigus accompanied by their teacher Mr. Edward Quinlan.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear!

Statements by Ministers

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

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am very pleased to announce to this hon. House that a tentative agreement has been reached in collective bargaining negotiations involving Government, the Newfoundland and Labrador School Trustees Association, and the Newfoundland Teacher's Association.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. BAKER: Mr. Speaker, for many years both Government and the NTA have recognized that major changes were necessary if the teacher's pension plan was to survive. The pension consultants were advising that the fund from which teacher's pensions are paid would be exhausted within ten years unless responsible action was taken. Unfortunately previous Governments failed to come to grips with this problem and deal with it responsibly. Accordingly, the financial security of teachers was put at risk by administrations lacking the foresight to plan for the long-term.

Mr. Speaker, one of our first stated objectives upon forming the Government of this Province was to provide for the long-term financial viability of the teacher's pension plan. I am please today to say that with the co-operation of the NTA executive, and subject to ratification by teachers, that objective has been achieved and teacher's pensions are no longer at risk.

Mr. Speaker, details of this tentative agreement will be released following ratification vote by teachers.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. SIMMS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

First of all I would say it is rather old news as it was announced last night on the news and it was in the newspaper today. I suppose the President of Treasury Board thought he would try to get his pound of flesh by bringing it into the House, but I wonder what it is we are cheering about? This Government signed agreements during this past year and now with Bill 16 we have seen they have cancelled them, broken them all, so what is the point of cheering? I would suspect that the teachers are pretty concerned about what might happen in the future. Now, Mr. Speaker, I remember the last agreement that the NTA and the teachers signed was actually an agreement that was signed and agreed upon before the expiration of their previous agreement, for the first time ever, Mr. Speaker, now, we have seen this Government take about sixteen or seventeen months of negotiations to try to get this agreement so I say, Mr. Speaker, it is about time that they were able to settle with the NTA. Now, Mr. Speaker, the only reason they have settled of course is because of the pressure from the Opposition in the House with petitions on behalf of teachers.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. SIMMS: Because of the Premier's threat to members of the NTA to use legislation - a stroke of the pen, I think, were his very words, the teachers' themselves were browbeaten into taking a work-to-rule vote and in fact voting on it. It was only after they voted on the work-to-rule that this Government finally decided to sit down and bargain properly, Mr. Speaker.

There are questions. Will this group lose a 7 per cent wage increase that had originally been negotiated? Did they get pension indexing? And if so will other groups get it? So there are a whole bunch of questions, Mr. Speaker. But if they think that all is now well between the teachers of this Province and this administration, then they have another think coming, Mr. Speaker, that is all I have to say.

Oral Questions

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

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the President of Treasury Board. According to a list that I have obtained, there are twenty bargaining units, public sector bargaining units, who will have negotiated wage increases wiped out for 1991-1992 because of Bill 16, and the increases ranged from 3 per cent for one group, 6 to 7 per cent for other groups, most of them in fact, but up to 10 and 12 per cent, Mr. Speaker, for others; for example: the Lab and X-ray workers who were legislated back to work and indeed legislated to arbitration, were awarded a 10 per cent increase to achieve equality. My question to the Minister is, how can he justify wage rollbacks which will cost some employees two or three times as much as it will cost others? Is that an example of fairness and balance?

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

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just to correct a mis-statement by the hon. Member, the Lab and X-ray workers were not legislated back to work. What happened was that they agreed to go back to work following - they agreed to go to binding arbitration and they went back to work, it was not legislated; but with regards to the substance of his question, Mr. Speaker, what we will do when the legislation passes is impose a wage freeze for a one year period and everybody will be treated the same, in the sense that there has to be a zero wage increase during that one year.

If the member has read the legislation he will realize that the unions involved then have a choice as to how to proceed; the unions that have lost these amounts he is talking about, will have choices as to how to proceed, and no matter which choice they take, and I suspect that they will take the choice that best suits them and that is the way it was meant to be, that any inequities will be balanced out by the way the wage freeze is applied.

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

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, I do not know if that clears anything up for anybody or adds more confusion to it; we will examine what the President of Treasury Board has had to say and check it out with other sources. I ask the Minister also, if he would confirm that public employees in Labrador will lose, in addition to the wage freeze that has been announced, negotiated increases of 18 per cent isolation allowances, 27 per cent travel allowances, 9 per cent independents allowances, benefits given them in fact after a very lengthy independent study I think was done, and if this is true and he can confirm it, can he tell us then, why public employees in Labrador are being treated as special victims above and beyond other groups in the Province?

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

MR. BAKER: Mr. Speaker, as to the matter in his question, the last statement the Member made is simply not true. Nobody is being treated differently from anybody else. The increases that were negotiated for that year will simply come into existence one year later than the agreed on date, this possibility is built into the legislation as the Member knows if he has read the legislation, so nobody will be discriminated against unduly. The same rules apply to everybody in the public service of the Province.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

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

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure if I understand the President of Treasury Board correctly but he is assuming, I take it, that all groups will agree to the option provided for in the legislation. If that is what he is assuming, then he may be presumptuous in his assumption, because there is no definite guarantee that groups will take that. And if they do not take that option, wouldn't he then agree that they will have lost these increased benefits?

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

MR. BAKER: Mr. Speaker, the options are put there so that the unions will have a choice of choosing the option that best suits them and that treats them in the best possible way. We can only assume that when the unions make their choice they will choose what is best for them. I am not going to pre-judge that choice.

MR. SIMMS: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, his Government often boasts about the big plan they have; we hear the Ministers over there referring to `we have this big plan', but there are obviously many people in this Province, including economists, who do not really believe that our fiscal situation will be much more improved by the time next year rolls around. Can the President of Treasury Board assure the House and, indeed, assure the workers of this Province, public sector workers in particular, that no extension of wage rollbacks or wage freezes will make up part of this administration's so-called big plan for the following fiscal year, 1992-93?

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

MR. BAKER: Mr. Speaker, we have delivered the Budget pertaining to this year. I cannot pre-judge what may happen anytime in the next number of years. However, I would say to the Opposition House Leader, one thing all economists do agree on is that this Province will experience more real growth in the coming year than any other part of Canada.

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

MR. POWER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a couple of questions again today for the Minister of Health, to see if we can get some straight answers. Mr. Speaker, after the Budget was delivered on March 7 the Newfoundland Hospital and Nursing Home Association made a press release saying that basically it simply would not be possible this year to achieve the kinds of cuts that were requested by the Minister of Finance, that, in fact, even with a very significant downplay of services there would still be a $10 million shortfall. Over the past weekend the same Association has issued a press release saying that it is not going to be possible to achieve the kinds of cuts the Minister of Finance asked for in his Budget, that in fact they are going to be $10 million short, and if they do not receive some additional funding, then there are going to be additional bed closures and additional layoffs. Will the Minister of Health confirm and agree with this statement made by the Newfoundland Hospital and Nursing Home Association?

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

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, I will confirm that shortly after the Budget the Newfoundland Hospital and Nursing Home Association issued a statement in which they said they did not agree with the amount of money the Government was saying was sufficient to meet our health needs this year. I will not confirm the press release which they made over the weekend. I am not aware they made it. Do I agree with them? No, Mr. Speaker, I do not agree with them.

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

MR. POWER: Mr. Speaker, again it is so difficult to get straight answers from the Minister. Obviously, had you read The Sunday Express you would have seen that the Association did confirm its original estimation, that they could not save $10 million and do what the Minister asked them to do. I ask the Minister again, if he is not willing to listen to professional advice from a group such as the Hospital and Nursing Home Association, will he reconsider the fact that this group has to save an additional $10 million this year which they say they are not capable of doing without significant disruption to the health care services. Now, Mr. Speaker, I will ask the Minister will he reconsider the Budget cuts for the Hospital and Nursing Home Association, to find somewhere in his Budget the $10 million which they say they are not going to be able to find?

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

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, if there is one problem we have in the Department of Health, maybe it is that we listen to so many professional people who want to advise us.

AN HON. MEMBER: Right on!

MR. DECKER: We have listened to the professionals in the Newfoundland Hospital and Nursing Home Association, we have listened to the Newfoundland Medical Association, we have listened to the Association of Registered Nurses, we have listened to every town council in the Province, we have listened to every board in the Province, Mr. Speaker. We are listening to everyone and we are getting about fifty different suggestions as to how we are going to deal with this fiscal problem we have. And after listening to all the professional groups - and they do not all agree - the buck stops with the Department of Health and this Government and we have to make the final judgment call and, Mr. Speaker, we have made that. I believe we have made the right decision. We might be proven to be wrong, and if we are, we will have to deal with that. But we listened to all the professionals, and they are not all saying the same thing, and we tried to pick out of that what was the proper judgment call. Mr. Speaker, it stopped with the Department of Health to make that call and we made it.

MR. POWER: A final supplementary.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Member for Ferryland, a final supplementary.

MR. POWER: Mr. Speaker, again I can only reiterate what the Association is saying, that they are going to be $10 million short. And they say if they do not find the $10 million, the Christmas and summer bed closures will be extended, more jobs will be lost, and the health care system will be significantly impacted. Now I ask the Minister is he willing to sit idly by while this is taking place, this further downgrading of the health care system, or is he willing today to listen to the Hospital and Nursing Home Association and go to his Cabinet colleagues and find this additional shortfall of $10 million which is not going to be able to be found in the present health care system?

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

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, the hon. Member is talking like a spoiled brat who thinks money grows on trees, who keeps running back to his parents for more money. The fact of the matter is, this Province, this year, is spending almost $900 million on our health care system. Nearly 25 per cent of our total budget is going into health care, Mr. Speaker. His colleagues in Ottawa have practically stopped the transfer payments for health and education. We are left with taking the money out of our people's pockets, borrowing it, Mr. Speaker.

There is no money. We have almost $900 million to deliver health care to the people. We have put a system in place which I believe is the best system we can afford to put in place, keeping in mind that we have only almost $900 million with which to do it. Now, Mr. Speaker, I have taken advice from all the professionals. After hearing their advice I had to make a judgement call, and I made it.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Mount Pearl.

MR. WINDSOR: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have some questions for the Minister of Finance, following along with the questions from my colleague for Ferryland. The administrators in the Public Service told Government a number of months ago that because of lengths of termination notices required and bumping procedures inherent in collective bargaining agreements, that it would take five months lead time to achieve any savings the Minister of Finance had asked for from them in 1990-1991. Will the Minister confirm that because of this Government will achieve no more than two-thirds of the savings expected in 1991 from layoffs in the Public Service sector?

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

DR. KITCHEN: Mr. Speaker, our information is that we will be able to realize the savings we have projected. It is very important, though, that what has to be done had best be done quickly.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Mount Pearl.

MR. WINDSOR: Mr. Speaker, I say to the Minister my information is that indeed the Minister will not achieve what he has set out to achieve in the Public Service this year and that, in fact, as a result of the way in which the Minister has handled this particular issue, that either the deficit for 1991 will increase by $15 million to $20 million, or we will be looking at another 500 to 600 layoffs in the Public sector this year. Will the Minister confirm that that is in fact the case?

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

DR. KITCHEN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do not really know what entrails the hon. Member has been consulting lately for his information, but I can tell you it is false.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Mount Pearl.

MR. WINDSOR: Mr. Speaker, I thank the Minister for that. If that is the case, will the Minister therefore tell us why he has not published the Departmental salary details so that we will know how many people are going to be laid off? And is it not true that the Minister, in fact, does not know how many will be laid off or whom will be laid off and that is the reason why they are trying to hide away the salary details and they are not being published as they always have been?

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

MR. BAKER: It is very difficult sometimes, Mr. Speaker, to respond sensibly to comments like that.

MR. SIMMS: It certainly is (inaudible)

MR. BAKER: I will start again, Mr. Speaker. Again, I repeat, it is difficult to be sensible sometimes. The salary details will be published as soon as the information is available. As hon. Members know, there are certain decisions that were made very late in the Budgetary process, within days of the Budget actually being read in this House, having to do with the freezing of wages. Also, in terms of the downsizing of certain parts of the public service - there is access to bumping procedures and so on - Mr. Speaker, it was impossible for us at that point in time, because decisions were so late being made, to have the actual individual salary details at the time of the Budget. However, in Treasury Board my officials are working on this as hard as they can to get the numbers as quickly as they can. In one sense the hon. gentleman opposite is correct. It will still take a few days before the final effects are known and at that point in time, then, we can perhaps finalize and start publishing.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Mount Pearl.

MR. WINDSOR: Mr. Speaker, it is strange that every other year decisions were made late in the Budgetary process and we were still able to have the salary details, particularly in light of the age of the computer today, where that stuff can be turned out almost instantaneously as decisions are being made. Will the Minister not confirm, Mr. Speaker, that he is indeed trying to hide the truth and will he not come clean? The fact is that we will soon know the details of this. At least twelve months from now we will know how many positions there are. Why will the Minister not come forward and let us know who is being fired from the public service?

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

MR. BAKER: Mr. Speaker, again sometimes it is difficult. We have announced that the Budget will result in 650 fewer jobs, I believe it is, in the direct public service of the Province, and the steps have now been taken to bring that about because Departments have to live within their salary guidelines, within the budgeted amounts. There is no hiding here. In this whole process we have been totally open and totally honest with the people of this Province from day one. From the first day we recognized there was a financial problem and the extent of it, we were open, honest and forthright with the people of this Province. All along the way Members opposite were saying, why are you going around saying this? Why can you not simply make up your minds and stop telling us about it? Well, we told people every step of the way. We went out and consulted with hospital boards and with boards of community colleges; we went out and consulted with the management groups in the public service; we consulted with the unions. Eventually decisions were made, and when decisions were made we brought in a Budget and we are going to live by that Budget.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Green Bay.

MR. HEWLETT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last Fall, when this House sat, I pointed out to the Minister of Finance that prices of fuels were rising greatly because of the mounting Gulf crisis and asked him at the time to fix his tax rate on gasoline, etc. He refused and raked in a lot of money for the Treasury. Now that that war is behind us, a war in which a lot of Newfoundlanders served, and now that gasoline prices are falling rapidly and he has fixed the tax, will he not admit now that that fixing is ripping off maybe $10 to $15 million extra dollars from the people of our Province?

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

DR. KITCHEN: Mr. Speaker, we have to have a fairly secure source of revenue and the ad valorem tax, which had been imposed on gasoline, was a most variable way of doing it: as the price of gasoline rose the take from the system rose, and as the price of gasoline went down, our tax intake decreased. So you can never actually be sure from that type of system. It is very difficult to make predictions as to what will happen, because the price of oil has been flexible over the past number of years. So while the price of oil was quite high last fall and early winter, we decided that we would not increase the ad valorem because we do that on a regular basis. So we decided, realizing that the price of oil would in all probability decrease, that we would fix the tax at a high point in the price, which means that as the price of oil goes down consumers will get their break from the price of oil declining, and we will get our tax.

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

MR. HEWLETT: A supplementary to the Minister of Finance. The surnames involved, Kitchen and Baker, certainly fit the cooking of the books. Will the Minister admit that the motto of this Government has basically become, either axe it or tax it?

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

AN HON. MEMBER: No answer?

MR. A. SNOW: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. All last week the CRTC has been holding public hearings in Hull, Quebec, concerning the service reductions across Newfoundland and Labrador and the rest of the country, when CBC announced their reductions in December of 1990. I am proud to say that Members of this caucus, the Member for Humber East, the Member for Torngat Mountains and myself, attended these hearings on behalf of our constituents and opposed these cutbacks in strong position papers presented to the CRTC. I was surprised that no representatives of the Government caucus or the Government were at these hearings or, to the best of my knowledge, were scheduled to appear at these hearings, which are continuing this week. I would like to ask the Minister responsible for communications whether the Government considers that the proposed reduction in CBC service, at issue in these hearings, will impact negatively on the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, or whether the matter has, in fact, been discussed by the Cabinet at all?

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

MR. GULLAGE: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I have had considerable discussion with the regional director, Mr. Byrd, on the cuts that have taken place so far, and the fact that regional interests and staff across the country have been severely affected, not just in this region, but in other regions of Canada, as well. I followed up discussions with Mr. Byrd with discussions between other Ministers in provinces across the country, and we have had several conference calls about the cuts which have taken place and cuts which may take place in the future, because I do not believe this is the end of the problem. We all know, of course, that the real problem is that they are centralizing CBC into central Canada, into Ontario in particular, and that is the gist of the problem. So we have had considerable discussion, Mr. Speaker, and those discussions at the Ministerial level are ongoing with the CBC.

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

MR. A. SNOW: The Minister has confirmed that national centralization has an adverse effect on the people of the whole country, as does provincial centralization.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. A. SNOW: Now that we know the Minister has only conferred with CBC officials, can we ask why he did not intervene with the agency that could force CBC to reinstate local service, the CRTC? That is whom he was supposed to intervene with. Will he answer my question? Why did he not intervene with the CRTC?

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

MR. GULLAGE: Mr. Speaker, we have not ruled out intervention with the CRTC.

MS. VERGE: (Inaudible) going over?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. GULLAGE: I do not think the CRTC is going to disappear because the hearings are over, Mr. Speaker. And our view is that Ministerial discussions are important at this stage. We are trying to develop a consensus across the country between the Ministers responsible to attack this problem with the CBC, which is not just one that focuses entirely on Newfoundland. It is a nationwide problem and our concern is where they are going: not just what they have done in the past, but what they are about to do in the future. We want to address this and the long-range implications of it sensibly. I think we are doing that at the ministerial level, having discussions between the ministers responsible across the country and with Ottawa and with the CRTC if necessary. We have not as yet. That does mean we will not.

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

MR. A. SNOW: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the Minister is aware that other Provincial Governments presented briefs to the CRTC?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

AN HON. MEMBER: Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec!

MR. A. SNOW: Let me ask the Minister is the real reason Government has not done anything to speak out against the proposed CBC cuts because this Government has been hamstrung by its own drastic cuts announced in the Budget on March 7, and that this Government no longer has credibility in standing up for the services our people have come to rely on for decades?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. A. SNOW: Is that the real reason why they have not intervened to the CRTC?

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

MR. GULLAGE: Mr. Speaker, I would suggest it is the Tory Government in Ottawa that is responsible for these cuts in the CBC.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. TOBIN: (Inaudible) we opposed it, unlike you over there!

MR. GULLAGE: It is the Federal Government policy of getting rid of almost everything they have that has any connection with their Government, downsizing to the point of -

MS. VERGE: (Inaudible) MUN Extension?

MR. GULLAGE: - downsizing to the point that every corporation that is separate from Government now is on the chopping block, including CBC. And we have not seen the end of it as yet. I would suggest that before the day is over a lot of the intervention, a lot of the discussions we are having as Ministers with the Federal Government will probably, we would hope, see some regional programming retained, such as Land and Sea. And it probably will be as a result of our intervention that those decisions are rolled back.

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for the Minister of Education. The Minister will know that one of the basic principles of university education in Newfoundland is that it should be available to all those who qualify. Will the Minister confirm that the Government has been told by the President of Memorial University that if the cutbacks and the financing being offered to this University continue into the following year, that the University will be capping enrollment and restricting enrollment, and restricting returning students not for academic reasons but for reasons of economics, and that, in fact, he has set up a committee to determine how that should take place?

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

DR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, I have not been told officially by the President that that would happen, but I think the President has expressed a concern that we all have, that if we continue these reductions that accessibility will be negatively impacted. We are concerned about that as is the President, and that is why this year we increased the budgeted amount in Student Aid by $3 million, and there is no cap on that. So if there are students who are disadvantaged as a result of this year's increase in fees, they will have access to funds.

Mr. Speaker, one other point I would like to make. I have been told by a former president of Memorial University that our participation rate in post-secondary at the University level has increased dramatically in the last few years, and that increasingly rural Newfoundland students are attending Memorial University.

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

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, the Minister knows that Student Aid is only available to students who can get into Memorial University, not to those who are prevented from getting in by enrollment caps.

In view of the $7 million loss through EPF financing and the $12 million projected next year, indeed the $81 million losses until 1995, can the Minister assure this House that there will not be any caps on accessibility to Memorial University by the University capping enrollment?

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

DR. WARREN: I should clarify, Mr. Speaker, that I am delighted there are no caps on enrollment at Memorial University. Unlike other universities across this country, we have not capped enrollments and the Board of Regents and the President should be congratulated on not doing that. Mr. Speaker, we are seriously concerned about the reductions in transfer payments, and if they continue at the rate of the reductions and the capping at the Federal level, God knows what we will have to do. I hope, however, we will not have to cap enrollments, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. HARRIS: Perhaps the Minister misunderstood my first question. Can he confirm that his Government has been advised by the President that if the financing cuts continue he will have to cut enrollment, and, in fact, has set up a committee to devise how that would be done, to cap enrollment even for those who otherwise qualify?

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

DR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, I have not been told officially that there will be caps in the future. We have advised the university that we oppose any such caps, but in the future the university will make its own decisions. Our hope is that we will not have to cap enrollments, Mr. Speaker, but the university will have to do what it has to do. And we congratulate them this year on not imposing caps, on providing for greater accessibility for post-secondary in this Province.

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

MR. WARREN: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation. Would the Minister table correspondence he has sent off to the Federal Minister of Transport objecting to the 60 per cent increase in ferry rates and freight rates for Marine Atlantic to coastal Labrador and the southwest coast?

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

MR. GILBERT: Mr. Speaker, if the Member had been in the House two Wednesdays ago he would have heard that my colleague for Pleasantville brought in a private member's resolution, talking about the concern which has occurred with the privatization of airline and freight rates in the country by passing it from -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. GILBERT: Mr. Speaker, we are very concerned with the situation that has evolved, again with the Tory Federal Government, where they are increasing the rates to the peripheries of Canada. My colleague for Pleasantville brought in a resolution talking about it, then my colleague for Eagle River brought in one. We have been in constant contact with the Federal Government and the Federal Minister concerning the practice they are now trying to institute in Newfoundland, in this Province, of making the user pay for transportation of all kinds.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The time for Oral Questions has expired.

Presenting Reports by

Standing and Special Committees

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

MR. BAKER: Mr. Speaker, I would like to, first of all, table the 1990 Annual Report of the Provincial Advisory Council on the Status of Women, Newfoundland and Labrador, and also the Twentieth Annual Report of Newfoundland and Labrador Computer Services Limited.

MR. SPEAKER: Before moving to the next item, on behalf of hon. Members I would like to welcome to the Speaker's Galleries today Mr. Bill Kelly, the Mayor of Wabush.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

Answers to Questions

For which Notice has been Given

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Mines and Energy.

DR. GIBBONS: Mr. Speaker, I wish to table answers to questions which were on the Order Paper for me last week. Thank you.

Petitions

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Burin - Placentia West.

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I would like to present a petition on behalf of approximately sixty residents of the community of Beau Bois in the District of Burin - Placentia West. They are petitioning Government to have proper and safe road conditions to their community, for the safety of the children travelling by school bus and for other persons who have to use the road.

Mr. Speaker, many people may not be familiar with the community of Beau Bois.

AN HON. MEMBER: I am.

MR. TOBIN: Yes, my colleague for St. John's East is familiar with it. I had him out there at one time.

AN HON. MEMBER: You did?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. TOBIN: I can tell you, Mr. Speaker -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please! There is some noise on both sides, and I am trying to hear the petition.

The hon. the Member for Burin - Placentia West.

MR. TOBIN: Beau Bois, Mr. Speaker, is a very picturesque community, approximately 1.5 kilometres from the community of Little Bay, which is part of Marystown. There is probably no place in Newfoundland where, per capita, more taxes are paid to the Province than the community of Beau Bois. There are three or four trawler captains who come from that community -just about all the community is employed on deep sea trawlers: captains, mates and engineers. They make a significant contribution to the well-being of this Province and they are asking to have their road upgraded and paved from Little Bay to Beau Bois, which will cost the Government approximately $100,000. That is what it will cost. It is just one kilometre, Mr. Speaker.

As a matter of fact, the last year we were in Government it was a project which had been identified, it was on the list. And I can show the - the President of Treasury Board laughs. I can show the President of Treasury Board, if he so wishes, a copy of the Cabinet paper which included Beau Bois and the funding, as well as Red Harbour and some other communities in my district. But since then that has all been scrapped and left by the wayside. I would really impress upon this Government to look seriously at the contribution Beau Bois has made to this Province over the years and to do what is necessary in terms of providing them with good road conditions.

As I said, it is not going to cost them very much money to do the road to Beau Bois. They have worked hard all of their lives. As I said, there are three or four trawler captains who come from that community, a very tiny community, and it is not asking for the end of the world to ask to have a bit of pavement placed there. This past Winter, due to road conditions, the Department of Transportation had their grader roll bottom up while going down over the hill. I am sure no one wants to think what the result might have been had it rolled over on the opposite side of the road. The cars just cannot communicate because of the declining hill there, and the RCMP and everyone have been involved. So I ask the Minister of Transportation if he would give serious consideration this year to paving that piece of road? As I said, it is something that is extremely important to that community, extremely important to the Province of Newfoundland. I say to the Minister this is 1991, and to ask for $100,000 or $200,000 it is not the end of the world. And I would ask the President of Treasury to support it when he sits around the Cabinet table and they start divvying up the pie, as I understand this Government does, and support the community of Beau Bois in their request to have an adequate road service.

As a matter of fact, when I was elected in 1982, we needed $32 million to finish the roads. We were just about finished when Government changed, and we have received precious little work since that time. So I would now ask the Minister of Transportation if he would ensure that this year the road to Beau Bois, as well as the road to Rock Harbour, is paved. At least all the roads then will probably be paved, but in some cases, in places in the district like Boat Harbour, etc., these roads are actually worse now that they are paved than they were before they were paved.

So I place upon the Table of the House this petition, signed by all the eligible voters in the District of Beau Bois, asking that Government do what needs to be done in order to provide them with an adequate road service. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

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

I rise in my place today, Mr. Speaker, to support the petition so ably presented by my colleague the hon. Member for Burin - Placentia West on behalf of the residents of Beau Bois in his district. It is a fairly simple request in this day and age, 1991, for a group of people who are contributing immensely to the economy of this Province to try to have the access to their community, relatively modern, Mr. Speaker. To upgrade and pave, eventually, a couple of kilometres of highway between Marystown and this community would not create a great onus on the Department of Transportation in this Province who are spending millions and millions of dollars on roads this year, most of it Federal Government money. On behalf of the fifty-two residents of Beau Bois I would say to them to be realistic in that this Government is in place and that this Government would prefer not to pave or upgrade the road, Mr. Speaker. The actions of this Government have shown that they would prefer that the residents of Beau Bois resettle to a larger community. That has been the hope of the present administration since they came in power. They campaigned, during the election, on decentralization and their actions since becoming Government has created centralization. I would suggest that the people of Beau Bois will be waiting quite some time for their road to be paved and upgraded, and the best chance they would have of getting their road paved and upgraded would be to keep their present Member in position until the next election when the administration will change and then we will have a re-commitment in this Province to rural Newfoundland to allow people to stay in their communities and try to provide, as best we can, the minimum services of some water and sewer to rural Newfoundland, and some additional road upgrading such as a minimum amount of paving.

I would like to know from the Minister, if he gets up, the cost of trying to get the grader that turned over and was stuck while trying to clear snow in this community over the Winter, Mr. Speaker. I would say the cost of that would probably have alleviated about 10 per cent of the request of $150,000 just to get that grader out of the ditch last Winter. Mr. Speaker, to upgrade the road, to grade it every year, also probably costs, over a two or three year period, the complete amount of what it would cost to complete the road, to fully pave it, for this one and a half or two kilometres of road. The hon. Minister is going to waste more money on maintenance on this small section of road than what it would cost him to pave it and be finished with it once and for all.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. GILBERT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have heard the petition from the sixty-three citizens of Beau Bois and I am certainly concerned because we have a lot of gravel road in the Province and we would certainly like to have it all paved. There is 2500 kilometres of it still around and maybe if the previous Government had done something over the last seventeen years before we took over we would not have these problems now. When I think that I am spending $15 million a year to operate a ferry service that the previous Government took over, an expense that was a Federal Government responsibility, if we had that maybe we would have been able to pave the road to Beau Bois and many of the other roads in communities around the Province who have gravel roads. I certainly appreciate the fact that it is there and we are constantly aware and trying to upgrade the roads throughout the Province. It is interesting thought, Mr. Speaker, that now when the hon. Members get up we hear them talk about resettlement. I heard my colleague for Bellevue mention it when he was talking the other day to the gentleman for Green Bay, I think. It is a romantic thing now to talk about resettlement. Very few of us in the House are actual people who were involved in it. I am one of them. The place that I came from in Placentia Bay is a place called Haystack out on Long Island, and we were victims of resettlement, but let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, more victims in song and legend than in actual fact. If you were to talk to the people, the majority of people who were involved in resettlement, they would tell you that it was the proper thing to do, and it was done at the right time, Mr. Speaker.

If you were to go to the come home years, and I have had occasion to go to the come home years in some of those communities, you are finding now grandchildren of the people who moved are going there, and they go with a certain degree of nostalgia. I mean, when we hear the Wareham Brothers songs from Placentia Bay or the Byrne Boys, oh, they are great, but believe me when we lived there, we were pretty happy when the time came when we were getting out of there, and we did not have to sit on the wharf waiting for the boat to come once every two weeks or having to watch our relatives die as some of us did living in those communities.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. GILBERT: So let me tell you, this resettlement thing they talk about: it is great when it is sang about down in the hon. Member's club somewhere on George Street, the Harp and Thistle or whatever it is, it might be great. In actual fact, Mr. Speaker, it is a myth like many of the other things the Members are talking about. This Government is committed to serving Newfoundlanders and rural Newfoundlanders and bringing them into a world that the other people lost and forgot about for seventeen years.

MR. SPEAKER: Further petitions.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: I will switch back if the hon. Member does not mind. The hon. the Member for Trinity - Bay de Verde - a petition.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. L. SNOW: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present to this hon. House a petition signed by the residents of some twenty communities served by the catchment area of the Old Perlican Hospital. Many of these communities are in the District of Trinity - Bay de Verde, but some of them are from the Carbonear district represented by my hon. colleague for Carbonear.

The prayer of the petition, Mr. Speaker, I would like to read it: We are greatly concerned with the Government's decision as announced in the 1991-92 Budget to reduce health care services currently provided at the hospital. Considering that the Government has stated this is the first of perhaps three years of financial cutbacks, we perceive that by the end of this period there will be no health care services provided in the area as in Come By Chance.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. L. SNOW: The large elderly population, the elimination of the long-term care services, reduction and possibly elimination of acute care services, geography and unique winter conditions are an obvious recipe for human disaster. We fully support the efforts of the Concerned Citizens Committee re the Budget impact on the Wilkinson Memorial Hospital. We fully support the recommendations of the 1990 roll study for the Dr. A. A. Wilkinson Memorial Hospital for which the Department of Health was a prime consultant. We respectfully request that the hon. House urge the Government to take steps that will lead to the implementation of the recommendations of the 1990 roll study and the needs assessment done.

Mr. Speaker, this petition was spearheaded by a group of concerned citizens and was formed immediately after the Budget announcement of the downgrading of the acute care services in the Old Perlican Hospital. The group consists of community leaders, the mayors of many of the areas affected, the clergy, teachers, businessmen, fishermen and other citizens who feel strongly that the action taken by the Government is just the first step in the eventual elimination of health care to the area delivered through the Dr. A. A. Wilkinson Memorial Hospital.

They have a great deal of concern, Mr. Speaker, about the health and the well-being of their families and their friends who reside in the community served by this hospital. I want to say, Mr. Speaker, that this is not the first time, of course, that the area has been faced with the threat of losing their hospital, and a reduction in the health care in that area. In the early 80s the Government of the day had planned to phase down the hospital to a 24 hour clinic and to eliminate acute care services, however, the quick reaction to such a move by the concerned citizens saw the decision reversed, Mr. Speaker, and the 24 hour clinic was reversed to acute care services, although the number of acute care beds at the time was downgraded to 15. At the same time the Department of Social Services opened up the third floor of the hospital and added the DM unit, and the hospital, however, continued to operate basically as an acute care facility up until the present time. However, some of the acute care beds in the area had to be used from time to time for chronic care, for patients waiting to be placed in some chronic care facility. So over the years some of the beds remained acute while some have been used as chronic.

In the mid '80s and the following years, Mr. Speaker, the hospital board at the Dr. A.A. Wilkinson Memorial Hospital became affiliated with the Conception Bay Health Board, and several years ago they merged to form the Trinity - Conception Health Board for the area. Then the new board began looking at the institution and the future role of the Old Perlican Hospital. As a result a study was completed in the fall of 1990, and it was done in conjunction with the Department of Health doing analysis of the 1984 bed study, the Royal Commission and the 1986 bed study, and other assessments that hade been done by the department in recent years. The conclusion of that study was that there be 9 acute care beds and 25 chronic care beds opened up to take care of the needs over the next 5 to 10 years in that particular area. These were some of the recommendations of that study. It is obvious from talking to the residents how they feel about that study now, Mr. Speaker. They feel that the Government and the Department of Health in its recommendations on rationalizing the health care system completely ignored this 1990 study.

Mr. Speaker, the residents of my district, who up to this point in time received acute care at the Memorial Hospital -

MR. SPEAKER: Order please!

The hon. Member's time is up.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: By leave.

MR. SPEAKER: By leave.

MR. L. SNOW: Mr. Speaker, the residents who received acute care up to this point will now have to go to Carbonear. This will mean at least an additional hours drive for many of the residents, along a rugged coastline that experiences severe winter conditions. Of course, in addition to that it means that additional demands will be placed on the Carbonear hospital, which is already, to my understanding, utilized to maximum capacity. I have spoken to a lot of people over the last two weeks in my area and none of them, Mr. Speaker, see this as an improvement to the health care delivery in the area. In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, the Carbonear hospital has 8 to 10 chronic care units there at all times, and this will, indeed, place an additional burden on the Carbonear hospital. However, in the Old Perlican area there are at least 8 or 10 beds which can be used to deliver chronic care at a very reasonable cost to Government, and if we were allowed to transfer some of the chronic care units that are presently at Carbonear, then that would alleviate some of the problems that these people will be experiencing when they have to travel to Carbonear for the primary care services.

Mr. Speaker, there is a lot of concern raised by the constituents that I represent. The question is now: what will happen to the stroke victim who comes to the Old Perlican hospital now? He will be stabilized at the Old Perlican hospital, but where will he go from there? The acute care beds that are left there will not be allowed to be used as chronic care, the Carbonear hospital will not accept them because they cannot accept chronic patients, and the other facilities, the Harbour Lodge and the Interfaith Home, Mr. Speaker, are already filled and there is a waiting list. The patient cannot be taken back into the community by his family because they cannot provide the adequate care. So what is going to happen to such a case, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker, let me conclude by saying that what the residents of the area are saying to me and to the Government is that if you are serious about delivering health care services to the area through the A. A. Wilkinson Memorial Hospital, then along with the four to six acute care beds let's continue to deliver some chronic care to the patients in the area, until we have an assessment done and looked at the role study that is being done and is implemented.

They feel that if this does not happen then they believe that it is the intent of Government to close the facility completely in the future. They are asking, Mr. Speaker, for a commitment to the future care of the Doctor A. A. Wilkinson Memorial Hospital.

Mr. Speaker, I support the prayer of this petition.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. REID: Mr. Speaker, I rise to support my hon. colleague and friend from Trinity - Bay de Verde. I am not as, I suppose, affected as it relates to the number of communities in my district as it relates to my colleagues, but I do have five communities in the lower part of my district - Northern Bay, Gull Island, Burnt Point, Job's Cove and Lower Island Cove - that will be drastically affected by the proposed cutbacks to the A. A. Wilkinson Hospital.

Not only affected as it relates to medical services being provided to those people in the area but - and I have to say this because this is a concern of mine as well as providing hospital services. I have a large number of people from that particular area of my district that find employment and have found employment at that hospital for the last number of years.

The thing that bothers me more than anything else about this situation is that I tend to agree with my hon. colleague when he says that it would cost this Government very little in the next little while to keep a small number of chronic care beds opened in this particular hospital. We have the figures, and both the board and my hon. colleague from Harbour Grace and my colleague from Trinity as well as myself, have met with the health board for the area which operates the A. A. Wilkinson. And they have made a presentation to us, and to us it seems like we may for very little financial cost, be able to maintain some beds in that particular hospital, to lessen the burden, I suppose, and lessen the impact of: number one, the down servicing of medical services, and number two; the employment.

I sympathize with my colleague from Trinity because I know that for the last number of years he himself personally - even before being elected to this particular House - was involved with fighting the previous government in their proposals over the years to close this particular facility. And now, after doing and making a commitment to the people over the years that he has been living in the district, and fighting the previous administration, now he is in here, I suppose, and literally fighting his own administration.

The problem that I see with closing the beds at the A. A. Wilkinson is that the Carbonear hospital - the hospital located in my district - I know is over-crowded at present. The occupancy rate in the Carbonear hospital is one of the highest, if not the highest, in the Province. And we now find ourselves in a situation in the Carbonear General where people are brought in there from all over this district and a number of other districts that I represent, and have to end up in corridors on stretchers. And by closing the hospital in Old Perlican all we are going to do is add to that congested dilemma that we are in in the Carbonear hospital.

I only hope that in the next few days when myself and my colleague from Trinity - Bay de Verde, and as others meet with the Minister of Health, and hopefully down the road to meet with the Premier, we will be able to convince this Government, our Government, that possibly a second look can be taken at that particular hospital in Old Perlican.

I stand in support of my colleague and of the idea of keeping at least six acute care beds if not more open in the hospital in Old Perlican, and of course the chronic care beds be added or left as they are. I think that my hon. colleague has to be congratulated for standing in his place today and making the comments that he has made, knowing that he is a Member of this Government and hope - I am sure he is hoping, and I am hoping as well - that some solution to this particular problem that we have in the Old Perlican area can be reached.

I thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. POWER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to just spend a couple of moments in support of the petition so ably presented by the Member for Trinity - Bay de Verde and supported by the Member for Carbonear.

I have to say, if it was not such a serious situation it would be almost laughable, what takes place in this House of Assembly. Sometimes I wonder why the Newfoundland public has such little faith in politicians, when I see what is happening to the health care system of this Province. I see the Minister of Health who gets up today in response, or some form of response, to some questions that I asked, that Mr. Robin Burnell, the Executive Director or Acting Executive Director of the Newfoundland and Labrador Hospital and Nursing Homes Association, has said that it is impossible for them to do what the Minister of Health and Finance asked to be done with the budget amounts that they have. They have been asked to save $25 million or $27 million, they can only save $16 million or $17 million of that amount, they can't possibly save the other $10 million and do it within the parameters that they were given by the Minister of Health. Laying off 900 people, closing 430 hospital beds.

These professional people are saying that it simply cannot be done. What we will have to do is lay off more people, we will have to extend the Christmas closure of beds, the summer closure of beds, for extended periods of time. And these are professional people who are saying to the Minister and to the Premier and Treasury Board and Finance of this Province: somebody better have a look at this situation, you have made a mistake. All they are saying is you have made a mistake. Last week I presented a resolution here, a very simple resolution, it was not meant to cause any great national crisis, was not meant to overturn the Government. All I said was: because of all these strange, different viewpoints that we are getting from professionals, patients, hospital care workers and Members opposite, why does the Government not take its time? Why does it not simply defer the decisions they have made, have another look at it, and see and make sure we are not making mistakes?

Every one of the Members opposite got up and voted against that resolution. Saying: do not defer your decision, do not have an independent study. But then you bring in petitions in this House of Assembly that say: we are seriously concerned in the Old Perlican area, in Carbonear, in Placentia. Will you have another look at the situation? That is what the Member for Placentia asked the Premier and his Assistant Deputy Minister and the Minister the other day when he went to see him with part of a Placentia delegation.

Now, no wonder the people of Newfoundland will laugh at us as politicians. How can we be so inconsistent? How can we say two different things on the same day about the same issue and expect that somebody believes us? The reality is, is that the Member for Trinity - Bay de Verde has said, is that when the other government - us - were here, and we wanted to make health care cuts that were drastic, that maybe were not completely well thought out, and you asked us as a committee to reconsider, the other government listened and reconsidered and did what - albeit not professionals but concerned citizens groups who tend to know the issues a lot better than professionals sometimes - asked the old government to do. When you ask this Government over here - and I keep hearing the Ministers of Health and Education saying that: we are a listening Government, we listen to everybody, we listen to professionals - the reality is that this Government is not listening. It is not listening to the concerned citizens, to professionals, or to its own Members.

Now, democracy can not function that way. You can't have Ministers like those three little monkeys you see going around, with hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no-evil as their philosophy. That is not the way to run the government. The way the government is supposed to be run is that a government responds to the people's wishes, it listens to the Members, it makes its decision. And all I can say is that there are real, real concerns, and an awful lot of people in this Province are very concerned about health care. The Member who did a noble job presenting his petition is also very concerned and knows the issue, I suspect, better than the Minister of Health, the Premier, and better than any health professional in the Department of Health. That Member knows what is at issue in the old Perlican Hospital. He has been at it. It is part of his life. It is where his family probably lives, and all I can say is, nobody is listening to you. And I say that democracy will only function when a Government begins to listen and to respond. And so far this Government has one-half of the formula down pat, it seems to listen, but the ignoring of people, ignoring their concerns is not the other half. I can only hope, Mr. Speaker, that more petitions are presented like the hon. Member just did and maybe some where this Government will begin to listen and to respond.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Burin - Placentia West.

MR. TOBIN: I would like to present a petition on behalf of approximately 225 Eastern Community College students from the District of Burin - Placentia West. The petition is to the House of Assembly: The Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Students, Burin Community College Students, Council of Students at the Burin Community College protest the possibility of financial cutbacks to the Burin Community Campus and to the post-secondary education system.

Mr. Speaker, the students are concerned that they will have loss of courses that are presently offered throughout the educational system, reducing the staff levels, increases in tuition and user fees and closure of institutions.

We the undersign request the Provincial Government to reconsider their proposal to implement any financial constraints on the operating budget of post-secondary institutions in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I present this petition today in the House of Assembly and I strongly support the petition that is given to me by my constituents throughout the Eastern Community College system. I would ask the Minister of Education if he will stand and support or at least speak to the resolution, because we have just seen nothing but contempt displayed in this House by the Minister of Health, what are the people of Old Perlican going to think tonight when they realize that the Minister of Health refused to stand and say anything to the petition, whether he was for it or against it or anything else? He did not even acknowledge the petition that was presented by the Member for the area, and I think that is disgraceful. And I ask the Minister of Education not to treat this petition with the same contempt that his colleague just treated the petitions with.

The students in my District are concerned, and they have every right to be concerned, because what we have seen in this year's Budget is assistance set up where only the rich can afford to go to post-secondary institutions from now on. The cost to students today -

DR. KITCHEN: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: What is that?

DR. KITCHEN: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: If the Minister of Finance has something to say let him stand in his seat and say it, because it is he and a few others who were hid away over there for years who probably have contributed significantly to what has taken place in this destruction. And if one, Mr. Reid: a letter which I saw in the paper over the weekend addressed to the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Education from a colleague who I believe was very familiar with both of them, a former colleague of their's, saying they were ashamed of the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Education in how they have turned their backs on Memorial University and other places.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. TOBIN: So rather than make a joke about it, he probably should be serious and realize that in rural Newfoundland we are not all, Mr. Speaker, living in St. John's. There are some of us who live in rural Newfoundland and we have a right to an education the same as the people in urban centres. The people in Beau Bois or Parker's Cove or Fox Cove or Burin or Corbin or Epworth have a right to an education in this Province and they have a right to an education that is not going to be too expensive. And what we have seen in this Budget is tuition fees increased, where we have seen residence fees increased for people coming in from out of town like we have never seen before. It is becoming too expensive. And what is going to happen? The University will be for the rich - the parents who can afford to pay the cost for their children to go to university. That is who will be graduating. And if this Government continues on the path of economic destruction that they are presently on, it will not matter a lot because what we will have are no opportunities for people in this Province. The Government fires 300 nurses. What does it mean? What is the sense of a student going in for education when there are teachers being laid off left, right and centre? Why should someone go out and get an education degree, hoping to get a job in this Province? What opportunities are going to be there if you get a Government as callous, as cold and as cruel towards the people of this Province as has been displayed by the group opposite. And I speak on behalf of my constituents who attend the Eastern Community College, and I am sure my colleague from Grand Bank who has some constituents who have names on this will be making his concerns known as well. So I would say to the Minister of Education, to the Minister of Finance and to the Cabinet of Newfoundland and Labrador, for God's sake, do something that is good for the students of this Province. Not only that, we now find out that there is a list of probably six vocational schools that are on the chopping block. Yes, I think it is six throughout this Province that are going to be closed. Burin is not one of them, but we have a Government that is prepared to cut education, to lay off teachers, close schools and do all of that, but at the same time are prepared to spend a fortune to take the headquarters from Burin and move it to Clarenville. They are going to spend a fortune to do that. So if the Minister of Education is serious when he gets up and talks about education, why would he not leave the headquarters in Burin and spend the money that he will save on other educational needs in this Province? Why is he trying to take the headquarters from Burin and move it somewhere else? Then he gets up, Mr. Speaker, and there are people in this gallery who would probably believe that the Minister of Education is concerned about the education needs -

MR. SPEAKER: Order please!

The hon. Member's time is up.

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, if I may, in conclusion, I present this petition to the House, and I ask the Minister of Education not to be as callous and as cruel and as arrogant as the Minister of Health who did not support the people of Old Perlican. I ask him now to stand and speak on this petition for my constituents.

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise to support the petition so ably presented by my friend the Member for Burin - Placentia West. The students of the Eastern Community College have a very good reason, Mr. Speaker, to be concerned about the future of education in this Province, because we have on that side of the House a complacency about education, a complacency about the future of education in this Province and they are quite prepared to blame it on somebody else. We heard the Minister of Education today - who may go down in history as the Pontius Pilate of Education Ministers in this Province - washing his hands of responsibility for what goes on at Memorial University. He said that he hopes they will not cap enrollment. That is what he said. He did not say we are not going to let that happen; he did not say we are going to stand up and fight for it and we are going to make sure it does not happen. He says he hopes that the president and the Board of Regents of Memorial University will not cap enrollment, will not prevent people from going to university, will not prevent access to university education because of financial reasons. He said he is concerned about what goes on and he wants to blame the Tories in Ottawa for cutting back on established programs financing. So the concerns, Mr. Speaker, of these people are very well founded because this Government is prepared to blame somebody else without fighting back.

Mr. Speaker, this is not a community council; this Government here is not a community council that gets a limited budget and does not have any borrowing powers, does not have any autonomy and is a creature of statute - this is the Government of the Province, and this Government, Mr. Speaker, has a responsibility to take its responsibilities and duties seriously and to stand up and fight for people and to give the people some confidence that when education is under threat that they will fight back and that they will lead that fight and not leave it, not leave it to students having to send petitions to this House, having to demonstrate out in the lobbies of this building, having to themselves fight just to convince the Government that they aught to listen and aught to fight for them.

Mr. Speaker, this petition is presented with great cause because the cause of these students is of grave concern to all the people in the Province of Newfoundland, and it is about the complacency of this Government about the future of the province and about the educational standards of our citizens. Mr. Speaker, I hope the Minister of Education will stand up and will convince us that he will not wash his hands of the students of this Province and their needs. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

DR. WARREN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I want to inform the Member for Burin - Placentia West that the board will shortly be presenting to me their proposals for living within the budget that they have this year. I have confidence in that board, it's Chairperson and it's President that they will do everything possible to avoid the kinds of cuts that he is predicting. I have some evidence they will not do what he is predicting, but they have a serious problem with funding and I am sure that Dr. Marsh and his group will do everything possible to eliminate things that do not impact negatively on students in the classroom and I have confidence they will do what is right. But they have a difficult problem as the Government has this year, and many governments in Canada.

Secondly, I do not know how I am going to get it through the hon. Member's head that we are closing two headquarters and combining them into one. That is going to save money. We are closing another headquarters in Carbonear, we are closing one on the Burin Peninsula, we are opening one in Clarenville. Now how can I get it through to him that in the long run that is downsizing, and that is going to save us money? We have some problems, we will not do it right away, over the next few months, but in the long run it is going to be better educationally and it is going to be more efficient.

Mr. Speaker, the Member for St. John's East: I am amused by his comments. He should know that the Board of Regents has control over programming. I am amazed that the hon. Member for St. John's East, after being in Ottawa, knows so little about the facts of life in this country. He shocks me every day -

AN HON. MEMBER: He's ignorant!

DR. WARREN: -by how little he knows - well, you call it ignorance, I, lack of knowledge. I am being kinder to him. The Member for St. John's East was in Ottawa, he knows about equalization payments, he knows about established programme funding, he knows about all of this. Mr. Speaker, he knows that we have severe problems as a result of the Federal Government. He should know that the University makes decisions. We give them a global budget and they make decisions on their policies. The Government has not intervened with the University in the past and it will not. We must leave the final decision to them. We do consult with them, we give them our views, but they make the final decisions.

Mr. Speaker, I think perhaps I should end there. Thank you.

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

MR. GOVER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition to the House of Assembly from 288 residents of the districts of Bonavista South and Trinity North.

The petition is signed by residents from Bonavista, Elliston, Spillars Cove, Newmans Cove and Catalina, which is in the district of Trinity North. The prayer of the petition is: we the undersigned, representing 1,130 children of Cabot Collegiate, which is in Bonavista, and Matthew Elementary School in Bonavista, strongly oppose any educational cutbacks. Already our children suffer enough through lack of some vital necessities conducive to a quality education. A further reduction in the level of education will only serve to reduce our children's hope of becoming strong and productive adults.

AN HON. MEMBER: How many signed it?

MR. GOVER: Two hundred and eighty-eight. We back this statement with the words of our Minister of Education, Dr. Phil Warren: Newfoundland and Labrador's development depends on improving the quality of education, and future economic success depends more on improvements in education than any other single factor.

So, Mr. Speaker, that is the prayer of the petition from the residents of my particular district. Now before I get into the main allegations in the petition, I certainly agree that no one in this House of Assembly would like to see money taken out of the educational system. In fact I believe the Minister, when he had a recent press conference, accepted the fact that the education system could use more money. However, the needs of the education system had to be balanced against the needs of the other priorities of the Province as they were seen at the present time.

So none of us is for education cutbacks, we are all opposed to them. It is a question of priorities. And with respect to priorities, I suppose one of the most important things for primary, secondary and elementary education in rural Newfoundland is the School Tax Equalization Grant. I would note, under the former administration in 1986 the amount of money put into the grant was $2 million, and in 1987 the amount was increased to $2.5 million, and in 1988 increased to $4.5 million. Well, that was the previous administration's commitment to education in rural Newfoundland. They had a School Tax Equalization Grant of $4.5 million, increased from $2 million in 1986.

And when, I am pleased to say, the real change Government took power, the School Tax Equalization for rural Newfoundland was increased from $4.5 million to $10 million. That is hardly a commitment to resettlement in this Province. In fact, that is a commitment to rural Newfoundland.

The other point I would like to make about this real change Government and its commitment to education in rural Newfoundland, and in particular its commitment to education in the district of Bonavista South, is that when this Government took power the capital budget for new school construction in the Province was increased from $20 million, which was the figure under the previous administration, to $27 million, and that figure has been maintained in the current budget year. And as a result of that increase from $20 million to $27 million, I am pleased to say that the new regional high school at Bonavista can go ahead on schedule, in fact, on an accelerated schedule, and will be the only new regional high school in the Province which will have a link to a community college campus, being the campus at Bonavista.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. GOVER: No, I am not announcing it on behalf of the DEC, I am just stating the fact that because there is $20 million - you had $20 million in there, we had $27 million in there, the dominational education councils could accelerate their plans due to the increased commitment to rural Newfoundland that was in our education budget, which is hardly a commitment to resettlement.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. GOVER: Now, Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman there from Burin -Placentia West says that there are six campuses in the Province that are under-utilized and it is no secret that the Bonavista campus is one of those campuses that is under-utilized. Now, it is also no secret that the Federal Tories in Ottawa are systematically getting out of the fields of post-secondary education and health, that they are capping EPF funding, and by the year 2004 there will be no Federal contribution in terms of cash to the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador for post-secondary education in this Province. Now what on earth the hon. gentleman should do, if he is really concerned about post-secondary education in this Province is to try to persuade his Federal colleagues in Ottawa to remove the cap on EPF financing so these six campuses will not be in jeopardy.

Now also, he raises the issue about the headquarters in Burin, and what educational benefit that move could have when the headquarters is moved from Burin to Clarenville. Well now the first thing I would like to do on the cost aspect of it; I estimate to go from Bonavista to Burin would be at least 3 and a half hours making it a 7 hour return trip. To go from Clarenville to Burin would be a 2 hour trip making it a 4 hour return trip, which would be 11 hours. Now, if you put the campus in Clarenville, Clarenville to Bonavista, 1 and a half, 3 hours return, Burin to Clarenville, 2 hours, 4 hours return, 7 hours. So we go from 11 hours of travel return down to 7 hours of travel return.

MR. SPEAKER: Order please!

The hon. Member's time is up.

MR. GOVER: Anyway, Mr. Speaker, with respect to this particular petition - to conclude, Mr. Speaker, just one second. With respect to this particular petition everyone does not want to see cutbacks in education. The Government has a student first policy, and if there is any negative impact from the restraint measures -

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Member's time is up. No leave.

MR. GOVER: - imposed by this particular Government I will seek redress on the Minister of Education.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Member's time is up.

MR. GOVER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

DR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, I want to acknowledge receipt of the petition and I want to assure the petitioners that we are very cognisant of their wishes. I might say that a lot of the petitions, Mr. Speaker, were written before the Budget - a lot of the petitions in elementary and secondary education. Since the Budget was released, most of the concerns at the elementary and secondary level have been allayed. We are not losing additional teachers over and above declining enrollments - I think we are losing about 11. There is no cut in transportation, Mr. Speaker, as parents had expected and were concerned about. In fact, we have more money, even with the salary freeze and transportation. There is no cut in student assistants programs. We are going to have the same number of student assistants as we had last year. As the hon. Member, my friend, has pointed out, we have kept the $27 million per capital, that is a $7 million increase over the former administrations allotment. We have frozen the operational grants to school boards. So really since the Budget has been released, most of the people at the elementary and secondary level have communicated to us their belief that they can get by and can do very well and maintain high quality education with the monies made available this year, Mr. Speaker. So there will not be, let me repeat, there will not be substantial cuts in elementary and secondary. There will be some throughout the Province in certain areas, some minor cuts, but school boards have guaranteed me that they can maintain the quality of education with the monies being made available this coming year. And I am very pleased with their reaction in the K to 12 sector, their reaction to the Budget, Mr. Speaker.

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

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to speak to and support the petition presented by the Member for Bonavista South on behalf of people on the Bonavista Peninsula opposing cuts in funding to education, both education and also adult and continuing education.

The Member for Bonavista South said that nobody is in favour of educational funding cuts. If that is so, why did he and his Government put through a budget last year projecting a current account surplus of $10 million, yet involving eliminating the hospital schools outside St. John's, half of which were reinstated after months of pressure, and which included slashing funding for substitute teachers which had the effect - and is continuing to have the effect - of thwarting plans for professional development for teachers?

Last year there was not a money problem but there sure was an attitude problem, and there sure was a lack of consistency with the election platform put forward two short years ago from now. If you remember, two years ago the Premier was going about this Province promising to construct new university campuses in each part of the Province. There was going to be a campus of Memorial University in central Newfoundland; there was going to be a university campus in northern Newfoundland; and another one in Labrador. Now there were people at the time who questioned whether the Province could afford that but Clyde Wells promised to build university campuses in every part of the Province. I wonder if he had checked the financial records of the Province when he so glibly made those campaign promises.

In his first year in office he went through the charade of calling for proposals for the site of the central Newfoundland university campus, and municipalities and groups in that region took the Premier at his word. They did considerable research, made proposals, only to be told: sorry, we can't afford it. What the Government has in fact done is reduce funding to the campuses of the University at St. John's and Corner Brook and eliminated entirely Extension Service, the arm of the University to rural Newfoundland and Labrador.

So the Member for Bonavista South, as well as the Education Minister, are being totally hypocritical and inconsistent. Inconsistent with their election promises, inconsistent with their actions compared to their statements of theory now. The petition addressed education at every level. At the post-secondary level they must be worried about losing their Bonavista campus of the Eastern Community College. The Member for the area did not mention that. There has been considerable talk that the Education Minister - who for some reason that he is yet to explain, short-changed community colleges and institutes most severely of all the sectors of education - is getting ready to approve the elimination of the community college campuses in places like Bonavista.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Education, unlike the Premier, talks about the problems caused by the cut in Federal transfers for post-secondary education, the EPF reductions. We in the Opposition share that concern. The reduction in EPF to the provinces began under Prime Minister Trudeau in the early 'eighties and it has been continued and accelerated by Prime Minister Mulroney and his administration. We deplore that. We are on record as opposing the reduction in EPF because it is transferring an impossible burden to the provinces which have a constitutional responsibility of delivering education and health.

However, the current EPF projection will not result in the elimination of EPF. The Premier has recognised that, although some of his colleagues are saying things to the contrary. But given what this Government has to work with, they are not doing justice to the educational needs of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. They have a money problem this year, and part of it was of their own making. More of it had to do with the economy Provincially and nationally, and with Federal Government policies, but there is no question that the current financial problems -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time is up.

MS. VERGE: - facing this Province have been compounded by the ineptness and incompetence of the Wells' administration.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. MATTHEWS: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition on behalf of students attending the Burin campus of the Eastern Community College who are concerned, as well, about cutbacks in education. The prayer of the petition says: We, the undersigned, request that the Provincial Government reconsider their proposals to impose any financial constraints on the operating budget of any post-secondary institutions in Newfoundland and Labrador. So this is another group of students who are very, very concerned about cutbacks in education and the effects that will have throughout the Province.

I have heard various petitions presented today and people responding, and I must say I have to commend the Member for Trinity - Baie Verde, Mr. Speaker, today on presenting his petition. He stuck to the prayer of his petition and supported the petition. He did not do like the Member for Bonavista South and other Members, who stood in their places over the last week and presented petitions and then half way through backed off and, in essence, supported the Government. They really have not supported their constituents.

But I want to say that I strongly support these students and their call on Government to not impose any further hardship on post-secondary education in this Province. The students at Eastern Community College, Burin Campus, are very, very concerned about what is happening, and they want the Government to be aware of their concerns.

Now I have to say, Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Education spoke a bit earlier in response to the Member for Burin - Placentia West and he talked about the headquarters for Eastern Community College and why he took it out of Salt Pond and put it in Clarenville. Then the Member for Bonavista South talked about travel distances, and it was the most wishy-washy argument I have ever heard. Because wherever the headquarters is located, then the people there do not have to travel anywhere, but all the other campuses have to travel. Any way you balance it out it amounts to about the same, so you are not going to save anything.

Now what I would like to say to the Minister of Education is that he has a five year contract in Salt Pond for office space there that he is going to have to honour and the Government is going to have to pay for. How he figures he is going to save money out of that I do not know. If he had chosen to keep the headquarters in Carbonear I would understand, because there accommodations were in buildings owned by the college, I believe. I do not think they were paying rent, although I am not sure about that. But if that was the case, then that was his best option to save money, in Carbonear.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) supported putting it in Burin (inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: No, I would not have supported putting it in Carbonear over Burin, but the Minister could certainly have made a better argument for having the headquarters located in Carbonear as opposed to Clarenville. The Minister could certainly have made a better case if you were being honest with your reasons for doing so, but you were not that. You were not honest with your reasons, and you are still going to cost the Government and the Board of Directors of the Eastern Community College five years rent for office space in Salt Pond, and he now has to go to Clarenville and rent more space for headquarters. So in essence he is going to be paying rental fees for two spaces for headquarters for Eastern Community College when there is only need for one. How can the Minister stand in front of this House and say he is going to save money? How can he do it? He is paying for space for two headquarters for the next five years.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I want to say that out and about this Province there is such a fear amongst those participating, enrolled in post-secondary programs, a fear that we have never seen in this Province before. In the prayer of this petition they talk about cutbacks that will result in loss of courses presently offered and reduced staff levels. The Minister stood in his place and said there would be 100 people laid off in the community college system alone - the community college system alone in this Province - perhaps more; maybe 200 by the time the Minister is finished, but it is more than 100. There is 100 at the university. We do not know how many at the institutes. We have not heard that yet. Increased tuition fees. We know that is happening -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: Know what, that tuition fees are not going up?

DR. WARREN: I said more than 100 in (inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: Exactly. In your announcement you said there were going to be 100 people laid off in the community college system. Today he is saying there will be more than 100. So knowing the Government figures with the Budget, where a $10 million surplus turned into a $215 million deficit, I will not be surprised if the Minister's announced 100 layoffs turn into 200 layoffs. That is their mathematics, that is the way they do their math these days in this Government. And I want to say -

MR. EFFORD: (Inaudible) the way you fellows done it.

MR. MATTHEWS: Now listen, Mr. Speaker, listen to old pickles Efford himself over there. He is more concerned about pickles and clearing brush so he doesn't run into anymore moose than he is about anything else in this Province. That is the biggest problem he has. That is the biggest problem you have, running into moose.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time is up.

MR. MATTHEWS: I support the petition, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Burin - Placentia West.

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak in support of the petition presented by my colleague, the Member for Grand Bank. I can tell the Minister of Education and the House that we are both very concerned about our constituents; I did not stand right away because I thought the Member for Fortune - Hermitage, who had some students' signatures to the petition, would probably like to stand in support of his constituents. Unfortunately, the Member for Fortune - Hermitage has not supported his constituents in Fortune -Hermitage and the Eastern Community College, as he has not supported his constituents since he decided some time ago that he was going to try and become a Member of the Liberal caucus. He has not supported the Eastern Community College students, he has supported the health care cutbacks on the Burin Peninsula, he has not supported the Marystown Shipyard, he has supported the layoffs and the closing of beds in the Harbour Breton Hospital, he has not supported the people of Ramea or the people of Gaultois on their ferry, he has not supported the people of Gaultois on their fish plant. Mr. Speaker he has supported nothing for which these constituents stand.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who is that?

MR. TOBIN: The Member for Fortune - Hermitage. He refused to stand and support this petition and there are constituents of his attending Eastern Community College.

AN HON. MEMBER: ( Inaudible). Repeat it all for me.

MR. TOBIN: Repeat it all for you? Yes, sure.

AN HON. MEMBER: He will have to read it tomorrow, in Hansard.

MR. TOBIN: I have every intention of doing it. I am sure they will give me leave, Mr. Speaker, and I will do it when I am finished.

Now having said all that, I stand here and support my constituents as did my colleague for Grand Bank, as did not the Member for Fortune - Hermitage. Why have I stood here on two or three occasions today supporting petitions, Mr. Speaker? In case my colleagues are concerned, there are another 500 sheets here that I will be presenting this week, next week and the week after.

AN HON. MEMBER: One at a time.

MR. TOBIN: One at a time probably, until the Minister of Education finally listens. Because we are concerned on the Burin Peninsula about the action, or the lack of action, by this Government. We are concerned that the education system in this Province is being brought to its knees. Today, I want to say, that I was very happy to see Your Honour, who is now in the Chair, stand and be very critical of this Government and what they are doing in terms of health care in his area, very critical. And we saw the Member for Bonavista South standing with a petition, and if only the people of Bonavista South could have seen the way he presented that petition. If you were ever to see a person talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, it was the Member for Bonavista South.

Stand up and lay it on the floor what you think about this Government and how they are cutting back the education system. Do you know what is proposed for the Bonavista campus?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Well, if you do you should be more forceful, you should be going to the Minister of Education and to the Premier and telling them you are not going to tolerate it, that no one in caucus should have to tolerate the closing down of vocational schools in this Province. And that is what it is coming to. They are closing down everything. The Minister of Health is closing so many hospitals beds he should consider becoming an undertaker. It is the only thing left for him to do. There is nothing else left. What is happening in this Province? The education system is being gutted and there is nothing about it. Closing down schools: Today they are marching in Ferryland, I believe, because of the fact that this Government will not give enough money for education.

They are talking about closing schools and the amalgamation of schools here in the city of St. John's, as they are in the rest of the Province, and the Minister of Education sits there with a nice smile on his face and that is about as deep as his concern is for education in this Province. What did my colleague for St. John's East call him? The Pontius Pilate of the educational system, and I believe he is right.

AN HON. MEMBER: Are you good friends?

MR. TOBIN: Oh yes. For many years.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. TOBIN: For many years we have been good friends. Long before I knew some of the Members Opposite, as a matter of fact.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MS. VERGE: (Inaudible) all over here?

MR. TOBIN: Myself and the Member for St. John's East were friends when the President of Treasury Board was running for the NDP, when the Member for Pleasantville was a candidate for the NDP, when half the caucus over there were Conservatives; the Member for St. Barbe was a Member of the NDP as well, I understand. I was a friend of my colleague here when the Member for Bonavista South was a poll captain, I believe, for me down in Burin - Placentia West. That is how far we go back.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who?

MR. TOBIN: Bonavista South.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Yes, the Member for Bonavista South. I think he was a poll captain. He had some role in the 1985 election, in my campaign in any case, and on the night of the victory party he danced the whole night with joy and delight. That is the Member for Bonavista South a lot of you do not know about. As a matter of fact, he articled with one of the best lawyers in this Province.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time is up.

The hon. the Minister of Education.

DR. WARREN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Very briefly, I am pleased to receive the hon. Member's petition and I want to assure the people of this Province that despite what they are hearing from the Opposition, we have not devastated the education system this year. In fact, even with a salary freeze, Mr. Speaker, we have added 3 per cent to the Education budget - $795 million in education. I am the first to admit, Mr. Speaker, that there is not enough money. We want more money, and we are going to provide more in the future, but I can assure you we have not cut dollars. We cannot provide all the services that are needed, but this Government is committed to education. We are looking to the education system as a means of preparing our people for the 21st century. Education is a priority for this Government and will continue to be, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, very much.

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

MR. HEARN: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I would like to present a petition on behalf of a number of students at the Port aux Basques Community College. The petition, I know, will be supported by the Member for that area. It says: We, the undersigned, request the Provincial Government to reconsider proposals to impose any financial constraints on the operation budget of any post-secondary institutions in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The Minister just now, as he has been doing for quite some time since the Budget came down, is defending his budget and telling about the increases. Perhaps the Minister will someday outline the increases and discuss the impact of each increase, and then outline the decreases and discuss the impact of the decreases. Because where dollars really count, the Minister has not added any funding. We have a petition here from a community college, as we have had petitions from several others, as we will have petitions from several more, and the grants this year to institutes and community colleges have decreased. In fact, they are down by $1.5 million - that is in real dollars - $1.5 million from last year. When we factor in a 5.7 inflation rate we have an idea of what effect the cuts are having. I use the word `cuts'. It is not a freeze it is a cut, a $1.5 million cut over last year, and when you factor in the inflation rate it is a severe cut to institutes and community colleges that not only needed to hold the line, but needed 5.7 to keep their heads even with the water. And, of course, to move forward as education institutions like to do, they needed even more funding than that.

We also see the Minister playing around with his dollars to the university, about the big increase Memorial got. Memorial got an increase of $1 million, a big increase for a post-secondary institution. It does not even cover the inflation rate. He talks about an increase in tuition, and we find out that instead of a $3.5 million increase it is a $1.4 million increase. When we look at all the public servants being laid off, when we look at the job opportunities being cut, when we look at the jobs that the students would ordinarily get which are now being taken up by laid off public service people, we realize that many students attending post-secondary institutions will need more money not less.

So education has been devastated, Mr. Speaker. In fact, unless Government changes its mind, the blow that is presently being dealt will drive our education system back several years and it will take us a long time to regain the lost initiative that we see here presently. Maybe when the Member for LaPoile, representing the great town of Port aux Basques, stands to support the prayer of the petition he will also implore Government to change its mind about cutbacks, especially to institutes. As a number of Members have said, we have not yet heard announced the result of the cutbacks to the various community colleges and institutes. We will very shortly, and we are aware that the news will be devastating: loss of jobs, loss of programs, etc. That is not the way to improve the economy of the Province. If we are going to invest, the investment should be in education. The actual Budget this year is $100 million more than last year's Budget, so at least in education we should be able to hold the line and add a little bit, instead of decreasing grants to these various institutions. We see money being wasted, being thrown away on Enterprise Newfoundland, which could easily go into the education system that would create more jobs.

So hopefully the Government will reconsider. What we have seen, what has been demonstrated clearly by some of their own Members in particular, as well as all the groups and agencies across the Province, is that there was absolutely no consultation during the decision process in relation to what was going to be cut. So if they went out with reckless abandonment and just cut the budgets of these hospitals and schools and institutes, then maybe it is time to sit back and do as we suggested, take the six month hoist to look at and reassess their position. Because if they go ahead on the present course the devastation caused, it will take us a tremendously long time to recover from it, Mr. Speaker. I look forward now to the Member for LaPoile standing up and supporting the petition of his constituents.

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

MR. RAMSAY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Quickly on this matter, this petition, albeit the intent of it is to improve the educational system for the students concerned, the prayer of the petition is, of course, something that goes directly against the Government's efforts to try to improve the educational system.

Now I support the constituents' desire to have improved educational services provided to them through the community college system and the variety of different institutes and that available throughout the Province, but I think the problem we have is one that has been created over the years by a preponderance of colleges which have fulfilled their usefulness, I guess, to the communities they have served in a certain role, pre-vocational training initially. Now they have to adapt and evolve to focus their provision of courses to the job market as it now sits here in the Province and, as well, throughout the country as a whole.

What we have in a lot of colleges around is course offerings that do nothing to improve the opportunities for the students concerned. Now in some cases there are. Here in the capital city where you have certain courses being offered it is not too bad. You have some that are very well targeted. But if, for instance, we look at certain courses offered, such as hair styling, there seems now to be a preponderance of unemployed people in that particular trade. So it is obvious that the offering in, say, one area does not necessarily target the market.

Now if you look at what a rationalization of education might have to be done, I note that in 1982 the former Minister of Education - at that time I think it was the hon. Member for Humber East - laid off 120 instructors and rationalized the overall programme. Now this is the kind of -

AN HON. MEMBER: How many?

MR. RAMSAY: - 120 instructors at that time, and that was 1982. So we are doing something now that has never been done before, it is the kind of thing that just has to be done as we rebuild the education system to target the future.

AN HON. MEMBER: How many of them?

MR. RAMSAY: 120 instructors.

AN HON. MEMBER: And who was the Minister?

MR. RAMSAY: The Minister was the hon. the Member for Humber East, I think, at that time.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: No, she did not.

MR. RAMSAY: Oh yes she did. Anyway, at that time the courses were taken out of the system because the system was such that these courses were not offering pre-employment opportunities and training that could be used by people here in the Province. Likewise now, some adjustments have to be made. I am very proud to say that in our own institution, in Port aux Basques, the campus of Western Community College a number of years ago was targeted by the local community futures committee to receive upgrading in the skills that they could offer to a variety of people: they have improved the welding course, they offer NDT, and most of these at the initiative, I might add, of local people in the area, supported of course by the Federal Government, with Federal Government funding, and funding from the offshore development fund, of which the Province was - but a lot of this was done totally by the local group, much to the chagrin, at times, of Provincial representatives, because they wanted to make sure it went where they wanted it to go.

But what we have now is a centre of excellence for welding at the Port aux Basques campus that will see our institute, the Western Community College campus in Port aux Basques, maintain itself now and into the future because they have adapted. And this is what other institutions throughout the island have to do.

So, to the petition, I support the efforts of the individuals to have an improved education system. But in so far as trying to get the Government to change its mind and slow down, I do not think it would benefit anyone, Mr. Speaker. Thank you very much.

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

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am glad to support the petition of students at the Port aux Basques campus of the Western Community College calling on the Government not to cut funding for education and protesting the downgrading of courses and services, as well protesting the possibility of increased tuition and other fees.

Mr. Speaker, the day after the Budget was delivered, on Friday March 8, the Minister of Education and his staff had representatives of the approximately 30 school boards in the Province as well as representatives of the community colleges and institutes congregate at Confederation Building, for a briefing on the Budget. Now it would be interesting for us to find out the cost of travel for all those education administrators. I suspect it amounted to the salary for one of the instructors or teachers being eliminated from the system.

At the briefing, the Minister of Education and his officials told the gathering that of the education sectors, of the different parts of the education delivery system, community colleges and institutes were cut the worst. Now I have never heard the Minister own up to that or explain it, but it seems to be a fact that community colleges and institutes have been dealt with the most severely of all the sectors of education in this Province.

Mr. Speaker, the cuts to community colleges and institutes are forcing volunteer board members and administrators to look at unpalatable options, options such as closing completely campuses of community colleges, terminating multi-year programs, basically leaving students up the creek without a paddle and forcing them to re-locate to complete their programs.

The Member for LaPoile said that much of the community college offering is now irrelevant. Now he did not comment on whether there is any irrelevance at Port aux Basques. Perhaps he thinks that the irrelevant courses and facilities are at Bonavista or Bell Island. Perhaps he thinks the irrelevant offerings are somewhere else.

Mr. Speaker, let me assure the Member for LaPoile and Members opposite that when I was a Minister of Education from 1979 to 1985 adjustments were made in vocational school offerings. There was a re-organization plan mounted that resulted in the decentralizing of authority for non-university post-secondary education through the setting up of the community college and institute system, but, Mr. Speaker, adjustments then meant additions as well as subtractions. How would the Member for LaPoile explain is the Government now, to make any additions, make any improvements with slashed budgets for the community colleges and institutes? I submit to him that this Government will, indeed, make adjustments, and they will all be negative adjustments, they will all be subtractions of courses and facilities and increases in user fees for the students. I suggest to the Member for LaPoile that he re-think his commitment to the provincial Liberal Party and the Wells administration because the Government is not doing what the Premier said they would do two years ago when the election campaign was on the go. And the Government is not doing what the Member for LaPoile seems to want them to do, or at any rate the Government is certainly not doing what the residents of southwestern Newfoundland expect the Government to do and what they expected when they voted for the Member for LaPoile.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

AN HON. MEMBER: An excellent job.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

Orders of the Day

MR. BAKER: Motion 3, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Motion 3.

It is moved and seconded that I do leave the Chair for the House to resolve itself into a Committee of The Whole on Supply. All those in favour 'Aye'?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: Those against 'Nay'?

On motion, that the House resolve itself into Committee of the Whole, Mr. Speaker left the Chair.

Committee of the Whole

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Green Bay.

MR. HEWLETT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HEWLETT: See we have these short ten minute speeches, Mr. Chairman, I thought I might pick a theme and dwell on it to some extent. With the indulgence of the hon. the Member for Exploits, my theme for today will be smoke screens, Mr. Chairman. It is a theme I have elaborated on some time ago in this hon. House.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. HEWLETT: Some time ago, first when this Government got itself elected to office, much to its surprise, I might add, it decided all of a sudden that it had to come up with something to give an appearance of governing the Province. The hon. Member for Waterford - Kenmount, being a former municipal councillor and now a Member of the new Government, came up with this brilliant scheme of amalgamating one hundred and forty some odd communities throughout our Province. It provided sufficient commotion for the better part of a year to help this Government try some form or another and get itself organized after being elected much to its surprise.

Now that particular smoke screen, Mr. Chairman; the smoke is still drifting around. Municipal government is in a total shambles. The three islands in Green Bay that were on the list to be amalgamated; I do not think they have been told yet and it is nearly two years. They know they are still islands, Mr. Speaker, but they have never been told first nor last whether or not they are going to be amalgamated or not. The way things are going with the new grant system etc. one wonders, in due course, if they are still going to be communities or not. I fear deeply that my district will be greatly depopulated at the hands of this administration. When the smoke clears there will be a lot less people in Green Bay than first when I was elected. That was the first smoke screen.

Then the Premier got on the constitutional bandwagon and started another smoke screen, and that was Meech Lake. That smoke screen turned out to be a raging brush fire. It got really out of control. The country ended up in tremendous jeopardy and today we have Mr. Spicer in town sifting through the ashes and wreckage of the ruination of the nation. That started off as our Premier's smoke screen to distract people from their woes at home with his dance on the constitutional stage - on the national stage.

One other smoke screen that I have accused this Government of perpetrating of late, Mr. Chairman, is with regard to hydropower development in Labrador. There has been a continuous steady chatter out of my hon. colleague, the Minister of Energy, with regard to the closeness of an agreement with the Province of Quebec and that we shall shortly see a major hydroelectrical deal following on the heels of Hibernia.

However, Mr. Chairman, one wonders if to some extent all the positive chatter is indeed not another smoke screen to cover up for the woes of the recession that our people are feeling and the woes that our people are feeling as a result of this Government's budgetary measures in dealing with that recession.

For instance, Mr. Speaker, with regard to a hydro development in Labrador, there is a tremendous question now generally with regard to hydro developments in northern areas, period, insofar as it relates to aboriginal rights and land claims of that sort. The environmental process has to be done all over again and that is a process that often takes years. There is on the books a Federal/Provincial Crown Corporation designed to facilitate the development of the Lower Churchill River system. So far it has not been kicked into action to facilitate this development. From answers I have received from the hon. Minister on the Order Paper, the answers to two questions I put on the Order Paper, one can only indicate that it would appear that the Federal Government is not yet committed to helping to further such a project. Given the fact that a year or so ago it dropped the proposed mega project in the energy field out West one has the feeling that Hibernia may be the last major energy project that the Federal Government puts its commitment to for some time. The power line to the island of this Province will cost upwards of $2 billion and there is no way on earth that can be financed without substantial loan guarantees and/or cash infusions from the Federal Government. From a newspaper story I saw in one of the weekend papers it would appear that the Federal Government is not altogether in a tremendous haste, given its budgetary constraints, which our Minister of Finance seems very sympathetic about. The Federal Government is not altogether in great haste to heap tons of money, the billions it would require to start another major energy project, namely the Lower Churchill river system. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, so far we have gotten very little concrete action out of this Government at all, a lot of talk and bluster, and a lot of smoke screens. We have had cuts where they promised to expand, especially in the fields of health and education, which are suppose to be the fields where Liberals are suppose to excel. The only positive thing that has happened during the tenure of this Government is the fact that the Hibernia deal has been signed, and that was as a result of a long, hard struggle against the Federal Liberal Government by former Premier Peckford. Mr. Speaker, that is the only thing that happened, it is the only bright spot in the economy, and the jobs it would create were wiped out in the recent Budget. At peak, 3500 jobs, I understand, will come from Hibernia and that is short-term construction work. This Government just wiped out 3000 permanent civil service jobs so we have probably taken one step forward and two steps back, even with Hibernia on the go. Mr. Speaker, smoke and mirrors are what this crowd is all about. They have no plans for Newfoundland, I would think, except to drive most of us out of here - to where, I do not know. I gather from listening to CBC radio that my comment about going to Kuwait for your stamps is correct, in that some American company down there has had calls in the order of 100 a day from Newfoundland, saying if you are going over for the rebuilding of Kuwait let me know because I want a job, I am desperate for a job. Clyde Wells promised me a job, he promised to bring home my brother and give him a job, but there are no jobs. This Government has failed miserably to deliver on the promises it made to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. I think finally people are seeing through the smoke. The smoke is clearing and all we have is a stinging in our eyes and an emptiness in our future.

I thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

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

I listened with interest as the hon. Member for Trinity - Bay de Verde presented a petition on behalf of his constituents. I can see, as other people in this House can see and hear, the concern he has for his constituents with regard to the delivery of health care. He expressed himself eloquently. Albeit he convinced a lot of the people in the backbenches, private members, I only hope the people who sit in Cabinet, who make the decisions to close down hospitals such as he is concerned about, were listening. I hope they heard the message he was delivering on behalf of his constituents, as I hope they hear the message I deliver on behalf of constituents in Menihek who have real concerns about the quality of health care that is going to be able to be delivered by the Captain William Jackman Memorial Hospital after they have to institute the cuts that were necessary because of the mismanagement and bungling of this administration.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HEWLETT: You tell them.

MR. A. SNOW: In my District, in Labrador West, the Captain William Jackman Memorial Hospital was built in 1965 by the mining companies that produce iron ore in the area. I listened with a certain amount of interest last week when another private Member in this House talked about how a previous Liberal Administration had created the infrastructures in Western Labrador to allow the development of the mines in Western Labrador. I believe that if you were to check history, the infrastructure provided in Western Labrador was largely provided by the private sector not by the public sector. Neither the Federal Government nor the Provincial Government provided the railroad that transports the iron ore out of Western Labrador. They did not build that railroad, the iron ore companies built that railroad. The Government did not build the schools in Labrador in the 1960s. There was only one that I know of, maybe two, that was funded by the Provincial Government. All the other schools, the hospital, all the roads, that type of thing, all the infrastructure in those communities was put there by the mining companies, by the private sector, not by a previous Liberal Administration. I might add it was probably one of the biggest mistakes made in the overall development of Labrador, allowing that to occur, because I believe it is the responsibility of Government to provide an infrastructure to allow the private sector to do business. That is what a Government should be doing.

But, Mr. Chairman, I want to tell this House and the people of this Province about what happens when health care is cut in Western Labrador, because we do not have the option of driving for one hour or two hours to go to an adjacent hospital. We live in northern Labrador. If a person were to be injured on a project, on one of the industrial complexes, I believe if you were to investigate you would find that the three industrial complexes that are serviced by this hospital is undoubtedly the largest industrial complex combined in this Province, and in all of Eastern Canada, I would suspect.

There is only one surgeon there at the hospital. And that surgeon, by the way, may not even be there today if it had not been for the fact that the Salvation Army operates, administers the Captain William Jackman Memorial Hospital. The previous surgeon who had been there had an accident. They attempted to find a replacement surgeon here in this Province but could not get one. It was only through the effectiveness of the Salvation Army, that they were able to locate a member of the Salvation Army, a fellow Salvation Army Officer, from New York, to come up and practice in Labrador to replace the surgeon who is off sick that we now have the opportunity of having a surgeon located in Western Labrador. So it is because of their wherewithal, if you will, their experience, their network of support in hospital care that they were able to provide this good service that we now have.

One of the things that is going to occur with these drastic cuts in hospital care is that we may lose, they are talking about, maybe as much as 15 per cent of elective surgery. As I mentioned earlier, because of geography we cannot drive to another hospital in this Province in one hour; it takes eight hours for a turnaround, ambulance time, to get somebody from Western Labrador to a hospital here on the Island portion of the Province. It is very important that you consider the geographic position of the Captain William Jackman Memorial Hospital. So these people are either going to have to spend more money, these producers, these people who produce more wealth for this Province than any other electoral district in this Province, these people will have to spend more of their money to go get health care services, probably here on the Island portion of the Province. It costs almost $900 return airfare now to travel from Wabush to St. John's. So if you cannot get your elective surgery at the Captain William Jackman Memorial Hospital in Labrador City and you have to come out here, it is going to cost you an extra $900. Apart from being separated from your family and losing work, apart from all those things, it is going to cost you an extra $900. And that is tremendously unfair, I believe, Mr. Chairman, to the people of Western Labrador.

MR. EFFORD: What is?

MR. A. SNOW: The fact that this regime has seen fit to gut the health care of this Province.

MR. EFFORD: How foolish.

MR. A. SNOW: And, Mr. Chairman, it is unfortunate that this is raising a feeling, a deepening feeling of alienation within Labrador. And there have been drastic cuts, $870,000 cut from health care at the Captain William Jackman Memorial Hospital in Western Labrador. And this is going to drastically affect the quality of health care. Because not only are we going to be losing the fourteen people who are going to be laid off from that hospital, but the wages are going to be frozen. And there is an additional work load going to be placed on these people, because there are going to be just as many people requiring service. There is going to be an additional work load, they are going to be paid less, and that is going to have an effect on the morale of the work force at the Captain William Jackman Memorial Hospital.

This is unfortunate for an area that produces so much, to now find themselves being again called upon to make another sacrifice so that the people here can drive in bigger cars, or take longer trips, or whatever they are going to do with this money they are so called saving. It is unfortunate that that is the way they see it, but, you see, that has been the reaction. This Government has been reactionary to the problems it has faced. It does not have a plan. It has no plan as to how they are going to improve the health care of this Province, all they do is react. React, that is all they do. They say, My God, the revenues are down, albeit we had $50 million more from the feds last year than we got the previous year. What are we going to do? The RST is down $25 million or $35 million. What are we going to do? They forgot, of course, that they created this non-confidence in the retail market out there and so people were not spending as much money. They forgot they created that by that so called -

AN HON. MEMBER: The GST.

MR. A. SNOW: Not GST. The GST was not implemented until January. The lack of confidence this Government, this regime has spread out there in the economy of this Province has been criminal; it is ridiculous what they have done. Since last August they have been suggesting to the people of this Province that there were going to be massive layoffs in the public sector. What did you expect the nurse to do who works down at the Grace Hospital? Did you expect her to go out and buy new furnishings for her home? What did you expect the workers to do who work in Confederation Building, in the public sector, or down at the Health Sciences Complex? Did you expect them to go out and buy a fridge and stove? No. What did they do? They said, I may be laid off next month or the month after, so I will not spend any money. By not spending any money they stifled the economy of this Province.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) on Water Street (inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: They could not even buy a pair of shoes down on Water Street.

AN HON. MEMBER: He will have to start selling shoe polish (inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: The Economist from Pleasantville too has been hurt by the mismanagement of this Administration of the economy of this Province. The Economist from Pleasantville too has been hurt, I am sure, by the fact that this Government, this regime has seen fit to do absolutely nothing other than spread the word that there is going to be a downsizing or rationalization of the public sector of this Province. Thus they have created this so-called recession which has now moved into a locally, provincially made depression here in this Province. Because they have created no confidence -

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time is up.

MR. A. SNOW: By leave?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: No leave.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Minister of Social Services.

MR. EFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I came in a bit late because I had the privilege of meeting today with forty-five students from the District of Port de Grave, and again I had the privilege and honour of listening to the students' comments about the financial position of the Province and the decisions recently made by this Government. Now I do not need to go into that speech any further, because they were the same comments I got from the district last week, in that students for the most part support exactly what we have done and said we had no other choice. When I heard my hon. colleague whom I thought - in recent conflict of interest statements, I thought we were named as being the two richest men in the Province. Well, if he made his money based on the way he spoke in the House of Assembly, he must have inherited the money. He sure did not make it in the bond market. He must have inherited it from his forefathers. If any MHA or any representative in the House of Assembly can stand up here and make a speech like he just made and be successful in the bond market or in the stock market, then I have to get out there and talk to him myself. I hope he has not invested in Rolls Royce. I hope he never made that decision, because down go the Rolls Royce stocks.

Mr. Chairman, I want to talk about the health care system for a little while. I had the pleasure last year, or it started out to be a pleasure, of going to Florida, the first time in four years. I was in Florida two days when my wife took sick; she had a blood clot in her leg and she had to go to the Pasadena hospital in St. Petersburg. I think it was from Tuesday to Friday before they transferred her back to St. John's and the total bill was in excess of $7000. That was last year in February, when we went down to Florida for a holiday.

AN HON. MEMBER: What did that cover?

MR. EFFORD: Treatment in hospital for three and a half days.

MR. SIMMS: In Pasadena?

MR. EFFORD: In the Palms of Pasadena Hospital in Florida, for three and a half days. It is unbelievable the cost.

Anyway, we are talking about the health care system in this Province. What do we spend? Almost $900 million on the health care system in this Province. Think about it, $900 million for totally free, for the most part, care for everybody in this Province. Now when we sat down and made decisions about the health care system in this Province we had to keep two things in mind: Can we afford the system we have? Can we provide the services for the needs of the people today? And can we continue to do it in the future? If we are going to be financially responsible about the financial situation of the Province and still be taking Government responsibilities and making policy decisions, you have to be concerned about the future of the people of the Province.

Do we want to go with a health care system that will cost the same as in the United States? If we destroy the system we have now, we have no other choice but to go the route of the United States. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. You have to make some sensible decisions. We created the problem in two years. This Opposition Party sitting over there, which was over here for seventeen years, inherited a debt of $800 million, but when they went out it was $5.6 billion - but we caused it in two years. It was $5.6 billion over seventeen years, but since that we have caused all the debt of this Province, destroyed health, destroyed education, destroyed all the services. Now that is a sensible statement coming out of the mouth - talk about out of the mouths of babes. My God Almighty! We caused in two years what is now wrong in the Province.

But I will tell you one thing, I would much rather be responsible for making some rational decisions to protect the health care system we have today, to provide that my children and hopefully my grandchildren will have a health care system that is equal to today's needs in the Province of Newfoundland and in the country Canada, than ever being responsible for turning them to what is now in the United States of American. I would rather lose the next election. I would rather lose by a 3000 vote majority, and by another 3000 and make right decisions, than make the stupid decisions the former administration made. That is the type of nonsense you heard. I asked the students today, what would you do? If you were in my position, would you be concerned about the needs of the people today? Would you be concerned about the needs of people in the future, or would you act the way the former administration acted? Their answer was very clear: We are intelligent, educated young people and we want a future in this Province. We do not want to build cucumber farms and set up lights out in Mount Pearl. We want to make some sensible decisions. I heard the hon. Member talk about travel, that this Government is saving money on the backs of the poor people and abusing travel. You tell me one Minister in this Government who spent $226,000 in one year in travel.

AN HON. MEMBER: How much?

MR. EFFORD: The former Minister of Development spent $226,000 in one year in travel. Is that not right? How many Ministers travelled all over the world? What did they pay for hotel rooms? $1250 a night, $250 tips, $5.00 cigars. You talk about wasting money. Why do we have a $5.8 billion debt? The decisions being made by this Government today, Mr. Chairman, are to protect the future of this Province so that we can have a future for our young people, so that these young people when they go out and seek a profession, whether it be vocational or academic, whether it be in a fishing boat or digging ditches, they can have some independence in this Province, and not to throw away and destroy the system that was built over the last twenty-five or thirty years. If you are going to stand in this House and make statements and criticize this Government for what it is doing today, make some sensible rational statements about where we should be going in the future, and not be talking the nonsense you are talking.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear!

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Member for Mount Pearl.

MR. WINDSOR: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, there is one statement the Minister just made. It is not very often I agree with the Minister, but he just made one - it was not a statement, it was a question. He said, `how could you incur such a debt in two years?' That is exactly what all the people in this Province are asking of this Government. How could you go from a surplus position to a $200 million deficit position in two years? That is a good question, Mr. Chairman. There is only one answer. Absolute gross incompetence. That is the only answer.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WINDSOR: Mr. Chairman, we have been here now a couple of weeks debating Interim Supply and Supplementary Supply. Where is the Minister of Finance in all of this? He introduced his Supplementary Supply Bill. One minute he took. He read the Bill to us as if we were not able to read ourselves. He read the titles of the expenditures in the Bill, no explanation, no rationalization for why Government needed all this extra money, why they exceeded their budget by this amount. No comment whatsoever. We have been here now for a week or more on Interim Supply, where the Minister could get up and down, every ten minutes he could be on his feet, but not a word out of him, Mr. Chairman. I do not believe he has been on his feet yet. He introduced the Bill. I was a few minutes late that day, but I am told he took a minute or two minutes to introduce the Bill on Interim Supply. It is only a billion dollars, Mr. Chairman. A billion dollars he asks for from this House with no explanation, just straightforward, `here is my piece of legislation, give me a billion dollars,' in the midst of which we are talking tremendous deficit, we are talking the largest borrowing program in the history of this Province, we are talking severe cutbacks in all sectors of the public service, we are talking the largest layoff of the public service this Province has ever seen. We will see there are well over 3,000 people gone by the time this exercise is over, well over 3,000 people directly in the public service. The implications in the private sector are horrendous. In the public sector alone we are going to see over 3,000 people laid off in the public service.

Mr. Chairman, I do not believe this Government realizes the implications of what they are doing. You know, if we had an industry that employed 3,000 people it would be a major disaster that 3,000 people were being laid off, a major disaster. It is like shutting down the whole pulp and paper industry in Newfoundland - all of the paper mills, not all of the logging operations. But if you shut down the three paper mills, I do not say you would have 3,000 employees directly employed in the paper mills right now.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: In the woods. Counting the woods operation.

Mr. Chairman, this is a major, major loss of employment in this Province, and all over the Province. All over the Province the economy is feeling the impact of Government's decision. Now we all appreciate the fact that Government has gotten themselves into a financial hole. There is no question. It is obvious from the Budget that their expenditures are gone out of control. They have lost control of collective bargaining. The President of Treasury Board made an announcement today that he had reached an agreement with the teachers, and we are delighted to see that. We are delighted to see he has reached an agreement.

But, Mr. Chairman, let's have a close look at the agreement. Let's have a close look at what is in that agreement, we may not be so delighted. The fact of the matter is, Mr. Chairman, that this Government has been derelict in its duty, and have abrogated their responsibility for collective bargaining to arbitrators. I think there are still one or two in process, independent arbitrations for which this Government has absolutely no control. And those arbitrators, as I have said many times, perhaps too many times, are not going to spend too much time worrying about whether or not this Province can afford the awards that they are making, and that is the problem that this Government is now faced with. They have lost control of the purse strings, as it relates to public service salaries, and that represents a significant portion of Government expenditure, 50 per cent I think, of all the Government expenditures, you are talking salaries. And this Government has now lost control of that.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: Pardon?

AN HON. MEMBER: How would you correct it?

MR. WINDSOR: How would I correct it? Mr. Chairman, the first thing I would do is turf this Government out.

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes.

MR. WINDSOR: That is the first step.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. WINDSOR: That may take a couple of weeks. Immediate action: I would fire the Minister of Finance for gross incompetence. I would replace him before he can do any more damage.

AN HON. MEMBER: Make Chuck the Minister of Development.

MR. WINDSOR: Then I would chuck out the whole Government.

AN HON. MEMBER: Make Chuck the Minister of Development.

MR. WINDSOR: No, we cannot make Chuck the Minister of Development.

AN HON. MEMBER: Put Chuck in charge of Development.

MR. WINDSOR: He is the Minister without Portfolio now. No wonder his travel bill is not as high as that of the previous minister, he has no responsibility any more. He has nothing to do.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SIMMS: Check Doug House's travel -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. WINDSOR: That is right. Let us have a look at the Chairman of the Economic Recovery Commission, how much travel is he doing?

It is interesting, Mr. Chairman - we will get into this in more detail later on, when I do some more analysis.

Members opposite talk about all the cutbacks and all the expenditure restraint in the public service - eliminating 3,000 positions. Mr. Chairman, that is $100 million in public service salaries that will not be circulating through the economy of this Province - $100 million. That is a significant loss to every sector of the economy and every area of the Province, unfortunately, not to mention the reduced level of service being provided to the people of this Province.

And the Minister of Finance has not offered any solutions to the problems with which he is faced. And having said that the problems with which he is faced are of his own making, nevertheless we still need solutions, and where are they?

What is the program? I have not heard the Minister of Development. He has not been on his feet telling us about his great economic plan. Now one of the misconceptions in this Province, Mr. Chairman, about Government, is that the Minister of Finance is totally responsible for the economy. He is responsible for the finances of the Province under The Financial Administration Act, but the Minister of Development is the Minister charged with the responsibility of creating economic opportunities, creating an economic climate, making it attractive for business and industry to invest in this Province and to create jobs. Public service jobs are not the answer, but certainly neither are public service layoffs the answer in tough economic times. All that is doing is making a bad situation worse. At a time when our unemployment statistics are rising rapidly because of the recession, we aid that by eliminating 3,000 reasonably high paid public service jobs. In fact, what we are seeing, and we will have more to say about this in days to come, what we are seeing is that we are not losing the lower paid public service jobs, we are indiscriminately firing some of the more senior public servants, some of the more capable people in the public service, and those, naturally, with the highest salaries attached to it. So the implications on the economy are that much greater. But we do not see a plan coming from this Government as to how they are going to solve the problem. They have been telling us that we have a financial problem - we are going to try to reduce the deficit on the backs of the public servants. They have not told us what they are going to do about the implications of those layoffs, or what they are going to do about the state of the economy generally. What program do they have to create jobs? Not the Economic Recovery Commission, they have not created one job that would not have been created anyway by the Newfoundland and Labrador Development Corporation or the Department of Development, or the Department of Rural Development, or any of the other agencies that have been rolled into one under Dr. House.

Now we see there are some more layoffs in the Department of Development. The Minister can correct me, but I believe there are 23 positions being eliminated in the Department of Development - he nods his head in agreement - two of those are Assistant Deputy Ministers who have been transferred.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: One Assistant Deputy Minister. So you have three left instead of four. You had four.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: You have two left. I thought you had four. I will check that for -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: I will check it. Well if we ever get the salary details we will find out what we have.

Mr. Chairman, the Department of Development has been downgraded even more.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order please!

The hon. Member's time is up.

MR. WINDSOR: My time is up already. When you are having fun, how time flies. I will be back again, Mr. Chairman, thank you.

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave! By leave!

MR. WINDSOR: No, I would not want to impose.

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

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

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: Every day. Work is something that I am not unaccustomed to. Being from the great District of Menihek, of course, where we have learned to work over the last -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: - where we have learned to work and produce a wealth for this Province and this country that no other electoral district in this Province can claim. We produce more per capita wealth to this Province, to this Government, from Menihek, than any other district in this Province, and yet we are still gouged right to the hilt by hospital cuts, and the Member for Exploits is saying it is true. He agrees with me. He agrees with me that these cuts are hurting the people of Menihek. I just want to go back to the Minister of Social Services who made some comments earlier with regard to his personal wealth, and I am pleased to see that he has tremendous personal wealth. I hope he becomes not only the wealthiest person sitting in this House, but possibly, hopefully the wealthiest person in this whole Province. He may indeed be the wealthiest person in the whole country, but that may not necessarily be success. It may be success in his eye, but success to me is not necessarily to garner the wealth that he thinks is success. To me success in a job that anybody is doing today; what we are supposed to be doing is delivering service to the people of this Province, and that is not being done by that Minister or by this Government.

In my district there are a lot of people, albeit it is the richest and wealthiest district in this Province, there are still people who are in need of social services. There are people who are single parents who require assistance and are not getting enough assistance from this particular Government.

MR. EFFORD: What?

MR. A. SNOW: Now, our Minister of Social Services talked about -

MR. EFFORD: Boy, you cannot read. (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: - how some of the suggestions - that he feels that the total responsibility of that is going to be -

MR. EFFORD: Blessed God!

MR. A. SNOW: - cured, that illness, or that disease of the debt is going to be cured in this Budget and that is going to do it. Now he shakes his head, he agrees that it is not going to be cured. What I said is that this Government lacks any economic plan. They do not have any foresight, no plan of what is going to happen next year. And a witness of that, I give to you, Mr. Chairman, in the 89 Budget - when they took over. When you were elected to office and I was elected to office, you people were given a $4 million surplus. You came in with a Budget with a $4 million surplus. That was the first year you were in office, you had a $4 million surplus. The second year you come in with a Budget and you said we did such a good job last year, our priorities this year is going to be health care and education and economic development and then you went ahead and you brought in your Budget and you came in, you forecasted a $10 million surplus. What occurred? Because during that term you started talking about how people were demanding too much money. You started talking about how we got too much of a debt. You started talking about we are going to have to lay off people. What occurred? I will tell you what occurred. A lack of confidence occurred out there in the public that said: I am scared to death I am going to lose my job. And the people of this Province did not spend any money. So what happened? We ended up with a $110 million deficit. That is what happened. Because of a lack of a plan presented by this Government.

I know that some of you are shaking your head over there and saying: this is impossible. I mean, what does confidence have to do with revenue? Well, I will tell you what confidence has to do with revenue. The Minister of Finance said it the other day. That if we go scaremongering it is going to increase our rate for borrowing money, because the lenders will not have confidence in this administration. That is what they have confidence, or lack of confidence, in this administration. He was afraid of that.

But so does that nurse, that teacher, have a lack of confidence. They were terrified they were going to lose their job.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: And now the former leader of the teachers mimes from the backbench. He did not mime, he almost mimed it, because it was loud enough for, I hope, for Hansard to pick it up.

MR. SIMMS: What was it, what did he say?

MR. A. SNOW: -because we scared the teachers, because we told the teachers they may lose their jobs. Now, can you imagine? Yes, he did.

MR. MATTHEWS: No, he did not say that.

MR. A. SNOW: Now that is what -

MR. SIMMS: You did say it, did you?

MR. A. SNOW: And lo and behold, what did occur? A lot of them did lose their jobs, and so did the nurses. So did the social workers, and the respite workers, they did, they lost their jobs. But now what is going to occur this year? Now, this is the devastating part, and I want each of you to pay attention to it. And do not interject either.

MR. EFFORD: No social workers (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: And you just listen for one second!

MR. EFFORD: Not one social worker.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

MR. A. SNOW: One of the things that occurred is that you created a lack of confidence out there in the populace of this Province. And I have seen this occur before in my economy in western Labrador. Every three years our unions go to jointly negotiate a contract on the Quebec north shore and in Labrador, all the mining companies and the unions sit down and negotiate jointly. When Christmas comes in that third year, right after, the week after Christmas, the people do not spend. Retail businesses throughout western Labrador, the spending goes down. Why?

They are uncertain. It is another word for a lack of confidence. They are afraid they are either going to be laid off, they are afraid they may be on strike. Either way, their revenues are going to be affected. But that very thing that occurs in western Labrador every three years occurred in the last year in this Province, the whole Province. Because you had people coming out from the Government saying: well, there may 1,000 laid off, there may be 2,000 laid off. And that is what happened. Our Provincial economy shrunk with respect to Provincial revenues. Our Federal contributions went up, but our Provincial revenues - other than the 2 per cent increase in income taxes - that would be down too. Because some of the shoe merchants on Water Street had to lay off sales workers.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: Some of them did. Now what do we have out there this year that is going to instill the people of this Province with confidence - absolutely nothing? We are sitting on the threshold of the largest construction project in North America, the Hibernia project. And what do we see occurring because of what this administration has done, is that our local population is terrified. They do not know if there is going to be hospital, health care or Government workers - it is going to be six or eight months before -the expression home is: the guy is out the gate. Because when layoffs occur there it also has a ripple effect down through the system, but the expression there in Menihek is: out the gate.

Before the worker in this building or the hospital worker is out the door, it is going to be six months. So there is a tremendous fear throughout the public sector now of this, because they do not know who it is going to affect. So they are not going to spend any more money. They are going to tighten up, just bare necessities. That is what is going to happen. So, if you were to preach, if you were confident in the economy, sitting on this threshold - there is more confidence in the Hibernia development in other sections of this country than there is here. What are we saying? We are saying we are going to shrink the economy. That is what is going to happen. It is going to be a self-fulfilling prophesy. And that is what will happen here in this Province.

AN HON MEMBER: That is not true.

MR. A. SNOW: And the Member for Exploits just said that is true. And I am glad that he said that, he agrees with me. I am glad he sees the light now. The Member for Exploits finally agrees - maybe it is the fact that the teachers have reached an agreement in this Province and he is pleased with it and he is finally seeing the light. Maybe that negotiating team has shown him the benefits of being able to stick together and work together and be able to get a good agreement for the membership. He is, I am sure, quite pleased with that and he feels that if they could - if this Government did articulate a degree of confidence in the employees and our own public employees plus the ones out there in the health care and in the education sector, maybe that is going to be the new way, the new thought. They are going to be extremely confident.

MR. SIMMS: No, there is no confidence.

MR. A. SNOW: I think that they will, at least I certainly hope so. Because I know in my District we do have, we are blessed with the economic -

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time is elapsed.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: By leave! By leave!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: No leave! No leave!

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

MR. HEARN: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. HEARN: I think perhaps I will take a little bit of a different tact, and zero in on an area that we have not paid too much particular attention to, but one which is extremely important to the Province, and that is the area of fisheries.

Assessing the Budget for the Department of Fisheries: it is remarkable to note that the Budget has been downsized considerably. In fact, it is down about or in fact over $5 million. A very small department as is, a budget increase of that size is extremely significant.

Looking at the different headings it is more interesting to note where the cuts occurred. Even though we have an increase in the office of the Minister, we have the executive support down, we have administrative support up. But if you look at the budgets of many departments you will see a significant increase in professional services. Maybe the Minister of Finance, in explaining his Budget, will tell us what all the departments are doing with increased fees in professional services and then lay off their own hard working public servants and hire outside expertise made up of friends of the Ministers, because that is what it appears to be.

Look at Marine Service Centres, facilities around the Province that provide great service to the fishermen around the coast, staffed with a skeleton crew. Almost every year, in the one in my area, and I know the same thing is true of others, because we have had correspondence and, actually, we have had petitions in the House here, from fishermen who cannot gain access to the centres outside regular working hours. When the spring comes, in fact this time of the year, fishermen are busy getting their boats ready for the summer; and when they go, some of them travel quite some distance to get to the various marine centres - which is right and proper, you cannot have a major marine facility in every community, and I agree with that. But the fishermen travel to go to work on their boats. Quite often, they stay on the boat during the week. So, when the regular working day ends, they are told they have to leave the facilities concerned. Every year we have had to contact the department and petition the Minister to allow fishermen to stay and, luckily, the Minister and the department have agreed, always, to make some provision to help the fishermen. But that was happening with the crews that were there. Now, if we are going to reduce further the crews that man the marine centres, then the hardship on the fishermen will be even greater.

I notice also with interest the little program they had, the extension of electrical services, whereby every year different community stages and areas acquired little grants from the department to help extend electrical services, that vote is wiped out entirely this year, $40,000 budgeted last year, down to nothing this year.

Various fish and initiatives programs are cut in half. You have the middle distance fishing effort, of course, eliminated, at a time when, with proper forethought and proper use, we could be using the boats that we had, that we owned. A big decrease in aquaculture; of all the areas, now, to be cutting back on, is the field of aquaculture. And we can go on and on.

But there is another area to which we have not paid any attention at all and, with the federal Minister in town today, I thought it might be a very appropriate time to address the problem of the seal fishery. I am not sure if the provincial Minister met with his counterpart today - I do not know if he took him out to lunch - and discussed the seal fishery.

Right now, around the Province, many of our plants are being devastated because of a lack of product, a lack of raw material, cutbacks in quotas, failure to redress the fishing on the Nose and Tail. The federal Government will tell you that it is not in their jurisdiction, outside the 200 mile limit they have no control, international laws and rules and agreements, etc. and, to a great degree, we all know that is true.

The only way we can address it is by unilaterally declaring control, and then you have to enforce it, maybe it will work maybe it will not and maybe we should have the guts to try it, but, one area where we do have control, which has been overlooked it has not been addressed at all, and that concerns the massive seal herds that are around our coast. We have a small hunt approved for landsmen, but that is only a drop in the bucket compared to the number of seals in an increasing, rapidly increasing seal herd.

Reports all around the Province show that more and more seals are showing up, and a number of things are happening. Everyone knows that seals affect fish directly, whether it is by eating the cod, eating the food stocks, destroying the cod by eating parts of them, whatever, you get all kinds of arguments for and against; nobody knows very much about it. I think Captain Morrissey Johnson hit the nail on the head when he said they certainly do not eat turnips, that seals do eat fish.

One of the main problems caused by the seal herds, besides the direct effect on the fishery, is the indirect effect due to the parasites which fish pick up from seals. The statistics, if they could be made available, if proper research were done, I think would show that the seals would be having a tremendous effect on our cod stocks; if we could eliminate to a large degree, not entirely but to a large degree the seal herds, then we would not have to worry about having resource for our plants, so it just does not make sense to bury our heads in the sand and ignore the fact that we have a problem which we are not confronting.

We talk about the overfishing, we talk about the allocations within our limits, we talk about our own, I suppose over the years, mismanagement, but everybody ignores the seal fishery simply because they are afraid that they will raise the ire of protesters; we cannot govern if we are going to be afraid of minorities, the Provincial Governments, the Federal Governments quite often refuse to make decisions because of vocal minorities.

If the minorities are right, then they have every right to be listened to and an attempt made to try to appease them, if they are wrong, and certainly in this case, I solidly believe they are wrong, they are affecting the lives of our fishermen, directly they are affecting the lives of our seal fishery, they have eliminated the offshore fishery which should be reinstated; the application now by some of our own Newfoundland long-time seal fishermen to re-activate the seal hunt in larger vessels should be approved; we should get back and get into a heavy seal fishery so that we can address ourselves directly, one of the major problems facing us, and that is the elimination of the fishery in the Province. We can sit back and bury our heads in the sand. We can talk about markets so they can go out and destroy our markets and show pictures of fillets including worms. Well the big question is where do the worms come from? The worms indirectly come from seals. If we did not have the seal problem, we would not have the worm problem. The decisions are being made by Governments because of high executives in powerful companies. These are the ones who are running the fishery. It should not be. The fishery should be looked after for the fisherman, the average fellow out in the boat, the plant worker, the young children making a few dollars cutting out tongues. We should make decisions based on what is good for them and what is good for the Province, and I think it is about time that we addressed that problem. And all of us have been sitting back and saying very little because we are afraid that around the world we will raise the ire of professional protestors who spend most of their time going around lobbying, being financed by Government money, which is the ironic thing about it, for their own personal gain, and it does not matter at all about the detriment that is caused to the people in a place like Newfoundland.

So, Mr. Chairman, I think perhaps looking at a department such as the Department of Fisheries, it would have been nice to see a significant amount of money in there to help promote and address one of the major problems that is facing us, even though it comes under Federal control, but certainly we can do a tremendous amount to help out. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Member for Burin - Placentia West.

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Chairman, I would like to participate in this debate -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: - unless the President of Treasury Board wants to get up, Mr. Chairman.

AN HON. MEMBER: Carry on. Carry on.

MR. TOBIN: Do you want to adjourn the House now?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Chairman, I just thought the President of Treasury Board may want to - being 5:56, but in any case we will have a few words. I am sure I will have the opportunity to speak in this debate again. As I follow through what my colleagues have been saying here today and this past week as it relates to the attack, the vicious attack that this Government has taken on Newfoundlanders, and particularly rural Newfoundland, one can only say that it is certainly with a degree of sadness that you have to speak in a debate that is going to see in access of 400 hospital beds close in this Province, that is going to see a Government try to balance its Budget on the backs of the sick, the suffering and the poor in this Province, to know that there is not one nickel increase for the people who are receiving social assistance, to know that the budget of the Department of Social Services has been slashed by $4 million less than last year.

Mr. Chairman, you know the thing that really bothers me is the way that this Government has attacked rural Newfoundland, particularly in the health care system. When I heard my colleague from Trinity - Bay de Verde up today trying to ask, to plead, to beg on behalf of his constituents with the Minister of Health and the Minister of Finance to put in place the necessary funding for his area, to ensure that the sick and the suffering of Old Perlican and surrounding areas do not have to suffer, and to know that the Minister of Health totally ignored his plea. I would suspect that when the people of Old Perlican realize the fact that their Member stood in this House today and said what he had to say, they will have reason to be appreciative of their MHA. No doubt about that. But when they find that the Minister of Health displayed such arrogance and contempt in not standing to support the petition, then I believe they will have a degree of anger, to some extent, to know that the Minister of Health refused to stand and speak to a petition that was presented in a very genuine way by the MHA, and I think, supported in a very genuine way by the Member for Carbonear, as well as my colleague from Ferryland. But, to know that the Minister of Health refused to speak in that debate is going to be a cause of concern for these residents. The Member for Trinity - Bay de Verde stood here today, very sincere and genuine. I noticed that the Member for LaPoile did not. He tried to speak out of both sides of his mouth at the same time. He did not stand with the same vigour to condemn his Government the way the Member for Trinity - Bay de Verde did. He did not stand for what he believed, like the Member for Trinity - Bay de Verde. He basically did not support his constituents.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear!

MR. TOBIN: The Member for LaPoile did not support his constituents. Now, that is the long and the short of it. The Member for Placentia, I do not know, I was not here. The day the people for Placentia were in here, I was up in my district with 500 unemployed shipyard workers who were about to go to the mainland. So I do not know how the Member for Placentia presented his petition. But I do know the Member for LaPoile did not support the petition as did the Member for Trinity - Bay de Verde.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

On motion, that the Committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again, Mr. Speaker returned to the Chair.

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

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Speaker, the Committee of Supply have considered the matters to them referred and have directed me to report some progress and ask leave to sit again.

On motion, report received and adopted, Committee ordered to sit again on tomorrow.

MR. SPEAKER: It is now 5:00 p.m. We do not have a motion to adjourn.

AN HON. MEMBER: Mr. Speaker, I move that the House adjourn until tomorrow, Tuesday, at 2:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER: It has been moved and seconded that the House do now adjourn.

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: Against, 'nay'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay,

MR. SPEAKER: This House is recessed until 7:00 p.m.


 

March 25, 1991 (Night)       HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS     Vol. XLI  No. 15A


The House resumed at 7:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. BAKER: Motion 3, Mr. Speaker.

On motion, that the House resolve itself into Committee of the Whole on Supply, Mr. Speaker left the Chair.

Committee of Supply

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. SIMMS: I thought my colleague might want to get up again. He will, I guess, no doubt before the evening is over.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SIMMS: Unless he is mad at me. I am not sure, he might be mad at me.

Mr. Chairman, I want to address a few topics tonight. During the course of the evening from time to time Members on this side will participate in the debate on Interim Supply. We hope that Members opposite will show their courage and stand and speak in the debate as well, rather than just the odd one standing up. I would like to see the Member for Exploits, for example, stand and talk about all the wonderful things the Government has been doing and tell the House about the wonderful reception given to both of us Saturday night in Grand Falls during the music festival, and what a wonderful response we got from the people. Now I did not talk to all the same people that he did, but certainly those people that spoke to me did not speak in glowing terms about the Government's performance, I can assure him of that. And I have a sneaky suspicion - he may not admit it or confess to it - but I have a sneaky suspicion there were a number of people who expressed to him their regrets about the Government's actions over the last little while. Now he may not confess that, but -

MR. GRIMES: Yes, that is true.

MR. SIMMS: It is true, he does admit it. So, it is clear it is coming now from the mouth of the individual who sits, and is as close to the Premier of this Province, I suppose, as anybody on that side of the House, perhaps even closer, including Members of the Cabinet. Certainly he is much more closer to him than Members of the backbench, there is no doubt about that, but he is probably closer than Members of the Cabinet. And the Premier, I think, confides in the Member for Exploits on a daily basis. In fact, I would not be at all surprised if the Premier is getting most of his advice from the Member for Exploits. I would not be at all surprised, Mr. Chairman, so much so -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SIMMS: Pardon me?

AN HON. MEMBER: Family does not count.

MR. SIMMS: Family does not count. So much so that the Member for Exploits represents the Premier from time to time at different functions. Now tomorrow night in Grand Falls, for example, in the Central Newfoundland area there is supposed to be a speaking engagement done by the Premier to the annual meeting, I think it is, of the Chamber of Commerce, which is now I believe the Grand Falls - Windsor Chamber of Commerce or about to be if it is not already. Now I understand the Premier is not feeling very well today and I hope it is not too serious and that he will recover quickly. On the other hand, I hope it does not prevent him from performing his commitment to speak tomorrow night at the Grand Falls Chamber of Commerce meeting because I understand that there are an awful lot of people, a significantly large number of people who would like to greet the Premier on his arrival or on his speaking engagement in Grand Falls tomorrow night. So I hope there is no intention to cancel that. I know that they would be very disappointed if he did, because I understand there are an awful lot of people, a significantly large number of people who would like to greet the Premier on his arrival or on his speaking engagement in Grand Falls tomorrow night. So, I hope there is no intention to cancel that. I know they would be very disappointed if that was the case.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Government House Leader on a point of order.

MR. BAKER: Mr. Chairman, I cannot let the Opposition House Leader ramble on and on and try to make an issue of something that has happened that is totally unavoidable and trying to pretend it is something that it is not. The Premier has a very serious flu right now, he is home in bed, everything for a number of days has had to be cancelled from his schedule and it is absolutely impossible, I think the Member for Grand Falls probably recognizes that. There are no ulterior motives. If the Member would recognize it, even under the definition of rights that he has, everybody has a right to get sick.

MR. CHAIRMAN: No point of order.

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. SIMMS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There is certainly not a point of order, there is no question about that.

Mr. Chairman, the Government House Leader is obviously supersensitive, I do not know why, I did not make any disparaging comments or anything. In fact, if I recall I think I said I hope the Premier's illness is not too lengthy, I hope it is not too serious. And the Member for Exploits, who is a reasonably, relatively rational intelligent individual, unlike the Government House Leader, nods, acquiesces, and knows full well all I was saying is that I hope the Premier is not too sick and it is not too serious. I wished him well in his recovery. So, I do not know why the Government House Leader got all sensitive and touchy all of a sudden and everything like that. I did say though, admittedly, I hope it did not affect his planned attendance tomorrow night to speak to the Chamber of Commerce.

AN HON. MEMBER: It does.

MR. SIMMS: Well, I did not know that. So, that is why I said I hope it does not. Now that I know it does, then I understand, and that was my whole point, that perhaps the Member for Exploits may be very well designated to pinch-hit for the Premier in speaking tomorrow night -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SIMMS: No, he is not. The Member of Exploits is not speaking to the Chamber of Commerce tomorrow night? Oh, I thought you said you were going, when you were doing this (?) what did that mean?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SIMMS: Oh, you are going to be there but you are not speaking. Does the Member for Exploits know who the guest speaker will be for the Chamber of Commerce meeting tomorrow night?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SIMMS: Who would that be, Doug House?

Anyway, Mr. Chairman, my only point was that I hope his illness was not too serious so that he would be able to attend tomorrow night because I do know there are a number of the working class people out there who wanted to have a chance to see him. Unfortunately, now they will not and they will have to, I suppose, see somebody else if they want to talk to anybody. The Member for Exploits will be there and maybe a Cabinet Minister has been designated to speak and that is fine too. I look forward to seeing the Member for Exploits passing through, as we say.

Mr. Chairman, the Government House Leader rudely interrupted me with a spurious point of order, took up about three minutes of my speaking time and tried to throw me off track.

Is my time up yet, Mr. Chairman? I do not want to get into any new realm of topic if I only have a limited amount of time, I guess, I started at seven o'clock so presumably I only have a moment remaining.

MR. CHAIRMAN: One minute past seven o'clock.

MR. SIMMS: Oh, so I have two minutes remaining.

Mr. Chairman, I wanted to bring to the attention of the House then since I have a couple of moments, we have a limited amount of time, I guess, I started at seven so presumably I only have a minute remaining.

AN HON. MEMBER: 7:01 p.m.

MR. SIMMS: Oh, so I have two minutes remaining. Well, Mr. Chairman, I wanted to bring to the attention of the House then, since I have a couple of moments, the circular that has been going around from the Friends of MUN Extension and Codco, the nationally acclaimed Codco group. And it talks about saving MUN Extension. I want to read just a couple of quotes if I might, Mr. Chairman, with your indulgence for the benefit of Members of the House some of the comments that they are saying. Actually they are very good in the way of a reasonable protest.

Art May says, "We are going to cut the grass, plant flowers, clear the snow. We are going to keep the buildings looking good," but Friends of Extension say a university is more than a building, and so it is, and we all know that. Phil Warren says, "Extension was relevant twenty or thirty years ago."

AN HON. MEMBER: That is not what he said.

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Chairman, I am reading from the circular, if I may. The Minister now is getting super-sensitive. It is only ten past seven and the Minister is going right off the head over there. Just relax, Mr. Chairman.

AN HON. MEMBER: Quote it correctly!

MR. SIMMS: I am quoting, I am reading it here, look! Perhaps the Minister does not understand what I am quoting from.

MS. VERGE: (Inaudible) go ahead and read it, you were just getting to the punch line. You had better go back to the beginning of that (Inaudible).

MR. SIMMS: Yes. 'Phil Warren says Extension was relevant twenty or thirty years ago. Friends of Extension say, so were you, Phil. But Extension continues to provide outstanding community development and adult education services to people.' Now I quoted it accurately. I just read it. Finally, 'Doug House may say that the problems of rural Newfoundlanders are caused by their bad attitude. But Friends of Extension do not believe in blaming the victim.' Those are their words, not the Opposition's words or anybody else's. Those are their words and, Mr. Chairman, I submit, despite the interruptions by the Minister of Education, they are fully entitled to their opinion.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time is up.

MR. SIMMS: I will be back at it, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Member for Burin - Placentia West.

MR. TOBIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to have a few words to say in the debate.

MR. GOVER: Point of order, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member for Bonavista South on a point of order.

MR. GOVER: Yes, Mr. Chairman. I would just like to take this opportunity to correct an item which I heard on CBC Radio tonight arising out of comments from my colleague, the Member for Burin - Placentia West.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. GOVER: I would like to just - no, it is not a point of order, but I would just like to straighten out the matter, that is all. Point of privilege, point of order, whatever you want to call them. I am only going to be a few seconds.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

The hon. Member for Bonavista South I presume is on a point of order.

MR. GOVER: On a point of order. I will let the Chairman rule on whether it is a point of order or not. But I wish to be heard on the point of order. Okay.

I would just for the record like to indicate that I was not involved in any election activities prior to 1988. I was certainly not involved in any election activities for the PC Party. I was certainly not a poll captain for the Member for Burin - Placentia West. I did attend his victory party in 1985 and had a good time.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. CHAIRMAN: There is no point of order.

The hon. the Member for Burin - Placentia West.

MR. TOBIN: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am delighted that the Member for Bonavista South has admitted to the House that he certainly did take an active and participatory interest in my election in 1985. He did celebrate and enjoy the victory party, savoured the victory with all the rest of my campaign workers. When I spoke today I said I was not sure what role he played, whether or not it was a poll captain. My colleague for Grand Bank there reminded me he thought it was a poll captain and I did not think it was. He did enjoy the victory celebration. I want to on behalf of my constituents express our sincere gratitude to him for attending the victory party in 1985.

He did enjoy the victory celebration and I would like on behalf of my constituents express our sincere gratitude to him for attending the victory party in 1985. I can assure the hon. Member that whenever the Premier calls the election he would be more than welcome to come back and help me out again and to participate in our celebration.

Now, Mr. Speaker, to get on to the real issue here before I was interrupted by my former campaign assistant out there. Let me say that it is too bad the Minister of Health is not here because I want to express to the Minister of Health on behalf of the constituents of Bonavista South our disbelief that the Minister would dismantle the acute care health facilities in the District of Bonavista South, the District that was so ably represented for a number of years by the former Member, Mr. Morgan, who got the place built. I said the other day and I say it again, if the Member for Bonavista South, my former campaign worker, continues to neglect his District to let the Government slash the acute care beds, then I can only say to him that he will probably entice Mr. Morgan to come out of retirement.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Yes, I would say the Member for St. John's South hopes so, like he would hope for Dr. Collins to come out of retirement again. Mr. Chairman, the landslide, the Member for St. John's South, what a person to make comments on trying to entice a man who had the biggest kind of majorities for about fifteen years in this Assembly, and someone comes in here with one vote and then starts challenging people to come back. The Member for St. John's South would be well served to get back to campaigning in his District and looking after the health needs of his District and the employment opportunities in his District, rather than trying to entice respectable people like Mr. Morgan who has made -

AN HON. MEMBER: That is John Crosbie who got that.

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Chairman, the St. John's Dockyard is Federal and the one in Marystown I do not think is owned by anyone any more.

MR. R. AYLWARD: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: My colleague from Kilbride just said that he had a call from someone on the Southside Road wondering if the Member knew where the Southside Road was.

MR. MURPHY: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: My colleague had a call from someone on the Southside wondering if you knew where the Southside Road was any more, that is all I said. That is why the economic conditions in the District of St. John's South - that is why there are people in St. John's South telephoning my colleague for Kilbride almost on a daily basis trying to get some representation.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Telephoning my colleague from Ferryland, the Member for Ferryland getting telephone calls every day. Instead of coming in here, Mr. Chairman, and reading the paper in the House, it is time for my colleague to start getting involved in the debate, stand up in the Legislature and tell us if he supports the cuts in the 438 beds in the health care sector, is that what he supports? Does he support the layoffs of teachers and the layoffs of nurses? Does he support the firing of 2,500 civil servants? Let the Member for St. John's South have some real meaningful debate in this Legislature. Let us know and let the people of St. John's South know whether or not he supports that type of action by the Government and never mind sitting over there. I am sure my colleague from Eagle River could lend him some advice on that, on what to do and how to stand up. Our colleague from Old Perlican, Trinity - Bay de Verde, had no difficulty standing up and supporting his constituents.

Maybe it is time, Mr. Chairman, for some of the other people to stand up and let us know where they stand. It is time for the Member for St. George's to participate actively in this Legislature. The new Member for Trinity North, Mr. Chairman, when is he going to come to his feet and do something? Tell us about the industries that are closing down in your District.

MS. COWAN: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Chairman, every time the Member is in the House, she is always shouting across the House. She never gets up and participates in debate. Let the Minister stand in this Legislature and tell the House whether or not she supports the treatment that the CBS Council and the residents are getting from the Minister of Provincial and Municipal Affairs. Let her stand in this forum, never mind writing letters to the editor, stand up in the forum that you were elected to and participate in the debate.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. TOBIN: That is what she should be doing, instead of yapping back and forth across the House. Have some meaningful discussion, and participate in the debate. That is what we have got to do.

In my own district, Mr. Chairman, in Marystown, Burin, and Rushoon, all of these places are being stripped. It is unbelievable what is happening, in terms of the economic opportunities that were there. One time people from Terranceville and all over Fortune Bay -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: That is right.

- Bay L'Argent, and St. Bernards, they were all working with the crowd from Marystown and Burin. Now, there is nobody working.

MR. MATTHEWS: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Yes. Well, I can tell my colleague from Grand Bank that I get a lot of calls from the Fortune - Hermitage district. They are crying out for someone to represent them, because they have not seen the Member for Fortune - Hermitage since thirty-seven Liberals voted for him. He forgot since he got thirty-seven votes from the district.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who?

MR. TOBIN: The Member for Fortune - Hermitage. Was it thirty-seven? I am talking about in Fortune Bay. But in any case, it does not matter. He will be history when the Premier decides to issue the writ for the next election. He won the last election because myself and my colleague from Grand Falls and others spent more time in his district than we did in our own. That is how he won the election. I remember attending rallies with the Member for Fortune - Hermitage, Mr. Chairman, down in Terranceville. My colleague was over in Gaultois and these places, and we finally got him elected. It was not easy, but we did it, Mr. Chairman. It was not easy to get rid of him, but we did that too.

I hope, when I sit down now, that I have enticed him to take to the floor and speak on behalf of his constituents.

AN HON. MEMBER: For the first time.

MR. TOBIN: For the first time, because he has never spoken on their behalf yet. The interests of Fortune - Hermitage have not been expressed since the former MP, Mr. Simmons, was in the Legislature, and then only occasionally.

What about the Marystown Shipyard?

AN HON. MEMBER: What about it?

MR. TOBIN: Yes, what about it? It is in trouble, thanks to your colleagues. The best work force in the shipbuilding industry anywhere in the world is in trouble. Their equal cannot be found, and it is in trouble, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. member's time has elapsed.

MR. TOBIN: By leave, Mr. Chairman?

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member for Humber East.

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Chairperson.

I am surprised that some of the members opposite, who are heckling the Member for Burin - Placentia West, did not take advantage of a chance to rise and speak for ten minutes on this $1 billion budget bill that is before us.

What I find hard to accept about this whole budget process, is that the Premier and the Cabinet, who are responsible for this budget, this harsh budget that is eliminating 3500 public service and Government funded jobs, are not expressing any sympathy or regret.

We have the Minister of Health, who is presiding over most of the closures and service reductions, actually defending the Budget, saying that it is going to result in rationalization, centralization and improvement. The Minister of Education, a perpetual pollyanna, talks about ongoing improvements in education. These ministers are not showing any compassion for the people of the Province, who are being negatively affected by their Budget.

Last week I attended the CRTC hearing in Hull, dealing with the CBC service reductions, the reductions that included the cutting of all television production in Newfoundland and Labrador, except for evening and sign-off news produced in St. John's.

With the CBC service reductions, the reductions that included the cutting of all television production in Newfoundland and Labrador except for Evening and Sign Off News produced in St. John's.

Now when those cuts where instituted so abruptly on December 5, the CBC brass cited a $108 million budget shortfall as the reason for the reductions and many people around here who found the cuts so difficult to accept assumed that the CBC board and managers made the choices they did to try to stir up political protest to try to motivate citizens across the country to put pressure on the Mulroney Government to increase funding to the CBC. The Federal Government had given the corporation a 5 per cent increase, but that combined with advertising revenue did not allow the corporation to continue all their service. Instead of beginning at the top and trimming through administration, through the major production centres of Toronto and Montreal, they chose to eliminate virtually all regional and local programming in a big move to centralize decision making and production in Toronto and Montreal.

What emerged at the hearing through the CBC presentation is that the CBC decision makers have an entirely different perspective than people who live here and undoubtedly people who live on the Gaspe Peninsula, who live in southern Saskatchewan, who live in other areas that have been hurt by the CBC service reductions. Patrick Watson, the chair designate, said that even if the CBC budget shortfall is made up now he would not want to reinstate the regional and local programming that was cut. He and the President and the VPs, a phalanx of VPs, in their slick presentation bragged about a new philosophy, a new programme involving additions. They did not talk about cuts, they did not even mention Land and Sea. The VP in charge of English drama production cited a long list of Canadian content of recent years. He did not even mention any of the drama done in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Chairperson, sitting in this House today and listening to the Members defend their Budget reminded me of that mentality because the same mentality of the CBC decision makers that has prompted their massive centralization thrust seems to be the mentality of this Wells Administration, the mentality that triggered wholesale municipal amalgamation, cuts in funding to municipalities, and now the unprecedented centralization of health care services.

The Minister of Health this afternoon when his colleague the Member for Trinity - Bay de Verde made a moving plea on behalf of his constituents for continuation of the hospital at Old Perlican sat chatting and laughing with the Minister of Finance.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who did that?

MS. VERGE: I watched it.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who?

MS. VERGE: The Premier and the Ministers responsible for the devastating Budget measures do not seem to have any human compassion or feeling for the results of their decisions. They are confidently going about saying that the decisions are for the good. 'Trust us. We know what is good for you. We will rationalize, we will re-organize, we will improve.' That is the part of the Budget process that really shakes me, Chairperson. Patrick Watson said even if the CBC budget shortfall were made up he would not want to reinstate the local and regional programming. I believe that if the Wells' administration were to have its budget shortfall made up they would not want to reinstate the small town and rural hospitals that they are cutting. They seem to want to centralize, or rationalize as they call it.

I have said before that the thrust of the Wells' Administration Budget is in laying off, in downgrading services, to accentuate the disparity in affluence and well-being among sectors of our Provincial society. Women are hurting disproportionately. The only part of Bill 16, the notorious roll back legislation, that takes effect before April 1 1991 is the reneging on the commitment for pay equity back to June of 1988. Women public employees who are retiring now or who retired last year will never get credit for having done work of equal value to men who were paid more. This Government is ignoring the human rights of these women in reneging on the commitment to pay them the same as they have paid men for doing work of equal value.

But I have written the Premier saying that as a lawyer I believe that the roll backbill is unconstitutional. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees equality rights without discrimination on the basis of sex. Any legislation in Canada that violates that provision will be struck down by the courts as unconstitutional. I have asked the Premier to refer Bill 16 to our Court of Appeal for a ruling on its constitutional validity. I submit that the Court would strike it down. Further, I have asked the Premier to promise now that if the courts rule that the rollback legislation is invalid because it violates the Charter that he will not use the notwithstanding clause.

Now as a constitutional authority who has preached on the constitution from Atlantic to Pacific he has consistently faulted the notwithstanding clause in the Constitution. He may be put to the test in the coming months and we will see if once again he is inconsistent and hypocritical.

I have not got a reply to my letter. So the -

AN HON. MEMBER: When did you write it?

MS. VERGE: I wrote the Premier on March 7, the same day as the Budget was delivered. Chairperson, the Budget discriminates against women. Part of the discrimination is embodied in Bill 16 and I predict that the courts will find that that provision is invalid. There are other measures however that are unduly harsh on women. Women are getting the brunt of the layoffs. Women make up the vast majority of hospital and nursing home employees, and as we know that is a sector -

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time has elapsed.

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: No leave!

MS. VERGE: With leave, Chairperson, I will just finish my presentation.

MR. CHAIRMAN: No leave.

MS. VERGE: I will have to come back to it later then.

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

MR. MURPHY: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to softly remind the hon. Member for Burin - Placentia West if he was not out fishing through the ice and galavanting around all over the Island he would have known that I stood the other night and as a matter of face even complimented his efforts. But I found out afterwards that he was not in Marystown as he professed, but I understand he was off trying to get a few trout. But, then again I understand the Member for Burin - Placentia West has great difficulty holding on to his support and he might be very well advised to try and talk the hon. Member for St. John's South back into his campaign, he might do well.

MR. TOBIN: I would not want you there, boy.

MR. MURPHY: Well, Bonavista South, I said. Turn her up, crank her up a notch.

Now, there is not always chastising going on, and sometimes hon. Members stand in their place on both sides of the House and I have heard this since we have come back, it is not always partisanship in everything that is said and done.

Just for the hon. Member for Green Bay who keeps charging at what is going on in the hospitals, I was in the Health Science Complex -I suppose this could be a poor comparison when you consider some of the hospitals in rural Newfoundland - this evening visiting someone and within three-quarters of an hour the individual I was visiting was visited three times. Though the workload is heavy, let me say that we are very fortunate in the hospital system in Newfoundland to have such dedicated staff to tend to those who are sick. Although the hon. Members opposite want to leave the impression that people are overworked and cannot find the time to attend to the patients who are in the hospital, I can assure the hon. Member that is not true.

My main reason for rising this evening, Mr. Chairman, was to say a few words in the same area that my hon. Colleague for St. Mary's - The Capes alluded to this afternoon and to pick on some of the things that the hon. the Member for Grand Bank has already said dealing with the fishery. I listened with great attentiveness because I could not but wholeheartedly agree with the Member for St. Mary's - The Capes that it is time, as a matter of fact the time is probably long gone, that we paid some attention to not only the horrendous overfishing that is taking place on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks - it is nice to see Mr. Crosbie in Europe now waving the flag and I would hope, as I am sure all hon. Members would hope, it is not too late to do something positive and constructive with what is taking place in the fishery. The one sure item that needs to be addressed is the abundance of the seals that now exist off the coast of Labrador and off the coast of the Province.

I also want to say upfront to the hon. Member for St. Mary's - the Capes: one thing the Federal Government has done and done exceptionally well, is with their tactics and how they have addressed the inshore/offshore situation - my hon. colleague from Grand Bank - I was going to say the Member for Burin - Placentia West but he knows very little about the fishing industry, so I will leave him out of it - is that they have divided the inshore and the offshore like nothing else so I suppose the best way to go is that a house divided soon falls.

MR. TOBIN: (Inaudible).

MR. MURPHY: Now, you know if the hon. the Member for Burin - Placentia West had only stayed trout fishing. You know his problem was that he would still probably be trouting until somebody told him he did not have to dig a hole big enough to put a boat in. He said: I'm wore out turning this auger 174 times.

But I would want to say to the hon. Member for St. Mary's - The Capes, he is dead on. When you are looking at a harp population of probably in excess of 5 million, and Morrisey Johnson, that great benefactor of the sealing industry years ago - it is too bad that he lost his enthusiasm somewhere along the way - knows that seals do not eat turnips or carrots or beach rocks or whatever the case may be. There is too much scientific evidence to prove that seals sustain themselves on fish. The parasitic problem is a real one. If you go in the hon. Member's district from Grand Bank down to the south coast, and you will see the (Inaudible) effort that takes place from Marystown all the way up and even up into Trepassey. And the Member is also much aware of it. The amount of fish lost through parasitic problems, which is without question associated with the grey seal, and now well believed to be associated with the harp and the hood.

So these are things that need to be addressed. I would want to go on record, Mr. Chairman, as saying that I think we would be all well advised to do solid homework and make sure that we talk to the animal rights groups and Greenpeace and these people and get their authorization to go to the front again in larger vessels for many reasons. Safety obviously one. Because what we are finding today is that Newfoundlanders who do not have income are forced to go to the front in smaller vessels, vessels that are not safe for the type of ice conditions that exist out there. They are staying out overnight and now what is happening of course is that the private sector insurance companies are starting to remove their coverage from these type of vessels. So -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) the resolution (Inaudible)?

MR. MURPHY: I have a resolution for the hon. Member and I will be glad to get up and read it with twenty-two "whereases." But let me say in all seriousness that I would concur with the Member for St. Mary's - The Capes that it is time that we took a united front. And especially this summer - I would suggest to him that it might be a little late this year - that we get these letters of support from the rights activist groups, that we have a decent delegation made up of all sealers within the Province, both the inshore and offshore, and that we make an approach to somebody, I suppose.

I was going to say Valcourt but I am not so sure that the guy is approachable, but if not then certainly the Members who are there representing the Province in the Federal Government. It is long overdue. I think that the market is there. I think the market can be further developed both for the meat and the by-product, which is the pelt. And it is time that both sides of the House made some kind of an effort to put a package together over the summer months to make sure that we have an opportunity in the fall to go to Ottawa and have the sealing harvest in 1992 back in its rightful place as part of the way of life of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. And that we give some short-term gain for the effort that is made in that and we do ourselves I think exceptionally well in protecting our greatest resource, our fishery.

So I would concur entirely with what the hon. Member for St. Mary's - The Capes had to say this afternoon. Before the night is out I will probably want to get up and discuss refit, ship building, etc., when I do a little more research. I am reading a book from the Member for - I do not know where he is from.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HEWLETT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The more I see of it all, the more I wonder about the question I asked probably the very first week I stood in this Assembly, awestruck and absolutely terrified at being a member of this august body, having watched it for some fifteen years from the Gallery, having watched the Liberal Party, then in Opposition, speak its piece. Many, many, many times, in the last two years I have asked myself, over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, `Where have all the Liberals gone.'

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HEWLETT: Mr. Chairman, this Province right now is run by a bunch of accountants. I mean, we have, over on the other side right now, or we may as well have, a council of deputy ministers. I mean, this is getting to be atrocious.

I remember when closing a hospital bed, even temporarily during the Summer, was a crime against humanity. People who were in the Liberal Party, who were sitting in Opposition at the time, used to rale on endlessly about how doing such a thing was a curse upon the soul of humanity. Yet, these people stand up here and say, `Oh, poor Clyde! What can we do, we have no money!' You never gave a thought to money when you were on the other side, all you cared about were people. Joey Smallwood told you that Liberalism was all about people, people, people. Joey does not speak these days, but I am sure he must wonder, and, if he could, he would speak out loud, `Where have all the Liberals gone?'

Education, the key, the cornerstone of Liberal policy for so many years, how many times I remember, as a teenager, seeing Joey Smallwood speak in favour of education? I have a scholarship on the wall of my office signed by J.R. Smallwood. Education was the key to our future. This Government treats education the way it treats all aspects of the budget, as a bunch of accountants.

The community college system was formed under the former administration, barely put into place, a whole new way of going about things. We went from vocational schools, hewers of wood, drawers of water, with some degree of technical skills, to a grander concept, and now that is being completely reformed. The word, `reform', I suppose, is hardly the word, because now there are a bunch of colleges on the hit list.

The community college in Springdale, for years looked like a large school in a gravel pit. We finally got a lawn out front there a couple of years ago, Mr. Chairman, and a couple of trees on the front of it. A few months ago, I had the opportunity, and the pleasure, to participate, with the good Mayor of Springdale, the principal of the Central Newfoundland Community College, and the local principal, with regard to opening a day care center. Now, on the front page of the local newspaper, that particular community college is supposedly on the hit list. I have challenged the Minister of Education a couple of times to deny it in this House, and he really has not.

The Springdate Hospital, Mr. Chairman, the local hospital board put their best foot forward to make the best of a bad situation, put forward a position paper that they said would cost six jobs. Where have all the Liberals gone? The Liberals took twenty jobs, and there may be more to come.

The electrical inspection office: I wrote the Minister of Labour saying, there has been nobody in it for months. It is empty, vacant, with staff positions unfilled. Where have all the Liberals gone? The Liberals took twenty jobs and there may be more to come.

The Electrical Inspection Office: I wrote the Minister of Labour saying there has been nobody in it for months. It is empty, vacant, staff positions unfilled. What is the fate of the people who work in the Electrical Inspection Office? Non-committal before the Budget; no word since the Budget. And to top it all of, Mr. Chairman, and no disrespect to the gentlemen personally because I have the greatest respect for him, they have now assigned my District to twin the hon. Member for Lewisporte. He is the man who is supposed to come into Green Bay and coach the Green Bay Liberal Association on what the new Liberalism is all about. The hon. Member for Lewisporte is my twin, yes. He comes into Green Bay to teach the Green Bay Liberal Association how to sugar coat the medicine, how to make the bitter medicine go down.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HEWLETT: It was not an easy job. I remember the first one they sent into Green Bay was a fellow from Exploits and I chased him out. Remember that? And then the Member for Lewisporte has got a tall order on his hands. I obviously cannot wish him well in what he is about, but he has got the impossible job of helping the local Liberal Association make the bitter medicine go down very easily and that is not going to be done too easily.

Mr. Speaker, we are waiting for the great economic plan. This reminds me of the Russians, you know. Every year before they underwent their perestroika and what not, you heard these grand pronouncements from the Kremlin about the great five year plan. For three years we have been waiting for our five year plan, and the five year plan once installed is supposed to take six to ten years to take effect. I will be old enough to draw a pension if I am still a Member of this House by the time the great economic plan comes into effect, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, what this Province needs is leadership. This Province has elected a Premier whose chosen vocation seems to be that of Prime Minister of Canada. He does not appear to wish to lead this Province; he treats this Province as an accountant would a business, and you cannot run a Government like a business. This Province needs a leader with vision; this Province needs a leader who will give some of our people some hope. Right now the one thing that I notice everywhere I go, there is no hope, no hope, no hope. What are we going to do? The nearest jobs are thousands of miles away. Accountants do not give people any hope for the future, Mr. Speaker, they balance books.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HEWLETT: Heart? Liberalism was supposed to have heart. Where are all the Liberals gone, I ask?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

AN HON. MEMBER: What are you, in the 12 per cent?

MR. HEWLETT: Twelve per cent? Twelve per cent of what Sir? I am just a little boy from Port Anson who is lucky enough to be 39 years old standing here in this spot. Hopefully some of the good that I am saying came from the fact that you were once my grade five principal - hopefully. Hopefully some of the good that I am saying came from the fact that Roger Simmons was once my high school principal. Hopefully some of what I am saying came from the fact that Brian Peckford was my high school literature teacher. Hopefully some of what I am saying comes from the fact that I defeated my former grade nine algebra teacher.

Mr. Speaker, here we are tonight, constrained to the boring ten minute to and fro of debate on a piece of legislation that most of the general public know very little about. Where are all the great leaders? Where is liberalism, where is vision, where is hope for the future? I am not going to have a district come the next election because there are not going to be any people left out there.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HEWLETT: I did not mention whether or not I would win it. I will take my chances on whether or not I will win it. But one thing I would like to be able to do come the next election is have a district in which to have a contest. Right now, there is nothing but despair, lack of hope, no vision, no leadership, five-year plans that have been three years in the making and which are supposed to be six years to ten years in the doing. What do you do with all the people in the interim?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HEWLETT: The hospital board in Springdale put forward a plan which said they would lose six jobs and they lost twenty, Sir.

AN HON. MEMBER: They are happy.

MR. HEWLETT: Oh, yes. That are absolutely delighted. Wait until the people of Springdale hear that the hon. the Member for Carbonear, married to a women from the Green Bay area, wait until they all hear that the people of Springdale are tickled pink they lost twenty jobs. They put their best foot forward, Sir, and you cut it off at the knee.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time has elapsed.

MR. HEWLETT: I thank you.

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

MR. POWER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

When I listen to the Member for Green Bay reminding himself about his high school and other teachers, it reminds me of the line of that song that goes, "When I think of all the crap I learned in high school, it is a wonder I can think at all." And when I look at the motley crew that he had teaching him back in his old days I guess he is lucky to be here.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. POWER: Oh, I included him in the four. I have the whole diverse range of his teaching.

AN HON. MEMBER: Kodachrome (inaudible).

MR. POWER: Kodachrome, yes that is what it is.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. POWER: Mr. Chairman, no I do not have a leadership speech, I have a speech about interim supply and about what we are doing in this Province and where we should be going, and where we are going. I may even chat about some of the things the Minister of Development is doing.

AN HON. MEMBER: Doug House.

MR. POWER: Well, the Minister of Development is not Doug House but certainly an awful lot of the responsibilities of the Minister of Development have gone off to Doug House's side and, I think, ultimately - I have to be careful that I do not get like the Member for Green Bay in certain ways - being the person who brought the man who did our Royal Commission, Doug House, into the Government circles from the university, sometimes I think I did a great job and other times I think maybe we should have found somebody else.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. POWER: Yes, I did as Minister of Career Development and we hired him to do a commission on employment and unemployment in Newfoundland and many parts of his Commission were very sound and valid. I guess, most of us would have been able to make the same recommendations and think the same things that he thought had we gone out throughout Newfoundand and talked to as many people as he did. The only problem is that an awful lot of what he did recommend was not practical to implement and would have changed the nature of some of the problems but would not have resolved a lot of the problems that we have that are sort of generic to resource based economies and that type of thing. Then to go the additional step to take Mr. Howse away from the university where he had been an academic all his life and put him in charge of the economic business development of the Province. It is one thing to ask an academic to do a study for you, to do a commission for you, to do a report, it is another thing altogether to ask an academic to go out and be the main impetus for developing your economy and to, I guess, using the word the Minister used, to diversify the economy.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. POWER: Well, Lee Iacocca's job was good for a fellow like Lee Iacocca who understood business and how to develop it. I am not sure that a professor at a university is the right kind of a person to do that, but I guess the proof of that will be in the pudding somewhere down the road when we see exactly how many new jobs are created and exactly how successful he has been. I could go on with my normal lecture on what this Government is doing to health care. While the Member for Green Bay was talking, I saw the Minister of Health reading National Geographic. He was probably looking for some new health tips from the central Congo some place to bring to Newfoundland to improve our system. I guess reading National Geographic for the Minister of Health is probably one of the safest things he can do. As I notice him in the days as he is changing his tune. With every group that comes to see him he changes his tune about hospital and nursing home associations, whether they need more money or whether they do not. Whether they have to lay off more people than the 900 he originally said, and the 438 bed closures, whether they need more than that. And I guess the Minister of Health is going to have to change his tune a lot in the next six months when he realizes that his quasi-colleague the Minister of Finance is not the right person to run health care in this Province.

Somewhere along the way it will sink home. Maybe to the more compassionate President of Treasury Board who does have a kind bone somewhere in his body, or used to have a lot of them. I suppose he still has one or two left. Then maybe the President of Treasury Board will take over from the Minister of Finance and say: listen, we just could not do - we did a lot this year, we saved a lot of money. We maybe made the system more efficient, even if not so productive. And somewhere along the way we have to now balance the thing out and give the health care system a bit more money. And I suspect that if the Budget is $54 million in the deficit today starting off this year, it will be at least $64 million just on health care increases alone before the year is out. That they will have no choice but to find the $10 million because it is going to have to be spent.

What I really want to talk about, Mr. Chairman, tonight are just a few things on resource and economic development in this Province. One of the great things that this Government has spoken an awful lot about since its election campaign in 1989 is diversifying the economy. When I look at some of the things that have happened I see a great shortage of new jobs being created. When I listen to the Minister of Fisheries make his wonderful comments - what does Crosbie call him? 'woof woof,' I think, or something that relates to complains a lot? - all our Minister of Fisheries does really is complain that Ottawa has too much power, we have too little power. That we are not getting enough fish, that we do not have enough say, people will not listen to us in Ottawa.

That is what every Minister of Fisheries has said, certainly since I came in to this House in 1975. I think the Minister was Minister of Fisheries back somewhere in the mid-seventies when I was here as well. He used to say the same things then as a Conservative Minister of Fisheries that he now says as a Liberal Minister of Fisheries. We do not have enough say, that we do not have control over the resources, that we cannot decide what is really going to happen. All we really decide in Newfoundland is where you put a processing licence. We cannot decide who can build a wharf, we do not decide who gets a fishing licence. All we decide is on processing. When the fish comes ashore we can decide something about it.

But when I read the Minister of Fisheries complained to Ottawa every once in a while in the newspapers - not a very active Minister of Fisheries either, I might say by the way, a very quiet one compared to what we have had over the last fifteen years - but maybe if quiet diplomacy works I will be glad to take it. I just do not see very many results. I do not see any new fishing opportunities, I do not see any new people working in the fishing industry, I do not see any new markets being developed. I have not seen one single bit of improvement in the fishing industry which in, I guess in the Budget document you say, is the core industry of Newfoundland. It is the industry you have to have. It has been, is, and will remain to be the most important industry that we have. That is what it says in the Budget documents.

But when I look at it I see a downgrading of the Fisheries Department, I see no new job opportunities in the fishing industry. And I keep saying to myself: how can this Government say that fisheries is still the highest priority from an industrial point of view? In reality, the fishery has passed its time probably. That is very likely what has happened and this Government has not even realized it yet. The Minister of Development I suspect would acknowledge it if he had his chance to say it, that the chances for us of having any renewed capacity, increased capacity in the fishing industry, the time has passed. And we have to find something else to do.

And I say well you look at all the new technology that comes in the fishery, an awful lot of that wonderful new technology financed by ACOA and by - what is that thing called we have in Newfoundland now? ERC, that gives money to all the big corporations. Enterprise Newfoundland I guess is the generic name that would cover everything the Newfoundland Government does towards creating new jobs.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. POWER: Top secret jobs? But Enterprise Newfoundland, ACOA, put a fair amount of money into the fishing industry to do what? To modernize fish plants, to make them more productive, and to lay off people in many ways. It replaces employment opportunities that are there today.

Now that is the only way for the resource industry to go. The fishery is no different than forestry, there will likely be less jobs in forestry twenty years down the road than there are today as the new technology advances, as we get more used to computers, more used to communicating in that fashion, the need for newspapers, magazines, and communicating by paper will probably be lost.

But when I look at our Minister of Forestry, I do not see any new job opportunities in Newfoundland. He has been Minister of Forestry for two years, a portfolio that I had for three or four years back in the 1980s. I have not heard the Minister of Forestry once come in here and announce a new saw mill, have not heard him announce anything for Labrador where there is a tremendous resource which he nibbles at every once in a while but actually does not develop. So, in the resource sector of forestry where there are not any new opportunities in pulp and paper, where there is no secondary processing, I do not see any increase in furniture manufacturing, something which Members opposite used to talk about when they were in the Opposition, using our forest resources to the maximum for the benefit of Newfoundland, furniture manufacturing and all those types of things. I do not see any of that. I do not see one more person being employed in the forestry industry today, and there is probably somewhat less than there was three years ago.

When I look at mining: Has this Government in the last three years opened up any new mines? Do we have one more person working in the mining industry today than we had then, or have we less people? I think the reality is that we have a fair chunk less people.

So, if you have less people in fishery, less people in forest products, and less people in mining then somebody had better soon get off their rear ends and start doing some -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. POWER: Pardon? Well, there is no increase. I am saying there are less people.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. POWER: Well, I will tell you one place where they are employed and where the Minister is doing a decent job and because he is on to something which was started by our Administration and by the bureaucrats, who were excellent bureaucrats at the time in the Department, and that is in the tourism sector. It is a service sector. It is where there is a tremendous amount of new employment. Thank God the Premier likes skiing because we have a great ski resort now being developed.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. POWER: You like skiing as well. I like skiing now, but I mean the White Hills Ski Resort in Clarenville has done a tremendous job in that area.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time has elapsed.

The hon. the Minister of Development.

MR. FUREY: Mr. Speaker, just in line with what the hon. Member for Ferryland is saying, I too on many occasions publicly have given full marks and full credit to the previous Government. I have not on very many issues, but on the issue of tourism I have commended the previous Government and, in particular, the Member for Mount Pearl who was the Minister of Tourism for many years and laid a very good and very strong foundation for that industry. We have been building on that foundation and truly, I give high marks to the hon. former Minister for that and I have done that before publicly.

But the hon. Member made some statements and I read in the paper the other day an interesting letter that was there, I forget which paper it came out of, but it was quite interesting. It was titled: Opposition Attempts To Hide The Truth. The first couple of paragraphs are telling. It says: Is there no one to speak out about the dissemination of desperate falsehoods, deceit and incorrect statements being spouted by the Conservatives to try to throw dust in the eyes of the public who are prone to listen rather than seek the truth and the source of the financial mess in which we are emersed. Intelligent warnings by the Well's Administration following their election have been met by desperate, despicable Opposition attempts to hide the truth. Does one have to become so nauseated with the squirmings of those who perpetuated those crimes against us that one has to be a voice in the wilderness to bring some sanity into focus.

Now, what was this person talking about, what was he talking about? He was talking about, Mr. Chairman, the problems of the past that this new Government has tried to correct and cannot correct. We cannot correct in eighteen months the damages inflicted upon the Province for the last eighteen years. Nobody can do that and if anybody told you they could do that they are just not telling you the truth. They really are not telling the truth.

You see the salient point and passage in the Minister of Finance's Budget and the most telling point was on page 8 of his Budget Speech which told all. It said, the problems associated with excessive debt are many. The cost of servicing that debt has grown to unacceptable levels. Here is the most important sentence in the Budget: Interest squeezes out spending on needed public services, it exceeds the total cost of operating nine of the Government's fourteen departments. Operating nine of our departments in Government is equal to the interest rate that we pay on the debt in this Province. The $528 million in interest payments which the Province must make this year would be sufficient to operate our entire hospital system.

Now, Mr. Speaker, think about that for a second. The interest payments on the debt could operate nine of the fourteen ministries, pay for it all. The interest that we are paying on the debt could run the entire hospital system.

Now, Mr. Speaker, let's look at the facts because you just cannot say that interest is staggering. You cannot just say that stacked deck is awesome, an awesome burden on all Newfoundlanders and future Newfoundlanders, if you do not look at the causes of where this debt came from and it is no act, it is the truth. In 1972, as my Colleague for St. John's South pointed out the other night, this particular Province had $970 million worth of debt, that is after 23 years and everybody knows what that money was spent on: the universities that were built, hospitals that were constructed, the services that were delivered in the remotest most isolated parts of the Province, the roads that were constructed, the bridges that were built and on, and on, and on, the vocational school systems, $976 million in debt. So, when my friend from Ferryland rises and asks how are we spending our money, he has to say first of all the money is extremely limited. Why it is limited? It is limited because we have no ability to borrow to add to the debt. It is limited because we have no taxation room to bring in more revenues to provide more services. It is limited because we had a system that had been growing and expanding beyond our means. He knows that in his heart of hearts, because he is a good and decent Member, and I have known him always to be that. From 1972 he asks why? Let me tell you why we are in that position. Mr. Moores took over in 1972 and in one year he sent the debt from $976 million to $l.1 billion, in one year. Then a year later it went from $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion, and a year after that to $1.6 billion, and a year after that to $1.9 billion to $2.2 billion, to $2.3 billion, and then Mr. Moores left - $970 million to $2.3 billion, and then he left, thank God. Then Mr. Peckford came in and in Mr. Peckford's first year he sent that debt from $2.3 billion to $2.5 billion. Then he sent it to $2.8 billion. I think the hon. Member was in his Cabinet. Were you in his Cabinet in 1979? Was the hon. Member for Humber East in his Cabinet? I cannot fault the hon. Member for Humber Valley because he came into the Assembly as I did in 1985, but the hon. Member for Humber East was there when this debt was sent spiralling out of control. The hon. Member for Ferryland was there spending, and spending, and spending like drunken fools. In 1979 $2.5 billion, in 1980 $2.7 billion, in 1981 $2.8 billion, in 1982 $3.1 billion, in 1983 $3.4 billion, $3.6 billion, $4.2 billion, $4.5 billion, $4.7 billion, $4.8 billion, and in 1989 $5.1 billion. Then as you add the Crown Corporations and all the rest of the debt and stack it right up with the unfunded liability where does it leave us? Two more billion heaped in on top of that. My God you wonder why this tiny little Province of 550,000 people have no elbow room, why this Government is in an economic straightjacket, because the eighteen years of neglect put us from $970 million to $5.6 billion in an unbelievable economic straightjacket. You wonder why we cannot move. Well, there is why we cannot move. The facts are very clear. What we see here correspondently are the unemployment rates. In 1966 through the Smallwood years right up until 1972 it went from 5.8 per cent, then it hovered it at 7 for awhile, then 8, then times got really tough and it was 9 per cent. Then Mr. Moores took over and we moved into the double digits. Now, that corresponds with the debt. As the debt swelled up so did the unemployment rate take off correspondingly higher. Mr. Moores 10 per cent, the next year 13 per cent, and the next year 14 per cent. Then he did something right, or he got lucky, it dropped to 13.3 per cent. Then it jumped to 15.5 per cent, then to 16 per cent. Then it dropped back to 15 per cent and he gave it to Mr. Peckford. Remember now, Mr. Moores gave us $2.3 billion from $970 million, and he passed it over at $2.3 billion to those Ministers, to the Member for Humber East who sat in that Cabinet at $2.3 billion and at an unemployment rate of 15 per cent. Then what did she do? She drove the unemployment rate, she did, her policies as a Minister at that table, she drove it to 16 per cent, 17 per cent, 18 per cent, 20 per cent.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Humber Valley.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WOODFORD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I would liked to have had a few comments on the Interim Supply Bill. My comments now are going to change somewhat, and I will be honest about that. I will make a few remarks about what the hon. Gentleman for St. Barbe just said.

Mr. Chairman, as the hon. gentleman said, he came into the House in 1985 when I did, and we were there for four years before the last election. Anybody sitting in this Chamber from 1985 to the Spring of 1989, who did not know what the provincial debt was, or knew what the debt was, and then went around the Province in the Spring of 1989, the Premier, the Opposition Leader at that time, and the candidates, all fifty-two candidates - I believe there were sixteen members sitting in the House of Assembly previous to the campaign of 1989 - if they could go around the Province and do up a policy manual such as this, knowing exactly what the debt of the Province was, right to the cent, because it was published in the estimates every year, and promise everybody the sky -

AN HON. MEMBER: Who did that?

MR. WOODFORD: I do not know who did it, but I can start counting the members on the other side, Mr. Chairman, who made some promises. I will just mention a few, because that is where a lot of it is coming from today, and they are: The opening of hospital beds around the Province; the increase in funding to education; building universities in Central Newfoundland and elsewhere; increasing other subjects and courses and everything else around the Province; and the doing away or the reformation of the school tax system. Those are just four of the promises. A lot of those members knew exactly what the debt was in 1989. The Premier, above all, the Leader of the Party, definitely knew in 1989, and he also knew how much Sprung cost and all the rest of it. They also knew that.

Mr. Chairman, having said all that, and realizing that they did know what they were talking about, and, at the same time, two and a half years after - this is the third budget - so, for all intents and purposes, there is probably only one more before an election, if that. What have they done? Now, they say it is because of the debt, the $568 million we are projected to pay this year on the debt. We cannot do anything. Only for the Feds, they would do nothing. Forty-four per cent of the income to this Province last year came from the Federal Government. You better not get up and start lambasting the Feds. You better thank them, because, if not for them, you would have been thrown out of office by now, you would not have to wait until the next election, based on that kind of a record.

They promised the people of the Province everything, the sky, and today they got the cellar, they got nothing, they are down, they cannot even see the light of day.

AN HON. MEMBER: That is because (inaudible).

MR. WOODFORD: Well, I am just getting to that point now. We are here less than two years so far. Just imagine being here for seventeen and looking at and seeing and watching what we are seeing here today, and then after seventeen years all of a sudden we are catapulted into the power, into the Chamber, and we have to say, we have the reins of power, we have the cheque book, and all of a sudden we elect thirty-one Members, good competent people, elected by the people of the Province, and we say hold on now, we are seventeen years boys I am sorry but we are not ready. We just cannot do it. We will go to the university and we will pick out Mr. Howse and we will pick out a few more and we will put them up front. We will give them one of the biggest budgets probably than in any department in the Province, we will take them and send them here and send them there, and ww will give them control, we will give them a bank, almost as good or better than if you were in Cabinet and got the whole rein, the whole jurisdiction, and the whole, like I said, the cheque book of the whole Province and the Federal Government.

So, after seventeen years you would think you would have some ideas. Wouldn't you think you would have a nice plan in place and be able to know where to go and on the right path and so on, and where to spend it and how to spent it, how to get us out of debt. But not so, after seventeen years in Opposition, two years in Government, the third Budget, and I have never seen an Administration so bankrupt of ideas in all my life. I have never seen it because sometimes you talk about a bureaucrat or a civil servant or banker or someone like that, you walk into his office, and I have often heard it said and I am sure Members on both side of the House have heard it said that by the time you explain to him what you want to do, and he gives his ideas back, your idea is bankrupt. It is gone. Now that is exactly what I see here.

If after two years, the third Budget, they have to come up and after seventeen years in Opposition the only thing they can come up with is say: because of our Provincial debt, because we are $200 million in the hole on current account, because the Feds are taking a bit of EPF and something else, we are not getting enough money. Then all of a sudden, they do not start at the bottom, they start at the top, health and education are two motherhood issues in this Province and any country, and so-called, as my colleagues says, sacred cows when it comes to any budget. But to have it to say that we are willing to start and take the bull by the horns and do what should have been done years ago, to me is only a cop-out.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WOODFORD: Yes, now that is probably hard to do, I agree, but as far as I am concerned you should not start with health and education and more specifically health.

Now, Mr. Chairman, while I am on the health budget I would like to make a few comments, I have said it before here but I have to say it again, and I have to say without going any further that the two hon. gentlemen today, especially the hon. gentleman for Trinity - Bay de Verde, he is in the Chair tonight, I have to commend the gentleman because it is not easy to get up in this House, on either side, and criticize or speak on behalf of your constituents, now, for want of a better word to stand up for your constituents and show the people who elected you that you are doing just that, speaking on behalf of your constituents. For want of a better word stand up for your constituents and show the people who elected you that you are doing just that, you are standing up and you are going to be counted, especially on the Government side, get up and say those things. I have to commend him on a job well done, and regardless of the outcome he will never lose by telling the truth, by standing up to be counted, nobody ever did yet. There are other gentlemen opposite who wavered and went from side to side, who stood in the middle and bowed, but the man who stands up and is counted is the fellow who is going to come out the winner. He will be re-elected, too, that is right. He may not be for the Liberals because he may be over here by then, but still he will be elected.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time is up.

MR. PENNEY: Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Member for Lewisporte.

MR. PENNEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to take just a few minutes to speak in this debate. I would first of all like to address a couple of comments to my good friend the hon. Member for Mount Pearl. This is the Member who suggested he may be running in the Lewisporte district next time. Well, I welcome that. I have no problem with that whatsoever. One of the things my hon. friend said when he spoke in the House a few days ago was that one of the areas that created my visibility and my popularity in my district was the stand I had taken against the spray program. I would like to repeat what some of the hon. Members on the other side have reminded some of us of.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible)

MR. PENNEY: We are in Interim Supply. You can get up and speak. To go back to what I was saying, he says that I criticized the spray program, and because I opposed the spray program I gained some popularity in my district which was responsible for my win at the polls.

AN HON. MEMBER: The spray program?

MR. PENNEY: I am only repeating what the hon. gentleman said, that I applauded the Minister of Forestry and Agriculture when he made his announcement about the spray program. I do not know where hon. gentlemen have been, but the stand that I took was against one single item called fenitrothion.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible)

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. Members, my apologies, I took a position against the use of fenitrothion because there was an alternative that I considered to be better. It was the spray of a chemical called the bacillus thuringiensis. Now that was sprayed as well. I would like to remind hon. Members that we have not used fenitrothion since we won the election.

Let us stick to the topic though for a second. Let us speak about the Budget. The same hon. gentlemen suggested that all you have to do is go around this Province and you understand exactly what people think about our Government and exactly what people think about the Budget. He suggested that the comments he is getting across this Province are negative. He is suggesting as well that when he was out in my district, Lewisporte, all the comments he heard were negative. He did not hear a positive word about the Budget, the Government, or the Members. Well, let me remind him of what the President of the Chamber of Commerce said.

AN HON. MEMBER: Where?

MR. PENNEY: In Lewisporte.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who is it!

MR. PENNEY: A gentleman by the name of Bob Wilton. Anybody in that Party over there should be familiar with him, I would think. 'The Finance Minister Hubert Kitchen's Budget is a good one which addresses the needs of the Province,' according to Lewisporte area Chamber of Commerce President Bob Wilton. In general I like the Budget, he said. We cannot keep spending. The Government could not keep running up a deficit, and was in a position whereby it could not borrow any more, without having its bond rating reduced." He said, "The only solution is to cut spending." "Layoffs in the public service were needed, Wilton said, "because their numbers were out of control and their productivity much below that of a worker in private enterprise."

If hon. members opposite think that those kind of comments are coming only from the Lewisporte district, let me remind you what another gentleman said in The Evening Telegram.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who was that?

MR. PENNEY: Mr. Peter Boswell. "Although he is not a charismatic or common touch politician, he starts, "he seems to take positions which are supported by the majority of Newfoundlanders. In addition he demonstrates a democratic belief in the wisdom of a people, a belief that people can, in fact, understand and will support difficult decisions, and I believe he is absolutely correct."

As I go throughout my district, I hear people say to me: We have been living beyond our means for years. They say to me: Look, the budget was a very severe budget. We do not like it, but we understand that the Government had no choice. We understand that after seventeen years of continuous spending and continued borrowing, with no concern for the public debt, we understand that you had no choice. They also say: It is about time that we have a Government in there that had the courage to do it.

One of my hon. colleagues here in the House suggested that what we had been doing for seventeen years was similiar to running a cadillac on a volkswagon budget. I think that is a sound analogy. We have traded in our cadillac, Mr. Chairman, for a vehicle that we can afford to operate. Maybe if we had done it a few years before, we could have settled for something now a little bit better than a volkswagon. Unfortunately, we have been placed in a position where we had no choice.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

AN HON. MEMBER: What about this budget?

MR. PENNEY: Let me quote a few examples of what has been happening, Mr. Chairman.

Just in education: We have the most expensive education per capita of any Province in this country, the most expensive in this country. We have the lowest teacher - pupil ratio of any Province.

MS. VERGE: That is not true.

MR. PENNEY: That is true, I would remind the hon. member.

In 1971, there were 162,000 students. Since then, the number of students has dropped by 35,000, but the number of teachers has increased by 16,000.

AN HON. MEMBER: Sixteen thousand?

MS. VERGE: Was that under the PCs?

MR. PENNEY: I am sorry, that is 1600. The number of students has dropped by 35,000, but the teachers have increased by 1600. That is since 1972.

MS. VERGE: Who was the Minister, while all that happened?

MR. PENNEY: I wonder what party came to power in 1972. I wonder.

Mr. Chairman, from 1984 to 1987, in three years, we saw the population of this Province drop by 4,000, but we saw the public service increase by 10,000. Now, I do not know what kind of economic logic that is. Our population dropped by 4,000 and the public service grew by 10,000. They are asking: Well, why did you run up this tremendous debt? That is an example of why we ran up the tremendous debt. All of this, Mr. Chairman, at a time when our provincial debt was somewhere in the area of $5 billion and rising annually.

My hon. colleague the Minister of Development quoted some figures for the House a few minutes ago, but let me put them in perspective. From 1972 until 1976, that is the first five years after the Tories came to power, the debt increased by 17.9 per cent per year, an average of 17.9 per cent. Let me remind you as well, that in the first three budgets that this Government has brought down, that is the 1989 Budget, 1990 Budget, and the 1991 Budget, there has been an increase of an average of 3.2 per cent per year as compared to 17.9 per cent. Let me remind you as well that in 1989, there was not an increase, there was actually a drop of .4 per cent, that is the first time there was a drop since 1962. Hon. Members do not like to hear those kinds of figures, well I can appreciate that and I can understand why.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time has elapsed.

The hon. the Member for Torngat Mountains.

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

I would like to say a few also in this debate because I think it is a debate where once in a while you can get a Minister on his feet and go through a litany of some of the things which have happened over the last seventeen years.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to have a few words to say about the Department of Fisheries. Mr. Chairman, I am sure my hon. colleague the Minister of Fisheries will remember only about four or four and one half years or probably five years ago there was a resolution brought into the House about the seal fishery, brought in by the Member for Torngat Mountains about the seal fishery. Actually, it was calling upon this Government, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, all politicians, to put aside their political differences, to call upon the Federal Government to have a seal cull, because the seals were a major factor in destroying our cod fishery.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I opened debate on that particular resolution and the person who followed me was the Member for Twillingate who was the fisheries critic at the time, who now is the Fisheries Minister. Now, Mr. Chairman, it is only during the last few days I had the opportunity to go through what the Minister of Fisheries said roughly five years ago.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WARREN: Now, Mr. Chairman, the Minister will have the opportunity within the next eight or nine minutes to get up and either agree or disagree with what I am going to say.

Mr. Chairman, I do not want to be distracted by a few rabbit tracks from the back benches down there because you will remember the hon. Member for Eagle River was the first that had been shouting and was going up to Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick and asking support for the fish to stay in Labrador and at the same time 10 million pounds left Labrador because of the Minister of Fisheries. I mean this was the same person who was saying this. Mr. Chairman, I have to say this and I do not want to be distracted because I am on to the seal fishery and maybe my hon. colleague from Eagle River does not care about the seal fishery. Maybe that is why he is trying to upset or trying to distract what I am trying to say concerning the seal fishery. But I say to my hon. colleague that the people in Charlottetown, Cartwright, Mary's Harbour, William's Harbour and St. Lewis are as concerned about the seals that are eating their codfish as well as I am. Maybe the Member does not realize that, maybe the Member does not realize that, but I assure him that the Ford Rumbolt's, and the Sandy Campbell's, and the Max Pardy's and all those people are concerned about the seal fishery. So I say to my hon. colleague be quiet for a few more minutes and relax because they were expecting you to be up to the CRTC hearings, but you were told not to go because your Minister said we are not going to object - because your Premier said we are not going to object. So that is why you did not go. The reason you did not go is because your Premier and your Minister was not going to object against CBC cutbacks. That is why you were not allowed to go up to Ottawa and appear before the CRTC, because your Premier said a few months ago that we are not going to object against any CBC cutbacks. Your Minister said today we are talking to Mr. Byrd with CBC.

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes.

MR. WARREN: That is what your Minister said today: we are having discussiona with Mr. Byrd of CBC. Now Mr. Byrd is like a needle in a haystack as it compares to CBC across Canada. That is how much influence Mr. Byrd has. Now, Mr. Chairman, let me get back to the real meat of my few remarks.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WARREN: One thing about it, Mr. Chairman, I must say that when I did meet with Miss McDougall at least I got more satisfaction from the Minister of Employment and Immigration than the hon. gentlemen got meeting with three Premiers in the Maritime Provinces. Mr. Chairman, I was wondering why our Premier was not invited to the Maritime Provinces conference, because the Member for Eagle River told them not to invite him.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WARREN: He pre-empted the Premier from going up to the meeting. Now, Mr. Chairman, three or four minutes of my time is gone just because of the interruptions by my colleague from Eagle River. I want to get back to the Minister of Fisheries, and here are some of the comments that the Minister of Fisheries made in response to the resolution: Why does not a Member - the Minister of Fisheries was referring to me -why does not a Member get after his Minister of Fisheries, who was the hon. Tom Rideout at the time, and make sure there is a seal cull in this Province. We cannot put up with anything less. And all the Minister has to do is go back and get a copy of Hansard. He said: we cannot go around playing games, and all the hon. colleague is doing is playing games. Now, I would say to the Minister of Fisheries, why hasn't he returned phone calls to individuals who are after or want to prosecute the seal fishery offshore? Why hasn't the Minister responded to those people who want to prosecute the seal fishery outside of the fifty mile limit.

AN HON. MEMBER: Are you in favour of that?

MR. WARREN: I am in favour of killing every seal that is out there. I am in favour of killing every seal that is out there to save our cod fishery!

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WARREN: Yes, Mr. Chairman, every single one. And I say to my colleague for Carbonear that all of his people who go down on the Labrador Coast, it is only just a few more years unless we kill those seals that they will not go down there because there will be no cod fish, because of the seal population.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WARREN: I say to my colleagues that I am in favour of the inshore seal hunt and also the offshore seal hunt. We should go back to the harvest of the adult seals. Now, I do not agree with killing the Whitecoats, but I do agree with the killing of mature seals, and we have to do it sooner or later. I say to my colleague for Eagle River, whether he agrees with this or not, that unless he can stand up and say that he is going to support the seal harvest, offshore and inshore -

MR. DUMARESQUE: (Inaudible)

MR. WOODFORD: You do not support it? You do not support the offshore seal fishery. Okay. Well, I will assure those individuals tomorrow that the Member for Labrador does not support the offshore seal fishery.

MR. DUMARESQUE: I have no problem with that.

MR. WOODFORD: Well, that is fine and dandy, Mr. Chairman. I have no problem with supporting them either. I have no problem with supporting the inshore fishery. I say to the Minister of Fisheries at the same time, who now owns the two fish plants in Makkovik and Nain, who said when we were Government, why can you not take the seals into those two fish plants? Now, he has the opportunity and he will not do it, Mr. Chairman. In fact I have to address my concerns to my colleague in Eagle River because apparently he just does not understand what is going on in his district. He does not realize that the downfall of the cod fishery in his district is because of the abundance of seals. It is one of the main causes, and that is why this year coming up many of the people of my friend for Carbonear may not be able to go up north this year because of a shortage of cod. There are two reasons why there may not be cod, number one, because of the seal population, and secondly, because my hon. colleague for Eagle River allowed the Minister of Fisheries, last year, to give a permit to other buyers to take 10 million tons of fish from the Labrador Coast.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time is up.

The hon. the Member for Eagle River.

MR. DUMARESQUE: I cannot help, Mr. Chairman, but rise in response to the ravings of the Member for Torngat Mountains. As usual his logic is spellbounding. As usual he is declaring war on something or other, and now he wants to kill every living seal that is out in the ocean. It is like wanting to kill every fly that is in the world, Mr. Chairman.

I want to just take a few minutes to talk about the sealing industry, exactly how it is evolving, and why I believe some of the things I do about how it should be planned in the future. One of the concerns I have, and I indicated to the hon. Member, is to resurrect the offshore sealing fishing is like seeking an over supply in the present market and thereby driving down the present price which is even at the present time very much too low for an economic harvest of the sealing industry. The primary focus, in my opinion, of the sealing industry should be on the small boat fishermen, particularly those in Bonavista, Conception Bay, north eastern Newfoundland, and the coast of Labrador, because it is those people who need that extra income, that extra bit of income that would come from being able to go out and harvest their fifteen, twenty or thirty seals whenever they can. They need to be able to augment their income by that extra $300 or $2,000 or whatever they make. As the hon. Member realizes or should realize at this point in time we have a market now of some 85,000 seals split up between 50,000 for Carino and 35,000 for the Sealer's Association in Bay Verte.

So, Mr. Chairman, if we go out there now and say that we are going to send out five offshore boats that have the capacity to bring in 10,000 seals all you are going to do is come in and take those seals, land them onto the market and automatically the market is gone for the people who really need it the most, and that is the small boat fishermen of northeastern Newfoundland and along the coast of Labrador. Mr. Chairman, for the Member for Torngat Mountains to be advocating the offshore seal hunt is actually driving the nail in the proverbial coffin for people on the coast of Labrador because in northern Labrador they would be the last to receive the benefit from this, they would be the last to be able to deliver their skins to the market, they would be the last to be able to get the revenue back from this particular hunt in this Province. For a Member to stand up here and declare war on every seal just for the sake of doing so without any kind of logic behind it, without putting his people first, I might add, is certainly, I think, being very irresponsible in the execution of his duties as a Member for Torngat Mountains.

Mr. Chairman, there is absolutely no doubt that the future of the sealing industry is looking good. I would not say that at some point in time it could be brought into the offshore hunt, there could be bigger boats brought in as we go about developing our market. If we can get next year 200,000 pelts then we may be able to look at taking two or three boats from here and be able to send them out.

Mr. Chairman, that is the kind of planning, the kind of substantial development, the kind of concrete strategic planning that pervades the previous Minister of Northern Affairs. That is the kind of thinking that could not be there when he went out and built the $120,000 marble bathroom. If he had seen a little bit further ahead he would have known there was going to be a real flush then on April 20 and he would have known that he was going to be gone out of Confederation Building. That is the kind of strategic planning that you have to put into these kinds of things, Mr. Speaker. So, I would say, do not plunge yourself into the battle that you cannot win or indeed put yourself or your people out in front when they are going to be the first to be slaughtered.

Mr. Chairman, I only have to put this on the public record for the people of Labrador, whom we always put first, and I am sure they will put us first when it comes back to the time for the polls again.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to touch on the other issue that the hon. Member raised about going up to the CRTC hearings. I remember the last frequent flyer that went out of here last year when he had five Cabinet Ministers lined up: Well, glad to meet you, Mr. Member for Torngat Mountains, sit down, sit down, have a good meal with us, Mr. Valcourt said and Mr. Crosbie said, and all these people. This is what he was telling the press obviously before he went up there. He never got outside the airport before they said: Get back where you came from, we do not want to see you up here. Who do you think you are up here telling us big PC Members of the Government that we are going to do something for the Member for Torngat Mountains. I mean he was unceremoniously put back onto the plane and told to get back to Newfoundland and Labrador and let us not hear any more rhetoric out of the hon. Member. Nothing different happened this time, Mr. Chairman. He went up with grandiose plans of meeting Mr. Masse and probably trying some of the speckled trout that Mr. Masse catches in Labrador but there was no way he could get inside the door, Mr. Chairman. While he was up there what was I doing here? Was I was idly sitting by and saying to the people of Labrador there was no way we could get anything from the CRTC.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. Member for Torngat Mountains on a point of order.

MR. WARREN: Mr. Chairman, I need to correct my colleague. I think he is probably taking something out of context. I understood, now, I may need to be corrected, too, but I understood that the purpose I went to Ottawa, and the same reason that my colleague for Menihek went to Ottawa, and my colleague for Humber East went to Ottawa, was to appear before the CRTC. I understand that was why, Mr. Chairman, that was the sole purpose for going up. I do not know if Mr. Masse was on that board or not. I do not think he was. That was the only reason why we went up there. If the hon. gentleman understood that I went up to see Mr. Masse then maybe he must have Masse for brains.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

There is no point of order.

The hon. the Member for Eagle River.

MR. DUMARESQUE: That is not even a point for kindergarten, Mr. Chairman. I know when a Member usually goes to Ottawa they usually meet the respective Minister of the Department, and being the CBC controller, in this case Mr. Masse, that is usually the way it operates, so I assumed that would be the order of the day on this occasion. Certainly, Mr. Chairman, it is always sad to see somebody so unceremoniously dropped down, told to get back to Newfoundland, and told they did not want to see that kind of rhetoric up there. What I was doing here in Newfoundland, and in Labrador, was taking Marine Atlantic to task because of what they are going to do to the people of Torngat Mountains by driving the freight rates up 60 per cent. That is the bread and butter issue, Mr. Chairman, and not the hairy, fairy things that the Member over there was so involved with that he needed to take up half the Tory Caucus. We did not mind because we had the Member of Parliament for Labrador speaking up loud and clear for the people of Labrador.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DUMARESQUE: There was absolutely no doubt about where we were coming from, or where we are going to be going on this particular issue. I would say that come Wednesday I hope he will be able to stand up and do what I have been doing all this time, standing up for the bread and butter issues, and standing up for the people of Torngat Mountains who are calling me and saying they cannot remember where their Member was, they cannot remember seeing him for so many months now. They are calling me with their particular problems. I think the Member should start looking at his own back yard and spending more time with the people who elected him instead of running off doing these kind of exercises, when they are very much in the hand of Mr. Brian Tobin and Mr. Bill Rompkey, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

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

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a few comments on this motion before the House in Interim Supply. I made a speech the other day where I referred to this Government as having all the trappings of not Louis XV1 but of Oliver Cromwell, and I made a mistake when I said it was the 16th century, it was not the 16th century it was the 17th century, and looking through Hansard I noticed that the hon. Member for Port au Port at that time said that Members on the other side of the House did not know who Oliver Cromwell was, so I though I would enlighten them a little bit because some of the things I found out seem to be rather significant when one looks at the caucus on the other side of the House, and indeed the Premier.

Mr. Oliver Cromwell was an Englishman who was born in 1599, so when he was first elected to parliament in 1628, he was twenty-nine years old, he only sat for a couple of years and then he went back to his other occupation much like our current Premier. He went back to his occupation for fourteen or fifteen years. Mr. Oliver Cromwell was a farmer and then he got involved during the civil war in England in the 1640's, he got involved in the establishment of what - he fought in the new model army, he had a group called the Ironsides, and they combined rigid discipline with strict morality and organized enthusiasm, organized enthusiasm, Mr. Chairman, like we see from that side of the House there, organized enthusiasm for policies that the people do not want and do not support.

AN HON. MEMBER: He had a wart on his nose.

MR. HARRIS: He had a wart on his nose, yes, and he insisted that he be painted with it on his nose.

The essence of his fighting ability was involved with the New Model Army which had a single command, a corporate unity, again, Mr. Chairman, reminiscent of this Government, without regard to the local interests of people. Oliver Cromwell went on and fought in the civil war. He managed to suppress Ireland and Scotland, slaughtering people as he went. He eventually saw to the execution of the king. He became so well loved by the people that they made him Lord Protector. Then, as Lord Protector of all of England, Scotland, and Ireland, which he now dominated, he did, indeed, have a Parliament, but they were Parliaments of his own choosing, Mr. Chairman.

The first Parliament, in 1653, was called the Bare Bones Parliament, or known as the Parliament of Saints, much like our friends over here, who claim to be saintly and sanctimonious when they speak.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HARRIS: They claim to be saintly and sanctimonious when they speak about what they have to do about the Budget and what they have to do about schools and hospitals, and what they cannot do for this, in the days of wine and roses, being over there. I see the member for St. John's South.

He had that Parliament, but it did not last very long. This source says: It was ridiculous from its birth, and it departed unhonoured and without regret. That was the Parliament of Saints, Mr. Chairman.

He had another Parliament in 1654. He liked them. In addressing the Parliament of 1654, Oliver had claimed that the sheriffs, the justices of the peace and other local offices, had accepted his authority, and that the judges had taken new commissions from his hands. He was not very happy with that Parliament either, so that Parliament disappeared, and a new Parliament, in 1655, was not so popular with him. He says, now the lawyers and the judges began to show scruples. There were resignations and resistance, more accommodating judges were found, and inconvenient councils were punished.

Here is a quote from Oliver Cromwell. He says, "I am as much for Government by consent, as any man, but where shall we find that consent?" Failing consent, what remedy did he have but force. So then he took over the Parliament by force, Mr. Chairman, and he saw to it that they would do what they were told.

I say to the members over there, especially those in the back benches - I know those on the front benches are part of the chorus of the organized enthusiasm, but the back benches do not have to be so organized in their enthusiasm. We see a few ripples here and there. We see a few of them with enough courage to stand up and present petitions from their constituents, like the Member for Trinity - Bay de Verde did today. I ask the rest of you, where are your scruples?

AN HON. MEMBER: Rubles. Rubles.

MR. HARRIS: Now we know, Mr. Chairman, they are more interested in rubles than scruples.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HARRIS: The Minister of Environment says that he has a few extra scruples that he does not need. Yes, I am sure you do not need them with that crowd. I think what the Minister needs is more scruples than he has. In those days, Mr. Chairman, we had the Cavaliers and the Roundheads.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) Roundheads.

MR. HARRIS: We have a few Roundheads over there, Mr. Chairman, the hon. Member for LaPoile earlier today was lamenting the fact there were too many hairdressers being produced in the community colleges. I suggested to the Minister of Education that he was not doing much for the profession in this Province.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HARRIS: I would suggest, Mr. Chairman, that the head of the Minister of Education is certainly not a make-work project for hairdressers in this Province.

But I do not want to give total levity to the seriousness of the debate before the House, Mr. Chairman. We do have before us the issue of interim supply and $1 billion of money for the people of Newfoundland to spend for the services they expect and for the services they need. Instead of taking their responsibilities seriously to provide those services, we see a level of sanctimonious not seen since the time of Oliver Cromwell. We see that sanctimoniousness in the speeches of the Ministers getting up and saying we had no choice and we had to cut back on hospitals. In fact, they do not even say they are cutting back on hospitals. We have the Minister of Health sitting in his chair in the House standing and saying we are not cutting back on health care, we are improving health care. We have the Minister of Education saying the same thing. When we know, Mr. Chairman, that the university is being driven to the point that one of its greatest institutions, one of its greatest success stories is being destroyed. Not only that but we find out in the last couple of days that one of the great and fundamental principles of university education in this Province, the former Leader of that Party, the former Premier of this Province, Mr. Chairman, would be appalled to hear what he heard today from the Minister of Education.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who?

MR. HARRIS: Joey Smallwood was the man who said that any student in Newfoundland who had the brains to attend university would not be denied a place for lack of space. A great principle, Mr. Chairman, that the Minister of Education today in the House did not have the courage to defend. He was prepared to come to this House and say: Well, Dr. May will have to do what he has to do. That is what he says. The Pontius Pilate of education in this Province is washing his hands of the great principles of support for education by suggesting this is not the affair of this Government, this is whatever the Board of Regents or whatever Dr. May wants to do, they will do. That is what he said in this House today. That, Mr. Chairman, is the end of any respect that the people of Newfoundland can have for this Government because they are not prepared to stand up and fight for what the people of this Province want and believe in. They are not prepared to stand up and fight here in the House, they will not stand up and fight with Dr. May, and they will not stand up and fight with Brian Mulroney. They will not even stand up and fight with Jean Chretien and the leaders of the Liberal Party in Ottawa. They will not get them to do anything. They will not fight on behalf of the people of this Province. They stand up in this House and say: Well, we are doing our best. We do not have any money. They will blame it on this crowd over here. Sure, they deserve blame.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: What? What?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time has elapsed.

The hon. the Member for Grand Bank.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. SIMMS: Tell us about Cromwell.

AN HON. MEMBER: Karl Marx.

MR. MATTHEWS: Karl Marx! No, I am going to leave history to my colleague from St. John's East, about Oliver Cromwell, Pontius Pilate and all those. I was more interested in hearing the member talk about Clyde Cromwell, but he never quite got into that. I know what he was doing, he was drawing a comparison between Oliver and Clyde Cromwell. I think, to a degree, he summed it up very well. He summed it up, very, very well.

Having said that, Mr. Chairman, I want to have a few words on this $1 billion interim supply request that we have before the Legislature, to talk about some matters that I consider to be important and pertinent for the people of the Province. We have heard, over the last two weeks, the effects and impacts of the budget cuts on education and health in the Province. I am glad that the Minister of Health is here, but the problem we have with the Minister of Health is he never listens. He never listens to questions that are asked, and he never responds in - I suppose, to say, in an honest fashion, would probably touch on unparliamentary.

There is one thing that really bothers me about the cuts to health care and the layoff of the 300 or so nurses that we are going to see. I have heard reports from nurses, particularly here in the St. John's area, who work in the operating room areas, the intensive care unit areas, that they get called back for a lot of overtime now. They get called back for, and have to put in, a lot of overtime. With 300 nurses coming out of the system, and with more pressure now being applied to St. John's Hospitals and the larger regional hospitals, it would seem to me that with 300 nurses less, those nurses that will be left in the system will be subjected to a lot more overtime in our health care system. I would like for the Minister of Health and the President of Treasury Board to, perhaps, respond to that concern sometime, when they speak in the Legislature.

There have been a couple of other points tonight that have been of some interest to me. I do not know how we got involved in the seal industry debate. I think my colleague from Torngat Mountains started that, enticed the Member for Eagle River, and the Member for St. John's South got into the fray as well. I think it is a topic worth debating and talking about in this Legislature. There is right now, as the Member for St. John's South said, a lobby or some kind of a move afoot to get larger boats to go further offshore to harvest seals. I suppose, while we can all agree with that particular aim and objective, there are some very serious implications, or there could be, for our fishing industry. That is what bothers me most, I guess, about the debate with the seal harvesting industry. We all agree that there are too many seals off our shores, eating too much fish. I think we would all concur that there should be some kind of a cull on the seat herds, to diminish the numbers. But the biggest problem we have is, by going about that or putting in place some kind of harvest, what do we really do to our fishing industry. I think that is the biggest concern of all.

I think it is worth noting that if you look at major fish companies they are really walking sort of a fine line on the effects seals are having on our fish products. You do not hear them say too much about the need for the harvest of our seals, and that is for a very good reason because they do not want their markets affected. I think we have to be very, very concerned and very, very cautious about what we say and about how we go about the harvesting of seals. While we all realize there are too many, and while we all agree there should be a harvest and more seals harvested, we have to look at the final result, and if that is going to be that we are going to start up the protest movement again then it is very, very dangerous. I say to Members in this Chamber who have an interest in the fishery that we have to be very, very careful. The Member for Torngat Mountains said he would like to go out and make away with all the seals that are off our shores. I am sure a lot of us are not that extreme about it but we certainly would like to see something done, but we have to be careful that we do not further damage our fishing industry in the things that we advocate and the recommendations that we make.

Having a couple of deep-sea plants in my district, as of the moment, in Fortune and in Grand Bank, I have seen firsthand the implications that the parasites in the fish have. I know that both plants, since January, have had to hire on several more workers to deworm fish and that has driven their production cost up significantly. I think what the companies are saying to us is that they are willing to tolerate that extra production cost because to take action to further reduce the seal population might be very, very, detrimental to their marketplace, and, of course, without a good marketplace they cannot survive. I think what they are saying to us all, as concerned as everyone is about the seal problem, is that they are willing to accept the additional production costs because they are really scared of the impact on the markets if we get into a full fledged seal harvesting industry again.

Mr. Chairman, I have to comment on another remark made by the Member for St. John's East.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible)

MR. MATTHEWS: No, pertaining to the university and the comments made today, as I understand it, by Dr. May. If the current Budget trend continues then most likely we will see a cap on enrolment at the university, probably starting next year. I found that very, very troublesome, and bothersome as well. Of course what the budgetary decisions will be in next year's Budget, I guess, is anyone's guess, but with a Government that is looking at an in excess of $54 million projected deficit as of March 7 in this fiscal year, with the economic situation, more than likely, going to further erode in the Province, I suppose it is fair to say we could be looking at a deficit of in excess of $100 million by the end of March 31, 1992.

MR. SIMMS: They are not listening.

MR. MATTHEWS: There is no one listening as a matter of fact. It makes you wonder why you even stand here to talk.

MR. SIMMS: We are listening.

MR. MATTHEWS: My point being, if the economic and financial position of the Province worsens within the next twelve months and we see the Government having to take more drastic measures and measures that were similar to what we saw March 7 then I think it is a real possibility that if the university budget is further restricted we will see enrolment at the university controlled or capped, and I think that will be a very, very sad day for Newfoundland and Labrador if we ever see that happen, and I think it is incumbent on the Minister of Education and the Minister of Finance particularly, two people who came out of the university, academics -

AN HON. MEMBER: Maybe they should have stayed academic too.

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, maybe they should, but they are not any more and I am sure they never will be again. I am sure they will never be considered academics again.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

 

MR. MATTHEWS: Yes, exactly. So, I mean that tells you how plentiful they are. I understand that some of the skippers, I believe one from - the Member for Burin - Placentia West was to take down a video camera and so on and was going to take some pictures and bring them back to show just how plentiful they are. But I got sidetracked on the seals, so the other two (inaudible).

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time has elapsed.

MR. MATTHEWS: The Government seals, Mr. Chairman, the two Government seals I was talking about: the Minister of Education and the Minister of Finance.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: No, I have leave. They gave me leave.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Does the hon. Member have leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes.

MR. MATTHEWS: So what I was saying, Mr. Chairman -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: I did not say anything about the President of Treasury Board. What I said earlier - I did not say anything about the President of Treasury Board, what I said was I would hope that the President of Treasury Board and the Minister of Health would listen to some reason?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: Oh, I do not know. You will have to ask them that. But what I was saying is the Minister of Health - and I will repeat it again - since I got the Minister of Health's attention, let me just run this by him once again. The Minister of Health -

AN HON. MEMBER: Dr. Noel.

MR. MATTHEWS: The Minister of Health.

AN HON. MEMBER: Dr. Dagger.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: The Minister of Health, there are 300 nurses coming out of the health care system - 300 nurses. That is what you have announced.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: Oh, I do not know where I got it. I believe it was in that red document that the Minister of Finance read. But my point to the Minister is this, that some friends of mine in the nursing profession tell me that they are called back for considerable periods of time for overtime, particularly those working in the emergency end of places such as the Health Sciences where there are intensive care units, that they are called back for a considerable amount of overtime at present before the 300 nurses are laid off.

AN HON. MEMBER: Before the 300 -

MR. MATTHEWS: Before the 300 are laid off. My point to the Minister is that with 300 coming out those left in, particularly in those areas of the hospitals where there is going to be more pressure subjected now with the close down of the rural hospitals and they are going to be referred to the regional health care centres, that those nurses, it seems logical, will have to be called back for even more overtime. There are two points here, one is the additional cost: are you really going to save anything by laying off 300 nurses in light of nurses in the system getting more overtime; and the other point is the safety aspect of nurses who work particularly in intensive care units, operating rooms and so on, who have to be on duty for extraordinary lengths of time.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: It is like the Minister of Health said about the Budget and the 300 nurses, he does not know where I got that. But I have to say to the Minister of Health, I certainly do not know where he got what he is talking about.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: Mr. Chairman, the Minister of Health does not take his responsibilities very seriously, and he is obviously not going to answer the question so I will leave him alone. It is too bad, Mr. Chairman, the Minister of Social Services is not here tonight, because I wanted to talk particularly about the community development program and the cuts we have seen there and what that is going to mean again for hundreds of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians out and about the Province.

I look at my own area in my own District, last year there was considerably less money in the community development fund and people found it very, very hard to get enough work to qualify for unemployment insurance benefits for the winter months. Now, with $6 million less this year in the community development project fund, I think this will probably mean there will be 2,000 less people that will be able to be accommodated under the community development project. Now, the Minister of Health finds that very, very funny. He finds everything funny these days. He finds it funny that there will be 2,000 less Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, who will not be able to be assisted and accommodated under their social services community development fund. He finds it very funny and amusing that there will be about 3,500 people laid off from the public service of this Province. He finds it ironic. Yes, I tell the Minister of Health, I find it ironic as well. I find it very ironic that he sits as the Minister of Health for this Government and has taken the decisions that he has as Minister of Health, some people here tonight refer to some of the statements that he made when he was health critic in the Opposition. He was roasted on the radio again today. Roasted day in, day out, but you know something about this Minister of Health, he does not hear one concern. Not one concern registered with the Minister of Health.

There is only person over there who shows concern. He really shows concern and the only time he shows concern is when there are hundreds or thousands of people coming into Confederation Building, it is the Premier of the Province.

MR. SIMMS: The Premier shows concern?

MR. MATTHEWS: He gets very concerned when he hears tell there is a demonstration. Not that he really cares, oh, no. But the Premier has not been the same since the group from Grand Bank came and backed him in by the elevator door and big Jack Cumben with his Russian cap on pointed his finger at him, he has not recovered from it. As a matter of fact, he has not faced one demonstration since. He ran away from the students, he ran away from Placentia, he ran away from Bay Verte, -

AN HON. MEMBER: Ran away from Grand Falls.

MR. MATTHEWS: No, I would not say he ran away from Grand Falls because if he is sick the man is not well, that is fair game. At least there is one thing I found out tonight thanks to the President of Treasury Board, that the Premier is human enough that he catches the flu like the rest of us.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: No. He does. So the first Minister is the only Minister over there who takes notice of what people say and what people do. The rest of them slough it off so lightly, like the Minister of Health jokes about 300 nurses being laid off. He jokes about 3,500 public servants being laid off.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: Sorry, the old Katharine is over there now withdrawing leave, the old Katharine is taking back leave on me now. He is very, very quiet as of late and I respect that. I know why he is quiet, he does not have very much to be loud about. But he should get up and stand up for his constituents.

Mr. Chairman, the Member for Mount Scio - Bell Island is now withdrawing leave. Yesterday, or the day before, I heard him on the radio telling this crowd they had two choices, they could either stay at the Torbay recreation centre overnight for a modest fee, or they could take a very expensive helicopter flight.

AN HON. MEMBER: It is $30.00 per person.

MR. MATTHEWS: I do not know if he did set the fee. I did not hear him say anything about him soon having a second ferry for them, or anything like that. I did not hear him say that.

MR. SIMMS: He is a bitter man now.

MR. MATTHEWS: He is upset now. There are a lot of upset people over there.

MS. VERGE: What about the community college campus?

MR. MATTHEWS: The list is out as to what is going to happen in next year's Budget with the campuses of the community colleges. Some of the very same Members over there now who are upset with what is happening to hospitals are going to get the double whammy next year. The hospitals are gone and next year there are strong indications that they are going to lose their campuses. Now, can you imagine next year in this great Province of ours, this great Newfoundland and Labrador, where we see the enrolment at the university capped, and we will see five, six, or seven campuses of these community colleges shut down.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time has elapsed.

The hon. the Member for Burin - Placentia West.

MR. TOBIN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I hope the Member for St. John's South who has now given up all his ambitions to be Minister of Labour, now wants to be Minister of Fisheries.

If I were the Minister of Fisheries I think I would want to have my chair right in the back because the Member for St. John's South and the Member for Eagle River are almost beating each other up there to try to get the knife in your back to get your job. It is hard to say which one of them has the most ambition and are prepared to go to any extreme to try to replace the present Minister of Fisheries. Now, I can say one thing to both of you, the two of you together cannot replace the present Minister of Fisheries. And it is time you both realized it.

MR. SIMMS: The best Fisheries Minister that the Tories every produced.

MR. TOBIN: Yes, in my opinion he is a good Minister of Fisheries. I do not know if I am right or wrong, but what you think of my opinion I do not know, but in my opinion I have confidence in the Minister of Fishery.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: No, Mr. Chairman, one thing about me I not afraid to give credit where I believe credit is due. But what we have opposite, Mr. Chairman, is the aspiring Minister of Fisheries -

MR. R. AYLWARD: Walter, did he ever work on your campaign?

MR. CARTER: Poll captain.

MR. TOBIN: Yes, I will tell you something I was a poll captain for the Minister of Fisheries more than once. I will tell you that unlike the Member for Bonavista South, I won the poll that I was responsible for.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Yes, indeed it was.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: No, it was Daniel's Point. And the first time ever I voted PC was for the Minister of Fisheries, the first time ever that poll voted PC was for the Minister of Fisheries before that it was just (inaudible) the rest of them were Liberals. But that is what has happened, Mr. Chairman.

Now, let me say to the Member for St. John's South as he talks about the seal fishery and the commitment that he had made. He had made a commitment to a group of people in this city that he was going to bring their battle before the House of Assembly. I would suspect that the Member will. But I do not know what the Minister of Fisheries is going to think about what the Member for St. John's South is about to do.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: I do not know if he is against the seal fishery or not and I could not care less. Well, if he is, and I doubt if he is against the seal fishery because if somebody in this Province who represents rural Newfoundland like I do and a fishing district to a large extent and when you get trawlers that come in after taking back seals in the cod end, and it is happening lately, it is something that did not happen before, but now in the cod end, there were six seals I think one of the boats had the other day when he took back, -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Thirteen, was it in the cod end, and the belly chewed out of the fish, one after the other. There are more seals out there following the fish than there are gulls, ticklers, or whatever you want to call them. When this happens there is cause for concern because everybody realizes that seals are having a very negative impact upon the fishery in this Province.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: Well, I do not know whether he does or not, but I can say to the Member for St. John's South who believes that when he goes trout fishing he is actually fishing. He complains about the seals because he does not get trout. Well, I would like to remind the Member for St. John's South of the night he talked about me when I went ice fishing.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: I heard all about you. You had three holes cut in the ice when they kicked you out of the arena up on the Southern Shore. That is the ice fishing you did on the Southern Shore. Let me say to the Member for St. John's South, and to all other Members, that it is time you stood in this Legislature and denounced the Government for what they are doing to the people of Newfoundland, particularly those people who represent rural Newfoundland, the Member for Bonavista South, his own district, and the new Member for Trinity North. His fish plant is now closed down, I understand, and it is time for him to let us know where he stands on the fishery policies of this Government, and certainly on where they are coming from on the seal hunt. Are you going to support the resolution that hopefully my colleague for St. John's South will have the courage to bring in? Will the Member for Trinity South support that? Those are the kind of questions we have to ask. Nobody can show anything as long as he sits down and yaps across the House. It is time to stand, and I give credit to some Members for standing in this Legislature. It is now time that the Member for Pleasantville, who admits to having a social conscience, it is now time for him to stand in this Legislature and tell us whether he agrees with hospital beds that are closed, whether he agrees with the cut backs in education, and whether he agrees with the people on social assistance not getting an increase. It is all great for the Member for Pleasantville to sit back, and along with the Premier, take a chartered plane at the taxpayers expense, and spend a weekend in Ottawa talking about Meech Lake, but now let him tell us where his social conscience is. I say that realizing that he was a two time candidate for the NDP, probably more often, I am not sure. Does he still profess to have socialist beliefs? If he does how can he back and support a Government that cuts education, that closes hospital beds, that balance their books on the sick and suffering of this Province, and that gives no increase to people on social assistance? So, where is the Member for Pleasantville? Take away pay equity, very important. Is that what the Member for Pleasantville supports? It is now time for him to stand in this Legislature, stand when I sit down, and either support what the Government is doing, or denounce it. You cannot have it both ways. It is time for the Member for Mount Scio - Bell Island to tell us whether or not he supports cut backs in the ferry service, whether or not he supports the health care system, what is happening to the hospital on Bell Island, whether or not he supports the proposed closure of the campus on Bell Island. If you do not stand and tell this House and the constituents what you believe in, what are they suppose to do? I understand where Cabinet is coming from. You have to either support the policies of Cabinet or get out, but there is nothing to prevent a private Member from standing in this Legislature and letting us know where they stand on those issues. The other day when we brought in a resolution asking for a delay in hospital closures they stood to a person and voted against hospital beds, voted against keeping (Inaudible) hospitals open.

How can the Member for Fortune - Hermitage justify voting for the lay off of eight or ten or twenty people in his district? How can he do it? Is that why he wanted to join the Liberals so badly? Because they could stand and vote for them to close his hospital beds, lay off professional people, close down the Marystown Shipyard that his constituents depend on, as well as the Burin Peninsula health care? Is that what he stood for? Why does he not stand in this Legislature and let us know?

It is time that the Member for Fortune - Hermitage let us know whether or not he supports the type of ferry system that the people of Gaultois have. Or does he support the actions of the Minister of Transportation in denying them a good ferry service? It is time that this be done. And I am anxiously waiting for the Member for Fortune - Hermitage who has not spoken in this Legislature since he crossed the floor except to stand and vote against everything that is good for his district.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

The hon. Member's time has elapsed.

MR. TOBIN: By leave, Mr. Chairman?

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

AN HON. MEMBER: No leave! No leave!

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Chairman, in the ten minutes or so that I have I want to follow up -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SIMMS: Pardon? Just ten minutes. In the ten minutes only that I have - I am sure I will not get leave - I want to follow up a little bit on what my colleague, the Member for Burin - Placentia West, started to touch on towards the end of his very preliminary comments. I can assure you the Member for Burin - Placentia West will not be muzzled. He has a tremendous amount of commentary to offer to the House of Assembly. He is not one to sit on his behind, not one to be muzzled, not one who will sit back and lay back and not speak out on behalf of his constituents. He is one of those rare individuals, Mr. Chairman, who hesitates not at all to stand up and be counted on behalf of the people who elected him here and sent him here to the Legislature.

Now that is so much unlike certain Members opposite. I wanted to give my impression of what transpired in this Legislature last Wednesday with respect to the resolution put forth by the Member for Ferryland, our health critic, concerning hospital cuts in this Province. I want to compare for you the outspokenness of the Member for Burin - Placentia West who never hesitates to stand and speak out on behalf of his constituents - and he did it by the way when he was on the government side as well - and the approach taken by some Members opposite when this particular resolution that everybody is aware of came to the floor of the House for a vote.

Now just look at the difference. You heard the Member for Burin - Placentia West. Like a cracky he is on his feet all the time speaking out on behalf of his constituents. But we had a resolution that urged the Government to defer decisions announced in the Budget with respect to hospitals at - and there was a whole number of areas mentioned - and conduct an independent review of these decisions. Now that is a very - I say in all respect to Mr. Chairman - reasonable request. But compare the approach of the Member for Burin - Placentia West who stood up and spoke on behalf of his constituents and, for example, the Member for - yes, he is leaving - Mount Scio - Bell Island, who I do not believe has spoken at all in this Chamber.

MR. WINSOR: Not even a point of order!

MR. SIMMS: But more importantly, Mr. Chairman, he may not have spoken but I can assure you he has voted. And the resolution which partially said: ask the Government to defer decisions announced in the Budget with respect to the hospitals at Bell Island, those against the motion please rise, and then there is a whole list of names and then there is near the end Mr. Walsh. Mr. Walsh voted against deferring the decision on the hospital at Bell Island. So that was his approach. Now, compared to the Member for Burin - Placentia West who speaks out all the time, the Member for Mount Scio - Bell Island did not speak at all.

Then the next step up from that, I would say, of the four I am going to mention anyway, was, no I cannot use the Chairman, sorry, I will jump over him. This is by degree I am talking now. The next individual was the Member for LaPoile. Now, the Member for LaPoile's approach on that resolution was rather interesting and we saw it when he presented his petition to the House earlier that day or the day before, whenever it was. His position was just like this, he came right down the middle, that is where he came. He never had the intestinal fortitude to stand up for his constituents and say to the Government I support this resolution, which by the way was not a government motion, it would not have affected the Government's standing or anything like that. You had a marvellous opportunity to show your constituents how you really felt, like you told them on the Ron Pumphrey Show two or three o'clock in the morning one night, then coming into the House and being sort of wishy-washy. So that was his approach, oh, Mr. Chairman, I do not know, I kind of agree with the people out in Port aux Basques but now on the other hand I think I can do a better job if I stay in the Government and work from the inside. That was his approach. But here is the vote, BE IT RESOLVED that the House urge the Government to defer the decision announced in the Budget with respect to the hospital and among other places, Port aux Basques, those against the motion please rise, Mr. Ramsay, voted against the motion. Now, that is his approach.

Then you have another level and the other level is the Member for Placentia who gives the impression that he is dirty as the devil, mad and angry, gives all those kinds of impressions, goes out with the megaphone and on television again tonight they showed a story about it and he said: We are going to do everything we can to get this decision turned around. The next day, resolution in the House, Government deferred the decision with respect to the hospital in Placentia, all those against the motion, please rise, among others Mr. Hogan.

Now, Mr. Chairman, that is three different types of approach over there in responding to this resolution. But, Mr. Chairman, I have to say with the greatest of respect the most courageous stand taken by a Member on that side of the House with respect to this issue and others, although he did vote against the resolution, was the Member for Trinity - Bay de Verde. Mr. Chairman, I have to say he is the Member who showed the most courage in my view because whilst he was constrained and felt intimated, no doubt, by others over on that side, I do not know if you did, but he may have been intimated somewhat and was forced to vote against that resolution. I know he did not feel comfortable doing it but he did. But, Mr. Chairman, more than that today he presented a petition to this House of Assembly and unlike others on that side who have presented petitions in this House from that side on behalf of their constituents, the Member for Trinity - Bay de Verde said, Mr. Speaker, I support this petition.

Now, Mr. Chairman, that Member over there from Trinity - Bay de Verde, if there is to be a battle on for a Cabinet post, appointing people of integrity, honesty, forthrightness -

MR. RAMSAY: Point of order, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. Member for LaPoile on a point of order.

MR. SIMMS: Oh, I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, but I did not hear him.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

MR. RAMSAY: Mr. Chairman, just to clarify for the benefit of the hon. Opposition House Leader. The words which he stated and quoted as having come from the hon. the Member for Trinity - Bay de Verde, insofar as supporting the petition, those words also, or something to that effect, very clearly were uttered by myself in presentation of the petition on behalf of the people of the district of LaPoile. I just wanted to clarify that. And if the hon. Member would want to refute it I would ask him to quote Hansard in that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: No point of order. Just a disagreement between two hon. Members.

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. SIMMS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is not even that. I am going to do what most of his constituents have been doing since the last couple of weeks and that is ignore the hon. Member. It really has nothing to do with what I was trying to say.

You see what happens as soon as you start praising a Member on that side of the House for standing up for his convictions? All the rest want to jump up, that is exactly right. 'Oh. Mr. Chairman, point of order, Mr. Chairman, I did so say that, I did not say that, Mr. Chairman.' But now what you have to look at, I say to the front benches, is the Cabinet. You see what is happening here. You know all the rumours, you know all the stories of the backbenchers being hungry to get in to Cabinet. My suspicion is they are not that hungry, to be honest with you, but we all know the names, all the whispers and all that stuff. Most of it is nonsense or speculation and all the rest of it. We all know that.

But I say to the Premier if he was here tonight, if there is one individual on that side of the House who deserves more than any other an opportunity to fit into that esteemed Cabinet of his it is the Member for Trinity - Bay de Verde, in my opinion. Now, Mr. Chairman, I do not have much time left, I do not think. You said (Inaudible)?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time has elapsed.

MR. SIMMS: Time has expired now, so I had no time left.

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When I spoke last this evening I neglected to tell the Members of a quotation that I had from Oliver Cromwell. And if you have not heard this before - you have not heard it from Oliver Cromwell before but you have heard it from the Premier before. And it says: not what they want but what is good for them. That is what Oliver Cromwell said during his life between 1599 and 1658. Not what they want but what is good for them. That is what Cromwell said and that is what we have said to us on a daily basis here by "Cod Liver Clyde."

AN HON. MEMBER: Who?

MR. HARRIS: "Cod Liver Clyde." We will give you what is good for you, not what you want. If you want education, health care, jobs and a decent life do not look to us. If you want a future for your children do not look to us because we will not give you that. We will give you what is good for you, we will tighten your belt, we will turn our back on the promises that we made, we will turn our backs on the expectations that we created. We led people to believe that they could expect leadership and good things from this Government, and they did that during an election campaign to replace the Tories. They wanted to be leaders of this Province. They wanted to give the people what the people wanted. They had them convinced for a period of time that they could deliver and the people put their faith in them.

Well what we have now is a population of Newfoundland which is without hope for the future. A population which is afraid to spend money because they do not know where their next dollar is coming from. Many civil servants do not know whether they are going to have their jobs or not. And we hear some speeches from the backbenches quoting the various Chambers of Commerce and the Boards of Trade, and they support the Budget. But not for long. Because in a little while they will start seeing that the people who they depend upon to make their profits are not spending any money because they do not have any money to spend and they will not be supporting the policies of this Government. They will be looking for an alternative and they will be turning away from the policies of this Government, turning away from this Government.

The people of Newfoundland and Labrador have developed over the last twenty to forty years an expectation that governments will look after the basic needs of people or fight for those people, fight for those needs. And we do not see that happening from this Government. We see the front bench of this Government complacent about the problems that we face. They talk sanctimoniously about it and how we have to shave our expectations. How we can not spend money. But we hear the Minister of Health getting in the House almost daily now telling us that Medicare is over. Telling us that it is all over, she is going down the tubes. He's telling us that it is all over.

Is that the kind of leadership that we want from the Minister of Health? To tell this House and the people of Newfoundland on a daily basis that Medicare is gone, is all over? Is that leadership from the Minister of Health?

AN HON. MEMBER: What would you do? What would you do?

MR. HARRIS: Why do we not see - and we have the backbenches here, 'what would you do?'

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: Well, I will tell you something that I would do, I would show some leadership. Instead of telling people of Newfoundland that Medicare is dead I would be standing up and fighting for Medicare, going to the Government of Canada as a government of Newfoundland, and telling them that we will not stand for it, we will not see Medicare die, we want Medicare. People of Newfoundland believe in Medicare, they will fight for Medicare, and they will fight for the kind of policies and the kind of government that will keep it there! That is what we would do.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: Well, I am glad that the Member for Pleasantville is pleased with that. I know that the old conscience is speaking, and I know his former membership and former efforts on behalf of the New Democratic Party will be remembered in times to come. But that is the approach that this Government should be taking but I do not see that. We do not see that from the Premier, the man who is telling Newfoundlanders to take their medicine, "Cod Liver Clyde." Take your medicine, people of Newfoundland. We will argue about the Constitution, we will argue about the wording of the various documents of the Constitution, but we will not fight for basic rights for Newfoundlanders. And we have the Minister of Education, as I have said before, and we are going to hear a little bit more about this, because we have only discovered this in the last few days. We have discovered that the Minister of Education is not prepared to stand up for the right of access to university education in this Province. We have had a government -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: Is this the Party that went into power saying: we are going to have not one but two or three universities in this Province? Is this the Party that said that? And now they are prepared to say that there is not even going to be enough room in the one university we have for the people who want to go there. They are now prepared to see that happen and to let that be their legacy to the people of Newfoundland. Well, Mr. Chairman, I do not think the people of Newfoundland are going to stand for it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Member for Mount Pearl.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

AN HON. MEMBER: The new Member for Lewisporte.

MR. WINDSOR: I just might (Inaudible). I wish my friend from Lewisporte was here. I am under a great pressure.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: There he (Inaudible)! We smoked him out, we got him on his feet, and now we have him back in the House, Mr. Chairman. The minute that the Member for St. John's South referred to me as the new Member for Lewisporte in he came, just like a jackrabbit. Did you notice the look on his face earlier tonight as he challenged me to run in Lewisporte? It was a brave thing he did. It reminded me of one of Saddam Hussein's soldiers. Has anybody seen the cartoon that is going around? The one with the guy who is one of Saddam Hussein's soldiers coming on a camel. And he says it is a holy war. And the next thing there is a jet fighter coming at him and he is going in the opposite direction. And he is saying something totally different. That is what the hon. Member reminded me of. He is all nerve.

I say to him, though, that I am indeed under great pressure to run in Lewisporte but I doubt very much if I will run. And the hon. Member will be disappointed because I am really - I owe so much to the people of Mount Pearl and they really do not want to see me leave. I probably will run again. And the hon. gentleman's delighted. He would love to have me run in Lewisporte. He knows I would beat him, but he would like to have me run. Because he knows if I do not run against him, my wife is going to, and she is going to annihilate him totally! There is his problem.

AN HON. MEMBER: Why didn't she do that last time?

MR. WINDSOR: There are two or three good - the hon. gentleman did not win by more than a couple of hundred votes. The next time around he knows full well that she would do a job on him. So he would love to have me run because I would only beat him handily. My wife would totally annihilate him.

But enough said about him, Mr. Chairman. While I am on the subject, the other day I was speaking in the debate and I got into tourism with a discussion with my friend the Minister of Tourism and I talked about a trip I had made down to Bay d'Espoir. The hon. Minister of Transportation probably does not know where that is and I am sure he does not know what this facility is, but I undertook at that time to circulate some brochures dealing with this place called Hilltop Tourist Cabins. I would like to do that, Mr. Chairman. A very good establishment and I recommend it. The Minister of Transportation would like to see it for the first time.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible)?

MR. WINDSOR: A road map ought to get you there, yes.

MR. GILBERT: (Inaudible) ACOA. If the Tories had not been keeping them back they would have had it started a long time.

MR. WINDSOR: ACOA money? I would not doubt there is ACOA money. I have no idea really how it was established (Inaudible).

MR. GILBERT: It was your Tory friends (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: Good Tory ACOA money, that is good, I am glad to hear it.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: I would recommend it to hon. Members if they have occasion to go down that way or if they are looking for a good place to have a vacation or invite some friends, I recommend it.

AN HON. MEMBER: Did you go trouting down there?

MR. WINDSOR: Pardon? I did not go trouting, there was four feet of ice. I do not have the energy to try and drill down through four feet of ice. But there is good snowmobiling and I saw a couple of hundred caribou and a half a dozen moose and a few partridge. It is fabulous country. I would recommend it to hon. Members I must say.

Now, Mr. Chairman, it is getting late in the night and we only have a couple of minutes left. I would like to respond just a little bit to some of the comments made. My friend from Lewisporte had a couple of dandy comments, he quoted a couple of people and he quoted them accurately, of course. One of whom he quoted was Professor Boswell. I would like to quote Professor Boswell too. He says that: reading through the Budget documents I got the sense of work in progress, the Budget is curiously incomplete, so that is what Dr. Boswell also said, and a very astute observation because the Budget is painfully incomplete. We do not have salary details for one thing. The Government is hiding those away, we talked about that earlier today. But the Budget is curiously incomplete because we do not really know, there are no -

MS. VERGE: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: My colleague from Humber East reminds me that there is no mention of capital grants there, no mention of municipal capital grants and that is not unusual those are simply approvals to borrow to municipalities and I assume the Minister will come up with those shortly. In fact, I have spoken with him and he has assured me that as early as possible he will come out with those grants. I would encourage him to do that because that is in the interest of municipalities, the construction industry, and the engineering industry, to get those out as early as possible so that we can get ahead with the work.

But the Budget is curiously incomplete, there is no question about that. We do not know yet where the 3,500 positions are going to be hidden, where they are going to take place.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: No, Sir, I said well over 3,000. If the hon. President of Treasury Board will recall on the day after Budget Day I predicted that it would be at least 3,500 probably more than that, but I will still stick with my 3,500. That was the figure that I used on Budget Day.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: No, I have used 3,500 more than I have used 3,000. I might have used 3,000 on a couple of occasions. But 3,500 was the number I predicted on Budget Day, my colleagues will recall, and I still say there will be 3,500 at least and I suspect there will be many more than that. In fact, I said there would be many more in the private sector than the 3,500 as the result of 3,500 jobs in the public sector.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) Hibernia.

MR. WINDSOR: Hibernia is not helping us very much unfortunately. Most of the contracts are going out of the Province. The Minister of Development looks at me with scorn. Ask the Minister of Development, who is building the accommodations for the Bull Arm site, where are those being built? Are they being built in Stephenville? No, Mr. Chairman, they are being built by the Irving Corporation in New Brunswick.

AN HON. MEMBER: Harold Lundrigan (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: Harold Lundrigan did not get them. They are gone to the Irving Corporation.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: That is right. There is another contract that escapes me now, that I understand has gone out of the Province,

I do not have my notes on that with me now because I had not planned to deal with this tonight, but there is another contract that has gone out of the Province. I spoke with a company today, I say to the Minister of Development, who laid off two people last week who had been with them for seventeen years. That company has lost business first of all because Long Harbour had shut down. I cannot blame that on Government totally, they did not do a lot to stop it, but nevertheless it is gone and that was a large chunk of the business. Then he told me our next piece of business was the Marystown Shipyard, and that is all but dead now.

AN HON. MEMBER: Which company?

MR. WINDSOR: I do not wish to use the name because I do not have permission of the company to use the name. I spoke to the President and he said his second client after ERCO was the Marystown Shipyard, and because of the low level of activity at the Marystown Shipyard they are losing a lot of business in that company. Then he said he had hoped that the Fogo Island ferry was going to be built and that would make a big difference. However, we know where that is gone, the $24 million contract for the Fogo Island ferry, then the CN dockyard in St. John's, which is our biggest client. Obviously, he is in a business associated with steel fabrication, and as we know, other steel fabricators in the Province, some of the companies that are constructing structural steel are having serious financial difficulties as well. We may see a couple of those fold in the next couple of week, in fact, and that is because there is no construction activity in the Province because of the state of the economy, so companies that are associated with that type of industry are really feeling the impact. This particular company has its seasonal employees who come and go, they were all gone, but he had a base of permanent employees, two of whom he had to lose last week after seventeen years with him. He said it was the hardest thing he has ever done since he has been in business, and that is a story I am hearing almost daily now. Somebody made light of that today.

AN HON. MEMBER: You are only (Inaudible)

MR. WINDSOR: You are only fooling yourself if you do not think what I am saying is true. I am out there in the business community and I am talking to these people, and I am hearing daily very difficult tales from people whose companies are in severe financial hardship at the moment, and laying off 3500 people is not doing one thing for them. In fact, it is just the reverse.

MR. NOEL: Quite a few Newfoundland companies have participated so far (Inaudible)

MR. WINDSOR: Oh, sure they have. Quite a few have, but there is a lot of money gone out of the Province.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time is up.

On motion, that the Committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again, Mr. Speaker returned to the Chair.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Trinity - Bay de Verde.

MR. L. SNOW: Mr. Speaker, the Committee of the Whole has considered the matters to it referred and has directed me to report progress and ask leave to sit again.

On motion, report received and adopted, Committee ordered to sit again on tomorrow.

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

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to inform hon. Members that we will be getting back to this particular Bill again tomorrow, the Interim Supply Bill, and I would like to give notice that the Private Member's Resolution I intend to call on Wednesday is the one introduced by the Member for Eagle River sometime towards the end of last week.

On motion, the House at its rising adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday at 2:00 o'clock in the afternoon.