May 4, 2000 HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS Vol. XLIV No. 21

The House met at 2:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (Snow): Order, please!

Before we begin our routine proceedings, I would like to welcome to the gallery today thirteen Grades IX to XII students from B.L. Morrison School in Postville, in the District of Torngat Mountains. They are accompanied by teachers, Keith Jacque and Carmen Sheppard.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: As well, we have eight Level II and Level III students from Victoria Academy in Gaultois, in the District of Fortune Bay-Cape La Hune. These students are accompanied by their teachers, Mr. Glen Rogers and Ms Nancy Ruelland ,and I would like to welcome them to the gallery as well.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Terra Nova.

MR. LUSH: Mr. Speaker, I want, today, to pay tribute to one of Musgravetown's leading citizens, Tony Vincent, who passed away suddenly on Friday, April 14, at the age of forty-five. Tony was a unique, special person and special friend of mine.

Tony Vincent spent most of his working life with Marine Atlantic, and shortly before his death was promoted to the role of Assistant Chief Steward; however, Tony is best remembered for his involvement in the local community, as a great deal of his time and energy was spent doing volunteer work. Mr. Vincent was a founding member of the Musgravetown Fire Department and was heavily involved with the local Lions Club. He was also named citizen of the year in the community for his tireless efforts to make Musgravetown a better place in which to live.

Mr. Speaker, Tony Vincent was a pillar of the community of Musgravetown and all its citizens are saddened by the news of his passing. I want to send my deepest sympathy to his wife, Jill, his children, Matthew and Vanessa, his parents, Fred and Audrey Vincent, as well as the rest of his family and friends on the loss of this great citizen of Musgravetown. He will be remember for his energy and his commitment to the town and will be sorely missed.

In recognition of and respect for Tony's tremendous civic contribution to his community, many of my colleagues on this side of the House, and I know the Member for Bonavista South, attended the funeral.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Labrador West.

MR. COLLINS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This past weekend, representatives of the Iron Ore Company of Canada and the United Steel Workers of America traveled to Halifax and were presented with an award from the Conference Board of Canada. The award is called The Top Employer of Youth Award, and the Iron Ore Company was this year's provincial recipient.

The award came as a result of a program negotiated between the company and the union that has 120 students enrolled at the Labrador West campus of the College of the North Atlantic. The students will attend the program for three years, spending an equal number of semesters in the classroom and on-the-job practical training with pay. Those students will meet the identified future needs of their local labour market.

In addition to the 120 currently enrolled, there are plans to train an additional 120 beginning in September, 2001. Upon completion of the program, these students will go into well-paying jobs, contributing significantly to both the local and provincial economies.

I am sure this House joins me in congratulating the Iron Ore Company of Canada on being the recipient of this award and also for their vision, in cooperation with the union, in creating the employee of the future training program.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Forest Resources and Agrifoods.

MR. K. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to take this opportunity to inform Members of the House of Assembly that we have declared the 2000 fire season under the Province's Forestry Act. This order is in effect on the Island of Newfoundland as of midnight, April 28, 2000; however, on the Avalon Peninsula it has been in effect since April 15. In Labrador, the regulations will come into effect as of midnight, May 13, 2000. All of these regulations will be enforced until midnight, Sunday, September 17, 2000.

In accordance with forest fire regulations, I have advised the public that during forest fire season, every person setting a fire for the purpose of clearing land or brush on forest land, or within 300 meters of forest land, must obtain a permit to burn. The public can apply for a burning permit at any Forestry and Wildfire office in the Province. In addition, copies of the 2000 Forest Fire regulations are also available at these offices.

This year we have experienced low snow coverage during the winter months on the Island portion of the Province, resulting in the spring surface drying. This situation creates a potential forest fire hazard. We urge the public to exercise extreme caution when burning or traveling on or near forest land.

Based on a ten year average, the 1999 fire season in Newfoundland and Labrador was above average in terms of number of hectares burnt. The Province recorded 228 fires, which burnt a total of 39,291 hectares. Although the majority of the land burnt was non-commercial forest land in Labrador, there were large fires in the central region of the Island that consumed a large portion of commercial forest land that has been recorded since 1989. In addition, there was a higher than normal number of lightening caused forest fires on the Island. Out of the 228 fires that were reported, 176 were human caused and fifty-two were caused by lightening.

Our department is prepared for the 2000 fire season. We presently have our normal complement of six CL-215 water bombers and crews; however, two of our water bombers are on contract to North Carolina. If the need arises, these two aircraft can be returned to the Province within forty-eight hours. The two aircraft in question are stationed in Labrador, where the fire season traditionally starts later than on the Island. These aircraft are scheduled to return on May 20 or earlier. In addition, our ground crews will be brought on over the next few weeks.

It is only through the cooperation of our fellow Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who work in our forests and those who enjoy our forests for recreation can we reduce the risk of forest fires.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Windsor-Springdale.

MR. HUNTER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the minister for forwarding a copy of his statement this afternoon. It is a very important issue when it comes to forest fires in Newfoundland and Labrador. We cannot afford to loose any of this resource. This resource is a precious commodity to our Province. It creates a lot of jobs in our Province. I hope that the people of this Province would sincerely look at eliminating the threat to our forests. One-hundred and seventy-six fires were caused by human hands: that is unbelievable, that we can see this number of fires being caused last year.

I hope this year that people will be very careful and consider the implications of forest fires and the devastation that it causes to our forests. Also, I would like to say to the minister too that probably we could encourage the Department of Forest Resources and Agrifoods to look at these areas that have been burnt over and come out with a more in-depth silviculture program for burnt over areas that seem to regenerate a lot slower than cut over areas.

I would like to see a program put in place to specifically deal with burnt over areas so that we can encourage the new growth there earlier than what would come on a natural basis, Mr. Speaker.

I thank you very much.

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I cannot help but recognize or acknowledge the greater importance being placed by the public, and certainly by the department, in the interests in our forestry sector. This here is an issue that I think everybody can relate to. What is interesting here is that we all know that lightening generated fires play a role in regenerating forests, but here we have a situation where more than three times that number of fires are actually caused by human action. This is something that the public can play a role in, in eliminating forest fires.

I want to acknowledge that the department certainly seems to be ready with existing aircraft and the ability to bring back aircraft from North Carolina to meet any pressing need in the forest fire industry.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

The hon. the President of Treasury Board.

MS THISTLE: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this House today and update my hon. colleagues on the success of the Opening Doors Program.

This program has evolved over the past twelve years to become a very successful and unique public sector employment equity initiative for persons with disabilities.

I am delighted to report that Opening Doors has created over fifty-five permanent positions that are attached to various provincial government departments and funded through an annual budget of $1.5 million. These are long-term positions which can only be filled by persons with disabilities.

These fifty-five employees are scattered throughout the Province, working in such positions as word processing equipment operators, computer programmers, technicians, analysts, public information officer, statistical officer, mail room clerk, and micro-graphic technician.

The Opening Doors Program has formed four partnerships between provincial and federal departments and agencies to further improve the representation of persons with disabilities in the public service at both levels of government. These positions are funded by the federal partners involved in these initiatives.

Our provincial program serves as a recruitment agency for the Public Service Commission of Canada through a partnership called JEEPS.

The result is that not only has the Opening Doors Program been very successful in increasing the number of persons with disabilities in the provincial public service, but an additional fifty persons have obtained positions with the federal public service in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Although some of those jobs are for temporary positions, they are often extended and the individuals are given the opportunity to gain valuable work experience, making them more competitive in future job competitions.

I am also very pleased to report that Opening Doors is now entering the third year of partnerships with Human Resources Development Canada and the Province's Department of Human Resources and Employment.

Another forty-two persons with disabilities have gained meaningful employment in either the federal or provincial public service through the wage subsidy program offered through these two partnerships.

Opening Doors also has a partnership with the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work involving an annual commitment from the council of $54,000. That funding has established the Opening Doors Career Development Centre as the Provincial WorkInk Site. WorkInc provides online employment resources for job seekers with disabilities.

The Opening Doors Centre also serves as a resource for persons with disabilities helping them prepare resumes as well as prepare them for the all important job interview.

I also point out that persons with disabilities living outside St. John's can access the services and programs of the centre from their home communities through the advancements in technology.

I encourage all my honourable colleagues to visit the Opening Doors Career Development Centre for Persons with Disabilities located on the fifth floor of the West Block of Confederation Building. The six staff people at the Centre will provide you with information about the services and programs and you will view some of the new hi-tech equipment available to assist persons with disabilities in carrying out their work.

It is because of this centre of excellence and its partners that the provincial and federal public service in Newfoundland and Labrador are now more representative of the public they serve. People with disabilities in this Province now have more opportunities to find positions in the public service and have better access to employment and professional development services.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Waterford Valley.

MR. H. HODDER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We on this side join with the minister in supporting the Opening Doors Program. Minister, it is a program that has made a great deal of difference to the lives of many people in this Province and we acknowledge that it is a very positive initiative on behalf of the government.

We want to acknowledge as well the part that is played by private enterprise, by the businesses in this Province who also are hiring people with disabilities as a consequence of involvement with programs like the Visions Employment Centre in Mount Pearl, where we have groups that are funded, partly by the Province and others. Through the initiatives and the work experience they gained through groups like the Visions Employment Centre, they are then ready to take permanent jobs in the free enterprise system. So, we want to acknowledge that. Of course, we say in doing this that it is the government that has given the initiative and has shown the leadership and that certainly is a positive thing.

We want to note as well the problem in rural Newfoundland, because we believe that some of the programs that are available in St. John's and the other urban centres - we could be doing more to expand services to some of the communities that are more distanced from the growth centres.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Labrador West.

MR. COLLINS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the minister for an advance copy of her statement. We too applaud any effort that will enhance the opportunities for persons with disabilities to obtain meaningful employment. I think it is important, also, to say that it is important that the government and the public service create standards for the rest of society to meet. I know that from years of having served on the Labrador West Employment Corporation, trying to assist persons with disabilities to obtain employment is not always easy to do so. I think initiatives such as this will shed examples for people in the private sector and other areas of the Province to follow.

I would also like to say that, from my involvement in this program in Labrador West, I have always felt that there should be some sort of acknowledgment for people who own businesses that employ persons with disabilities. There should be some form of acknowledgment, probably from the government, for these employers in show of appreciation in their efforts to encompass all parts of society within their workplace.

We applaud the efforts of the minister.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. COLLINS: Thank you.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

My questions today are for the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. Yesterday, your colleague released in this House some 1,500 pages of information that was essentially generated by a Freedom of Information request written by myself. It is not what was released that was interesting, I say to you, Minister, but what was not released that is more interesting. Many, many aspects of that document contain section 14, which essentially means that they will not release it because it could be injurious to provincial or federal relations. Most of that information, I am told, was not released at the request of the Department of Intergovernmental Affairs.

I would like to ask you today, Minister: Why didn't you release all of the information yesterday? Why is government sitting behind the documents? What is it they are afraid of with respect to this very important issue?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. GRIMES: Mr. Speaker, I still am at a bit of a loss as to understand why the Leader of the Opposition so desperately would like to find some way to suggest that there has already been a decision made by the Government of Canada and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador not to proceed with an in-feed to the Island. No such decision has been taken.

It has been clear for some time that the Government of Canada is not readily accepting our position; otherwise we would have agreed to money for the in-feed a long time ago. The suggestion is there might be some missing information. I went looking, after yesterday, and found some other information that has been around since some time last fall as a result of a Canadian press. I will table that, if that is helpful, and if I can find anything else, the world can have that as well. It is not a matter of not providing information.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. GRIMES: Any of the information that is in the public domain as a result of access to information request to the Government of Canada, I will gladly provide to anybody in Newfoundland and Labrador. So I will table this additional information, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

A supplementary, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, this is interesting. It is really, really getting interesting. The documents he is releasing now are ones I released prior to Easter which his colleague, the real Minister of Mines and Energy, didn't know what I was talking about.

What is interesting, I say to Mr. Grimes, is that what you are doing today, Sir, is nothing but a charade and a sham. That is all it is.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member ought not to refer to members in the House by their name but by their constituency.

MR. E. BYRNE: I am sorry, Mr. Speaker.

What the minister is doing today amounts to nothing but a charade and a sham. What you have released, we have already released about an hour ago, I say to the minister. I want to ask you this question.

What you released yesterday deals primarily with the federal forecast of the economic growth in the Province for the next twenty years; their view, your party's view, the federal party's view, of this Province for the next twenty years. That is what the document says, I say to the minister. It paints a very, very dismal picture of our prospects economically.

I would like to ask you, or whoever wants to answer it, this question. Maybe the Minister of Finance would be more up to speed on this, seeing he is in charge of the finance. Did the Province do anything to counter this outrageous assessment of Newfoundland's economic prospects? Did you do your own study? I believe you did. Why don't you table that, while you are at it? Did you do your own study - when will you table it? - that counters this notion that this Province is nothing but an economic backwater for the rest of the country? When is it that you are going to stand up and table your response to that outrageous assessment by the federal government, which you have been aware of for over two years?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The negotiations and officials representing Newfoundland and Labrador have dismissed out of hand, completely and totally, any representation by the Government of Canada in our joint working group on the in-feed that Newfoundland and Labrador is - if the Leader of the Opposition wants to describe it as a basket case, or not going anywhere economically -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. GRIMES: Mr. Speaker, we have never, ever agreed to, we don't agree to, and that is not the vision of Newfoundland and Labrador that we have. That is why there has been no conclusion yet to work of the joint committee, the combined committee, of the Government of Canada and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador; because obviously, as the Leader of the Opposition would agree, there should be, and is, a very large difference of opinion as to what the potential economic future is for Newfoundland and Labrador. That is why the group yet hasn't concluded its joint study, because we were hoping they were going to be able to jointly agree to a position. That hasn't occurred because, as he has indicated, there is a very large difference of opinion as to what the economic potential - twenty years, thirty years, or forty years time - is for Newfoundland and Labrador.

MR. FITZGERALD: That is not what the Premier said.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. E. BYRNE My colleague from Bonavista South is right; that is not what the Premier said.

The fact of the matter that we are having this debate in this Legislature today is a result of this caucus and myself pressing the federal government to give us information that you would not.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, it is also clear that this government knew as early as October of 1998 that there would be no transmission line, and they failed to tell the people of the Province.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. E. BYRNE: I would like to ask the minister this question. He seems to be the minister of all departments in government, so I will ask him this. The federal analysis of our economic prospects surely is an insult, as you have just agreed, to the people of the Province. Why didn't you, Minister - you and your government - step forward before now and expose the federal view of this Province to the people of the Province? Why did you sit around for two years, sit on your political behinds, and do nothing but lend creditably to this fundamentally wrong and misleading assessment not only of our Province but of the people who reside here?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. GRIMES: Mr. Speaker, there is nothing to be served by continuing this particular discussion. What we had agreed to are the following: In March of 1998, the Premiers of Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec discussed the possible development of a major new hydroelectric project in Labrador for the benefit of Newfoundland and Labrador, the benefit of Quebec, and the benefit of all of Canada. One part of that was to be a joint working group between the Government of Canada and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to determine whether or not an in-feed could be included as part of that overall project.

That joint working group obviously has been having some very serious differences of opinion for the whole period of time. That is why the work is taking a lot longer, because Newfoundland and Labrador cannot agree, and will not agree, and has not agreed, to some of the assumptions put forward by the Government of Canada in some of the documents that have been available through the Freedom of Information request to the Government of Canada - made by the Canadian press, by the way, not made by the Opposition but made by the Canadian Press, a correspondent back last fall - and the government, as a courtesy, provided us with some of the documents that they had provided to the correspondent for the Canadian Press. When the Leader of the Opposition also made a similar request recently, the Government of Canada sent us the documents as a courtesy that they had sent to the Leader of the Opposition.

As I have said, Mr. Speaker, anybody who wants those documents is welcome to them. They are there for the public record and they can have them.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, again let me ask the minister: Isn't it true that most of the section that was whited out in the documents that were given to me, was done at your request or at the government's request? That is the fact. They didn't send it to you as a courtesy, Minister; you already had it. Isn't that the fact?

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

MR. GRIMES: Maybe, Mr. Speaker, I can go back to my teaching days and try again to instruct a little better as to how the Freedom of Information works for the Government of Canada.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. GRIMES: When the Government of Canada is presented with a request under Freedom of Information, in an issue with which they were dealing with another political jurisdiction - like another government, like in Newfoundland and Labrador - they are free, under their legislation, to release each and every single piece of information that is solely and entirely theirs. That is what they have done.

In releasing information being done by a joint committee, they, every single time, by law, must check with the jurisdiction which they are partnering with and decide whether or not the information is solely the property of the Government of Canada, or whether it's joint information.

They are not at liberty to release information that they have gleaned or have partnered with with the other jurisdiction. The only parts that are not released by the Government of Canada are those that are either joint information or information that is the property of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, much of which is in the public domain anyway.

The debate is certainly in the public domain of Newfoundland and Labrador. People do understand that the progress on the talks, both with Quebec and the Government of Canada, neither of them are going as quickly and as smoothly as we would like. I believe that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, contrary and opposite to the view and wish of the Opposition, still hope that we are successful in our discussions with the Government of Quebec, and successful with our discussions with the Government of Canada, so that we can proceed with this project rather than hope, like the Opposition does, that it all collapses so they can have some political fun for a few days.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

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

I would like to ask the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs a question. Surely his department, not the Ministry of Health, but the Ministry of Intergovernmental Affairs - he is in his seat today - is dealing with the notion of the emission credits. The question is this. The documents released today clearly show that the federal government knew that the greenhouse gas credits would not be available to finance the transmission line before March 9, 1998. The information had to be passed on to the Province, minister. In fact, the Premier talked about -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: That is the point, I say, minister -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member to get to his question.

MR. E. BYRNE: - there is no system, but your Premier was going to use the system to finance the transmission line. That is the point!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member to get to his question.

MR. E. BYRNE: I would like to ask the minister this question. In view of the fact that the statement that was sent to the Province - I know it was - was that the central conclusion of this analysis is that the nature and design of such a system will not be known -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member now to get to his question.

MR. E. BYRNE: - until well after a decision is required on whether or not to proceed with the in-feed, how then can government make a statement that they were going to use money from the sale of emission credits to finance the transmission line when they were already told that the decision to do so could not be made in time for the transmission line to be funded? How was it that the ministry and you in your department could stand and make that statement?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

If the Leader of the Opposition is interested in an answer to the question, I will certainly attempt to provide it. The issue of providing for the Government of Canada an avenue whereby they could justify to the rest of Canada - that is the whole point of this exercise that I am hoping he is still supporting the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and the government in - we have to help the Government of Canada to justify to the rest of the Canadians why it is in their interest to spend $2 billion to build an in-feed to the Island part of our Province. He is obviously not very interested in helping us with that argument.

One of the several and many varied components that were presented to the Government of Canada is that if the international community could agree on a way of swapping credits under the Kyoto agreement for greenhouse emissions, that they could explain to the rest of the Canadians, who have always been suggesting that they find it more and more difficult to keep sending money to Atlantic Canada period - and the members opposite know what I am speaking about, because their first cousins in Ontario, led by Premier Harris, are the very worst ones, along with their other partners, the Canadian Alliance.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. GRIMES: The Canadian Alliance, or whatever the right name of the party is because they do not seem to know if they are conservatives or not, Mr. Speaker -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. minister now to conclude his answer quickly.

MR. GRIMES: Yes, Mr. Speaker. Because of the fact there are groups like those led by the Government of Ontario that suggest that there should be very close scrutiny for any money sent to a place they would like to describe as a basket case like Newfoundland and Labrador - because that is there language. It is not ours. It is conservative language primarily from Ontario that describes Newfoundland and Labrador like that.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. GRIMES: Mr. Speaker, the greenhouse emission credits was one of several components that there has been no international agreement on as to how it should work at this point -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. minister now to take his seat.

MR. GRIMES: - but there are several other components that were put to the Government of Canada.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

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

The minister talks about going back to his teaching days. If he keeps it up he will be back there sooner than he thinks, I believe. He did not answer the question so I will ask him again. How does government make a statement on the one hand that they are going to use the money from the emission credits to fund a transmission line when they are in the possession of information from the federal government which says that the central conclusion of this analysis is that the nature and design of such a system will not be known until well after a decision is required on whether or not to proceed with an in-feed? How do you use money to fund a transmission line that the federal government has already told you will not be there in time for them to make a decision to fund it? Could he answer that question for us, please?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

MR. GRIMES: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I guess the Leader of the Opposition was so busy thinking up his next question that he did not listen to my last answer. I indicated clearly that the idea of credit and cash related to greenhouse emissions and the Kyoto Protocol was only one part and one of several parts and rationale presented by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador as to why the Government of Canada should participate with us as partners in building the in-feed.

It was not the fact that the Government of Newfoundland went and said: You should build the in-feed, and the only reason you should do it because there will be greenhouse emission credits. That is not the debate that has been going on. It is clear that there is no agreement in the international community about how these greenhouse emission credits will be valued, how they can be traded in the international community and exactly what value they will have, but that is only one component of the discussion that is going on between the Government of Canada and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador in our joint working group. That joint working group has not yet reported, has not yet concluded its work.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. E. BYRNE: A final supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

The information released today clearly indicates that the Province knew that Ottawa would not contribute a penny to the transmission line. It shows up again and again in these papers. In fact, at each step of the way Ottawa said, and I quote, that: they have only participated in these studies out of a spirit of cooperation, and at each step of the way they reminded the Province -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. E. BYRNE: - Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Health would know this being the former Minister of Mines and Energy - at each step of the way they reminded the Province that the federal government's view, 1995 policy -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member is on a supplementary. I ask him to get to his question.

MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, if I can get it out. If you can tame down the cats over here, we will get to the question pretty quickly.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. E. BYRNE: The federal government clearly reminded the Province each and every time that its 1995 policy, which this Premier helped develop, that it would not participate in energy projects, megaprojects, any more. In view of that I would like to ask you: Why did you and your government on March 9, 1998, and several months following, lead the people to believe - because all of you clearly did - that there was going to be a transmission line -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. E. BYRNE: - when you do not have the intestinal fortitude to stand today and say no, because it is not going to happen?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member to take his seat.

MR. E. BYRNE: They have told you so and we have brought it out to the floor of this Assembly. Why?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. E. BYRNE: Why, Mr. Speaker, did this government not (inaudible)?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member to take his seat.

The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The only thing I can conclude -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

MR. GRIMES: Yes, Mr. Speaker.

The only thing I can conclude then is that the position of the Official Opposition in Newfoundland and Labrador is that if they had been negotiating, or trying to negotiate, a contribution by the Government of Canada to the in-feed from Labrador to the Island as part of this overall development, first and foremost I have heard, from what I have listened to today, that they would not have even asked the Government of Canada to participate in the first place. Because he is suggesting there is a policy around since 1995 of the Government of Canada that they said they are not going to do it, so don't bother to ask. That is one thing I can conclude.

Secondly, I will conclude that because one of the components that was there as a rationale as to why the Government of Canada could participate was the possibility to have some greenhouse gas emission credits, because that was not going to be available in the short-term they would have given up immediately and not provided any other reasons why the Government of Canada should participate.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. minister now to conclude his answer.

MR. GRIMES: Mr. Speaker, we decided that we would ask, we decided that we would suggest that greenhouse credits were a possibility, along with several other good reasons why the Government of Canada should participate. We are still asking, and we are going to continue to ask unless and until we get a definite outright no from the Government of Canada. We will continue to ask because we believe it is in the best interest of the Province.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. TULK: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

On a point of order, the hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. TULK: I have no objections, as you will know, to people (inaudible) across this House, sit and make certain statements about ministers when they are standing. I distinctly heard on at least four occasions the Member for Conception Bay South - you uttered a word that what the minister was saying was a lie. I would ask the Speaker to ask him to withdraw it. I ask him to withdraw it.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Chair did not hear what the members were shouting across the House, but I'm sure if the member has said something that is unparliamentary, I am sure that the hon. member will withdraw that comment.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Conception Bay South.

MR. FRENCH: Mr. Speaker, I don't know if the Government House Leader has a problem with his hearing, but I did not say that somebody lied. I did not say that. I asked a question.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My questions today are to the Minister of Health and Community Services.

A number of hospital boards in the Province received permission from your department to engage in training medical laboratory technologists to do basic diagnostic x-ray procedures. This training program is considerably less than for a trained radiation technologist. There is a correspondent aspect to this course and a clinical aspect. The clinical aspect for a cross-trained technician is nine months less than for a fully trained radiation technologist.

I want to ask the minister: Is he fully satisfied that all safety concerns have been appropriately addressed with reference to cross-trained lab technologists doing radiation technology?

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

MR. GRIMES: Yes, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: A final supplementary, the hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Minister of Labour receives advice from an advisory committee on radiation health and safety. I have a copy of a letter that the Minister of Labour wrote to the Minister of Health, and he approved this training program based on six specific recommendations from his advisory committee. Minister, there are six specific recommendations from the panel of experts to ensure the public safety has been met.

I want to say, minister, are you aware that the Minister of Labour, almost a year after that date, wrote the Newfoundland Association of Medical Radiation Technologists, their ad hoc committee on cross-training, and he advised in this letter -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member now to get to his question.

MR. SULLIVAN: Mr. Speaker, I am asking him is he aware of this. I just want a yes or no. I'm in the process of the question.

Is he aware that the Minister of Labour wrote the ad hoc committee on cross-training advising them that he has experienced concerns with compliance with certain conditions in that minister's advisory committee on radiation health and safety that was felt necessary to protect the public health and safety?

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

MR. GRIMES: Yes, Mr. Speaker.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. SULLIVAN: Mr. Speaker, I ask the minister: Is he aware that recommendations (inaudible) - one of those six recommendations - that trained technologists only could fill positions left vacant by combined lab/X-ray technicians, and that is not being met, I say to the minister? Is he aware that another recommendation requires graduates of this course to undergo additional training and receive CAMRT standards that would require up to fifty weeks of clinical training? Will the minister tell us if even one person in the last two years has even commenced that training that is considered to protect the public health and safety?

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

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is a very serious issue that has been under discussion between the two departments of the government that are involved: Employment and Labour Relations primarily focusing upon the safety aspects that you mentioned, and the Department of Health and Community Services focusing primarily upon making sure that we have trained medical personnel available in all parts of Newfoundland and Labrador, particularly in our more rural parts of Newfoundland and Labrador.

It was clear that there were some incidents of non-compliance, as was pointed out by the other department. In every case that was always brought to the attention of the appropriate health care board so that they could check and make sure that the people were being trained appropriately and that there was no risk being taken for the safety of the trainees or to the safety of any patients who would go to these trained employees afterwards.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Opposition House Leader, one quick supplementary.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Is the minister aware that the expert committee advisory to the Minister of Labour that advised on health and safety - is he aware that not one of the lab technologists that were crossed-trained have written the national examination that is a prerequisite to be specialized in administering radiation that can have very deleterious effects on human health in the long term?

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

MR. GRIMES: Mr. Speaker, we have been satisfied, through repeated and regular contract with the boards. As a matter of fact the hon. member, as the health critic - and I know he takes his job very seriously - would be interested in knowing that in my visitation throughout the Province shortly after becoming the Minister of Health and Community Services, that this was one of the issues brought to my attention by CEOs and board chairs in each of the regions, to suggest that they had concerns about safety but they also had concerns about the availability of staff.

I am sure that the hon. member would acknowledge that there is a debate actually going on in the country as to whether or not the separate training needs to actually happen, or whether the cross-trained specialists that we have had in Newfoundland and Labrador for thirty to forty years now are more appropriate in rural settings than individually, singularly trained individuals for each function. It is a matter that there are different standards in play in different parts of the country. It is one that is a current matter in the Province -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. minister now to conclude his answer.

MR. GRIMES: - but we would not compromise the safety of anybody with respect to this issue.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Chair recognizes the hon. the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My question is for the Minister of Health and Community Services. The minister has talked about summer closures for hospital beds in this Province. In 1998, 12 per cent of hospital beds closed. In 1999, there were 20 per cent closed. This summer, the minister projects upwards of 25 per cent of the hospital beds closing in the Province.

Given the fact that this government has taken some measures, allegedly, to increase staffing, particularly with nurses, why is it that we have fewer and fewer beds available for hospital needs in this Province?

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

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

If I might give this answer and the hon. member - I know the member who asked the question would like to hear the answer. I don't know about anybody else. The real answer is this: Last year, we would all remember, just around this time - a month or so before this - we had a labour disruption in the Province involving nurses. Members on that side of the House stood up, every single one of them, and talked about the need for more full-time nurses, more physicians and more professional staff. What we did was put them in place.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. GRIMES: We did convert over 400 positions from casual positions -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. GRIMES: Thank you for leading into my answer.

They all were working full-time hours, Mr. Speaker, and they had no benefits such as holiday entitlement. This year that extra 400, plus the 125 that we hired, plus the new physicians that are here - some sixty of them - all have an entitlement to vacation and holidays which they said last year they should get.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. GRIMES: They said we should have more of them and they should get their holidays. We have more of them. To get their holidays, we have to close some of the beds for the vacation period.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The time for Oral Questions has elapsed.

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

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I give notice that I will on tomorrow ask leave to introduce a bill entitled, "An Act To Amend The Income Tax Act." (Bill 22).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Before I call the next item under Routine Proceedings, I would like to welcome to the House of Assembly today a delegation from the Town of Comfort Cove-Newstead: Julie Eveleigh, the Mayor of that community; Wylie Head, Deputy Mayor; Junior Eveleigh, council member; and Gerald Head, council member.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TULK: Where are the questions on the Order Paper?

AN HON. MEMBER: We had 2,000 on the Order Paper.

MR. E. BYRNE: A point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: On a point or order, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, if the Government House Leader wants to make a little show for the press, let him tell them the whole story. In one session of the House, over 110 questions on the Order Paper and not one answered by the government.

If he wants some questions, start answering the ones in Question Period first and you might get some more.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

There is no point of order.

The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. TULK: On a new point of order, Mr. Speaker, let me say to the hon. gentleman that I recall some questions being answered here by ministers on this side, but I can take him back a little further than that, and that is to when his -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TULK: That is what he started to give us, a history lesson, so I will give him one.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. TULK: Mr. Speaker, let me say to the hon. gentleman -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TULK: I am on a point of order.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Chair has ruled that the point raised by the hon. member was not a valid point of order. Is the Government House Leader raising a new point of order?

MR. TULK: A point of order, Mr. Speaker..

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

MR. TULK: That is what I asked to have raised, a new point of order.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. TULK: Let me say to the hon. gentleman, Mr. Speaker, that I can recall all of the questions that were put on the Order Paper in this House, some attention being paid to them by this side to be answered.

Let me take him back a little further and say that when his political cousins -

AN HON. MEMBER: His brothers.

MR. TULK: - brothers in this case, his political brothers, some of them now living far away, when there were some 2,000 questions put on the Order Paper when we were in Opposition, and not one single one was answered.

AN HON. MEMBER: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. TULK: No wonder the Member for Lewisporte is grinning. He knows exactly what I am talking about.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

There is no point of order.

The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. TULK: Mr. Speaker, let me say to the Member for Lewisporte that there was no point in asking him any questions, so he got none.

Order 4, "An Act To Amend The Fishing Industry Collective Bargaining Act." (Bill 5)

MR. SPEAKER: Order 4.

Motion, second reading of a bill, "An Act To Amend The Fishing Industry Collective Bargaining Act."

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Environment and Labour.

MR. LANGDON: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This act that we have in front of us today, An Act To Amend The Fishing Industry Collective Bargaining Act, was really putting into legislation a process that we brought in place over the last two years as a part of a pilot project to bring stability to negotiations and working arrangements in the fishing industry in Newfoundland and Labrador.

There is no doubt about it, that this particular arrangement that we have negotiated between the unions, the FFAW, FANL, and the independent fishing industries, has been a success. In fact, I can say that this particular piece of legislation is not only unique to the Province but it is also unique to the country here.

When the proponents of this particular piece of work did their work, they visited jurisdictions across the country. They also went to Iceland, and did work also in conjunction with their stakeholders in this particular situation, the unions, FFAW and FANL. I can say today that we have been in consultations with the stakeholder group and we have full support of the industry and the union in this particular piece of legislation.

This legislation does, in a sense, take in effect for two years. If, after two years, the parties are not happy with this particular arrangement, it does give them an out and then be able to negotiate a new agreement with a new group in the industry or with another elective bargaining unit, should that be the case.

This process is unique, as I said. It has brought stability. It is only, in a sense, legislating what we have already had as a pilot agreement between the stakeholders in this particular Province.

I am very pleased today to introduce this piece of legislation during second reading. I am confident this will add permanent stability to the fishing industry in this Province.

MR. SPEAKER (Smith): Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Bonavista South.

MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I stand today to say a few words on this piece of legislation. It is no surprise. It is not something we haven't seen in this House before. It was done on a trial basis, I understand, in looking at the minister as he nods his head in approval. It was done on a six-month basis, if I recall, and I think it was brought back into the House again to be extended for a further six months, and now we are looking at putting it into effect for a two year period.

This is a good piece of legislation, which shows what can happen when we get a dialogue between the provincial fisheries and aquaculture, when we get a dialogue with the union and the stakeholders. This is the kind of legislation that we can see brought here, which is not controversial. It is something that is good for the industry, and it is good for the people who take part in that particular industry.

We can all think back just a short while ago, a couple of years ago. Every year before the crab fishery would start - this is why this piece of legislation has been brought forward. It started out with the shellfish industry and now it has been extended to include the framework. The blueprint is being allowed to continue to be put in place for other fishing as well.

We can recall when there would be some dissatisfaction with the price offered by the processors, where we would see boats tied up at the wharf for sometimes a month or two months waiting for a price settlement before people would go fishing.

You must realize that if we had boats tied up at the wharf, then the processors of this Province weren't meeting the market demand that was out there. When you go and make a commitment to a market, it is incumbent on the stakeholders to be able to provide that market with a product that they can take to the supermarket shelves and supply their clientele, supply the consumers of the world, in a timely way so they can plan their business and have their business move along in an orderly fashion. This is why this is a good piece of legislation.

The other part of it I would like to expand on, and it is probably something that can be tied in with this, if we are going to bring about legislation for a price settlement, I think we should also bring about or have some form of understanding where we are going to share information about the whole industry.

We can all think back to what happened just a few short months ago. I am not convinced that the minister didn't know long beforehand the problem with crab recruitment around the shores of this Province. I am not convinced that the man who prides himself for having a pulse on the fishery of Newfoundland and Labrador was caught by surprise when he heard the results of a trial survey that was done last November, and just two weeks prior to the opening of the crab season the shocker was delivered, the bad news, that maybe we may have a problem with shellfish in this Province, we may have a problem with crab recruitment around the shores of this Province.

When the concern was raised - I remember where I first heard it. It was in the stadium in Bonavista, I say to the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture, where there was a hockey tournament. A processor was there at the time and we had a little chat. He said: Have you heard the rumor? I said: No. In fact, I said: Look, don't pay any attention to rumors. Because I can assure you it was in the back of my mind that if it was true, this minister would be on his feet telling people that we have a problem. We have to slow down. We have a problem with recruitment. I am concerned about it. Hold back the industry. We are not going to start fishing as of the first of April, until we find out what is happening. We have a real problem.

Instead, it was allowed to fester. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans came out and said: Don't be alarmed. This is only a small piece in a big puzzle. There are a lot of other surveys. We have to talk to fishermen. We have to look at the results from other experiments that have been carried out. It is only a small piece in a big puzzle.

I remember an interview. The Minster of Fisheries and Aquaculture was at the trade show down in Boston, and I remember the interview. The Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture was on the radio, saying: What are you fellows trying to do to me up there? You are trying to hijack me. Here I am, down here in Boston, trying to line up markets, this great seafood show right here in the heart of the biggest consumer of shellfish in the world, and you people are out there throwing out those fears that we may have a problem within the shellfish industry in this Province. What are you doing to me? You don't know what you are talking about. Stay quiet until you hear all of the information. It is not true.

I said: Well, that kind of confirms what I was thinking. I was glad that I heard the minister. I was glad when I heard him talk about not allowing this to happen, because the minister knows. I had some faith in the minister. I figured the minister knew what he was talking about. I said: Well, that is great. I am glad that I kind of put the fear to rest in the processor that I was talking with in the stadium in Bonavista, because it is not true.

Then I had another call. I said: No, look, don't push the panic button. The minister knows what he is saying. I heard him on the radio interview direct from Boston. He is saying: Don't put those fears in people. You are trying to hijack me again down here. I am putting together markets. Where last year the industry was worth $1 billion, we are going to have a great market this year for snow crab; because as he always said, as he said this last six months: Now is our chance to be a showcase to the world because the Alaskan crab industry is failing and now is our chance to reach forward and control 40 per cent of the marketplace. Never once was there any fear that we had troubles with the recruitment of snow crab in this Province.

I heard the minister talk about how the survey that was done was wrong, and I agreed with that. I agree that if we are going to go and look at carrying forward experiments, and look at carrying forward scientific ways of doing things, then we should do it in the traditional way. If we are going to find out what crab is on the ocean floor, then we should carry out the experiment in the way that fishermen fish crab, which is set pots, have a smaller mesh in the pots so if the small crab would crawl in then the small crab would be there. It would be a good way to find out exactly what the recruitment levels were for this particular species.

This was a trawl survey carried out by the scientists. It was conducted back in November. So here we are. Six months ago this particular trawl survey was carried out. We are living in a modern world where it is not hard to put information together and transfer information from one point to another, whether it be ship, airplane or whatever to an onshore base, and we are looking at six months from a trawl survey that was conducted until we found out the results of that particular survey and relayed it to the fishermen. So, the government cannot have it both ways. You cannot say on the one hand that we are doing the right thing here by having a settlement in price if you are not going to share information with the stakeholders within the industry.

Then I refer back to what the minister talked about, the way that he would carry out his survey in potting crab and the way that the crab survey should be carried out, only to find that the minister did not know a lot of what he was talking about there as well.

MR. EFFORD: Why?

MR. FITZGERALD: Because the small crab that we are talking about, Mr. Speaker, with the concern we expressed for recruitment levels, are too small to even pot.

MR. EFFORD: That is not right.

MR. FITZGERALD: It is correct, I say to the minister. The thing that matters here most of all is the lack of scientific information and I have never heard this minister once -

MR. EFFORD: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: Small crab will not mesh, I say to the minister. That is the information that is provided to me. You can put all the small pots you want in a fleet and the small mesh and they tell me that the small crab will not pot.

MR. EFFORD: That is not correct.

MR. FITZGERALD: You had better talk to the scientists, I say to the minister, because that is where I got it from. I am not a scientist. I do not know what your knowledge is of scientific information.

Getting back to science, Mr. Speaker, the shame of it is the amount of science that has been carried out. Here we have a fishing industry worth $1 billion last year in export value. Fishery Products International, one of the best employers and probably one of the biggest employers in Newfoundland and Labrador, had $700 million last year in sales. Yet we are going and we are cutting back the science information with the all the problems, the challenges and the heartache that has happened within this industry since 1992 and prior to that. Because that all goes back to science as well. It goes all the way back to there. Here we are cutting back science, and we know no more of what happened to the groundfishery today than we did back in 1992 when the bottom fell out of her, I say to the minister. We know no more about it.

Last year there was something like $25,000 spent in discretionary spending on shellfish science. The minister shakes his head, going through this theatrics over there, but he knows what I am saying is true. Last year, for an industry that was worth in excess of $1 billion, an export value in this Province, the amount of scientific knowledge that we have brought forward to us is next to nil. What do we do? We go and cut back the amount of science information that has been put forward and the effort that is put forward to the point where last year, excluding the cost of the rental on the boat, excluding the cost of salaries and that sort of thing and maintaining, there was $25,000, I say to the minister, spent in discretionary spending in science in the crab fish industry in this Province. That is shameful.

I do not know what effort the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture is putting into this -

AN HON. MEMBER: John!

MR. FITZGERALD: I do not know what effort John is putting into it, but I do know that it is something the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs should be taking up the gauntlet on. Because if there was ever a disappointment in this House, Mr. Speaker - in fact I would say there were two disappointments. If I was to name two major disappointments that have happened in this Legislature within the past six months I could name them very quickly.

AN HON. MEMBER: What are they?

MR. FITZGERALD: One is the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. Everybody thought that once we had a full-time Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs that we would have a direct line to Ottawa and all the problems and all the heartache and all the grief that has been spread on this Province by old man Ottawa would be looked after.

AN HON. MEMBER: What has he done?

MR. FITZGERALD: What has he done? Nothing!

The second biggest disappointment - and I say this at the risk of getting something thrown at me - is the fourth place allotment of the Leader of the New Democratic Party in Question Period. Everybody was waiting for him, and he made such a noise that he wanted to have the fourth place allotment because all the issues were not getting out there. The Tories weren't touching on the issues of the day. He wanted his place in Question Period.

MR. TULK: Roger, I am going to tell you something. It is not very often that I agree with you. (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: He wanted his place in Question Period and the Speaker - and I am not questioning the Speaker's wisdom. The Speaker came back, and I thought our House Leader had put forward a workable solution.

MR. TULK: Listen (inaudible) and I must say that I think you are right, but I pushed the Opposition House Leader to try to do something for the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi. I will tell you something. (Inaudible) -

MR. FITZGERALD: Hurry up. If you have something to say, say it.

MR. TULK: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: It was disappointing. I will tell you, it is not disappointing to me because we knew -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: The media was playing up to the Leader of the New Democratic Party and was saying that the Leader of the New Democratic Party should have a place here. He should have a place in Question Period. I haven't seen him -

MR. TULK: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, a big disappointment to us over here because we expected to get some guidance on how to have a leadoff question the next day. We expected the media to have a scrum with the Leader of the Opposition on a regular basis. I haven't seen him on television, except for cutting around by somebody who was having an interview, since he was allowed fourth place in Question Period. So those were two major disappointments, but I am digressing.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: No, that was a fluke.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: Listen, don't start me again.

MR. FITZGERALD: Two big disappointments.

MR. E. BYRNE: I just happened to be in a certain place at a certain time.

MR. TULK: (Inaudible) twenty years. First of all, Eddie Byrne got up and spent a full hour talking about how (inaudible) joined the Liberal Party (inaudible). Then he got up and made a (inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: I heard.

MR. SULLIVAN: Who said that?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. FITZGERALD: That was a testament that was delivered in your absence.

Mr. Speaker, I say this to the Government House Leader. When I talked today about when the minister was getting up and delivering certain packages and releasing so much today and so much another time, I said that the wheels were coming off her over there. The wheels may not be coming off her but there are some severe leaks, I say to the Government House Leader. This last, I would say, six days that I have had a copy of five Hansards delivered to me, five Hansards that show me the difference in attitude and the difference of opinion from what the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture had when he got up here in 1985 and 1986 when he would introduce private members' resolutions here and when he took part in debate, compared to his attitude and the information that he brings forward to this House today. What a difference a day makes.

When you see the Minister of Health get up and talk about how words are important, well, I don't have the Hansards with me here right now but I do have them up in my office. There are some pretty interesting information there. The Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture, for one thing, introduced a private member's resolution where he talked about the Fisheries Loan Board, how all of a sudden the bad PC government had allowed the Fisheries Loan Board to be controlled by the banks. He talked about how bad that was and how it hurt the fishermen. Lo and behold, he becomes the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture and not only does he allow the Fisheries Loan Board to be controlled by the banks, but he gets rid of it altogether and gives it to another separate department, completely out of his control, I say to him.

Those are the kind of things that are not being done for this particular industry. While the minister stands here and talks about how he is a great saviour and all the wonderful things that have happened, just think back to Question Period yesterday when the champion of the people got up and turned his back on the sealing industry in this Province, turned his back on an organization that has done so much to shepherd the sealing industry from where it was back in the late 1970s to 1980s to where it is today. The minister turns his back on them and says: You are on your own; find your own funding or you can disappear.

I say to the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture that this organization, this industry, has given you a platform to travel around this Province on, and given you a soap box this last four years. Now it is about time that you showed some support to the sealing industry. It is about time that you reached back and showed some support to them since they have provided you with your platform and your soapbox to go around the Island.

Everywhere he went it was the sealing industry, how important it was, how we need to go out and there is nobody standing up. He would be saying: It is only me, me, it is all about me. I can guarantee you that as fast as they stood up, that minister would shoot them down, pick them off one by one, because he didn't want anybody - and I say to people in the galleries - to be there to help them. He didn't want anybody to take any of the limelight. It was the only thing he knew, to go out and take somebody on and say: Look, I am the only one, there is nobody helping me. Where were you, and where were you and you? I know where I was.

Only yesterday or a couple of days ago he said to me: Where were you? I told him where I was. I was putting on a pair of rubber boots to go to work in a fish plant. That is where I was when he was down jumping around from ship to ship trying to be the chairperson of the United Fisherpersons association, where people now are looking for it, wondering what happened to their money. That is what happens there.

The minister speaks about a slipway. That is another thing that is wrong, I say to the minister. Why should we in this House of Assembly have to literally beg a minister in order to get a paltry $3,000 for some organization, some fisheries committee, to repair the slipway?

MR. EFFORD: If you are going to stand here in the House of Assembly and lambast me for half an hour then I am going to write (inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: No, you don't have to take it. No, you don't have to write - it is not your cheque, I say to the minister. You have to remember one thing. You might have thought it was your check the other day when you went to Bonaventure, but I will tell you it is not your money. That is as much my money and as much of that man's money as it is yours. You have been entrusted with that money and I say shame on you for taking the political and partisan attitude towards it.

Mr. Speaker, a few years - in fact, it is still continuing today I think - the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture went out and looked at the infrastructure that they had around the Province. The committee was encouraged by the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture to go around, look at, and encourage fishermen's committees to take back infrastructure. I think of wharves, I think of slipways, I think of sheds, ice, and all that kind of thing around the wharves. They were encouraged to take it back because the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture wanted to divest itself of it. I can't blame them for that. It was a situation where the local people knew what was needed. They knew what repairs needed to be done to their slipway and to their wharf.

You might say: I don't know what you are doing talking about slipways and wharves if there is no big amount of fishing activity going on today. There is. When I talked about a $1 billion export value, all that is not landed in St. Anthony or Bonavista. A lot of it is landed in small communities. People here, the Members for Twillingate & Fogo and Fortune Bay-Cape la Hune, know very well what I am talking about. A lot of this product is still landed in small communities.

Some of those small communities exist because of a few fishermen keeping a little bit of economic activity going there. The least we can do, if we cannot go out and maintain that infrastructure that we passed back to the fishermen's committees, with the instructions or with the full knowledge of this government, is to say: We will continue to support you, and we will continue to make available a sum of money - and it was normally approximately $3,000 a year - in order for you to maintain the infrastructure. Now, $3,000 a year is not a lot of money but I can tell you, with free labour for the most part, if it was done right and if it was done proper and if it was taken out of the hands of the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture and put in some responsible hands, that a lot of people would be able to maintain that infrastructure and have it there to serve them to carry out their everyday activities.

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

MR. FITZGERALD: What is that?

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

MR. FITZGERALD: It is a good program. It is just that it is in the wrong hands, I say to the member. I would venture to say that I represent probably one of the biggest fishing districts on this Island. The Member for Baie Verte nods his head. Yes, yours as well is a big fishing district. Last year there was something like $350,000 in that particular pot of money for special grants. Do you know how much I got last year? Not how much I got. It was not my money. Do you know how much the fishermen in Bonavista South got last year? Thirty-five communities. Out of those thirty-five communities I bet you I have thirty-two wharves, I bet you I have thirty-three slipways. Do you know how much money the fisherpeople in Bonavista South got last year? A measly $3,000, and I had to go and beg. I do not know how many phone calls or how much time I consumed in trying to get $3,000 from the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture. Now, that is shameful.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: You probably did. That is shameful, I say to members opposite, because what people have to remember, and what you people have to remember over there, is that the Ministers of Fisheries and Aquaculture, Health and Community Services, and Finance are not the ministers for the Liberal government. He is not the minister for St. John's North or Port de Grave. He is the minister of Newfoundland and Labrador. The President of Treasury Board is not the minister for Grand Falls-Buchans. She is the President of Treasury Board for Newfoundland and Labrador. The people in this Province should be served well by those ministers -

MR. MATTHEWS: They are.

MR. FITZGERALD: - and we should not have - they are not. You are right, I say to the Minster of Finance, they are not. You are one of the few who would probably reach out and help everybody if the need was there.

The Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture - I am going to repeat it in case you did not hear it - when I talked about the $350,000 that is in your budget for special grants -

MR. EFFORD: The one that you are not (inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: It is not me, I say to the minister, it has nothing to do with me. It is like this seat here. This seat is not mine. This seat belongs to the people in Bonavista South and I am only occupying it. When I come looking for money, whether it be for road work, or for slipways, or for wharves, it is not for me. It has nothing to do with me. I do not have a boat. I am not a fisherman.

AN HON. MEMBER: Tom Rideout never put much in Twillingate & Fogo when he was (inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: You fellows will have to talk to Tom Rideout about that. It has nothing to do with me. I can tell you something, that if I was there in that chair I would treat everybody the same way, and I would treat people in Bonavista South, Port de Grave or Bellevue the way they should be treated. That is the way things should be done.

One of the biggest fishing districts in Newfoundland and Labrador, Bonavista South, thirty-five communities, one of the biggest fishing communities. Out of the $350,000 that the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture had at his disposal, a little slush fund, I got a paltry - not me, I am referring to it wrong again - the people in Bonavista South got a paltry $3,000. I had to beg, I had to go knocking on people's doors, I had to raise it in a public forum with the minister. I had it here in the Estimates meeting with the minister, to say to him: Minister, yes, it is a good fund, but let's start distributing wisely. If we are going to go out on one hand and encourage fishermen and fishermen's committees to take over the infrastructure and make the commitment that the funding is going to be there to improve the slipway and improve the little shed, then let's live up to our commitment.

I am not going to get into any of the foolish promises that the minister made in the by-election; that is up to him. I am not even going to touch that. I am not even going to touch the promises that the minister made in Trinity North. I hope he lives up to them. The people in Trinity North deserve a wharf, deserve a slipway, and deserve to have their fishing infrastructure looked after just as the people in my district. If the need is there, it should be responded to.

Mr. Speaker, there is nothing wrong with this special account, nothing wrong with it whatsoever, as long as it is carried out right and correctly. The minister should take it out of his own office. I should not have to go and beg to the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture for a paltry $3,000. If the minister has no more to do than worry about dishing out a few paltry dollars underneath the table, or to keep somebody begging to him, then I question the need for the minister.

It was almost like the Minister of Forestry and Agrifoods a few years ago. I had to bring it up in the House where they brought in rules and regulations that, if you are going to pull your wood out of the woods at a certain time of the year, you had two months. If you didn't get it out in that two months, you had to go to the minister to get special permission. How silly, boys, come on.

AN HON. MEMBER: No.

MR. FITZGERALD: What do you mean, no? Not no, yes. Yes, that is the way it was.

It was also that silly that if you were going in to pull out your wood, you couldn't even have somebody else on the ski-doo with you. This is the kind of silliness, and it came from the first minister that was sitting in that seat where the Member for Bellevue is sitting now. It came from him, from the former Premier, who said he was going to do away with government red tape. He was going to have one-stop shopping. Do you remember that?

The Government House Leader, I have to say, while he wasn't very happy when he sat in the back benches, he has been one of the few bright lights in the front benches here. I have to say that in all sincerity.

MR. EFFORD: Why would you say that?

MR. FITZGERALD: I say it because he makes himself available to not only his own constituents but to other people around this Province. I have to say it because I have had dealings with the minister and had delegations come in and sit and talk with him, and he allowed them the time they wanted. It had nothing to do with me. It had all to do with Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who were there, trying to help themselves.

The sadness is, and I suppose the fear is, I say to the Member for Baie Verte - a lot of things can happen. Can you imagine the state we would be in, can you imagine the mess that we would be in, can you imagine where we would go, if, God forgive us, the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture ever gets to occupy the prime seat, the number one seat, that the Member for Bellevue is occupying now. What kind of a mess would we be in, with that kind of an attitude? That can't be allowed to happen. We are operating in a democracy. We are supposed to be in a democratic county.

Members opposite went out knocking on doors during the by-election and talked about how you have to get on the side of government. If you are going to get anything, you have to get on the side of government. What a demented way of thinking, that you have to get on the side of government in order to get anything.

Do you know what I said? The doors that the minister was at, when I went back and heard that, do you know what I said? If you believe in that bull, you believe in Communism.

MR. BARRETT: A point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, I want to remind the hon. Member for Bonavista South, and take him back in history a little bit, that in a by-election in Bellevue district, actually, the former, former, former Premier of this Province circulated a letter in Bellevue district warning the people in Bellevue district that if they did not vote for Bas Jamieson, at the time, that they would not get a cent of government money. That was his brothers and sisters in the Tory Party that threatened the people of Bellevue district.

There was no threat in Trinity North, to the people in Trinity North. What we did say was that if you are on the government side you had complete access to the ministers; but Brian Peckford sent a personal letter to every voter in Bellevue district, threatening them, that if they did not vote for Bas Jamieson they would not get a cent of money from the government.

Actually, what happened in Bellevue district in seventeen years - and I have the figures - $48,000 was the total spent on water and sewer in Bellevue district in seventeen years.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. BARRETT: I am on a point of order, yes, because you have to tell the whole story from Bonavista South.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

There is no point of order, but obviously it is a good opportunity for the -

The hon. the Member for Bonavista South.

MR. FITZGERALD: Mr. Speaker, I can't relate to those things, I say. That is why you are probably surprised to hear me say some of the things that I am saying. You might say: How green is the Member for Bonavista South, to think that he can come and have access to government members and to government ministers? That is my way of thinking. I think that is the way that it should be. All the things that you are talking about are probably true. I am not going to argue against any of that; but, if it is true or if it is not true, the question I ask is: Is it right?

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

MR. FITZGERALD: Then you had better tell some of your colleagues in the front benches of the government that you support today that it is not right, because I agree it is not right. I would never want to be part of something like that happening. You go out, and when you knock on doors you go to support yourself. You talk about people having -

MR. TULK: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

On a point of order, the hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. TULK: Mr. Speaker, I just want to try, if I could, to ask the hon. gentleman for Bonavista South to declare his true allegiance once and for all, if he is a member of the PC Party - I am not sure; nobody is sure where they are those days, whether they are PC or Alliance or what they are - or whether he is part of the disintegrating PC Party.

I have to say to him that the fellow who brought them down their recent policy statement on what should happen to the transmission line from Labrador to Newfoundland, the former Premier of this Province, the hon. Brian Peckford - the fellow who brought that down to them at their convention - was a person who got in Terra Nova district when a very good friend of the hon. gentleman from Musgravetown, Mr. Glen Greening, was elected the Member for Terra Nova in a by-election and stood in Musgravetown, Port Blandford, and areas like that, and said: This will be the forty-second member that we will have elected, if this member is elected, and he will get one forty-second of the budget. In other words, there is nothing for the Opposition so don't even bother voting for the Opposition.

I want to ask the hon. gentleman: Does he really - I want him to clarify it for us - support the disintegrating PC Party in Canada and, I suspect, in Newfoundland? Does he stick to that issue or is he one of those nilly-willy's that is all over the place, doesn't know where he stands and doesn't know what he stands for, but just stands up and says what is opportune at the time? I would ask him to tell us who he is and what he is about.

MR. SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

The hon. the Member for Bonavista South.

MR. FITZGERALD: Mr. Speaker, I don't have this great ideology about any party, I say to -

MR. TULK: I don't think you have any ideology about anything.

MR. FITZGERALD: I don't have any great ideology about any of that stuff. I suppose if I had a choice to have some input on how government should be structured -

MR. TULK: I heard you would like to be a Liberal.

MR. FITZGERALD: You heard wrong there.

If I had some input into how a government should be structured, I would look at the blueprint that - listen to me now - I would look at the blueprint that the new Territory used, Nunavut. An excellent way to form a government. You go out and you run. You offer yourself as a candidate. The people come forward and they have an opportunity to vote for a person, a candidate, that they want to represent them.

MR. TULK: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

On a point of order, the hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. TULK: Maybe I could encourage the hon. gentleman to do exactly what so many of his other PC friends are doing, leave the party and form a new political movement in the Province. If he feels so strong and principled about not being a part of any party, maybe he would like to get out and put together his own political movement which says that we will be all one and the same.

MR. SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

The hon. the Member for Bonavista South.

MR. FITZGERALD: In the territory of Nunavut they campaign, and the people elect a candidate, and there are no parties. They together elect the premier and they take the wishes of the people who elected them.

MR. TULK: (Inaudible)!

MR. FITZGERALD: I say to the Government House Leader, and I have to go back to him, because he stands here today as a proud Liberal. I can only think back over the short time I have been in this House, seven years, and I think about the first three years that that great Liberal there wasn't in tune with the great Liberalism that was happening within those confines and on that side of the House.

I remember the Government House Leader would have revolted at that time. In fact, the Government House Leader tried to lead it by getting people over here to come on side with him and start a revolt.

MR. TULK: (Inaudible)!.

MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, yes. The member knows exactly what I am saying. The Government House Leader, Mr. Speaker, would make many trips across here and echo - that is when he would show up in the House. I will tell you, the Government House Leader -

MR. TULK: (Inaudible) you don't have one principle (inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: The Government House Leader would make many trips over here and try to start a movement to get back at the premier of the day, and I don't blame him.

MR. TULK: That is not true. (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: We may be politicians -

MR. TULK: (Inaudible) my own party.

MR. FITZGERALD: No, you are a man of principle.

MR. TULK: I fought my own battles in my own party.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: He did. Against you. I know that.

AN HON. MEMBER: I led the charge.

MR. FITZGERALD: What do you mean, to put him there or get him out of it?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) say goodbye.

MR. FITZGERALD: I don't know about that. There are things that have happened behind the back benches that I knew nothing about.

MR. TULK: Not true. (Inaudible) my own party.

MR. FITZGERALD: Some of them were wide open. Some of the anger and some of the aggravation and some of the displeasure was carried out into the public as things would happen in this House. Things were carried over to parties right here in this building, little Christmas get-togethers.

The Government House Leader would come here when he would show up and he would sit back in the back benches. He wouldn't even be able to look - I don't know where he was looking. He couldn't look at anybody over there because he had no friends. He couldn't look over here because he hated everybody over here. He would come in, and he had one cheek of his rear end on the chair, and the other cheek off and looking up, mad at everybody.

MR. NOEL: As long as he wasn't mad at me.

MR. FITZGERALD: No, he wasn't mad at you at the time. I just referred to you as a great disappointment, in your absence.

MR. NOEL: What?

MR. FITZGERALD: I just referred to you as a great disappointment, in your absence. I will have to repeat it for you. The Member for Virginia Waters, I don't know where he ever got the nickname as a maverick politician?

AN HON. MEMBER: Who?

MR. FITZGERALD: The Member for Virginia Waters. Because he came here - only it lasted longer than you, I say to the Government House Leader. Your talent got recognized long before his, and so it should have.

MR. TULK: (Inaudible) mad at everybody?

MR. FITZGERALD: You were. You were mad at everybody, you were mad at yourself.

AN HON. MEMBER: Mad at the world.

MR. FITZGERALD: Mad at the world.

MR. TULK: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

On a point, the hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. TULK: I have to say to the hon. gentleman that that is not true. For example, one of my best friends here was carrying a resolution around in his pocket about me for a number of days. I fought what I fought on principle, not on personalities. I think the world of the Minister of Fisheries, the Minister of Finance. I think the world of them. I am not mad at anybody, but I just did what I thought I had to do. Unlike the hon. gentleman who I don't believe would fight anybody unless it is somebody across the way (inaudible). I don't think you have the gumption, Roger.

MR. SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

The hon. the Member for Bonavista South.

MR. FITZGERALD: Mr. Speaker, there is no point of order.

I don't blame the hon. Government House Leader for feeling the way he did. He toed the line of the Liberal Party. He was there in the good times and he was there in the bad times. I don't blame him for being mad at the Premier today. I would be mad as well. I think if I was one of the foot soldiers of the Liberal Party, and if I had done and came through and took my knocks and bruises along the way, then I think I would like to be looked after. I would like to have something there that would show what my history had been for the party. Especially if I had the ability to sit in the front benches.

The member wasn't treated right. Furthermore, we are all normal here. The forty-eight people who sit in this House, while we badger back and forth and we throw insults at each other, for the most part it is only done in this House. It is only done in the forum where we sit for the one hundred or so days a year. Once we go outside, once you are in company of other people - far greater people than ourselves, I say to people opposite - then there is always some courtesy. I have never seen it any other way. I have to say that to members opposite and I say it to everybody, I think, that I have ever appeared before or appeared with outside the forum where we sit today.

There are only forty-eight of us in Newfoundland and Labrador and while we do those things we are all very normal people as well. Some of us, I guess, have bigger egos than other people, but it is a sudden touch of reality come election time when you have to go back to the people who elected you. I don't blame this Liberal, Tory, NDP thing, political thing, during election time. Whatever is on the go, whatever you can do when the writ is served that you feel will help you, within your own conscience, if you feel that it is right to do or it will help you or your friends, then you do it.

I have the philosophy, and I operate on the premise, that once the election is over then put it all away. Don't go out and because you are perceived as a Liberal then I am not going to help you, or if you are perceived as a Tory then I am not going to help you. If anybody from my district calls, if they are from the District of Bonavista South, they get whatever help I can provide them. I don't care if they are Liberal, Tory, black, white, red, or green, it doesn't matter. If they are from Bonavista South I will do what I can to help. Come election time they can do what they want. I will do what I have to do, they can do what they have to do.

Unfortunately, some people don't do that. The Minister of Health does it. The Minister of Health, I think, is pretty much the same as I am. I know when the Minister of Health sees things happen and when he can provide some direction with having something happen in another district, that he takes as much satisfaction out of it as the person whose district it is and the people that he helps.

I say that thinking about the announcement in the Budget for dialysis machines in St. Anthony and Clarenville. I remember that day with a gentleman and his wife who were sitting here in the gallery, and who sat here many times as I presented petitions. When the minister heard that announcement - he knew it prior to that, because I had chatted with him and I had a feeling that something positive was coming down - and while he didn't want to say what was in the Budget, and I didn't want to build up the hope of the gentleman that was here, we had him come here and sit in the gallery. I tell you, they were two of the happiest people, and two of the happiest faces, that I have seen in a long while. Now we could see a gentleman who has been coming here to this town for the last four years, packing up his truck, taking his food, taking his little refrigerator every Monday morning and coming to St. John's, checking in at the hostel, going on dialysis three times a week, and going back home again Friday evening. That has been the routine for four years. Everybody here was well aware of it. The man had carried on his own personal pilgrimage, if you would, his own personal pleas on the open line shows. The day the minister made the announcement, he was just as happy as the people in the galleries.

The first thing the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture would have said was: What are you doing that for him for? It is not the way it should be, I say to the minister. The only person who is going to be doing something for another individual is going to be you when we go on that tour. When we go on that tour, Sir, you will be tending on the PC Party hand and foot, I can assure you now.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. FITZGERALD: The only plea that I have is that we land that boat in some isolated place, because I wouldn't want anybody to see me and see the Member for Baie Verte and the Member for Cape St. Francis when we get off, I can guarantee you. We might land down in English Harbour on that floating dock. It would be a good time to initiate it. We might go down to English Harbour and land on that floating dock, because -

MR. SULLIVAN: Haul her up on the slipway and (inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: Haul her up on the slipway over in Champney's. Look at her rudder and look at some of the graze that is on her, take her out, and away to go again.

Those are the kind of things that we all share. We can all come in here and we can buck one another. We can come in here and be against what everybody else is saying. There has to be some kind of a relationship.

I have a good relationship with the Member for Terra Nova. I would never do anything in this House or outside the House to belittle him or to take some credit away from him, and I can tell you that he would not do the same for me. I had a good relationship with the Member for Trinity North, neighboring MHA, a fellow I had worked with. I knew him long before politics.

AN HON. MEMBER: Trinity North?

MR. FITZGERALD: The Member for Trinity North. I had a good relationship, and that is the way it should be. Why should I go to the graduation on May 29 in Musgravetown, and the school is served by the Member for Terra Nova's district and my district, why should we go in there and just snub each other and not talk to each other and that kind of thing? That is not what people want to hear. That is not what people want to see. We are not running against each other. We are there to represent the people who have represented us by sending us in here - for him to occupy a seat from Terra Nova and for me to occupy a seat from Bonavista South. That is why we are here. There is the way it should be. It was not always that way.

I know another member. I know the other member, before the present Member for Terra Nova was here, and it was not a good relationship. It was not a good situation, but that is the pettiness of politics, the pettiness of politicians.

AN HON. MEMBER: You're a decent man.

MR. FITZGERALD: Absolutely, or I try to be.

AN HON. MEMBER: You have a good relationship with (inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: I have a good relationship with -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, sure I have. I will tell you that if I were the Minister of Tourism, I would have a good relationship with you, Sir, because we both share the same thoughts. We both know that there is another life after you leave this place right here. We both know, when we leave here, that we should leave what happened here, here.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: Was supposed to get it last year, I say. I am not going to jump up and down about that yet.

Mr. Speaker, I am learning a little bit. It has not been done intentionally, but I am getting like some government ministers. I am announcing money that the minister tells me I have, and I have announced it three times already, and I have not seen the money. Show me the money.

AN HON. MEMBER: Be cautious.

MR. FITZGERALD: Be cautious. It is a good thing that I have not been taken to task on it. The minister came over last year and said, Roger, you have the only capital spending in my department this year. You have $500,000. Put out the announcement. I will support you on it.

I put out the announcement and, the next thing I saw, another news release from the minister talking about $200,000 going to Bonavista, $160,000 going somewhere else, another $160,000 going somewhere else. I said: Minister, I thought I only had $500,000. Now you are giving me $700,000. He said: No, Roger, you are not getting $500,000. That is the $200,000 you are getting. You are going to get the rest of it probably next year. So there has been another announcement made.

MR. TULK: Who was that?

MR. FITZGERALD: The Minister of Tourism.

So there is another announcement made that we are going to get $600,000 this year, and it is going to be money well spent. It is going to do some work at the Cape Bonavista lighthouse. In a little news release that the minister put out, he had indicated that the Bonavista lighthouse sees more tourists, sees more visitors, than any other place in Newfoundland and Labrador.

AN HON. MEMBER: That is not true.

MR. FITZGERALD: Well, whether it is true or not -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: I don't know. I don't have those stats. I am just repeating what the minister said. The minister said that it was something like 18,000 people who visited Cape Bonavista last year; but whether it is Cape Bonavista or whether it is the lighthouse in Twillingate or whether it is the lighthouse out in Cape Spear, that is not the issue. If we have those strengths then we should support them. If we have those strengths where we can attract tourists, and if they are going to go out and visit places like Bonavista, Twillingate and Cape Spear, then they are also spending some money. They are buying gasoline. They are eating in restaurants and they are buying crafts, and that is what makes the economy tick. In fact, if you go out to rural Newfoundland and Labrador in the summertime you see it come alive. I think we have learned a lot from other jurisdictions. I think we have learned a lot from other areas.

In fact, it was only yesterday I was reading the paper - or today probably - where I see the clubs down on George Street now are looking at setting up little gardens, eateries, out on the sidewalk. This is new to Newfoundland but it is not new to any other area of Canada. It is not new in Halifax. It is not new in Quebec City. It is not new in Toronto. It is not new in Ottawa, but it is a good thing, I say to people here. Why shouldn't we have outdoor restaurants? We get as good a weather here as we get anywhere. It was only a couple of days -

MR. SULLIVAN: I wouldn't go that far.

MR. FITZGERALD: We do. Whether you want to grade the weather on how much sun you get or how much fog you get is entirely up to you, but I can guarantee you that I would class our weather far above some of the weather that you get in mainland cities like Toronto and those places where you go and you have the scorching days. I would much rather have to put on a sweater and go and eat outside or sit outside than have to go and look for somewhere to fan the - to keep the sweat off. I know all about Toronto because I worked there for eight years.

AN HON. MEMBER: You don't want to go back either.

MR. FITZGERALD: I don't want to go back.

MR. SULLIVAN: The climate is warmer now. Global warming has hit it since.

MR. FITZGERALD: I spent eight years working in Toronto, and I know exactly what it is like. You get off work in the evening and go for a place to swim, go for a swimming pool or go for the lake.

MR. SULLIVAN: Electrical work?

MR. FITZGERALD: At electrical work with Ontario Hydro, I say to the member. I worked with Ontario Hydro, out in the nuclear power plant out in Bay Ridges.

MR. SULLIVAN: Where?

MR. FITZGERALD: Out at Bay Ridges, Pickering, Ontario, out by Lake Ontario.

AN HON. MEMBER: I passed along by it the other day and I got the shivers.

MR. FITZGERALD: I haven't passed by it since. I wouldn't go near it. You have a lot of nerve.

AN HON. MEMBER: I don't say you would, after putting it together.

MR. SULLIVAN: He is half afraid something will happen when he's going by.

MR. FITZGERALD: You talk about our weather, and you say that our weather here is cold and our weather is foggy and that kind of thing. I remember working up there. There were two shifts. We would do a week of days and a week of nights.

AN HON. MEMBER: Did you (inaudible)?

MR. FITZGERALD: Did I get paid for what?

AN HON. MEMBER: Did you get paid for that ticket yet?

MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, yes, I got my money for that and got it spent.

We would go out at nighttime, to go from one of the buildings there to wherever we ate, and your breath, your nose, would freeze up, it was that cold, with the wind and the cold that was coming off Lake Ontario. I have never seen that kind of time here yet. While we don't have great weather, we have good weather. Why shouldn't we be able to go down on George Street and sit outside and have a beer if you want one, or have a steak, or have -

AN HON. MEMBER: In Washington they have them outdoors, remember?

MR. FITZGERALD: Sure they do. They have little sleeping places there as well, I say.

MR. SULLIVAN: Down in Georgetown it is nice outside eating.

MR. FITZGERALD: - or have a hamburger, because it is all part - now I can go home. Why shouldn't we have those kinds of things here? I don't blame people for wanting it, because we're as good as the best of them, I can guarantee you that. We have good weather here and we can go and promote our area, whether it be St. John's, Bonavista, Twillingate, or anywhere else in rural Newfoundland and Labrador. We have a lot to offer, and our people are certainly no different.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: Where's that?

AN HON. MEMBER: Georgetown, Washington.

MR. FITZGERALD: Georgetown, Washington. That is one of the very few safe places in Washington, I say to the minister. Myself, the Speaker, and the Member for Bellevue spent a few nights in Georgetown, on the river there, having something to eat after hard days of Parliamentary Conferences.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who was the navigator of that trip?

MR. FITZGERALD: The navigator was the Member for Bellevue. (Inaudible).

AN HON. MEMBER: Where did he lead you?

MR. FITZGERALD: He got led astray quite a few times.

I say to the Minister of Health, if I could get his attention, the first time we went to Washington on a Parliamentary Conference, myself, the Speaker, and the Member for Bellevue, the Member for Bellevue was the driver. A normal taxi route from the airport in Washington to Georgetown is about twenty minutes. He knows what I am saying. It took us four hours, Sir. We ended up hiring a taxi, told the driver the name of the hotel, and said: Would you please take us there? We didn't save much money in renting a car.

I remember, as part of the trip - it didn't cost this House of Assembly anything - we decided, after the parliamentary trip was over, that we were going to go somewhere else. We were going to go down and take in another jurisdiction in the United States. In order to get there, we had to go through Philadelphia. This was about twelve at night when we were driving through, and I was in the front seat asleep. The driver, the Member for Bellevue, said to me: Roger, do you recognize that place there? I said: Yes, that is the Spectrum. You know the Spectrum because of the way the stairs go up the outside and it is all lit up. I said: Well, we are in Philadelphia; we are on the right way. I looked at the map. Yes, he said. He kept driving and I went to sleep. I woke up two hours later and he said: Roger, do you know where we are? No, I said, but that is the Spectrum right there. We went two hours and we went right around in a circle.

This is the kind of direction that your government is in. This the kind of direction that some departments of your government are in, going around in circles and going nowhere.

MR. BARRETT: A point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

On a point or order, the hon. the Member for Bellevue.

MR. BARRETT: I want to make sure that the record is clear in terms of this important issue, in that the reason that we didn't find the hotel is because the conference organizers had given us the wrong address.

AN HON. MEMBER: Right, and they are not here to defend themselves.

MR. BARRETT: They are not here to defend themselves.

The other thing was that he talked about no direction. The problem was that I couldn't keep the navigator awake. The person reading the map was asleep, so it was very difficult to get directions when the person who was giving the directions was sound asleep. Not only that but he snored.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

While the Chair recognizes that the hon. member's pride may be hurt, there is no point of order.

The hon. the Member for Bonavista South.

MR. FITZGERALD: Mr. Speaker, that is just a side issue. Parliamentary trips are good things. It gives you a chance to see how other jurisdictions work, it gives you a chance to find out how best you can do things yourself. Probably even better than all of that is that it is a situation for a little bit of comradely between people you don't ordinarily get together with, and I mean people from both sides. Here again, political patronage or partisan politics is laid aside. Here is the Speaker who was on that trip, right here, right now, who will verify everything that I said earlier.

Mr. Speaker, those are the kind of things that we should continue to do because that is the only way we can improve things, when we go out, learn, and ask questions

Having said all that, I have never seen anybody and I have never gone anywhere where I have seen people so patriotic as Newfoundlanders. I have never gone anywhere. You notice it on those parliamentary trips. I would submit that everybody here has been on a parliamentary trip at one time or another in their tenure here in this House. Mr. Speaker, when you hear Newfoundlanders speak, they always promote the Province. They always promote where they are from. They promote their Province, what we have to offer, and how we would enjoy somebody coming to visit us. You don't hear that from other people. You don't hear that from other politicians from other Province's. I have never heard it, but I hear it wherever we go. I hear it from both sides of this House. It is not somebody following the lead of others. I think it is just something within us that we want to tell people of where we live, how we live, that we are proud it and we would like for you to come and visit us and see it for yourself. I think it is a great place here, and I firmly believe it.

While you talk about the idea that we should adjust to people moving away from this Province and moving to other places, because in the United States of America, the great country, the great democracy of the world, people don't go and live in the community that they were born, they don't go and live in the community where they work and expect to stay there. They move around. People, uncaring, say that Newfoundlanders should do the same thing. They say: Because we do it, and we have no sense of home, and we have no sense of where we are from or what we are all about, then everybody should do the same thing. It is a little different here.

I say to the Minister of Government Services and Lands, he can probably relate to it even more than I can. I visited the man's hometown and I know the Coast of Labrador fairly well. I can tell you that those people as well are proud of where they are from, proud of their heritage, don't want to leave, would like to be able to continue to live and support their families, and have their families around them. So they should, because these are special places.

While we may go to some of those special places ourselves, and we may say: I wouldn't want to live here, I wouldn't want to stay somewhere else, I think we can all feel some sort of relationship, and some sort of whatever it is that is in us, where we can understand why people don't want to leave. Because it is special things. I say this sometime when I visit seniors' functions, and I talk about the comradery and the friendship that we experience by coming together. When you see seniors come together in small communities and small towns around Newfoundland and Labrador, and the reason why they come out and sit together, and enjoy a supper and a little bit of fellowship, it is all about people knowing each other.

When you look at somebody, you don't only see the face looking back at you, you see the son, you see the daughter, you see the uncle, you see the whole family. Because they are people that you know, they are people that you have grown up with. When you meet somebody, it is always: How is Uncle So-and-So, or Aunt Somebody Else, or how is Mrs. So-And-So? Everybody knows everybody, and everybody has feelings about everybody.

When you inquire in rural areas sometimes as to how somebody is -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. FITZGERALD: If you had some people from St. John's out there, I say to the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi, they might say you are nosy, because you are asking questions. They can't relate to it. It is not that you are nosy, it's not that you want to inquire because it is something that you want to tell somebody else about. You inquire because you care. You inquire because you care about somebody.

I read with some interest a few months ago - maybe it was even longer than that - where there was a story written about this older gentleman who was found over in Germany sitting in front of his television set. He had been dead for five months. The way he was found was like this. Nobody had bothered going to his door. He lived alone. He had enough money put in the bank to look after his rent and all his bills, and the bills were coming out of his bank account. As the bills were due, it was all set up to come out of his bank account. Finally the bank account ran out, and there was no money there. The landlord went up to knock on his door, and he couldn't get in. When he went in, he found this older gentleman dead in front of the t.v. set. He had the television guide in front of him, and the television guide was opened up to a certain date. It was five months prior to him been found. He was dead for five months before anybody even knew he was dead.

Can that happen here in rural Newfoundland? Does anybody know a place in rural Newfoundland where that can happen? It can't happen!

MR. BARRETT: It wouldn't be five hours.

MR. FITZGERALD: It wouldn't be five hours, the Member for Bellevue says. He is right. It can't happen in Newfoundland, because the first thing is, if we do not see somebody out to the clothesline or out on the beach, or out in the garden or starting up their car, we are going to pick up the phone and call. We are going to go and knock on the door. We do not do it because we want to gossip. We do it because we care. That would never happen here. It would never happen in rural Newfoundland for sure.

So that is the way we are. That is the reason why we are proud of who we are. While we come here and we banter back and forth, there is part of that in each and every Member of the House of Assembly. There is part of that in each and every one of us here. While sometimes you try to be tough and you try to put the best foot forward because I am this or I am that, we are all not much different no matter where we are from, whether we are from the South Coast, the Cape Shore, the East Coast, or from the Labrador Coast. We are all the same. We are from this special place called Newfoundland.

That is why, Mr. Speaker, it bothers me sometimes when I have to go to people like the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture. That is why I have to go to beg to him to help some people in my district, and he plays partisan politics with them. He does not -

AN HON. MEMBER: Who?

MR. FITZGERALD: The Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture.

That is why it bothers me. It bothers me because he is not helping me. While he is disappointing me by not allowing it to happen, he is not hurting me. He is hurting people who deserve special treatment. I do not think that there are too many ministers over there other than him who would be like that. I know the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation, I would submit, is probably the most disappointed person sitting in this House today.

AN HON. MEMBER: Why?

MR. FITZGERALD: He is disappointed because he knows that he does not have enough money passed to him in his Budget to look after the need in rural Newfoundland and Labrador for roads. He knows himself, and he knows that he would like to reach out and put forward some dollars and some cents to be able to attend to the need that is there. He knows, Mr. Speaker, that he cannot respond to the needs that are out in rural Newfoundland. He can only pay lip service to it. While he is going to please one or two people -

MR. SPEAKER (Snow): Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. FITZGERALD: - I say he is going to disappoint many more.

Mr. Speaker, with those brief comments I will sit and allow somebody else to speak.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to (inaudible) before the House, An Act To Amend the Fishing Industry Collective Bargaining Act. I can understand why the Minister of Health and Community Services is wondering what piece of legislation the previous speaker was talking about. I was wondering myself. I listened very carefully at the beginning when he was talking about the Fishing Industry Collective Bargaining Act. Then I thought I went to sleep for a day or so and we were listening to him talk about another bill, because the last going off I heard him talking about democracy in America and some poor fellow who had fallen asleep for five months before his t.v. set. Then it turned out that in fact he was deceased.

He was talking about democracy in America and how supposedly it is the most democratic country in the world. I am going to take up that theme in a minute, but before I do that I want to go directly to the meat of the matter and talk about the bill that is before the House, An Act To Amend the Fishing Industry Collective Bargaining Act. I think it is a piece of legislation that has been the result of a fair amount of cooperative effort and problem solving in an industry that is vital to this Province.

What we have seen happening in the past as a result of intransigence on one side or the other, or as a result of the inability of parties with goodwill on both sides of the equation at certain times to reach an agreement on the price of fish to be paid to fish harvesters, is the industry has been shut down. At times that has been to the determent not only to the processors but also the harvesters themselves, the plant workers, the communities involved, and to the point where the fishing season has been missed, or a goodly portion has been missed where, particularly in some cases, at the early part of the season, the prices might be better. The industry, as a whole, hasn't been able to take advantage of the markets and, in fact, has lost markets as a result of unreliability of supply. That is becoming increasingly important in our fishing industry. The integration of the market with processing, the timely delivery of product because of contracts that are engaged with major chains of food to service industry, means we have to recognize that we are in an industry which, if we miss the market, we may in some cases lose that market for not only that year, but the next, and possibly not be available for longer-term contracts.

The certainty of supply has been a problem. We saw it in the crab industry a couple of years ago, and from time to time we have seen it in the caplin industry, although I don't really know what has happened to the caplin industry. It seems that industry has suffered a setback.

We have a bill before the House that allows - this has been debated before. I have spoken on it, the minister has spoken on it, the Member for Bonavista South has spoken on it before - where the parties have tried an experiment, and a cautious one I have to say, because, certainly on the union's side, a commitment to this type of process, the results of it, aren't always known in advance. I think the minister was wise and the government was wise to offer this as a pilot project for a couple of seasons to see how it worked, to allow the process to work through cycles of where the price is up and the price is down to see how the system works. It appears that the results have been acceptable to the parties and they are now agreed to see it go into permanent legislation.

I had a little concern, in looking at the bill itself, about the change in the terminology used from operator to processor. I understand - I guess the minister can confirm this when he closes debate - that this doesn't represent any policy change, that processor still includes people who aren't actually processing. It still includes people who are buying fish. They may be buying lobsters and not processing them at all, just reselling them. They may be buying product and reselling them to a major processor. They too are included, I understand, in the legislation and, in fact, processor is a term that is more appropriate to the common understanding of the fishing industry. I think the word operator was devised some time ago. It was even awkward at the time it was used initially, but it was intended to ensure that anybody who was involved in the purchasing of fish directly from the harvesters of fish, the fishermen and fisherwomen of this Province, were to be covered by the Fishing Industry Collective Bargaining act.

I think it is worthwhile saying, while we are talking about this bill, that this is a bill unique in Canada in terms of giving fish harvesters the right to collective bargaining with the buyers of fish. It doesn't happen in British Columbia, it doesn't happen in Nova Scotia. Other provinces' fishing industries would like to have this kind of legislation. It was brought into this Province back in the early 1970s. I think the last of the Liberal government, the government of Premier Smallwood, brought this legislation in as part of its, I believe, last mandate or second last mandate in this House.

It is legislation that has gone through three or four governments: the government of Premier Smallwood, the government of Premier Moores, Premier Peckford, Premier Rideout, Premier Wells, and now Premier Tobin. So it has, as legislation, stood the test of time in terms of providing a basis for collective bargaining in this Province. It has also stood many legal tests. We had, from 1987 to recently, a lot of challenges within the fishing industry in terms of representation through the Fishermen's Union. Once again this legislation has been able to withstand those types of changes within the fishing industry. We have also gone, as we know, through a moratorium. So the legislation has provided a basis for collective bargaining in the fishing industry, for mediation of fish prices and for allowing fishermen to bargain collectively, to use their collective strength, Mr. Speaker, to bargain within the industry.

I think we have to recognize that without an act like this, without legislation like this, the kind of activity of collectively refusing to sell your product would quickly be the subject of injunctions, Mr. Speaker, and would quickly be determined to be illegal, as conspiracies in restraint of trade, which is what the judges and the legal system call it. So this legislation is vital legislation in allowing the fishers of this Province, those who do the primary work in harvesting the product, allowing them some say in the price of fish, allowing them to play a role in negotiating the price of fish; something that they never had for centuries.

For centuries in this Province, the fishermen, the ones who were producing the wealth, the primary producers of the wealth in this Province, had almost no say in the price for that fish. They were at the mercy of the fish merchants, Mr. Speaker, at the mercy of those people who often had monopolies in the particular fishing communities in which they operated. It was not until the development of the Fishermen's Union in 1969, and following, that there came about a collective strength and a role for the fishermen, not only in bargaining fish prices but also a very strong role in our society.

This legislation, in fact, was probably one of the first major successes of the Fishermen's Union in achieving the legal right to collectively bargain for the price of fish. I want to remind hon. members that that was a very, very significant and important step and it has taken place in this generation, in our lifetimes, Mr. Speaker, in the last thirty years; something that never happened in any generation before that, that fishermen were actually given the right legally to negotiate the price of fish collectively, without running afoul of labour law or the law itself.

Now, I am not saying there haven't been strikes, Mr. Speaker. There have been many strikes in the fishing industry; in the sealing industry, going back to the 1830s, collective action to refuse to go to work as sealers, to refuse to go on board the sealing vessels. These were all illegal and brought down the wrath of governments and the courts and the magistrates, and the people suffered as a result of taking collective action in the past. This process here made it a process whereby collective bargaining could take place, that it was legalized. It has happened in our generation of adulthood, Mr. Speaker, and I think it is worth noting.

This particular change here allows all parties to be protected. It is a final offer selection, which I believe, Mr. Speaker, is particularly concerned with the price of fish itself and the details as to the relationship with the price and other aspects having to do with the price of fish to be paid in the Province, paid by processors to individual fishermen. That final offer selection forces people to be realistic in the final instance, because they know that if they are unrealistic, if the fish processors demand too low a price, and the fishermen and the Fishermen's Union is being reasonable, then they stand to have the other side being accepted. Therefore, they have to be as reasonable as possible in the final instance. I understand, Mr. Speaker, that this legislation has been studied by the Fishermen's Union and by the processors and that both sides are in agreement with this legislation going forward now.

Mr. Speaker, the fishing industry, of course, in rural Newfoundland in particular, is very dear to the hearts of all Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. It has given us our way of life, our understanding of life, our culture, our institutions, and our uniqueness as a people with our very strong rural roots.

The Member for Bonavista South talked about how, in America, people move around quite often, not living in the same place for very long and quite often not living in their hometown. We have the opposite tradition in Newfoundland and Labrador, based on our strong attachments to our communities, to our culture, to our neighbours, to our friends. We like to stay put if we can. In fact, that is noted by the migration patterns. Where we have very many people leaving our Province, we also have very many people coming back here to live in this Province because that is where they really want to live.

I think the Member for Bonavista South painted too broad a brush talking about America, to suggest that it is the greatest democracy in the world. That is what the Americans will tell you. My notion of democracy is a little different than that. I think that Canada has a better system when it comes to democracy, democratic institutions and support for the people of this country, whether it be in the area of health care and support for people, regardless of their income, to be able to get adequate health care. We have more respect for collective rights, as is evident in this piece of legislation, recognizing that collective bargaining in the fishing industry, which as everybody knows is a very individualistic business. Like farmers, farmers and fishermen are very independent minded, very individualistic. The Americans would not want to see legislation like this because they are very individualistic minded, whereas we recognize here in this country and here in this Province that if the fishermen are to get their fair share of the enterprise of working in the fishery, making sure that they get their fair share, that in order for them to do that they have to be able to bargain collectively, and this legislation is legislation that allows them to do that.

We see in this so-called greatest democracy in the world, the United States, the differences, the gap between the rich and the poor growing greater and greater, to the greatest extent probably of any country in the world which calls itself a democracy. I imagine the Sultan of Brunei, when he is compared with the lowest of the low in his country, that the wage gap is probably a lot bigger, or the wealth gap is a lot bigger than the United States ,but I don't think that Brunei claims to be a democracy in any form. In fact, I believe the sole country is owned by the monarchy. We don't compare ourselves with the wealth of the Sultan of Brunei when we are talking about comparing democracy; but when we are looking at democracy in the United States and Canada, I would prefer our democracy here in Canada to that of the United States any day of the week.

If members of this House - to get back to some of the other matters that the Member for Bonavista South was talking about - if we had to go through the process in this country that people have to do in the United States to get themselves elected, to have the so-called political action committees, the PACs, if we had to get our political funding from the PACs and be influenced by them about our policies - because they are the ones who have tapped the millions of dollars that are needed to run a political campaign in that country, they can control and influence the political process to an unfair extent - that would be a sad day for democracy in this country.

While America certainly is a powerful country and certainly has achieved great things in the world, I wouldn't hold it up as a paragon of democracy. I would prefer to hold up our own country. I would prefer, in fact, even to see some changes to our democratic structure, some changes to the way we elect people, some of them that.... We are one of the few countries that share with the United States right now - only ourselves and Britain, and Britain has strayed from the fold, but ourselves, Britain and the United States used to be the only three countries that had no form of representation by population in terms of proportional representation of political parties. That would be a progressive step in this country where we would see some modified form of parliamentary democracy such as exists in the Scottish Parliament, as existed in the Northern Ireland Parliament that is now under suspension, and that exists in 99 per cent of the countries of the world with democratic traditions, they have a system of proportional representation where you don't have what the member complained about where, regardless of how many votes the opposition parties get in a particular district, the one who gets the most wins, and they can win with an minority, with 34 per cent. The Member for Cape St. Francis could get 35 per cent of the vote and the other two parties get 65 per cent, and yet the other 65 per cent have no representation.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: I was talking about proportional representation as a method of helping to select -

AN HON. MEMBER: What do you think of (inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: I believe in the party system, I say to the hon. member. The party system is one where each party has its own principles, its own traditions, its own belief system, and they are fairly discernable. Each of those parties should be represented in the Parliaments or the Houses of Assembly in proportion to their support in the population, to some extent at least, so that we have a system of representation that includes both district representation as well as representation by population.

If that were applied in this country, nationally, we wouldn't have the excesses that we had under the Mulroney government, or under the government of Jean Chrétien, of adopting things that the majority of the people in this country are against, and we are against, such as the Free Trade Agreement, such as the GST, such as the tack we are now on where the Government of Canada, along with the PC Party in Ottawa and the Reform Party in Ottawa, are presiding over the demise of our treasured national health care system.

I think improvements can be made to our democracy, and I don't think they can be made by looking to the United States for guidance, but I do think that this legislation and this tradition here of recognizing collective rights and collective bargaining rights for fishermen is a very important one, and this is a modification, probably one of the first major modifications of the Fishing Industry Collective Bargaining Act since it was brought in. I think it is a measure of how our system is able to response to the realities of a marketplace and at the same time preserve collective bargaining rights.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have a few comments on Bill 5. The minister is looking at entering into law, basically, what has been happening for the last couple of years. I think it is important that we have a dispute settlement model to cut down on a lot of uncertainty, because traditionally we have seen the fishing industry in the spring of the year - what is the price going to be?

A lot of species, for instance crab and shrimp, are very high priced commodities. The price could range from being as high as $2.50 to $2.60 a pound for crab in the past few years. It has been as low, a few years ago, as fifty cents or sixty cents actually. Last year, if I remember correctly, it hit about $1.50 or $1.60. This year, I think it started at $2.16 and it is going up. It is estimated or predicted that it could be in the $2.50 or $2.60 range before the year is out.

We are dealing with a very high priced product that we are putting on the market. We are dealing with uncertainty when the season opens in April. One year I think it was July. We can't be losing productive parts of fishing seasons when the species are probably at their best point for harvesting. Later in the season we run into periods where there is a molting and we get soft shells. They are not suitable, then, for the market and they have to avoid fishing during that period and there is a shutdown period. I believe the shutdown period they are talking about this year is two months. It was normally a month. I think that was the initial announcement, mid-July to mid-September. I think that was the specific date.

This legislation allows people to at least put their final offer. It might not be: Is this your final answer? Actually, it is a version of: Is this your final offer?

AN HON. MEMBER: No lifelines involved.

MR. SULLIVAN: No, there are no lifelines. There is one difference in this.

AN HON. MEMBER: No asking the audience.

MR. SULLIVAN: Yes, you can ask the audience before your final offer.

When you deal with it, when the producers representing the processing sector and the groups designated - there is reference here to who can be established as a group to represent these in the harvesting sector - put forth their offer, instead of negotiations going on for days, give some, take some, back and forth, maybe the Treasury Board could take a lesson, I say to the President of Treasury Board, in dealing with the public service. Maybe in dealing with the public service we can get a dispute settlement model as we have here, in saying: When you look at it, if the company figures we are going to offer a very low price and the unions representing the harvesters and the people selling the product go too high with their price, there has to be a decision. Someone is going to pay a big price.

At least now it narrows the gap. They want to not go too far beyond the point that we are going to lose it in this offer, but we have to do something that is reasonable, and building in those is a good suggestion. The way I look at it, this is the third year now we are into it, if my memory serves me right. What works well, let's adopt and let's do something about it because lessons can be learned.

I have seen the uncertainty of people being cut off their EI in May, who don't have a cent to put in their pockets until July. People have to resort to social assistance. I have seen many plant workers, their families, having to resort to social assistance because the plant never opened when it normally should have in April because the dispute wasn't settled, because they couldn't agree on a price and it lingered on and on until it got so late then. What happens then, when you wait too late in the season? You get a large amount of product in a short period of time and you can't get enough of it through the processing sector fast enough. What do we do then? We compromise quality. We get a poorer quality, number one, and we get normal workers depending upon that for a livelihood who can't get the amount of work out of that job that they would. Instead of having 300 people in a plant employed for a longer period, we are having peak periods now. We are having to call in people off the street to work there, all over a short period of time, so we get unskilled people come in and get in there. We also have the regular workers there who can't get the number of hours and they can't get a decent cheque even on employment insurance during the wintertime.

In other words, there are drawbacks to not getting it settled early. You get a big glut and a rush, and sometimes that is not controlled as well as it should so that creates problems. I have seen some of the problems and concerns. I have spent over twenty years, basically, in the fishing industry. I know a little bit about dealing with workers and dealing with harvesters in my management and owner capacity. I have experienced those problems on a daily basis.

It is difficult when the only source of income for a family - for a harvester - runs out in May, and the plant workers run out in May, and they don't have a cent of income until they can go fishing in July. It is pretty tough in rural Newfoundland. Rural Newfoundland has been typical that way. A lot of these people never made enough money in the period they can work to carry them over until the next year.

Lately it has been a little more comfortable from the harvesting sector. Many harvesters, because of the high price of crab and the high price of shrimp and that, have been able to make decent incomes and been able to earn a good living from the harvesting end, but that has not transferred into the processing sector. We are experiencing - in spite of what they talk about - increased export value. We have unprecedented heights in export value, but we have heights of employment in the fishing industry - at some of their lowest. We do not have near the number of workers working in the fishing industry that we had before. We have fish plants closed. We have shorter seasons in some cases. We have less employment in the fishing industry when our export value has tripled pretty well over the period of time because we are dealing with a couple of things. One is higher priced products going on the market. Crab and shrimp are way higher priced than the basic groundfish. That has been one of the reasons why we have that. As a result, really we get a distorted value when we talk about export value approaching $1 billion dollars.

We have seen in our industry where a large amount of sales, export value, came from groundfish. It came from cod primarily, that was the main species. Other groundfish such as flatfish - flounder we call it - yellow tails and other types of flatfish, these species added significantly to the economy of our Province. In particular to offshore plants, in particular with flatfish products, Fishery Products International and National Sea traditionally had millions of dollars in sales on these species alone. Even in my district, one fish plant in my district employed 650 people up to 1990. Six hundred and fifty people worked in the town of Trepassey on a year round basis making a living. Today there are hardly 650 people living in the town of Trepassey. It was estimated in the census in 1991 that there were 1,480 living in the town of Trepassey. Today, if you did an actual count, a real count, you will probably find there are about 700-some people in the town. No young people coming back to live there, none whatsoever. When students leave in September they may get home probably once in the fall of the year. Some of their families have moved out here.

There is no fish plant any more. Fishery Products shut down the only fish plant in the community. When you employed 650 people - people moved into Trepassey from as far away as White Bay, they moved in from Hampden and Jackson's Arm. They came in from all over the Province, set up and built homes. Homes up in that area now - as a result of the fishing industry there - have sold for $3,000. Some have sold for $5,000, and as high as $8,000. So if anybody wants to buy a retirement home and if you want to go up and live in Trepassey, come with $5,000 or $8,000 and you will get a house that was probably built on a value, about twenty-five or thirty years ago, at $45,000. What we call a regular-three bedroom bungalow with a basement in it, you can go in and buy them at bargain rate prices right now. There is house after house that has just closed up. They have some beautiful houses there too that can't sell. There is just no point to sell them. What some people have done recently, because they could not sell them, they are worth so little, they let the town take them to pay for delinquent taxes, on their water taxes and property taxes. Take it, sell it. That is what they are doing. They are just letting them go.

It is pretty tough when we went through a prosperous period in the fishing industry when we had probably one of the most prosperous, if not the prosperous, town in the entire Province. They have a water system that serves the community there. They have a fire hall, a town manager, staff associated with it. It is a town that was a very prosperous and thriving town with a large population. When you look at a town of 1,500 people, that is a fairly significant population in a town in this Province. Just imagine, 650 people working in a town of 1,500. That is 40-some per cent, you could say, of people employed in one facility. It is equivalent to 40-some per cent of the population of that town. That is an enormous amount.

If you look at a town like, in Central Newfoundland, Grand Falls-Windsor, if you looked at 20,000 people or close to it, and you said 40 per cent, that would be equivalent to 8,000-some people working with Abitibi in Grand Falls-Windsor. That would be enormous figures. So you can imagine the devastation that has occurred.

We saw some hard times prior to implementing this pilot project. There was some hardship experienced around my district, and I am sure in all other districts. Districts are all alike that depend on the fishery to the same extent. My district is no different than anyone else's. When you have to sit home for months and go on strike - nobody wants to go on strike. Nobody wants to tie up their fishing boats and say: Look, we are not getting the right price. Because there are people affected; their spouses are probably working in fish plants. They haven't got a cheque. The harvesters haven't got a cheque and companies can't process. They have overhead. They have other costs, and the longer you wait the more costly it is for everybody.

This particular bill here will put into law certain aspects of a collective bargaining process, dispute settlement model we will call it, that has been applied over the past while. The way I look at it, if the unions representing these, if the FFAW or UFCW or whatever bargaining body is out there on behalf of these people are content to accept this process, and on the other side the companies, the processors who are involved in this, find that suitable too and they are happy with the process, so be it.

When you look at it from a harvester's point of view, you can never get a high enough price. If you look at it from a processor's point of view, a company owner's, you probably can never pay too low a price. The lower the price you pay the more profit you get and the higher price a harvester gets the better it is for them. So that is natural. People are going to try to maximize the return to their operation, and that is why we need a balance. We need a mediator, an intermediary process in there that is going to balance those extremes and get a result. We have gone through that. I think in the spring or summer of 1998, whenever that came through there, we got a process that is proving to be very acceptable, so much so that I do not hear any resistance out there on this.

I have not gone out looking for comments, to be honest with you, on this bill. It is not in my critic area. I have not gone out looking to see how stakeholders might be affected by it because most of us know it has been going on for some time and if there were concerns out there they would have been expressed long ago. I just know from the experience of having been fairly close to the industry and having a district that it is highly dependent on that industry that it is working. People are working because of this too. If you can get a settlement on issues there you get stability first of all. You get stability in a supply. What we are finding out is that this is more so than just getting a price set. It is not just a price set so that you can get a fair return. This has other implications beyond the price setting. It allows an improvement in quality of product.

Everybody remembers the inshore fishery and what happens when we wait for the fish to come in. When they came in in June or July, you could not get enough of it into your fish plants and people even had to dump fish. It all came at the one time. There was no orderly harvest of it and people came in -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) was that?

MR. SULLIVAN: Anybody. The community I grew up and operated a business in, everybody down to grade VI basically who wanted a job had a job. Everybody came to work, whether they were in a carton room making boxes, a person in grade V or grade VI. There was not an unemployed person in the community who wanted to go to work there. They had a job all summer long. Eleven year old kids up in a carton room making $1,000, or whether it is carting boxes down to a production area, or whatever the case may be. It has a stabilizing effect. One thing with quality that is important is that when you get an orderly process, you can have an orderly workforce. You do not have to depend on shorter seasons. When you get labour unrest and it is near the end of a season, you have to push what you can into that short period of time then and what does that mean? That overtaxes capacity. Plants can only process and freeze so much. What happens then? What should be processed one day probably does not get processed until the next day. What does that do? That affects the quality. When you sell a product on the market, it is not what you put into a box and send out and hopefully it goes well. That does not work anymore. People want quality. The consumers today who are buying this product, right across the world, the United States, want quality, and if the quality does not show up, whether it is the Japanese market or wherever it is, they are not interested in doing business with you the next year.

Companies are identified by the products they produce. Newfoundland is recognized by the quality of product it can produce. If they are going to buy from different countries they go with ones that have established reputations in being able to provide what the consumer is going to buy, and we are going to have no complaints. When you get a processing occurring over a longer period of time by getting an early settlement in this mechanism here, a dispute settlement mechanism we call it, or a model as it is referred to in the bill basically, or the preamble or the introduction there, you get a season when you can say: Look, bring in your 25,000 a trip or whatever it is. We can have some regulation to it, some management, I guess, of the fleet sector out there, so we can have an orderly industry. Now, there is a certain amount of that done by companies that had offshore quotas in the past, FPI and Nat Sea.. They had their own trawlers and they would bring them in at certain intervals to ensure that there was an orderly production process there, that you were not having too much product on hand and you had the process of quality going down. Crab is a highly perishable product, as we know, and if you were at sea for an extended period of time -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: Not as bad as the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture. He gets in his little dart there. Timing wasn't impeccable, I might add, it was far from it. Off he runs again.

It wasn't the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture, no, it was the Minister of Labour who had to get this straightened out, to get this mechanism there. If he had to get his hands into it, we would probably still be debating how to get a resolution to the problems in the fishing industry. So I think the more we can keep the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture away from the controversy, the more we can keep him ‘ahide' on this issue, the better the results can be, I can tell you. So that is one step we have to take.

Overall, the industry is better because of it. We have earlier starts, we have a more orderly income for plant workers and harvesters, we have a better quality in the process, we have less anxiety and uncertainty, better planning and better regulation. There are so many other factors that come from not having the anxiety of not knowing what is going to happen. Every year we went through the same process: How much are we going to get for our fish? What is it going to be? How much we going to get? What is the price going to be? You look at the market conditions, and all these are factors tied into what the market is willing to pay. The price is only relevant to what consumers are going to pay. Supply and demand - anybody who has any background in economics, I did a few courses in economics in my university career and probably got a lot more experience through the business end than I did the academic end - but supply and demand dictates the price. If the demand is not there, you can supply what you like, it only drives the price further down. So, there is the supply aspect to it, and this is being used to a degree in the fishing industry. Do we set quotas in line with the health of the stock, or do we set quotas in line with what the consumer is going to buy, with the market? I really think there has to be a balance.

Certainly you cannot exceed what is sustainable, number one. That is one of the underlying things. We don't defy the sustainability aspect, but quotas don't just get established on sustainability. We have to look also at the market. Why tell us to go out and catch - even if it could be sustained - double the product if you cannot supply it. We have heard tell of people dumping tons and tons of potatoes because it is going to drive the price down. If you can sell half as much and get the same price, maybe it is a lot less work, a lot easier. Why drive the price down? So the supply and demand themes, we have seen that all over, from sugar coming in from down in the Carribean to our Province, and any product. When there is a problem with one sector the prices go up. So that is part of the process of (inaudible).

I think my time has pretty well run out. I only had two minutes left three minutes ago, so it is almost run out. I must say that I support the bill.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. SULLIVAN: Just half a minute to finish up.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: By leave.

MR. SPEAKER: By leave.

MR. SULLIVAN: I support it because it makes sense, for the reasons I have already outlined - I won't get into them - and because the stakeholders agree with the process and they think that it is suitable for them. Therefore, what is suitable for the people involved, I think, is the most important thing.

Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Cape St. Francis.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to say a few works on Bill 5, An Act To Amend The Fishing Industry Collective Bargaining Act. Of course, the main purpose of this bill is to put in place a solution, a final offer selection for the pricing in the industry. We know, over the past few years, that every season there seems to be some kind of a dispute with respect to pricing in the fishing industry. It is good, I suppose. Hopefully, this bill will go a long way to resolving that problem which appears each year.

Of course, when you have dialogue between the unions, the stakeholders in the fishery, and consultation, there can only be good results, I would imagine, unless certain people get their backs up, of course. That often happens, when some people want too much for their product and other individuals want to pay too little for their product. That is usually the crux of the matter. This, of course, will help resolve that.

The Member for Bonavista South was up earlier today speaking on this very topic. I don't profess to know a lot about it, to be honest with you. I know that when I was a young fellow, growing up in Torbay, there was a whole different fishing industry than what is in place today in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Of course, when we had the motorium come on with respect to the cod fishery back a number of years ago there used to be a lot of wastage before that. Now, of course, we see utilization of different species and more of the products or the fish itself being utilized in the industry. That is a good thing.

I remember when I was growing up, as I said, in Torbay, going down to Tapper's Cove or what have you, and you would see the fishermen with small fish, throwing them over the wharf. You would see boat loads of small fish over the wharf and, of course, a lot of wastage. Probably that may have led somewhat to the moratorium, but I think overall the big fish factories, I suppose, that are out there now, the floating factories and the dragging of the bottom of the ocean, caused the fish to deplete.

Another point that the member was on today was when he was speaking of the sealing industry. He asked questions the other day here in this House of the Minister of Fisheries with respect to the sealing industry, the sealing association, the funding for that association, and the problems now that the association finds itself in. We heard the Minister of Fisheries stand in his place and say that it should be self-sufficient, that the people in the industry who are making money off the industry, basically, should be footing the bill for the sealing association. They are the people who benefit. The people in the industry itself should be paying for the cost involved in the association, and maybe they should have some kind of a fee put in place for the sealers. That is the impression that I got from the Minister of Fisheries, to pass it on again, even though the federal government has been providing some funding for that association.

The Department of Fisheries, from what I understand, were paying for the rent in the building that these people were occupying. It is strange to see now, of course, that the Minister of Fisheries again, who has been so vocal over the past number of years basically with respect to the seal fishery -

AN HON. MEMBER: Where is he?

MR. J. BYRNE: Where is he? I don't know where he is, I say to the member. He isn't here. He should be here listening to every word that is being said, Mr. Speaker, but he is not. I am not sure how concerned he is with respect to this issue.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: Yes, I say to the Minister of Government Services and Lands. I won't name the minister but you would think that he would be here, seeing that it is his bill, I would think, and he is responsible for it.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: Oh, I am sorry about that. I stand corrected. It is the Minister of Environment and Labour. Right on. I apologize to the Minister of Fisheries. The Minister of Environment and Labour is here and he is paying full attention. There is no doubt about that. He is certainly learning. I expect that the Minister of Environment and Labour learned a lot today when the Member for Bonavista South was up speaking about this, I would think.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: Oh, he did. He is listening. I think he is; there is no doubt there.

The Member for Bonavista South is well-versed in the fishery of Newfoundland and Labrador. I would say I would compare him almost to the Member for Ferryland who is so well-versed in health care in the Province. He knows much more about the health care in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador than the Minister of Health, and I expect that the critic for fisheries knows more - the Member for Bonavista South - than the Minister of Fisheries.

It just happens to be that this is a labour issue. That is why it is the Minister of Environment and Labour's bill and he is presenting it. I really don't know how much he knows about the fishing industry, to be honest with you. He may know a bit more than me. He is from the South Coast, I do believe.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: Pardon? A fishing community. I don't say he would ever be a minister of fisheries. Did he ever go out in a boat fishing, I wonder, when he was younger?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: Yes, he did. He grew up on the fishery, eating lots of fish and what have you, fish he caught himself.

MR. LANGDON: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: He just said to me, for Hansard purposes, that he would eat fish four times a day. I don't know if I could take it four times a day, but I've eaten a lot of fish. The best fish I have eaten, to be honest with you, I say to the Minister of Environment and Labour, was when I was a young fellow down on the beach with the old bake pot and cooking up a stew and eating it right out of the pot. That is what I liked of the fish. It is hard to do these days. You can't even go out and jig a fish any more.

I heard the Minister of Fisheries the other night saying he is going to try and get this tags system in price. Not the TAGS with respect to the money that was given to the people of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, which a lot of people other than the fishermen benefitted from, but a tags system something like you have for salmon. That was suggested a number of years ago by people in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, by the public. It was suggested in this House of Assembly by members on this side of the House. As usual, we were ridiculed, but in the end it turns out that we were right in what we were presenting at the time. We see it so often.

I am not going to say much more than that. I think the Leader of the Opposition wants to say a few words on this. With that, I will thank you for your time, Mr. Speaker.

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

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

I want to, first of all, compliment this Minister of Labour for the legislation that we are debating, and I want to ask the question: Why didn't the former Minister of Labour bring forward such a resolution? This is a minister supposedly now - you know what the quote was in the scrum area today? He is now called the omni-minister, as if he is omnipresent. The omni-minister of legislature, the right hon. - not right hon., maybe the hon. What I want to ask is this. In his first ministerial appointment he was the minister in the old Department of Employment and Labour Relations, if I'm correct.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: Correct. Prior to that, parliamentary assistant to the premier.

AN HON. MEMBER: Premier.

MR. E. BYRNE: Sorry. You pronounce it Premier, do you? I thought I was being revisited by Ed Roberts, and people were going to be called ‘clarks' of the Table. I was going to say, my good God.

It just goes to show the difference in ministers, you know. From this Minister of Labour to the omni-minister over there right now, what a difference in approach. Maybe it wasn't your fault, was it? Maybe it was the former premier, because he was omnipresent, wasn't he?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: There is no doubt about that. From what I understand, there was no free reign in the ministries then, compared to what it is right now. I can tell you that, that is for sure. Anyway, that is enough picking on my colleague over there across the House. I am not going to do that any more today.

I want to speak seriously for a few moments on this dispute resolution mechanism - that is essentially what it is - in terms of final offer selection. It is something that government should seriously consider in terms of all of its negotiations. I shouldn't say all, that is a bit too much, but in other aspects of how it deals with other parties and other industries in the Province. Because what it comes does do is very clear. What this sort of mechanism does in fact accomplish is that it makes the parties who agree with them, it forces them ultimately to put their best offer forward.

MR. SULLIVAN: Did baseball use that first?

MR. E. BYRNE: Absolutely.

MR. SULLIVAN: I think it was baseball arbitration in the US. They have the final settlement. It is your final offer and you take it. (Inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: I am not sure what analogy my colleague is drawing here. In that case, it was a fight between the billionaires and the millionaires. I don't think we can say that certainly within the fishing industry, I say to -

MR. SULLIVAN: As long as they play ball (inaudible), it is okay.

MR. E. BYRNE: It is a mechanism, all the same, that forces the stakeholders in an industry, particularly in this industry - I want to talk about the mechanism for a few minutes because it is an important one - to consider first and foremost the industry. What is in the best interest? What is in the long-term interest? It forces people to think about what the future will bring. It also forces people to deal realistically. It takes away this sort of uncertainty that existed prior to this mechanism being implemented and agreed upon, and put a closure, I guess, to what normally was a very chaotic, awkward situation that created uncertainty, that caused prices to fall and rise, that put people in the industry in a position not to take advantage of higher market prices when they presented themselves, which led to the internal politics on both sides, in terms of the stakeholders trying to play with each other, in terms of one-upmanship, et cetera.

The legislation itself - what year is this?; the third year, if I am correct - seems to be working well. People are generally pleased.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: Yes. Whatever concerns there are, it has created a playing field by where the mutual interest of the industry is what is taking precedence, not the private or personal interests of those involved. I am not trying to cast blame or accusations on those who are involved in the industry, because sometimes the process by which we decide things creates an environment, an atmosphere, of distrust maybe. It creates an environment and an atmosphere within an industry that does not necessarily need to be there. I guess out of that sort of environment three years ago came the debate, what we are talking about today. It puts first and foremost the interest of the industry forward.

What it also does is that it forces people to be real. Because when the deadline approaches and their final offer is going in, time is up, that before it is, they have to have their ‘i's dotted and their ‘t's crossed. It has to be. Because the people they represent, whether it is those who are going to catch the product or those who are the owners and going to process it, that their interests are at stake. It forces everyone to be real, to put the margins where they need to be, to put the best price forward. Because ultimately what could happen and does happen is that one of the two offers will be chosen that will govern the relationship for that year. It forces the industry to come together in a more inclusive sort of way to move forward together, to work on behalf of themselves ultimately, but at the same time it guarantees somewhat of a future and stability during the season, which is what is important.

We talk about where such a dispute resolution mechanism could work in other areas. This is within the jurisdiction of the Minister of Environment and Labour. When you look at workers' compensation, are there lessons from the fishing industry and how they resolve disputes that we could learn, transpose, take in to, how disputes are resolved at the Workplace Health, Safety and Compensation Commission? It is a very much, in my view, an unnecessary bureaucratic structure that exists in terms of making decisions where people are judged or deemed to be off the system. It wastes money not only for the Commission; it wastes money from the injury fund. Is there a cleaner way that we could do it there, taking the lessons that we have learned from here, from this piece of legislation? Those lessons having been learned that could be put into other areas of jurisdiction just within the minister's department that could see a mechanism whereby disputes could be resolved quickly, thoroughly, effectively and efficiently. Because right now they are not happening to the extent I believe, minister, that you would like to see them. I don't think they are happening to the extent that anyone would like to see them.

I only wanted to take up a few minutes to be on the record and speak to this piece of legislation, and to say look, this is a mechanism I believe that can work in many other jurisdictions within government. I am not convinced that it could work with all public sector employees. We can't, as a government I suppose, abdicate ultimately our right and the responsibility for being here in terms of protection of the public purse and protection of services. I do believe there are other areas and other jurisdictions within the bureaucracy, within the things that government controls and is responsible for, where this sort of mechanism could be applied and could work just as effectively. It could eliminate bureaucracy and the decision making process, streamline it, save money, and ultimately insure that the people who could benefit from it are the ones who deserve to get benefit from it.

With that I want to say, Mr. Speaker, thank you for allowing me the time. I will sit down and let the minister close debate.

MR. SPEAKER (Smith): The hon. the Minister of Environment and Labour.

If the minister speaks now he closes debate.

MR. LANGDON: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to thank the members for their comments on this particular piece of legislation. There is no doubt about it, as I said in the opening, this is a unique piece of legislation. There is no other piece of legislation in any other legislature across the country that compares to this one right here. It does have merit, as the Leader of the Opposition has already said. The department is presently looking at other areas where we might be able to engage this type of process. As time goes on, hopefully, we might be able to do more.

What this piece of legislation does, I think, more than anything from the fishing industry point of view is to bring stability. It also does away with a lot of confrontation. It is interest based. Also, toward the end, what we have found is - and I think it is very interesting to note - that over the three years this particular pilot has been in place, the process itself is beginning to be improved. At the beginning there were a number of instances where the arbitrator would have to select one or the other, but now, through negotiations, that is working even more. We have seen that over the last three years.

Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt about it, it is innovative, it is important and it brings effectiveness and efficiency to the fishing industry, one of the very important industries in this Province. I am really pleased that we are able to conclude second reading on this today.

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The Fishing Industry Collective Bargaining Act," read a second time, ordered referred to a Committee of the Whole House on tomorrow. (Bill 5)

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

MR. GRIMES: Yes, Mr. Speaker. Order 5, Bill 9, "An Act To Amend The Pippy Park Commission Act."

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

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have just a word or two on the introduction of this bill that stands in the name of my colleague, the hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

I was thinking as I was looking at it, this bill was actually drafted when I was Minister of Works, Services and Transportation, it was kicking around when I was in Municipal and Provincial Affairs, and it finally makes it to the House and I get a chance to speak to it.

It is a very small bill in terms of its size and an explanation to what it is. It basically provides for the accommodation of a member of an association of landlords and residents, which they have in Pippy Park, representing people who live in Pippy Park, to become a member of the Pippy Park Commission by virtue of having a right as opposed to by virtue of the pleasure of the government at any given time.

I think it is a good piece of legislation. I know the residents in Pippy Park - because they all live, virtually, in my district - are people who not only have the good fortune of living in a good setting, residential-wise, but they are also people who have a great interest in the matters that pertain to the park in terms of ensuring that it is preserved for the good of the residents of this area, and indeed for the good of all the residents of this Province.

It is a nice spot and the members of the park, the residents of the park, who live there by virtue of having a residence captured within the park boundaries, take a great interest and pride in the park. I think it is most appropriate that they have, by right of legislation, a seat on the Pippy Park Commission. I'm sure that the people on the other side of the House would certainly be prepared to support this concept in terms of principle and practicality.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Cape St. Francis.

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

I want to say a few words on Bill 9, "An Act To Amend The Pippy Park Commission Act."

Mr. Speaker, we just heard from the horse's mouth, the minister on that side of the House, who said - I will tell you now how efficient this Administration is. When he was Minister of Works, Services and Transportation, this bill was kicking around. He has been the Minister of Municipal Affairs since then, he is the Minister of Finance now, and it is only now that it is getting to the House of Assembly. That will tell you the inefficiency -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: What are you saying?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: Relevance.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation presented this today on behalf of the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

AN HON. MEMBER: The minister of what?

MR. J. BYRNE: The Minister of Works, Services and Transportation; again, another example of the inefficiency of this Administration. The minister this is supposed to be under is the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

AN HON. MEMBER: What?

MR. J. BYRNE: That is who is supposed to be presenting this today, the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs. You talk about a crew who doesn't have their act together, Mr. Speaker. You are looking at them on that side of the House. The Apple Dumpling Gang over there, that is who we are looking at.

Now, with respect to this piece of legislation, I support the legislation. It is only right and proper that a member of the resident's committee who lives in the area be appointed to the Pippy Park Commission.

I remember before I came into this House of Assembly; our company did some work up in the Pippy Park area ,on the boundaries up there. Speaking of boundaries, what is happening today? Government, again, is looking at taking another section of the Pippy Park and removing it from Pippy Park for a development for housing. We heard a minute ago the Minister of Tourism - I think it was the Minister of Tourism - making a comment that they were protecting the area up there for the people.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) Question Period.

MR. J. BYRNE: Question Period?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: I am only on the title yet, I say to the minister.

Let's talk about a little bit of Pippy Park itself. What does Pippy Park contain? I think Pippy Park contains the Confederation Building, it contains the University, it contains the Botanical Gardens, and a golf course up on the hill with a great building on the top up there. I don't golf, myself.

AN HON. MEMBER: Long Pond.

MR. J. BYRNE: We have Long Pond, walking trails. We have the park itself down there, and even during the winter Pippy Park is utilized with children skiing and sliding and what have you, so it is very important that the people in the area have a say in what happens to Pippy Park.

The people's properties up there, in actual fact, the value of the houses of the people in the area has diminished because they were not allowed to add extensions to their houses. As a matter of fact, there was a time when they had trouble getting permits to even upgrade their house or make renovations or improve or build.

MR. FUREY: Jack, were you for or against Confederation?

MR. J. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, I can tell you this, I do not know what the Minister of Tourism is getting on with on that side of the House. I know we are talking about Pippy Park and the Minister of Tourism is talking about Confederation. I did not even know if the man was born then, in Confederation. I know I wasn't born back in -

AN HON. MEMBER: Oh, yes you were.

MR. J. BYRNE: I was born on June 2, 1951, Mr. Speaker. That was when I was born, a couple of years after Confederation. By the way, if I was born at the time of Confederation, if I had been around - according to the books that I have read on the lead-up, the time concerning pre-Confederation, I would say that a lot of the stuff that Mr. Cashin said at the time was right on. I say to the Minister of Tourism, he is supposed to be so informed. We see him in here with the big thick books, trying to give the impression that he has a few clues. I ask the Minister of Tourism: What side was Cashin on back in the 1940s, Peter Cashin? Do you know that?

AN HON. MEMBER: I think he was on the side of Pippy Park.

MR. J. BYRNE: I just made a statement that he had a lot of facts at the time, that he made a lot of statements, and that he was right. He is talking about not be allowed to go out and jig a fish. He is right.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: I know.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: Yes, I had the books and I read them, I can guarantee you that.

So, looking at the situation now, I would say that if you want to talk about Confederation, back then, here is what I would say to the Minister of Tourism with respect to Confederation. I would think, from my beliefs and what I have read and what I have seen over the years, I probably would have been anti-Confederate at that time; but once we became a part of Canada I would have accepted it and worked for Confederation like I am doing today, I say to the Minister of Tourism. Now, what that has to do with the Pippy Park Commission, I do not know.

MR. MATTHEWS: (Inaudible) in your mind.

MR. J. BYRNE: I say to the Minister of Finance that the previous Member for St. Mary's-The Capes, the previous Member for Placentia was out here and he stood in this House of Assembly. I can look over at the Minister of Finance and say to him that there is only one member in this House of Assembly who has proof he has a brain, and you are looking at him. We don't know about you. With the budget that you brought down, I say to the Minister of Finance, it is questionable if you have one, I can guarantee you that.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: I can phone a doctor and tell him to give you a call.

MR. MATTHEWS: I didn't see your doctor declare in The Telegram that he found a brain (inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: I can guarantee you that he did. Listen here, I say to the Minister of Finance, let's look at the last election, and your election. Look at my election and your election. I got more votes. I got a bigger majority and more votes than my opponent got in the majority itself. Do you understand what I am saying? I got a bigger majority in votes than my opponent got himself. He got 2,000 -

MR. SULLIVAN: In other words he bet his opponent -

MR. J. BYRNE: - by more than what he got.

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible) more than double.

MR. J. BYRNE: Okay, do you understand now? I forgot that when I am speaking to the Minister of Tourism I have to speak in very simple, slow terms so he can understand.

Anyway, I am not going to go on. We support this piece of legislation. It is only right and proper that the people living in the area can have a member appointed to the Pippy Park Commission so they can have a say. The people who are most impacted, of course, are the people living in the area, so it is simple that we would support this piece of legislation.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

If the hon. minister speaks now he will close the debate.

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This is indeed a fast moving institution today. We are certainly dealing with this bill in record time.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the hon. the Member for Cape St. Francis for his enlightening remarks, not so much as with respect to the bill or the content of the bill but it is with respect to what he would have done had he been born and had a voice and a vote at the time that we entered Confederation. It seems to me that if he had his way we would not be here today in the form and fashion that we are, a part of the great country that we are a part of, but thanks be to the good Lord he prevailed upon his mother to delay the delivery to a point in time where he could not affect the Confederation vote and hence our good fortune today is that we are part of a great country and, being a part of this great country and this great Province we have the benefit of a park called the Pippy Park.

I move second reading of this bill, Mr. Speaker.

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The Pippy Park Commission Act," read a second time, ordered referred to a Committee of the Whole House on tomorrow. (Bill 9)

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

MR. GRIMES: Mr. Speaker, Order 6, Bill 10.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Human Resources and Employment.

MS BETTNEY: Mr. Speaker, this, as members of the House can tell, is a very important piece of legislation. It is substantive, however it is brief in terms of its content. As you will see, there is one major change that is being recommended to amend the City of St. John's Act. It has one subsection which is being proposed to be re-appealed and substituting another section in its place.

The intent of the legislation and the total content of the legislation is simply to change the requirements for a quorum at city council meetings in St. John's so that they no longer require a two-thirds majority of members present. They now only require, with this bill, a simply majority of the complement of councillors in order to deal with their acts of business. This is the sum total and substance of the content of Bill 10, and I move it forward for second reading.

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is very concise. The city council feel they should have a simple majority of the members elected. That is not a simply majority of the members present, necessarily, but a simple majority of the members elected; and there is what, nine members on council in St. John's?

AN HON. MEMBER: Loyola, a lot of the people in Renews (inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: The people in Renews don't care about this particular bill here in the City of St. John's, and neither should we. If the City of St. John's wants to have a simple majority of the members elected, I would say, so be it; let them have it.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SULLIVAN: They have asked; that is my understanding. If they have nine members, which I think they have - I am not sure, I could be out; I don't sit down and watch the cable network every night on the city council - which means five would be a quorum now as opposed to, if only six show up and four are there, that was quorum before. In other words, it may be a little tougher quorum but at least it says we cannot do business until we have a majority of the members who were elected, which seems to make a fair amount of sense. That means Andy might have complete autonomy over what goes on. I can't really say that I agree with everything His Worship Mayor Wells says. I can't say I agree with a lot of things. I don't know where you stand on it, but rather than delay further discussion, the City of St. John's wants a simple majority. Give them a simple majority. We don't have any problem with it at all. There are other things they might like, too, besides that, but that is all they are asking for in this bill. I say, give it to them and we will support it.

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

MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, what I really want to know is: What is the former Mayor of Mount Pearl introducing this piece of legislature for? That is what I really want to know today.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. E. BYRNE: You would think that the omni-minister would be up again earning his $440,000 a year, because that is what he is worth. He is doing all the work of every minister over there.

MR. SULLIVAN: He is worth more than that to that government, more than $440,000.

MR. MATTHEWS: A point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: On a point of order, the hon. the Minister of Finance.

MR. MATTHEWS: Mr. Speaker, I have to take exception to the assertion by the Leader of the Opposition that the omni-minister, the newly appointed omni-minister, the omni-minister who sits second to my right, does all of the work of all of the ministers on this side of the House.

There are days I have to assert, in my own self-interest and protection, that I do show up and do a measure of activity that qualifies me to draw a minister's salary.

With great respect for the hon. minister who does so much for so many, in such a wide and varied array of responsibilities, I have to defend my own honor, integrity and net worth in the interest of maintaining my salary and my position.

MR. SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. E. BYRNE: Is it any wonder that Len Simms threw that minister out of his office? It is plain for everyone to see right now.

Just a few moments on the bill. Obviously this is a piece of -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: What is that?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) read the book.

MR. E. BYRNE: No, because from the time he got it to the time the ads were on the radio for St. John's North, he never had time to read the book. There wasn't enough time transpire.

AN HON. MEMBER: Well, if you can read what you have (inaudible), I think I can read that book in a night.

MR. E. BYRNE: Don't start, I say to the Member of Bellevue. We will get into other stories and I don't want to embarrass anyone here today. I did enough of that to him the other day.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: We have a couple of weeks left yet.

As a member who represents a district within the city boundaries, obviously this is a piece of legislation, as the minister explained, that the city council themselves have asked for, government is complying with it, and obviously we don't want to be seen in any way, shape or form as holding it up. We certainly support the spirit and intent of what is in the legislation.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Human Resources and Employment.

If the hon. the minister speaks now she will close the debate.

MS BETTNEY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I move second reading.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The City Of St. John's Act," read a second time, ordered referred to a Committee of the Whole House on tomorrow. (Bill 10).

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

MR. GRIMES: Mr. Speaker, Order 7, Bill 11.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Government Services and Lands.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. McLEAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is a real pleasure to stand and introduce second reading of Bill 11, "An Act Respecting Tenancies Of Residential Premises."

This is a new act and we have had lots of consultations with the stakeholders in this particular act. We have gone out and spoken to everybody who is impacted by this act. For those who read The Telegram, you have probably seen most of the major changes in The Telegram from the consultations that we have had. They thought it was such a good act that they wanted to put it in the paper before we even passed it. I have not problem with that.

There are just a couple of changes I would like to mention, because they are major changes from what we had in the previous residential tenancies act. We made some amendments in 1997 which took away the residential tenancies boards and we went to a referee system which improved the act immensely for the tenants out there.

A couple of the other major changes are: We are fixing the rent periods, and a landlord will only be able to increase the rent during any fixed-term tenancy or during the first twelve months of a month-to-month tenancy. That basically takes care of a lot of the students out there who had problems having to rent for twelve months when they only were in the apartments for eight months.

A term lease will be permitted for any term of six months to one year. That is a new piece to the act.

Mr. Speaker, the maximum security deposit will be increased from one-half of the month's rent to three-quarters of the month's rent. This will be put in place in order to help out the people who rent basement apartments and have damage to these apartments and need a little bit of extra money to fix up these places before the next tenants move in.

Just a couple of the other sections that will be of importance: I think one of the key issues is that awards up to $3,000 will be filed in Small Claims Court, in this new act, where it had to go through the Trial Division of Supreme Court in the previous act, and this will decrease the cost. I would just like to mention that in the existing act, a landlord and tenant who was awarded any money would have to pay $50 in a fee to the Supreme Court for registration, and a minimum of $75 to file in the Sheriff's Office, which required a tenant to pay $125 for each appeal. Under the new act, the new system will be a $20 fee which will be filed in Small Claims Court That will be the only fee they will have to pay in order to file an appeal.

We believe that this act is a vast improvement in today's way we do business. I would be happy to entertain anybody who wants to speak on the new act. It is a good, progressive piece of legislation.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

When the minister made his statement on this on April 11, back at the time I think he mentioned probably six specific things. I assume they are all in the act.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: Yes. I responded, in fact, that day to the statement. I was fairly familiar with what is happening. There are a few things I want to comment on there. When we get to Committee, if there are any particular questions we can direct them to the minister at that time.

It is positive to see that one of the first things the minister mentioned is that during the first twelve months of a month-to-month - the landlord will not be able to increase rent during any fixed term or during the first twelve months of a month-to-month tenancy. He goes on to mention that right now, as it currently stands basically, it is either an annual rent or it is really a month-to-month type thing.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: Yes, I know, but currently what is happening there is that, for example, a lot of students probably don't rent until August or September and they want to move out the end of April. I know many students, some of my constituents, and I have been giving people as much advice as possible, from experience, to make sure you don't sign - technically you are signing what is an eight month lease, but that is a one year lease, and if you don't give notice.... Some people had to go to appeal. One particular one lost it, and there were a couple who won it, or the landlord, in some cases, was a little more generous. What is happening? They had to end up, young students, trying to come up with an extra three months rent at the end. They thought they were signing an eight month lease and there was no such thing. Right now at least, by having that option, you can lock into a six month or a seven, an eight, a nine, a ten or a twelve month, whatever the case may be, and that is positive, particularly for students who are in the situation. There are high enough costs in getting an education for people living in rural Newfoundland. One of the biggest costs in getting an education in rural Newfoundland is that the cost of your tuition is not even half of your cost of living, accommodations and food and so on. When you are living at home, you can do it more than half as cheap than having to come into the city, for example. They have to come here and spend eight months to go to university, and it is costing about $10,000 a year for someone to come in. Someone who lives here can go in for tuition and a few other incidental costs, probably for less than half that amount. So that is welcome news in particular for people in rural parts of this Province, or whether you live outside Corner Brook, Grand Falls-Windsor, Labrador City; wherever they happen to be to attending or wherever the institution happens to be, it is very positive.

Another particular one there is this. The security deposit now has increased. That is one that - I do not know the section in the particular act but I think it will be a marginal cost to the individual but I am sure that will be -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: Pardon?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: It is section - yes, I don't have it at my fingertips but it is there anyway. It is going from one-half to three-quarters basically, which really when you move in first you generally pay your one month up front, and now you will pay basically 1.75 of a month's rent. It is a little bit of money up front but most people going into rent at the beginning expect to have to pay a fee when they go in anyway. They want some securities, because some of the rationale is there are sometimes damage costs, and other things, and they have to get that particular thing ready for the next tenant. So there are certain particular associated costs with that that will be an extra burden but not highly significant there.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: Yes, in particular.

I am not quite clear on this, and maybe it could be clarified. It says here that under proposed changes: The right of landlords to ask for the last month's rent in advance will be removed. For instance, if you are going to rent for September you normally pay at the beginning of the month anyway, so if your last month is April, you normally would get that April 1 anyway, wouldn't you? When we get to Committee we can deal with this. So I am not quite clear on the first month's, what they mean by it. Does that mean that you have to pay your second last month for the next month, too? Does the minister follow what I am saying? You always get a month in advance, anyway. It says: Under the proposed changes the right of the landlord to ask for the last months'- it says months, plural, here, the apostrophe is after the s - rent. In other words, in some cases when they are ready to move out they might want more than one month or the last two months' in advance. Is that what is...?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: That was referenced in your ministerial statement in one of the things there.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: No, when we get to Committee we can deal with that, but I just tossed it out so the minister can have a change just to check that aspect out in the meantime.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: Yes, the principle.

An opportunity now to avoid Supreme Court is a positive element there, and it makes it a little bit cheaper to able to honour that because it could be a heck of a lot of money just to deal with Supreme Court. It really would discourage people from even pursuing it in many cases where there is not much money involved because of the costs associated with it. So that is a positive factor. Claims up to $3,000 can be settled in this manner.

Overall, most of the points here are very positive. There is a slight increase in one instance but there is a justification I think for that half to three-quarters. There is a reason why -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: No, I'm definitely not. As House Leader in the absence of them I take on the responsibility to try to be up on all legislation, to read it all, and to be familiar with it. I like to do that. It makes me a little bit more knowledgeable on it, not an expert by any sense, but a little more knowledgeable.

MR. E. BYRNE: Loyola, there is one thing for sure, that member will never have a critic.

MR. SULLIVAN: He said you will never have a critic.

MR. E. BYRNE: That is right, because you will never have a department to have a critic for.

MR. SULLIVAN: Anyway, with that I will conclude my comments on this. I am sure a couple of my colleagues have a couple of things to ask when we get in Committee later. They will have a few questions to ask too.

That will conclude that. I will give the minister an opportunity to close second reading, it being such a late hour of the day and week.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Government Services and Lands.

If the hon. minister speaks now he will close the debate.

MR. McLEAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I think the hon. member there will get into debate when we get into the Committee stage and I will check these things out. With that I will conclude second reading on this bill.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

On motion, a bill, "An Act Respecting Tenancies Of Residential Premises," read a second time, ordered referred to a Committee of the Whole House on tomorrow. (Bill 11)

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

MR. GRIMES: Mr. Speaker, with the clock rapidly approaching 5:30 p.m., and not wanting to risk us having to stay after that time, I would move adjournment until Monday at 1:30 p.m.

On motion, the House at its rising adjourned until tomorrow, Monday, at 1:30 p.m.