November 27, 2002 HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS Vol. XLIV No. 36


The House met at 2:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (Snow): Order, please!

Statements by Members

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MERCER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to bring to the attention of hon. members the recent designation of four new heritage structures by the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador.

In keeping with its mandate of stimulating an understanding of, and an appreciation for, the architectural heritage of this Province, the Foundation has designated the Rose Blanche Museum, the Rose Blanche Lighthouse, the Harding House in Greenspond, 67 Central Street in Corner Brook and the Stoodley Fishing Stage in Grand Bank as heritage structures.

While all of these structures have their own distinctive characteristics, it is the house at 67 Central Street in Corner Brook to which I wish to draw members' particular attention. 67 Central Street, which until quite recently was owned and occupied by Mr. Jack Penney, is an exceptionally well-preserved example of architect Andrew Cobb's Type 4 house that he designed for the Newfoundland Power and Paper Company as dwellings for the employees of the Pulp and Paper Mill in Corner Brook. Built in 1925, this home is noteworthy for its high level of interior and exterior preservation.

Mr. Speaker, I ask all members to join with me in commending the Heritage Foundation and its many volunteers around this Province on the work they do in preserving our heritage structures.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order, a serious point of order. I have a copy here for you regarding a disturbing series of events that transpired in the House of Assembly yesterday, as confirmed by Hansard. I felt it was important to review Hansard last night in detail before raising this point of order, and I had the opportunity to do so last night.

I would like to put it in context first of all. The context for this point of order is a ruling that Your Honour made at the start of the sitting day on Monday with respect to unparliamentary language. It was a detailed and very significant ruling, in our view, which Your Honour made only after taking the matter in question under advisement and deliberating over a period of five days. In making that ruling Your Honour made the following statements, "Before getting into the details of the point of order, the Chair would like to remind all hon. members of the importance of conducting the proceedings in this or any other Parliament in such a way as to respect the integrity of all members. Without such respect, the proceedings descend into disorder and the work of the House becomes secondary to wrangling and disputes."

Your Honour then quoted Marleau and Montpetit on page 525, which states, "...the use of offensive, (or) provocative... language in the House is strictly forbidden." "Personal attacks, insults... are not in order."

Your Honour stated, "While the acceptability of language depends on the context, there are certain prohibitions which are fairly well established. These can be found on §481 of Beauchesne's 6th Edition".

Your Honour quoted the following paragraphs of that section of Beauchesne, "A member must not, ‘(e) impute bad motives or motives different from those acknowledged by a Member or (f) make a personal charge against a Member.'"

Your Honour then stated, "It has been consistently ruled in the House that language must be temperate. I think this is the key to the whole matter." Your Honour continued, "...it is perhaps a good opportunity to remind all members of the necessity of keeping their language temperate and of respecting the integrity of one's colleagues and the dignity of the House."

In conclusion, Your Honour ruled that the remark in question "...is in the category of imputing bad motives and, when applied to an individual, is unacceptable and tends to cause disorder." In making this ruling Your Honour has set an important and far-reaching precedent for this House, that whenever a member uses language in this House that falls into the category of imputing bad motives to an individual then: One, disorder results. Two, the Standing Orders of this House are therefore breached. Three, the statement is therefore unparliamentary, and four, the statement must therefore be withdrawn. Even if a member believes that he or she has the proof to establish that the motives of another member are dishonourable it is absolutely unparliamentary in this Chamber to impute bad motives to another member. It is a breach of the rules of this House and it must be withdrawn.

With this decisive ruling on Monday, Your Honour has set a standard against which behaviour in this House is to be measured. Behaviour that fails to measure up to the standard is contrary to the rules of this House and out of order. Moreover, the ruling indicates that the standard must be applied vigorously because without such rules of conduct the proceedings would descend into disorder and the work of the House would become secondary to wrangling and disputes.

Now that I have established the context for this point of order I will present the facts of an event that occurred yesterday; indeed, the very next day after Your Honour made this ruling, an event so flagrant in its violation of this ruling that I firmly believe it constitutes a direct challenge to Your Honour's authority in this House.

One member of this House clearly and unequivocally imputed bad motives to another member of the House, not once but three times. The member's actions clearly resulted in disorder, clearly breached the rules of this House, and clearly fell far short of the standard that Your Honour has set for acceptable conduct in this Parliament.

The events to which I refer are these: Under questioning by the Leader of the Opposition yesterday, the Premier made the following three statements regarding the Opposition Leader and the now former Chair of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro. I will quote these statements for the record.

Statement number one, and I quote directly, "The Leader of the Opposition has acknowledged, I think, publicly in the Province, that he has compromised the former Chair of the board of Hydro by speaking to him..." - and these are the key words - "...through all of last week, while he was still Chair of the board, and, in fact, that is okay according to the Leader of the Opposition...".

Statement number two, directly from Hansard, "The standard that the Leader of the Opposition uses is that he sees nothing wrong with putting the Chair of a Crown corporation, a major business, in jeopardy and in possible breach of trust, by conferring with him and talking with him. In fact, Mr. Speaker, the public record says - and the Leader of the Opposition bragged about it - that..." - again the important words - "...he spoke with the Chair of the board throughout last week. It is verbatim, Mr. Speaker, it is a quote."

Statement number three, "The Leader of the Opposition acknowledged that publicly, now tries to deny it in the House of Assembly, and has been conferring with the Chair for over a week, Mr. Speaker, and he sees nothing wrong with it."

Your Honour, these statements taken together are scurrilous. Firstly, the Premier's remarks assert, as if it were a fact, that the Leader of the Opposition conferred continually over a period of the week with the Chair of Hydro when in fact that was not the case.

Secondly, the Premier's remarks assert, as if it were a fact, that the Leader of the Opposition was doing something that he knew, knowingly that he knew, would compromise the Chair, place the Chair in jeopardy, and possibly create a breach of trust when in fact that was not the case.

Thirdly, and most importantly, the Premier's remarks assert, as if it were a fact, that the Leader of the Opposition was motivated by a belief that it is not wrong to take actions that compromise individuals, jeopardize individuals, and create breaches of public trust.

So scurrilous, Mr. Speaker, is the third allegation that I am obliged to address the gross factual error on which it is based, and I will conclude shortly. Did the Leader of the Opposition, in fact, acknowledge on the public record or anywhere else, for that matter, that he had been conferring continually, over the period of the week, with the Chair of Hydro as the Premier had asserted? No, he did not. He made no such statement. There was, at the time, only one statement, Your Honour, on the public record regarding any discussion between the Opposition Leader and the Hydro Chair, and as the news media have demonstrated, that statement was not at all as the Premier had characterized it. It was not a statement on the record of the House because it was not made in the House. It was a statement that was made in an interview just outside the House, a statement that was captured on tape and broadcast on the CBC Radio Morning Show yesterday.

Now, let me quote for members, the statement the Leader of the Opposition actually made during the interview, for the record: Mr. MacDonald indicated to me, I guess, well over a week ago, that he had concerns with the project. As well, Mr. MacDonald and I spoke late this week and, in fact, last night, and he had indicated to me that he was tendering his resignation.

The quote, Mr. Speaker, refers exactly to two conversations. The first, a week prior to Monday when the interview was recorded, and the second on Sunday evening when the Chair indicated he was about to tender his resignation.

In the same broadcast, Mr. Speaker, was the following statement by the CBC reporter who conducted the interview. Characterizing his understanding of the Opposition Leader's comments, the reporter said, and I quote: Now, Williams, the Leader of the Opposition, says that was the extent of his conversations with MacDonald on this. He said he never pressed him for specifics because he did not want to put the Chairman of Hydro, or the then Chairman of Hydro, in a comprised position.

The Premier stated outside this House, Mr. Speaker, and it was quoted in the media yesterday, that his only knowledge of any such discussion between the Leader of the Opposition and the former Chair of Hydro was what he learned from the remarks of the Leader of the Opposition. It is strange, then, that the Premier's characterization of those remarks is so conspicuously different from what the Leader of the Opposition actually said and is reported to have said.

Because the Premier did not establish a solid foundation of fact, all of his allegations about the Leader of the Opposition are shown to be utterly and completely without any justification.

Breach of order - but that does not put an end to the matter, Mr. Speaker, because this point of order is not merely a dispute among members about the facts of the matter. The point of order is about the imputing of dishonourable motives to a member in this House.

Let me repeat the significant part of the Premier's second statement. I am quoting, Mr. Speaker. "The standard that the Leader of the Opposition uses is that he sees nothing wrong with putting the Chair of a Crown corporation, a major business, in jeopardy and in possible breach of trust, by conferring with him and talking with him."

Mr. Speaker, we have now established that the Leader of the Opposition, in fact, did not place the Chair of Hydro in jeopardy of breach of trust, but the Premier did not simply say the Opposition Leader jeopardized the Chair; the Premier said the Opposition Leader sees nothing wrong with putting the Chair in jeopardy. That, Mr. Speaker, is not a statement of fact. That is a statement about motive and intent; the most despicable, dishonourable motives that could be ascribed to any member in this House.

How dare one member say that another member is acting in wilful contempt for the welfare of others, in wilful contempt for the integrity of the offices of the Crown, and in wilful contempt for the law of the land?

The Premier could hardly have been more blunt if he called the Leader of the Opposition a degenerate thug. It is one of the most scurrilous, shocking and indefensible tirades I have ever heard levelled by one member against another.

Mr. Speaker, I am just about to conclude.

I remind hon. members that Marleau and Montpetit, on pages 431 and 432, states that replies to Oral Questions to be phrased in language that does not provoke disorder in this House.

Let me repeat. It says, the use of offensive or provocative language is forbidden, personal attacks and insults are not in order.

Let me repeat Beauchesne, §481.(e): A member must not "...impute bad motives or motives different from those acknowledged by a Member." Or §481.(f) "...make a personal charge against a Member."

Let me quote again from Your Honour's ruling on Monday.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member now to conclude quickly.

MR. E. BYRNE: I am just about to conclude.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. E. BYRNE: Let me quote again from Your Honour's ruling on Monday.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. E. BYRNE: Let me quote again from Your Honour's ruling on Monday.

"It has been consistently ruled in the House that language must be temperate. I think this is the key to the whole matter.

"...it is perhaps a good opportunity to remind all members of the necessity of keeping their language temperate and of respecting the integrity of one's colleagues and the dignity of the House."

I do not expect, Your Honour - I am just about to conclude.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member to quickly conclude.

MR. E. BYRNE: I am just about finished, Mr. Speaker, just another paragraph.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: I may? Thank you.

I do not expect Your Honour to rule on the Premier's stunning misrepresentation of the facts of the Opposition Leader's remarks in the media. The issue of imputing dishonourable motives is another matter entirely, and one that our caucus views with serious concern.

Given the seriousness with which we take this matter, I am today tabling my Point of Order along with the copies of the documents I have cited.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

To the last point that the hon. member raised, the member has neither the right nor the obligation to table documents in the House. I think that has been ruled on a number of occasions.

The other point that the Chair made, in ruling on Monday, was that points of order ought to be raised immediately or, in the case of Question Period, immediately after Question Period. I said at that time that I would not be considering points of order that were not brought up in a timely fashion. The Chair is going to stick with that, because points of order ought to be raised when the thing occurs, and members ought to do that.

I did say that I took the point that the hon. Government House Leader did raise under advisement and for that reason I had to rule, but I said that points of order that were raised, not in a timely fashion, would not be considered.

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker.

MR. RALPH WISEMAN: (Inaudible) going to question the Speaker?

MR. E. BYRNE: No, I am not going to question the Speaker. All of our questions are saved for you, Mr. Wiseman, and others like you on the opposite side, in your capacity as ministers of the Crown.

Mr. Speaker, what we attempted -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

What I attempted to do today: We raised a point of order according to your ruling, I believe, and this is for your consideration, and I put it before you for that reason. We raised this point of order immediately yesterday, and I wanted to take the opportunity to elaborate on it today. That is all that we did, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The point of order that the hon. member raised yesterday, the Chair has under advisement and will rule on it.

The hon. the Member for Waterford Valley.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to offer congratulations to the City of Mount Pearl for having been recognized in an awards ceremony on October 30 as one of Canada's most friendly communities for home-based business.

Over the years, the Mount Pearl City Council has taken various initiatives to encourage all types of business and, in the case of home-based businesses, the council has changed zoning regulations to ease the process and has offered creative support that coaches grassroots entrepreneurs through many of the most challenging aspects of getting a small business off the ground.

In 2001, the city dedicated its annual high-end, full-colour magazine entitled Business Success to raising awareness of the home-based business sector, including the profiling of more than twenty successful home-based businesses located in Mount Pearl.

Thirteen per cent of all business ventures in Mount Pearl are home-based, Mr. Speaker. In real numbers, that translates to 121 home-based businesses operating in the City of Mount Pearl.

Mr. Speaker, congratulations are extended to Mayor David Denine, the City Council and the Economic Development Officer, Mrs. Bronda Aylward and her staff on receiving this national award. I am sure that all members of the House will want to wish all the home-based businesses located in Mount Pearl continued success.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Carbonear-Harbour Grace.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SWEENEY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, over this past weekend, the Newfoundland and Labrador Economic Developers Association held its inaugural conference in Gander.

This conference was organized by economic development practitioners who feel it is necessary to have an organization to encourage professional development and networking amongst those in the profession.

The executive of the national organization of economic developers also met in Gander over the weekend and attended the first provincial conference to act as resource people for the local organizations. It is also worthy of note that the National Economic Developers Association will hold its national conference in St. John's in October, 2003.

Mr. Speaker, I ask all members to join with me in wishing this new professional association every success in the very important work they do.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

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

Today, Mr. Speaker, I would like to pay tribute to the contribution that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians make to service organizations in general and to the Kinsmen and Kinette Clubs of Canada in particular. The Kinsmen and Kinette Clubs of Canada is the largest Canadian only service organization with almost 10,000 members in 640 clubs nationwide.

Each year at their national convention, they elect the current year national team and that consists of a national Kinsmen and Kinette president and one each of a national Kinsmen and Kinette director.

What is of particular significance is that for the past five years the position of national Kinsmen director has been held by a Newfoundlander, starting with Neville Greeley of the Kinsmen Club of Corner Brook, followed by Shawn Woodford of the Kinsmen Club of Lewisporte.

What is even more remarkable is that for the past three years, this national position has been held by a member from the same club, that being the Kinsmen Club of St. John's. Those who held that office are: Peter Noel, Gary Carville, and the most recent being elected just this past summer, Harold Sullivan.

An interesting addition to this story of service by residents of our Province is that next year the position of national Kinette director will also be held by a Life Member and current national vice-director, Marilyn Foote of the Kinette Club of Conception Bay South.

The leadership shown by the people from this Province in this National Service Organization is indeed a shining example that demonstrates once again the spirit of giving that is a hallmark of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. It is what separates us and what makes us special.

I ask the members of this hon. House to show appreciation to the residents of our Province for their spirit of giving and for making us proud.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Conception Bay East & Bell Island.

MR. WALSH: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I, too, want to recognize a Newfoundlander today, that person being Roger Jamieson. Roger is this Province's first private sector representative on the Canadian Tourism Commission Board of Directors. He was appointed by federal Minister Allan Rock on October 4, on the recommendation of Hospitality Newfoundland and Labrador.

Roger is owner and operator of Kilmory Resort in Swift Current and, because of his experience with the industry, he possesses extensive knowledge of tourism in this Province and throughout Canada. Roger is the immediate past-president of Hospitality Newfoundland and the past co-chair of the Atlantic Canada Tourism Partnership, giving him the provincial and national experience needed to be successful as the private sector representative for Newfoundland and Labrador and for Nova Scotia.

The appointment of Roger will bring the private sector concerns to the table so that there is a stronger small business enterprise focus. Currently, many of the programs offered by the Canadian Tourism Commission are specifically designed for larger corporations within the industry and do not meet the needs of the small sector; for example, in this Province or in Nova Scotia.

Mr. Speaker, as this is the first private sector appointment from Newfoundland and Labrador to the Canadian Tourism Commission, I feel it is important to recognize Roger Jamieson, and I ask all members to join with me in congratulating him on this prestigious appointment.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

 

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

Oral Questions

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WILLIAMS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My questions today are for the Minister of Mines and Energy. Mr. Speaker, would the Minister of Mines and Energy confirm, for this House, that he is familiar with all the terms and details of the proposed deal with Hydro Quebec, that he has seen all the documentation provided to the Board of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro and that he supports all the terms of the deal and that documentation in its entirety?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I think it is appropriate at this time to probably put this whole discussion, line of questioning, et cetera, for the past week-and-a-half, into some perspective for the people of the Province, less they misunderstand where we are today as a Province. We are, as a government, and have been for some time now, attempting to structure a proposition that would allow us to move the development of the Gull Island project forward. The fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, that after all of the work and effort we put into it, all of the good work that our officials have put into it, and all of the advice we have taken, all of the considerations given by others to this project, we still today do not have, to conclusion, a deal to move the Lower Churchill development forward. At what point, Mr. Speaker, we get to that circumstance, obviously as we did with the Voisey's Bay deal, we would be happy to provide - we will have an obligation and we will be pleased to provide - the detail in its totality, to the extent that it is developed, to the people of the Province.

With respect to the direct question, because that was just for a bit of context, the direct question: have I seen, am I privy to the various documents that have been developed, the various agreements that have been at some level of conclusion -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

MR. MATTHEWS: The answer is obviously yes, I have seen all of these documents. I have gone over them. I have poured over them. I have had access to them and I have read them on many occasions. The fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, that we have not yet brought any of those documents to conclusion. Therefore, there is nothing that I have further to add to the question other than to say that I have seen them and I guess I will continue to see them as long as we are involved in this process of, hopefully, trying to get a deal done.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, the Premier of the Province has said that talks with Quebec to develop the $4 billion Gull Island project are virtually complete. The documentation which I referred to was put before the board of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro for their approval. We would assume that the negotiations were complete. I ask you a simple question with a simple yes or no. Have you seen all the documentation that was provided to Hydro? Do you know the details, and are you in favour of everything in that documentation in its entirety or not? Very simple, minister, yes or no?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I think it is also important in the context of recent developments, particularly at the Hydro board level, to inform the public what it is, in fact, the board of Hydro did consider and what, in fact, they were required to pass judgement on. It was not the full scope and extent of the project as reflected in a bunch of documents. What it was, was to consider three resolutions. The board of Hydro has a responsibility, a judiciary responsibility, to that corporation. They have a responsibility to act in the best interest of that corporation, and by extension, act in the best interest of the ratepayers of the Province who make up the reason why the corporation exists.

The corporation's board was asked to consider or, in fact, did consider, and did vote on three specific resolutions. They were resolutions that did not, in totality, deal with whether or not the deal itself was a great deal or a good deal, or a bad deal. While some may have given some consideration to that, they voted on three specific resolutions. I can outline for the people in the House specifically what, in substance, those resolutions were all about -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

MR. MATTHEWS: - if the hon. member wants that information.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WILLIAMS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Would the minister please tell us what those resolutions were all about?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MATTHEWS: Mr. Speaker, the resolutions were to deal with the issue of whether or not we would, in effect, set up another Crown corporation to be the owner and developer of the project; whether or not we would appoint certain people to be the directors of that corporation, and whether or not, in the event that the deal went ahead, in any event and in any circumstance what happened through the development or through the process of managing the project, whether or not the corporation would be injuriously affected if something did go wrong. These were the only three resolutions that the corporation reflected on. These were the resolutions that they considered. These were the resolutions that the board of directors in significant majority agreed to be able to support in the context of their deliberations. Obviously, the board of directors had available to them other information that they gave consideration to, but at the end of the day, they were not voting on the entire project as to whether or not, as government, we will vote in this Legislature. They were voting on matters that were specific to their fiduciary responsibilities as directors of that corporation and in the interests of protecting and ensuring that that corporation's financial integrity was always kept whole in the event of any eventuality.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WILLIAMS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

So, Mr. Speaker, they were in fact voting on resolutions that affected the financial integrity of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro.

I ask the minister: Did they consider all the detailed documentation related to the agreement between the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador and Hydro Quebec? Did they have all that information before them? Was that used to reach their decision?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Board of Directors at Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro were provided with sufficient information that they needed in order to deal with the business that they were required to deal with. I have not seen yet, the copy of the minutes of the corporation. As a shareholder we will be entitled to see them. I anticipate I will see them once they are prepared and finalized.

I did not sit in at the board meetings, therefore I cannot answer the question: What, in fact, in full detail did they consider? I can say this though, in a general sense, that they considered all of the information that was put before them and they were provided with, as best I can judge, all of the information that they thought was necessary for them to have to render a decision on the piece of business that they were asked to deal with.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, I would ask the minister: As a result of the information that was provided to them - I do not know if you are giving me the impression that it was complete or was not complete - were the officers or any of the officials of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro required to sign any documentation in order to approve this deal for the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MATTHEWS: There was certain documents that the board of Hydro would have to approve its officers to sign in the context of their responsibility in the event that we moved to do a project in substantially the same structural manner corporate wise that we had done other deals, such as the Upper Churchill. The fact of the matter is, the Upper Churchill is being managed by a corporation that is a subsidiary of Hydro. There is always a potential to do a Lower Churchill in similar fashion. However, I would hasten to add that there is always the option of doing it in some other format or in some other fashion, directly or indirectly, through government or a Crown corporation that is owned solely by government. So, the issue of whether or not they are required to sign anything is predicated upon the question of whether or not we would go in a certain direction that would necessitate them to sign anything.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WILLIAMS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

So, Mr. Speaker, in fact, their approval was required in order to sign off on this deal in order for the government to proceed, similar to the Upper Churchill deal, as the hon. minister has said.

Mr. Speaker, the Premier has repeatedly stated that seven out of ten members of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro's Board of Director voted in favour of the deal to develop the Lower Churchill. Does the Minister of Mines and Energy feel that it is appropriate that his Deputy Minister, Mr. Brian Maynard, who is a civil servant and one of the negotiators for the deal, should have the right to vote for this deal on the Board of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The simple answer to the question, Mr. Speaker, is obviously yes, because he is a member of the Board of Directors and duly appointed by government to sit on the board. That is not unusual, for public servants to be sitting on boards. They sit on all kinds of boards as a part of government's responsibility to ensure that they have a presence there, but to give further comfort to the Leader of the Opposition, I would say this to him: that the former Chair of the Board of Hydro explained - and I was happy to hear him say - he said that we, as a board, were given the opportunity to do full due diligence in the matters of business we had to consider, and he said we, as a board, did full due diligence to the matters that were before us. He indicated that he was quite happy with the process, the length of time he was given as a board chair -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

MR. MATTHEWS: - to deal with his board on the issues, and if there was any suggestion that, in terms of whether or not it was right and proper for Mr. Maynard -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

MR. MATTHEWS: - my deputy, to sit on the board, I am sure that the board itself would have considered that question and come to a decision one way or the other. The fact that he was there and voted indicates the board and board chair were (inaudible).

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WILLIAMS: I understand Mr. MacDonald to say that the due diligence was completed and, as a result of that due diligence, he voted against that particular resolution, as you are saying.

As well, I understand the minister to say that he sees nothing wrong with the chief negotiator for the Province voting on the deal at Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, and that is correct as well. That is what I understood you just to say.

Mr. Speaker, in his Ministerial Statement this week, the minister said, "I have asked the President and CEO of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, Bill Wells, to report directly to government on the deliberations of the board, including any concerns regarding the proposed Gull Island development." He want on to say, "Government is most interested in hearing the specific issues and the facts surrounding them. More importantly, we want to give them full consideration and evaluation."

Mr. Speaker, since the minister has obviously heard from two of the government directors who voted for the deal, Mr. Maynard and Mr. Wells, could he advise the people of Newfoundland and Labrador if he has even bothered to seek details of their concerns directly from Mr. Dean MacDonald, Mr. Mark Dobbin and Mr. Bill Kelly, who opposed this deal.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Not to be picky or to be splitting hairs, I would say to the hon. Opposition Leader, my deputy minister is not the chief negotiator in this, inasmuch as we have a dedicated team doing that at the Hydro organizational level. I would not want to have that out on the public record, that in fact he is the chief negotiator; however, he is involved in the negotiations. You are correct to that extent.

Mr. Speaker, in the statement that I gave to the House on Monday, I did say that I, along with the Premier, obviously, and appropriate ministers, would be seeking an early briefing with Mr. Wells with respect to getting a general overview of the meetings that were held last week. In fact, we had that opportunity within the last twenty-four hours. It was a preliminary meeting in terms of the information that he was able to share.

I indicated already in an earlier question that I have not yet seen the minutes of the board meeting. They are in the process of being prepared, and other information that we would like to have for our review is also pending. Obviously, I have not had a chance, nor even had the opportunity in any way, to even think about whether or not it would be appropriate, or even inquire whether or not Mr. MacDonald would be interested in sharing with us, in the event that we wanted to do that. I acknowledge to the hon. leader, it is an option.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

MR. MATTHEWS: We could obviously speak to Mr. MacDonald if we decided it would be in our interest, because I can tell him and I can tell the people of the Province that we are fully intent not on doing a deal at any cost, but we are intent on only doing a deal if it is the right deal that has the right level of benefits for the people of the Province -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MATTHEWS: - and that it will attract and sustain the same level of support that we have seen in other projects we have recently dealt with, such as the White Rose project and the Voisey's Bay project.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, we have had serious, very serious, concerns expressed by the former Chairman of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro. We have another leading business person in this Province who has voted against this deal, and we have a nominee from Labrador, Mr. Bill Kelly, who has voted against this deal. Is the minister now saying - and I would ask the minister - that it is merely an option that you may talk to these people about these concerns? So, in other words, you may not, and you may proceed with a deal in the absence of that very valuable information? Is that what you just said to us?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I indicated two days ago that we would seek an early meeting with the President and CEO of the Hydro Corporation. We have done that in the last twenty-four hours. We have not proceeded to have discussions with any of the board members who voted on these resolutions that they were dealing with. There are ten of them. We have not sought a meeting with any of them, either those who voted for it or those who voted against it, at this point. The option is obviously there if we wanted to do that, but we do respect -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: We have not asked any of the directors to come in and speak with us. We have not done that. Let me be clear. If we were to decide to ask any of the directors to speak to us, we would give equal consideration as to whether or not we would ask those who voted for it or against it, but it is premature to talk about that because we have not done that. I acknowledge that is an option. That is something that we may indeed consider and it may be helpful to us.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. minister to take his seat.

MR. MATTHEWS: We are interested in getting good help, good advice, so that we can do a good project.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Ferryland.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Sustainability is defined as the degree to which a government can maintain existing programs and meet existing creditor requirements without increasing the debt burden on the economy.

The net debt to GDP ratio is a measure of the government's ability to be able to afford to carry that debt. Our GDP has been leading the country for the past three years, and therefore we would expect the net debt to GDP ratio to go down. Astonishingly, over the past two years, our net debt to GDP ratio has gone up from 57 per cent to 63 per cent. The Auditor General says that if this upward trend continues, the Newfoundland and Labrador economy will not be able to meet the financing needs of a growing net debt.

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the minister: What solution does the minister propose to rectify this very serious financial situation?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS J.M. AYLWARD: Mr. Speaker, it is very interesting for the first time in a number of years one very important graph which has not been included in the Auditor General's report: the total borrowings as a percentage of GDP, because it shows positive variance, in fact. For the first time it shows a decrease in a period of time, so I think that is an important piece - very important.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS J.M. AYLWARD: Mr. Speaker, the decisions that this government has made have been about people, and the decisions that we make have to factor in not only the bottom line about the programs and services.

Now, every day of the week any of my colleagues can hear any of those members across the way ask for money for everything, everything under the sun, and many of them, I might add, are legitimate. I do not deny that. However, Mr. Speaker I would ask them, what would they do? Would they balance the books at the risk of health care and people's programs and services? Because this government, Mr. Speaker, has made a choice about striking a balance. Sure, we could balance the books tomorrow; but, Mr. Speaker, it is about people - the people we represent and we serve - and we have chosen health care as our number one priority. We do not apologize for that, Mr. Speaker, and I do not think the people of the Province would expect anything less.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We would not spend $1 million promoting Inco, and we would not spend hundreds of thousands trying to promote and improve our own image. That is what we would not do!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SULLIVAN: The Auditor General said, Mr. Speaker, even if a reader attempted to understand what transactions caused the increase in deficit from $47.2 million to $473.1 million last year, as a result of not preparing a summary budget, it is not possible to determine how close government came to meeting its fiscal plan.

Now, about a year ago, Mr. Speaker, our party released a policy indicating we were prepared -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

MR. SULLIVAN: In light of the fact, Mr. Speaker, that our party, almost a year ago, released a policy that said we would prepare a budget on the same basis of accounting that is used to prepare a consolidated summary financial statement. I ask the minister: Why isn't she doing that instead of preparing a misleading budget utilizing only a cash basis?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS J.M. AYLWARD: Mr. Speaker, the only thing being misled here, I think, is by the member opposite when he is trying to leave the impression that somehow the information is not there.

When I stood up here in the House and delivered the last budget I clearly identified it was a cash-based budget. A few days ago I tabled this government's Public Accounts, not the Auditor Generals, this governments, for all of the people of the Province to see.

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible).

MS J.M. AYLWARD: I say to the Member for Ferryland, I listened intently to his question. Please allow me the privilege of answering his question because I think it is important. I would further say to the member opposite: Would you spend forty-five cents out of every dollar in health care? Because the way you are talking, I doubt very much if the people of the Province can expect that. I can say, in your preamble that was something that had to be addressed.

Further, I would say, Mr. Speaker, the money that we have spent has been clearly identified as addressing a health care growth, which has increased almost 50 per cent in five years, and we have made major, significant approaches to addressing the Unfunded Pension Liability expenses. It is clear that we have made those two priorities and all of the money is there to be identified. It has been tabled for the people of the Province to see. There is nothing hidden, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. minister now to conclude her answer, quickly.

MS J.M. AYLWARD: It is all there, and as far as we are concerned it is about choices for the people that we represent.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: A final supplementary, the hon. the Member for Ferryland.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Isn't it a little unusual that the minister tries to keep talking about health care when she almost shut down the health care system in this Province when she was minister?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. SULLIVAN: She had to be taken out of the job. They had to remove her.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

In the Auditor General's Report to the House of Assembly just this week, the Auditor General indicated that government has contravened the Financial Administration Act by using special warrants that were not urgently required. Government broke the law to the tune of $33.1 million last year and to the tune of $299.7 million since 1997. The Auditor General referenced that in his report. The minister said in this House on Monday -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

MR. SULLIVAN: - "...they have received a clean, unqualified, audit opinion by the Auditor General."

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

MR. SULLIVAN: In light of that, I ask the minister, in light of her own praise and accuracy of the Auditor General, clean, unqualified audit, why is this minister, and the government, breaking the very laws that she has sworn to uphold?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS J.M. AYLWARD: Mr. Speaker, I can honestly say - and if the member were to read what the Auditor General said, it was in his opinion. In our opinion, spending money to fight forest fires, spending money to put into health care is very important to us and falls under the Financial Administration Act, as it relates to special warrants. It is all tabled in the House, it is there for everyone to see. The member opposite would like to leave the impression, somehow, that the "Building Hope" campaign to buy equipment and other services is not important, that fighting forest fires is not important. We differ over here, Mr. Speaker, because we represent people, we hear what they say, and we respond to the issues that they put forward to us.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My question is for the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs.

A year ago the Province signed on with the federal government for an Affordable Housing Framework Agreement that would deliver fifty-fifty programs for new housing and to refurbish Newfoundland and Labrador Housing units in the Province. Mr. Speaker, winter is setting in, the whole year has passed, without this program being signed on in a bilateral agreement by this Province, whereas three territories and seven other provinces have done so.

I ask the minister: Why are we waiting so long to get involved in this program when so many hundreds of families are in desperate need of affordable housing?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

The Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi is right, last fall, the ministers in the provinces and territories did meet with the then Minister of Housing, Mr. Galliano, and we were able to work out a deal with him that met the needs for Newfoundland and Labrador. Subsequent to his being there as minister, there have been two ministers since that and these two ministers, of course, somehow did not want to honour the commitment that was made by Mr. Galliano.

You see, what we argued for right from the beginning was that, there is not one program that fits all across the country. One of our biggest expenditures was to retrofit many of the housing units that are here in St. John's and across the Province that are older units, some built in 1950. We wanted that to be a major portion of our deal with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

We are getting there, and very, very soon I am hoping that my colleagues in Cabinet will be able to approve of a plan that we were able to work out, a bilateral agreement, with the federal government. We have been persistent because we believe we know our needs best. That is why we have been long in getting it, but I think at the end -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

MR. LANGDON: - it will be beneficial, because we are really sticking to what we had suggested in the first place.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The flexibility that the minister talks about has been granted to the Province of Manitoba which signed on in September. There are millions of dollars involved here for affordable housing.

I want to ask the minister whether he is prepared to signing that agreement immediately and whether he is also committed, along with this Province which is committed, to a fully funded national housing program with active participation by this Province? Is that part of the minister's agenda as well?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. LANGDON: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am quite familiar with what happened in Manitoba, because the minister at the time, Minister Sale, who was Minister of Housing and is now Minister of Health, was the chair of the committee. I want to say to him, that there was no particular jurisdiction, whether the provinces or the territories, that was insistent to the federal government of having a major portion of our dollars go into retrofit. That is why we have really been vigilant and tried to make it happen. I think we are pretty close to doing what we want to do. Over the next week, with my Cabinet colleagues, we should be able to conclude a deal and be able to sign on.

It is not the fact that we have not committed. It is a $30 million project, fifty-fifty, that we know we have had to agree to, and we do, but we believe it is very important for us to be able to get our priorities, because what are Newfoundland's priorities might not necessarily be what is in Manitoba or any other province in the country.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Lewisporte. Time for one more question.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. RIDEOUT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have a quick question for the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

In August, 2002, a delegation from the Town of Lewisporte, the Lewisporte and Area Chamber of Commerce, and myself met with the minister. The purpose was the ascertain whether or not government was fully committed to closing out the Coastal Labrador Marine Services through Lewisporte at the end of the 2002 season. Could the minister tell the House whether or not a final decision has been made for the operational plan for 2003?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. BARRETT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The government, recently, has been studying the whole area of the Labrador transportation marine services. I would anticipate that we will be in a position to make a decision on it in about a week.

MR. SPEAKER: Question Period has ended.

Presenting Reports by Standing and Special Committees

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

MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, I present the exceptions to the Public Tender Act for the periods March to October for the year 2002.

Private Members' Day

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Trinity North.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. ROSS WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I gave notice the other day that I wanted to introduce the motion. Before I start some discussion and comment I just want to read into the record the motion that I introduced the other day. Mr. Speaker, the motion reads:

WHEREAS the percentage of the province's population over the age of 65 is increasing faster then any other Province in Canada; and

WHEREAS an aging population requires specific attention to medical treatment, quality of life issues, affordable prescription drugs, home support services and other direct and indirect supports; and

WHEREAS the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is not responding to the health needs of the seniors in our Province;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador make public immediately a detailed action plan to respond to the long term care needs of our Province's aging population.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to create some background information. We are going to hear a lot of comments today about what government may or may not be doing and some direction they may want to have, but I want to create the backdrop for this kind of a resolution.

Today, in this Province, a little over 12 per cent of our population is over the age of sixty-five; that is in the year 2002. If you look at predictions going to 2016, which is just fourteen short years from now, the Province is projecting to have some 19 per cent of its population over the age of sixty-five. Mr. Speaker, that is a pretty startling increase because what we have experienced in the last fourteen years has been slightly a little more than a 3 per cent increase in the aging of that particular sector of the population, but in the next fourteen years that is going to double. We are going to see a 6.4 per cent increase in the percentage of the population over the age of sixty-five. If that is not startling enough, in the course of the next twenty years, Stats Canada is predicting that portion of our population, the portion that is sixty-five years and older, will more than double in this Province. If you look at that same source, there is no other province in Canada going to experience that kind of accelerated increased in the age population of sixty-five and over, and it is in that context that I make this resolution.

There are a couple of other points, I think, that are important. We just heard the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board make the comment that there has been an increase in health spending of over 50 per cent in the last five years. She made a reference to the fact that 45 per cent of every program dollar in this Province is spent on health care. We, no doubt, will hear the Minister of Health and Community Service stand today and tell the people of this Province that they have increased spending on home support in the last three budgets by some $4 million. He will, no doubt, stand and tell you how they put $4 million or $5 million into personal care homes in this Province, but I want to create another backdrop to this particular resolution, because here are some startling facts, Mr. Speaker, and this is the part that is frightening.

If you look at this Province today, there are some over 200 people, 200 seniors in this Province, who are over the age of sixty-five, who are on a waiting list to receive home supports. What that means is, these individuals are living at home, they have been assessed by Health and Community Services staff and have been deemed to require a level of support in order then to remain independent and living in their own homes, but they are on a waiting list, cannot get the service. They are at risk. They are a vulnerable population. They are at extreme risk.

Mr. Speaker, in addition to that, there are another 150-plus people who are getting some level of home support but the assessment process has said it is not enough. The hours that they are getting, it is just not safe. They need more care. They are not getting it. So, if you look just on home support alone, there are over 400 people out there in the Province today who are on a wait list for either new services or to have an appropriate level of service.

Mr. Speaker, when you couple that with some stats around the number of people who are on waiting lists for nursing homes - in this Province today there are over some 450 individuals who are on waiting lists to get into long-term care facilities, so you have that 450 people, and another roughly 400 people on the wait list for home supports. How can the minister or any other minister of this government stand in the House today and suggest that they are providing an adequate response to the health needs of the seniors in this Province when we have over 450 of them on a wait list to get into long-term care facilities, and we have over 400 on a wait list for home support services?

Mr. Speaker, these individuals have gone through an assessment process. They have been deemed to be at risk. If we are not able, as a society, to respond to the needs of an aging population, some of the more vulnerable people in our population, the very same people - Mr. Speaker, these are the very same people who developed Newfoundland and Labrador to where we are today. These are the people who laid the foundation for what we have in this Province today, and here is how we are repaying them. We are leaving them, lots of time, in a destitute state, Mr. Speaker, and I think that is a crime. It is criminal for any government to allow those seniors in this Province who are at risk and vulnerable, to be left out there, not having adequate health supports.

Mr. Speaker, I would be very remiss if I did not acknowledge the existence of government's Strategic Health Plan for Newfoundland and Labrador. So, when you read the cover of this document you would assume when you pick it up and read it that it would map out a blue print for you, for how they are going to respond to the critical health issues facing this Province today. Just let me read for you, Mr. Speaker, when I turn to - and I remind you, this is about a thirty-five page document. I look under the heading of long-term care and it only occupies just better than half a page in this document. Just let me read for you, Mr. Speaker, what this strategic planning document says. It says, "The current array of residential, day, home and community-based services is inadequate from several perspectives."

These are the government's own words, Mr. Speaker. The government are further, saying, "...there are often few options when decisions about care and supervision have to be made. There are many times, for example, when an elderly person has to remain in an acute care hospital simply because a bed is not available in a nursing home."

The document goes on, Mr. Speaker, to say, "...nursing home beds are being occupied by people who would be better served in less regulated, non-institutional environments; the physical structures of many facilities need renovation or replacement with an emphasis on greater choice and movement away from traditional institutional environments...."

This is the government's own strategic planning document. This is not news. This is something that the people of this Province have been telling us for years and years. The irony and the uniqueness about aging, Mr. Speaker, is that ten years ago, fifteen years ago, people were telling governments of that day: Here is what you can expect in 2002. So, the circumstance and the situation that we find ourselves in, in the year 2002 ,was predictable ten years ago. We knew it was going to happen, and it is inexcusable that we are not prepared for the dilemma that we have today.

It is not like we are saying that we have our emergency departments today jam filled with people who have the flu because we have had an outbreak, it was unpredictable, you should not have known, or would not have known, and it is an excuse and it is reasonable that you are not adequately prepared. But, Mr. Speaker, for someone to have been told ten years ago, here is the picture that you can expect in 2002, and to not adequately prepare for it and respond is criminal.

I say, Mr. Speaker, that is the position that we find ourselves in today. But, when I read on in this document I just assumed that I was going to see something that was going to tell me exactly what was going to happen. When I read, here is what I see: " A strategy to deal with these challenges needs to be built on an assessment of the need for these services in each region...." Again, I would have to agree.

So, when we know the facts, we know the circumstance we find ourselves in, we know how vulnerable these people are, we look to a document like a strategic plan to tell us what we are going to do. Mr. Speaker, this document tells us absolutely nothing. The 900- plus seniors in this Province who are on waiting lists for either long-term care services or home support services, this gives them very little comfort, in fact no comfort at all, in knowing how this government is going to respond to their critical needs and the crisis situation that they find themselves in, Mr. Speaker. It gives very little comfort. That is why this motion calls on government to immediately - not down the road in a year or two years' time, but immediately - unveil a detailed action plan for the future. What are we going to do with these seniors?

Maybe my colleagues have other comments that they want to make, but I do want to make a couple of other comments in opening. When you look around this Province, I just highlighted some of the significant issues around home supports, the long waiting list. I have commented about what is happening in long-term care services. We have reports, we have studies. The colleague from Humber East has introduced petitions in this House, and my colleague and Leader of our party has introduced comments in this House about long-term care services on the West Coast. A deplorable situation existing in this Province where, in fact, we have some of the existing long-term care facilities grossly inadequate: three and four people housed in one small room; no place for their personal effects; no place to create a home-like environment. In fact, I did a tour of Western Memorial Hospital. They were so desperate, having medically discharged patients still in hospital and no place to do, that they had to create a special unit to accommodate those individuals who were medically discharged and had no place to go. That is deplorable.

In fact, in some cases - and I will just look at the eastern region, a region where Trinity North would exist. In the eastern region today, there are some fourteen people, and in central there are twenty-four people, who are placed in long-term care facilities but they want to go somewhere else. I will give you an example. This is someone who might live in the Trinity North area, who wanted to be placed in a nursing home or a long-term care facility close to family and friends, who may find themselves now in Grand Bank, and family and friends cannot visit. That is the kind of thing we are doing to some of the people who do, in fact, end up getting placed in a long-term care facility, and that is the kind of treatment we are giving them.

I looked recently at a report prepared by the St. John's Nursing Home Board. I looked at one of the exhibits in the report, the profile, the facilities that are in St. John's, and a profile that some thousand beds currently exist, some 1,015, but here is what is startling. Let me just read it for you. It says: Of the 755 Level III and Level IV beds required by the year 2011, only 320 can accommodate appropriately in the existing buildings.

Do you know why, Madam Speaker? This is the profile that I am showing here. I see two nursing homes here in St. John's where over 70 per cent of the residents are housed in rooms with three or more people in the same room. Now, I ask you, Madam Speaker, if you have gone through life, you have made a contribution to your community, you have raised your family, you are now at a position in life where your health is failing, you are very vulnerable and someone says: the only place we have to put you is we are going to take you out of your house and we are going to move you into a small room in a long-term care facility. You are going to share that with three or four more people and you will have to sell all your personal effects, give them all away, because we do not have a place for you to hang your clothes, dressers to put your pictures of family and friends on. That is the kind of thing that we are doing, and that is deplorable. It is shameful in this day and age when we look at the contribution these people have made to our communities, for us to treat them in that fashion.

The other side of the coin, we have some anomalies. I will not say daily but on a course of a month, I would get five or six calls from people who own personal care homes in this Province. Right now, today, there are some eighty-eight personal care homes in this Province. Many of them, Madam Speaker, are on the brink of bankruptcy. Many of them are going out of business. Many of them are closing their doors. Many of them have. They have not been able to afford to keep their doors open, despite - and the minister may comment in a moment - that in the last three years government has injected a million-plus dollars into personal care homes in this Province, but today we have personal care homes who are still going bankrupt. They do not have the financial resources to continue to operate, continue to improve services and enhance the level of care that they are providing to their residents, and that is because of the manner in which we are regulating that industry.

I say, Madam Speaker, that is the backdrop I am creating today for the introduction of this motion, and that is why today I am calling on government to quickly and immediately unveil for us, their vision, their strategy. Not a document that sounds like what I read a moment ago that acknowledges all of the problems that we have but does not outline any kind of an action plan to deal with it. What I am calling on today is just that. We want to see a detailed action plan. The seniors of this Province, the family members of those seniors want to see government's action plan today because they want to know. They need to know. They deserve to know what is going to happen to them when they reach this very vulnerable stage in life where they rely on society to give them the kind of support and help that they earlier gave to society and helped us create the great Province that we have today.

Madam Speaker, there are many other aspects to this debate that I am sure my colleagues on both sides of this House will contribute to, but, I think, one thing is fundamentally important and that is why we are calling on an immediate plan today. In the early 1990s, before that, it was predictable where we were going to be today in 2000. This government for the last thirteen years have ignored that direction, ignored those predictions and ignored the advice of the people who told them about an aging population and what we would expect to have today. Here we are today, thirteen years later, and we are no further ahead. If we do not develop an action plan, not a vision statement like we have here or the acknowledgment of the problem. If we do not acknowledge that we do need to move forward, in thirteen years time, when the percentage of the population of the age of sixty-five and over has reached 19 per cent and not the current 12 per cent, we will be no better prepared and we will be much worse off because given the planning timelines -

MADAM SPEAKER (M. Hodder): Order, please!

I remind the hon. member that his time is up.

MR. ROSS WISEMAN: By leave, Madam Speaker, just to conclude.

MADAM SPEAKER: Does the hon. member have leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

MR. ROSS WISEMAN: I just wanted to say that unless we move forward quickly and develop an action plan, we will be in the same position fourteen years from now as we are today, with you saying: you should have listened to what you were told fourteen years ago.

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SMITH: Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to rise in this House this afternoon and engage in this debate. It is good to have the opportunity because for weeks and months in advance of us having the opportunity to meet here in the House, the hon. member opposite is under the cloak of releases that are coming out regularly from the side opposite, on a constant basis, misconstruing things that are happening within this Province, misconstruing actions of this government, trying, constantly, to put their spin on things, trying to make matters worse than they are and trying to cause alarm within the Province.

I read with interest this resolution brought forward by the hon. member, suggesting, first of all, that the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is not responding to the health needs of seniors in the Province. I mean, what a statement to be - if you wanted to be helpful, I would suggest that you bring forward something constructive that quite possibly we could support and work together on. Just constantly tearing things down. All I hear from the hon. member opposite is a constant barrage of: this is no good, that is no good; looking for the first parade they can go out and jump in front of to lead, but when it comes to giving real leadership he is nowhere to be seen. It is amazing, absolutely amazing.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SMITH: We went through a major job action just a short time ago in this Province where we had the doctors of the Province out on strike, the hon. member disappeared; nowhere to be seen. They could not find him. He was absent from the Open Line programs. There were no releases coming upstairs. I am sure the hon. members opposite must have laid off one or two staff members because there was such a shortage of dribble coming out of his office they certainly did not need them.

Madam Speaker, I have to say that listening to the hon. member - and I would say with full respect - first of all, he referenced the Strategic Health Plan, a plan that has been developed by some very competent people within my department. I have to say, Madam Speaker, surprisingly, that it has been endorsed and accepted by all of the bodies that are involved in the delivery of health care in this Province. Surprise of surprise, the hon. member opposite thinks it is a pile of garbage. Everybody else in this Province who works in the delivery of health care services, who thinks this is a good document, obviously they do not know what they are talking about. It is only the hon. member opposite who has a vision for this Province. The only thing I would ask, Madam Speaker, is when is he going to share that vision? He certainly has not done it to this point in time. Nobody opposite has.

It is very interesting, if I could say, I think it is very revealing. We are on the eve of having released in this country the Romanow Report, a piece of work that everyone in this country has been waiting for in anticipation; a commission that was stuck by the federal government to travel this Province, to hear from all of the stakeholders, to hear from all of the citizens who were interested, asking their concerns with regards to health care.

Madam Speaker, when they came to this Province, I represented this government and put forward some very serious, sound suggestions as to where I felt we should be going. The Member for Quidi Vidi, who leads the NDP, made a presentation on behalf of his party, but lo and behold, no one appeared on behalf of the Official Opposition. The hon. member opposite, who likes to cloak himself in the flag and pretends to be the champion of every health care cause in this Province, did not think it was important enough to actually appear before the Romanow Commission and to put forward his vision and the vision for his party as to what needed to be done in this Province.

Now, I say to the people of the Province: Is this the person who is going to solve your problems? Is this the party who is going to solve your problems? If the vision that they have is what we hear from the hon. member opposite, then I assure you, you have a long ways to go because you do not have any idea at all where you need to be going.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SMITH: Madam Speaker, I would say to the hon. Member for Baie Verte, I know as much about health care as he does. If he wants to stand in debate, he will have his opportunity.

Isn't it very interesting to see the hon. members opposite, they are good at giving it out, but when they start taking it, they cannot.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SMITH: I would say someone should offer something to the hon. Member for Baie Verte, I think he is getting a little bit carried away there.

Madam Speaker, the issue that we have under discussion here today is a serious issue. When we talk about the needs of long-term care in this Province, there are some very serious concerns. What I would say and what I just indicated, it is interesting, when I mentioned the fact that they did not even have the interest to appear before the Romanow Commission all of a sudden that started pushing buttons. Maybe some of the hon. members opposite did not even realize that they did not show interest enough to go down and appear before the Romanow Commission and put forward what they saw as their vision. I would think everybody would expect that they were going to do that. Someone who assumes or puts themselves forward as being a government in waiting, surely you would want to go down and say to the Romanow Commission, these are the kinds of things that we think that should happen.

The hon. member uses terms like: crime and criminal. He stood up and said to the seniors today, who are watching this debate in this Province, that somehow this government is completely uncaring. What do you have to gain by getting on with that kind of stuff? Do you think you are the only one who has any claim at all to the moral high ground, that you are the only person who has any concern for what seniors' needs are in this Province? I suggest to you that all of us in this House, who have many seniors as part of our constituents, are people that we try to represent on a regular basis.

In terms of the concerns that we have and the things that we are trying to do on behalf of the seniors - the hon. member talks about releasing the plan. Indeed, he is well aware that we are in fact developing a plan. We have committed to develop that plan, which will outline and outlay what we propose to do and what needs to happen for the seniors, in terms of providing for the seniors' needs in this Province. In fact, I have travelled extensively throughout this Province. I have been into a number of areas with many of my colleagues, and the two Opposition districts as well, meeting with concerned citizens, with councils, and discussing the needs as they see them and as they know them. I have talked to the people who are working on the ground, who know the concerns that are out there, and working with them in co-operation with them, we are working to develop a plan to deal with these needs here in our Province.

Madam Speaker, what I am suggesting and what I am saying is that what I have heard the hon. member, in his opening remarks - and I would hope when he speaks later one that he will put forward something constructive because at this point in time, other than criticize and condemn, I haven't heard anything from him that would indicate that he has any ideas or suggestions as to how things should be done differently. In fact, we have a lot of people in this Province who are working on a daily basis, a lot of them within my department, trying to deal with the demands that are out there, the challenges that are out there.

We heard today in Question Period, my colleague, the hon. Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board, talking about the fiscal situation of this Province. Well, Madam Speaker, every day we hear hon. members opposite rising, as they should - they have people to represent and they have their issues to bring forward - suggesting that we need to expend more money in the area of roads, that we need more money in the area of infrastructure, that we need more money in this area and that area. The reality is this, for all of us: in the last number of years, any additional monies that government has been able to allocate and find have gone directly into health care. In fact, expenditures in health care in this Province in the last number of years have grown year over year. I sat in this House when we were bringing in difficult budgets, that were seeing all departments being cut, but, in fact, even during those times of strict restraint, the health care budget was still growing. In fact, since 1994, in terms of the amount of money that this government has put in health care, which includes supports for seniors as well, has increased by some $500 million. I would defy anyone who could say that a government that puts forty-five cents of every program dollar into health care - and that includes providing for the needs and concerns of seniors - is not committed to seniors, and for anyone to say, in a resolution, is not responding to the health needs of the seniors of the Province.

We are not saying we are perfect, and we are not saying we have all the answers, Madam Speaker, and we are not denying there are challenges out there, but surely, during the last number of years with the $500 million in additional funding that this government has put into health care, the hon. member opposite would have to recognize and acknowledge we must have done something good during that period of time. We must have been able to purchase something of some value for the $500 million.

This, Madam Speaker, is the sort of thing, I think, that does not serve any purpose at all, other than trying to get a message out there to people that somehow this government is totally uncaring. As Minister of Health and Community Services, and as the minister responsible for seniors, on a regular basis I hear concerns from seniors. I meet with them individually and I have met with groups who advocate on their behalf and who do a significant and important job in terms of bringing these issues forward. But, Madam Speaker, we cannot deny the reality as it exists today, and I, as minister, have to be very often honest, as I did even today with groups that I have met with, and say to them: While I recognize the justice of the concerns that you have, at this point in time I do not have the ability to respond.

I think the public of this Province do understand that we do not have all of the resources that we need to meet all of the challenges that are out there. In terms of the needs of our seniors as it relates to long-term care, we are all aware - and the hon. member opposite referenced the fact that we are developing a long-term plan. Now, I am sure he will pooh-pooh that just as he did our Strategic Health Plan. I am sure, even if everyone else in the Province comes out, when we do release our long-term plan, and say it is good plan, I am sure, I predict now, that he will on his feet saying that this is garbage, this is no good. Because that is typical of the sort of thing that comes from the hon. member opposite. Really, he has not seen any good to say about anything. The other thing that I find so surprising is that, when he sat on this side of the House, you could not do any wrong. When he walked about there, all of a sudden, nothing is right.

Madam Speaker, it is a serious issue, there is no question. The difficulty that we have here, that I see in terms of the resolution that has been brought forward, is just a ploy to try to condemn government, to say that we are doing nothing, and asking us to release a plan that the hon. member opposite knows we are developing. Surely he realizes that you are not going to snap your fingers, or my going over within the last couple of days and saying, we need this plan tomorrow. It requires due diligence. It requires planning. I would say to the hon. member opposite, if he has all of the answers, and again I repeat, it is too bad he would not choose to share them with someone. If he has the answers to everything, if he knows all the solutions, I am sure that Mr. Romanow and his commission would have been delighted, Sir, to hear from you and to hear what your vision and that of your party is, to deal with the health care issues in this Province.

I think the people of this Province have the right to know, and when you rise I am sure you will give us an answer to that, as to why you decided, as a group, that you felt you were not going to participate in this process. Maybe you felt the process wasn't worthwhile. Quite frankly, I thought it was important enough for us to at least have input into the process, to put our ideas forward. Whether or not it will influence what Mr. Romanow releases tomorrow, I am certainly hopeful that his report, and I think a lot of people in this Province and indeed in this country are looking at the Romanow report and holding out hope for all of us, Madam Speaker, as making specific references to some of the challenges that we face - one of the every important ones referenced in this resolution, having to deal with long-term care.

Madam Speaker, as I said, I have travelled throughout this Province. I have been in the areas and I have met with the people in those areas and discussed their needs, and I visited the homes. The hon. member's area, I have been out and visited the long-term care facility in his district, and I met with the officials there. I was down to Bonavista South, and I visited the facility down there. I have been on the West Coast, and met with the group there, and out in Conception Bay North, and met with the groups there, and discussed with them what their needs are, what their concerns are, and working with them, committing to try to develop a proposal and a strategy whereby we can deal with the comprehensive challenge which we face in terms of providing long-term care.

Madam Speaker, this member and my colleagues opposite do not need a lecture in terms of the value of our seniors. We understand the contribution which they have made to society. The fact that we are able to live in a Province like Newfoundland today is due to the kinds of efforts that were made by my parents and their generation and the people who are living today, and we certainly do have a duty to try to make sure that we are able to provide for them in their old age.

Madam Speaker, what I can say, without contradiction, is that this government is undertaking every effort and every initiative that it can to ensure that the long-term care needs of the people of this Province are met. We are not happy with the situation that we do have wait lists, as the hon. member opposite has referenced, and that is true. I have acknowledged that publicly. We do not want that. We want to eliminate those long wait lists and we want to be in a situation where we can respond in as quickly a fashion as we can to the need as it arises; but, Madam Speaker, the reality is, even if I today, as minister, had all the resources that were necessary to go out and to fix the situation as it is today, we have to recognize that wait lists are probably going to exist for some point and time because you cannot build exactly to the exact number. Things do change. We would like to see the wait lists certainly shortened from what they are now, not to have the extensive wait lists that we have now, but we have to realize that the reality is probably going to be that there will always be in fact some wait lists, certainly very short we would hope. We would hope that people could be placed in these facilities in a timely fashion. Also, I as well do not take great delight when we have to put seniors into homes that we would love to see improve. That is what we are committed to do, Madam Speaker.

The other thing is, too, that we have to be very careful. I, as minister, sometimes get concerned that in the debate recently in this Province as it relates to one of our facilities, that some of the remarks made public, not by hon. members opposite but certainly in terms of the public debate, in my opinion brought into disrepute the public system, especially as it exists here in this city. I have great difficulty with that because I have visited our homes here in the city. I have been to St. Pat's, and I have been to some of the others, and I have been impressed with the caliber of the service that is offered there, the commitment of the professionals who work there. While the structures themselves may be in need of upgrading, Madam Speaker, to provide a facility takes more than infrastructure. It takes more than -

MADAM SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. SMITH: One second to conclude, Madam Speaker.

It takes more than brick and mortar. It takes a commitment by the people who work there, a dedication by the professional staff to try to provide the service that is needed.

Madam Speaker, I am delighted to have the opportunity to participate in this debate and would hope that the hon. member opposite, when he rises, will find something that he can be positive on, because I think we are all getting a little tired of all the negativity that is coming opposite.

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MADAM SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's West.

MS S. OSBORNE: Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I am pleased to rise today in the House and speak to the motion of my hon. colleague. The first clause in this resolution states that the percentage of the Province's population that is over the age of sixty-five is increasing faster than it is in any other province in Canada.

I would like to say to the minister that hopefully we will all eventually, if we are fortune enough, be part of that percentage. What I would like to ask is, what do we face when we get into that age category? I would not want to be facing what some of the seniors in our Province are facing today. Far too many of our seniors and their families in this Province are suffering today as a result of a lack of any action plan for the long-term care needs of our seniors.

The Minister of Finance, a little while ago, got up and spoke about people, and how they are doing things for people and they are focusing on people. Well, I would like to talk today about people, and some of the people who have called my office. I would like to cite one example. There was a woman who lived in rural Newfoundland - and I think I addressed this particular situation to questions to the minister in the spring session. This woman was in her late eighties, lived in rural Newfoundland, and her house was adjacent to the house of that of her son and his wife, and they were giving her some supplementary care, as she needed it, in order to enable her to remain in her home. That is the home that she lived in all her life, the home where she raised her family. Because of no employment in the area, the son had to go away, not permanently, but he was going away for four or five months to work and taking his family with him. In order for her to remain in her home she needed a couple of hours a day of home support. Because the freeze was on home support, that woman was unable to access any home support, which meant that this woman, who had been born in the community, raised in the community, married, had her children, they were baptized, went to school, and were married and living in that community, and now because of a lack of employment in the community that son and daughter-in-law had to move away, and this woman was left with nobody to take care of her, and not one hour of home support available by this government. She was assessed and she did, indeed, qualify, but there was not one hour of home support available to that woman. The support that she had, as I said, came from her children.

If there hadn't been a freeze on home support, if this government had some kind of a plan, something to offer this senior woman, this mother, this grandmother, who lived and had raised her children in this community, she would have been able to spend the rest of her days in that home. She would live in that home all right. She would miss her children when they were gone away to work, but at least she would have been able to stay and live in her home.

This case is not an isolated case, there are many, many families in the Province, both in rural Newfoundland and in urban Newfoundland. Historically, we were able, years ago, to take care of our senior population, able to take care of our aging moms and our aging dads and our grandmothers, when two parents in the family didn't have to work. Because of a change in demographics, a change in lifestyle, a change economically, we find that most of the families in the Province have two of the parents working. In some instances they are single parents who are out working and they are unable to take care of their moms or their dads or their grandparents. Because of the change in the demographics, we have to have a plan to take care of our seniors because, as I said, seniors that were once cared for by family members, this fact no longer exists.

My colleague spoke about the waiting list, about the number of people on the waiting list for either long-term care facilities or for home support. Now, not only are we placing our seniors in a traumatic situation because they want to be able to remain in their own homes - in many instances, just a couple of hours a day, somebody to go in for some personal care or a little bit of help in the housekeeping, will enable that senior to remain in their home for a much longer period. Not only are we traumatizing them by their not being able to remain in their homes, we are placing them at risk by not having some support go in. The longer they are left in their homes without the home support the more at risk they become. So, are we not only traumatizing our seniors, but are we being penny-wise and pound foolish, because by not putting in a couple of hours a day of home support now, what we are doing is placing the seniors at risk, and eventually they will end up in chronic care much sooner, either because they were not taking their medication properly, or because they had nobody there to help them and they fell and broke a hip or whatever. As well as imposing the trauma on them and placing them at risk, we are also placing the possibility of them ending up in a long-term care facility sooner.

I have another incident of how there is no planning. Last year, in the last session as well, I brought up the case of a gentleman who was in intensive care. Now, we all know the costs of being in an intensive care unit is much more costly than having some home support in your home, but because of the lack of planning this person was discharged from the intensive care unit, said that he was able to go home, but there was not one hour of home support available to that gentleman. Eventually, we put pressure on and we were able to get that gentleman - he was not an elderly gentleman, I think he was in his mid-60s - discharged. He is now at home and doing very, very well.

Another example of the lack of planning and how we see our seniors is what is going on at Chancellor Park. Thirty seniors were taken into a pilot project within the last couple of years, used as an example, used as part of a project because the government wanted to determine how the privatization of long-term care would go. It was fine. There were thirty seniors accepted into the plan. Some of them - I think the number is about fifteen of them - were not even aware that they were part of a pilot project. This pilot project is scheduled to be over on January 31, 2003. That is about two months from now. Two months away, thirty seniors have absolutely no idea what their fate will be on January 31. That is what this government has done to thirty seniors in this project, who they placed in the project. Now the seniors are not complaining about being placed in the project and their families are not complaining about them being place in the project, but what will happen to these seniors in two months? The seniors do not know. Their families do not know.

AN HON. MEMBER: It is a shame.

MS S. OSBORNE: It is. It is an absolute shame! Some thirty very fragile people, very, very vulnerable people, used as a part of a pilot project and two months before this project is over these thirty people have absolutely no idea -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MS S. OSBORNE: Yes, I say to the member, I should be ashamed for bringing the plight of thirty people to this House of Assembly. Thirty people, I say to the hon. member, who have absolutely no idea today where they will be on January 31. It is shame for me to bring it up. Well, Sir, I will bear this shame proudly. If I have -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MS S. OSBORNE: Yes, I am beneath contempt because I get up and speak on behalf -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS S. OSBORNE: This is what a member on the government side of the House is saying, because I stand in my place today and speak on behalf of thirty seniors in our Province who have absolutely no idea where they will be on January 31, that that is contemptible. Sir, I will do it everyday if I have to. We have thirty people who have been taken into a pilot project and this government cannot tell them where they will be on January 31, 2003, two months from now.

There is an assessment review going ahead and the minister will probably tell us that there is an assessment review going ahead.

AN HON. MEMBER: Not the original thirty?

MS S. OSBORNE: Not the original thirty, no. There are fifteen who are in and did not know that they were even part of the pilot project. They were told, just recently, that on January 31, this pilot project is over and we do not know what we are going to do with you. We do not know what this assessment review will show. If it shows that the pilot project is working and that private long-term care is successful, will the government leave them there? The government has not said. If it shows it is not working, will the government move them? Will they go in as a single entry? Will they be moved several times, these thirty fragile and vulnerable people? What will happen to them? We have absolutely no idea and they have absolutely no idea.

This is what this government thinks of the seniors in this project in this Province, that they can use them as part of a project and sixty days before the project is over, the people still do not know where they are going to be. They have to go through the holidays having absolutely no idea where they will be in two months from now.

What I am saying to the government is: Get a plan. Get a plan, not only for these sixty people, but a plan for all the seniors in our Province. At least these thirty people. I am asking the minister: Will he come out and say to them whether the assessment review shows that the project was successful or whether it shows that it was not successful and we are not going to embark on this anymore? At least these people will know what their status is and they can at least spend this Christmas knowing where they will be in a couple of months from now.

What I am doing is calling upon the government to get a long-term plan, as my colleague has introduced, so that the seniors of our Province will be taken care of as they deserve to be. The ones who expect to go into facilities, the ones who require home support, the ones who require home care, whether they are Level I, Level II or Level III, no matter what their financial ability is, the government should have a long-term plan for the long-term care, an action plan, so that the residents of our Province, the seniors of our Province, will be taken care of, and so that we, when we fall into that category, will know what our future will be.

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. MERCER: Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I rise to participate in this debate on the Private Member's Resolution presented by members opposite. I do not do so proudly because I do not believe in bringing health care, certainly some of the specifics that we are hearing across the floor today, into this Chamber. It is not the type of debate I would personally prefer to get involved with.

It seems today, Madam Speaker, that in this Province anything and everything goes. There is no topic that is above or below political debate, whether it be seniors or peritoneal dialysis or whatever the case might be. It is all just for the political fodder and it all makes good press. I am sorry, Madam Speaker, but I cannot agree with that concept. That is not why I got into politics. That is not why I stand today.

MS S. OSBORNE: A point of order, Madam Speaker.

MADAM SPEAKER: On a point of order, the hon. the Member for St. John's West.

MS S. OSBORNE: I take an exception to the fact that I raised the plight of the seniors in our Province as being contemptible or looking for good press. It is very, very far from that.

MADAM SPEAKER: There is not point of order.

The hon. the Member for Humber East.

MR. MERCER: Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I show no disrespect to the seniors. I show no disrespect to my eighty-nine year old mother who is in one of these long-term care units. I show no disrespect, whatsoever, to any of our seniors in this Province. I have the utmost respect for them and everything that I can and will do, I will do for our seniors. But, I do have a lot of problems, Madam Speaker, with making these types of issues political.

In the Corner Brook area, Madam Speaker, there is absolutely no doubt that there is a need for long-term care facilities. However, I would ask where the members opposite were in 1997 when we were trying to establish a long-term care Level I facility in Curling? In Curling, in 1997, when members opposite said that we did not need such a facility in the City of Corner Brook. We did not need it. I guess we did not need it because there were other places on the East Coast which thought, perhaps, they might have needed them more. I do not know, but the fact is, it was said we did not need them.

Madam Speaker, there is a need. There is a demonstrated need for long-term health care on the West Coast. The document provided by the Western Health Care Corporation, and submitted to government in February 2002, clearly outlines the need and what it is they plan to do for it. Madam Speaker, I would say to you, that while there have been other facilities in this Province which have been needed since the 1980s and the 1990s, perhaps if the members who in those districts had spent more time advocating for the needs of their own constituents rather than doing other matters, that maybe those facilities would be a little closer to fruition today.

Within the Corner Brook area we have a need for the facilities. Let there be no doubt that this member, and the other Member for the Bay of Islands, strongly supports the need for a long-term health care facility in the Corner Brook area to take care of the residents of that city and surrounding areas.

Madam Speaker, since February 2002, not only have we succeeded in bringing the minister, the social policy committees of Cabinet to Corner Brook to view the facilities, to tour the facilities, we have used every means at our disposal, including lobbying the provincial Cabinet, to establish committees to look at the possibility of public-private sector partnering. I take great umbrage in the fact that there are those who are accusing us of not doing all that we possibly can to look after our senior population.

In the City of Corner Brook let there be no doubt, there is a great need for long-term health care. That has been well demonstrated, and I believe the Member for Bay of Islands and myself have been very successful in lobbying this government to recognize that need and to move forward.

Madam Speaker, I draw your attention to the fact that on September 13, a local headline in the local newspaper: Long-term care facilities would be a priority for a Tory government. That is the headline, and the Member for Humber West said he does not deny the need for long-term care facilities in the city but wonders how to cover the enormous costs associated with same.

Madam Speaker, cost is very much an issue in this Province of how to get the millions of dollars that we need to build facilities. In our conversations with the Department of Health they tell us that there is a need at the present time for at least three long-term care facilities in this Province. One in Corner Brook, one in Conception Bay North - predominately Carbonear-Harbour Grace region - and in St. John's. The total value, Madam Speaker, of $200 million. Yet, day in, day out we hear from the other side that you should not do this project, you should not do that because - because changes from day to day, but obviously what they are saying is: yes, you need all this money to do all these things but I am sorry, we are going to have to tie your hands because we do not believe you should be doing a Voisey's Bay, because we do not believe you should be doing a Lower Churchill.

Shortly after the statements of September 13, our Premier, in a meeting of the St. John's Board of Trade, made some announcements. One of the announcements that he made, as an attempt to get the $200 million needed to build the three long-term health care facilities, he suggested the public-private sector model. Madam Speaker, I do not know if that is the right model, I do not know if it is the wrong model. All I do know is that it does provide us with an option to provide long-term health care facilities to people in three parts of our Province in the short term, rather than in the long term.

Madam Speaker, I anxiously await the report of the Premier's committee to see exactly what it recommends and whether or not we can, in fact, move forward with the construction of these facilities. I strongly hope that the model they are proposing will work for us and that we will be able to move forward.

Madam Speaker, I think that was a very good announcement in October, keeping in mind that we only first heard of the proposal in February. From February to October we went from a proposal to a statement by the Premier of this Province that he was looking at a public-private sector model to build three long-term health care facilities in the Province, one of which could be located in the City of Corner Brook.

To say that the members opposite or the Liberal members, shall we say, representing the West Coast have not been doing their job, I think that is a lot of poppycock.

It was just the following day, long-term care facility for the city is not a high priority. I am not at liberty to mention the person's name, but I guess he is the Member for Humber West. The statement is saying that the Member for Humber West said that the problems in health care should be looked at in a priority sequence, and it may become evident that a long-term care facility in the city is not the most pressing need at the moment.

AN HON. MEMBER: What city?

MR. MERCER: The City of Corner Brook.

Clearly, at that point in time it was not considered to be a priority for the city. As a matter of fact, that was reiterated the very same day on Bill Rowe's Open Line and anyone can read the transcript from that meeting. Nothing has changed.

The following day a new headline in the Western Star. The Member for Humber West reiterates the stand on long-term care issue. As a matter of fact, he reiterated it so well that three days later, on October 22, the editorial read: Why confuse a simple matter? In part it reads: Last week the Premier of the Province said his government has already started to move forward on a public/private sector plan to replace the outdated facilities spread around the city and made it clear that this area needs that kind of facility most.

In response the Member for Humber West said: Dismiss the Premier's announcement as grist for the election mill. Madam Speaker, there is no grist for an election or politics on this side when it comes to long-term health care in the City of Corner Brook.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MERCER: As the editorial writer in the Western Star stated: It is no time to breakout the political gobbledygook. As a successful lawyer, the Member for Humber West should know we just want a yes or no answer. It sounds familiar.

The question was asked: Is a long-term care facility for Corner Brook at, or near, the top of his to-do list? The editorial, Western Star.

On October 25, the Member for Humber West felt compelled to write a letter to the Western Star reiterating his stand. Basically, the stand is: Well, yes, I kind of agree with a long-term care facility for Corner Brook, but if, and when, I form the government I cannot make a commitment to doing that.

That is the position that we are looking at. That is the position that we are hearing from the other side. At the same time, we are here dealing with a motion from the members of the other side demanding that the government, right now, today, immediately, put forward a detailed plan responding how we are going to deal with the long-term care needs of our Province's aging population.

Madam Speaker, I just to conclude by saying that in the City of Corner Brook the Member for Bay of Islands and myself have been strong advocates for a long-term health care facility. We do not need this resolution to tell us what we need to do. We know what has to be done. We have done our job. We have done our lobbying with the government, we have done our lobbying with the Cabinet, and we fully expect that some time in the very need future, hopefully before Christmas, we will be able to deliver to the City of Corner Brook a plan which will allow for the construction, in the very near future, of a long-term health care facility.

Madam Speaker, to say that we are not responding to the health care needs of our seniors in our Province is a gross mis-characterization of what is in fact true. This is not factual.

Madam Speaker, from day to day in this House and from day to day in this Province we are hearing statements day in and day out, people saying things which they know to be factually incorrect, in the hope that if they say them, and if they say them enough, people will believe that they are actually true.

AN HON. MEMBER: Are you talking about lies? (Inaudible).

MR. MERCER: I am talking about factually incorrect statements.

AN HON. MEMBER: Is there any difference between lies and factually incorrect?

MR. MERCER: You have to look up the dictionary on that one.

Madam Speaker, this business of making statements which we know to be factually incorrect, in the hope that someone will believe them to be true, is persisting day in and day out.

As recently as just a couple of weeks ago, one of the members who perhaps would like to run for my seat, from the other side, decided he would like to issue a press release. The gist of his statement was, he was looking for leadership in terms of the long-term health care facility in Corner Brook. He was looking to people like myself and to the Member for the Bay of Islands to provide the leadership. Anyone in the City of Corner Brook knows where the leadership is, and it is not over there. The leadership on that issue is over here.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MERCER: Again, Madam Speaker, it is the same old line. Tell them a nonfactual statement often enough, you might get someone to believe that it is, in fact, true. This is not at all unlike what we see in today's resolution, making statements that, "AND WHEREAS the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is not responding to the health needs of the seniors in our Province..."

What nonsense! It is true, perhaps, to say that we are not responding to all of the needs of every person in this Province. I would not deny that. In any system, it is sometimes difficult with the resources that you have, to provide the quality of care that everyone needs. There is no doubt about that, Madam Speaker.

When you look at this, it is again the same statements that I am hearing week after week, day after day, in this House and outside, statements being made that are not factually correct, statements made, repeated time in and time out, in the hope that people will believe them to be true, and, in believing them to be true, they will probably say: I guess the guy who made the statement must have been right all along. Well, Madam Speaker, I have to say to you very clearly, this resolution is not making factually correct statements.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MERCER: I, for one, as one member in this Chamber, make no apologies for the actions -

MADAM SPEAKER: Order, please!

I remind the hon. member that his time is up.

MR. MERCER: Just a second to clue up, Madam Speaker?

MADAM SPEAKER: Does the hon. member have leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: No leave.

MADAM SPEAKER: There is no leave granted.

The hon. the Member for Waterford Valley.

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

I rise today to support the motion put forward by my colleague, the Member for Trinity North. In the motion, the member did, in his whereas, say, "AND WHEREAS the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is not responding to the health needs of the seniors in our Province; THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador make public immediately a detailed action plan to respond to the long term care needs of our province's aging population."

Madam Speaker, during the presentation made by my colleague, he outlined the present status of the health care that is offered to our aging population. He laid out the numbers and percentages of our seniors today who are over sixty-five years of age; and 12 per cent of our population is now over sixty-five. He said that by 2016 it will rise to 19 per cent of our population, and by 2022, or thereabouts, it will be as high as 25 per cent of our total population. This represents a tremendous challenge to all governments, regardless of what party forms the government in this Province in the years to come.

I want to go back to the very principles upon which our modern Canadian health care system is based. I want to refer back to what Tommy Douglas, the acknowledged father of medicare, said in 1961 - the legislation of Saskatchewan of that year, and I quote: The concept was to remove the financial barrier between those who need health care and those who provide it. Then he said: The second step would be to establish a new type of delivery system in the health field.

Twenty-five years later, when he was reflecting on it, just before his death - and I did have the opportunity one time to meet Tommy Douglas - when he was reflecting on what was happening in medicare, and I quote again, I think it was 1980 - he said: Surely to heaven we are not going back after all of those years to a system in which the quality of care which patients receive depends on their financial capacity to pay.

MR. HARRIS: A point of order, Madam Speaker.

MADAM SPEAKER: On a point of order, the hon. the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I am delighted to hear the hon. member quote Tommy Douglas, but he neglected to mention that Tommy Douglas was a New Democratic Premier of Saskatchewan and that he was actually quoting from a speech that I gave to the Federation of Labour about a month ago. So I would hope that he would at least attribute that quote to the right person. I was quoting from Tommy Douglas when I gave my speech to the Federation of Labour, talking about the NDP premier. I appreciate him telling the House about this great man and his contributions to the national health care system.

MADAM SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

The hon. the Member for Waterford Valley.

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

What I am quoting from, I say to the hon. member, is from a study prepared by the Tommy Douglas Research Institute, which came out of Vancouver, and it is called Revitalizing Medicare, written by Michael Rachlis, Robert Evans, Patrick Lewis and Morris Barer. Nowhere there did I see the name of the Member for Quidi Vidi. He wasn't even mentioned. He didn't even make the front page, the back page or the middle page. So, Mr. Speaker, when he jumps up and says I am quoting him, he had better make sure he knows the answer before he raises that proposition.

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

MR. SPEAKER (Snow): On a point of order, the hon. the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, the minister misunderstood what I said. The quote that he actually quoted from Tommy Douglas was a quote that I had quoted from Tommy Douglas to the Federation of Labour. It is a very good quote and a very important quote and it recognizes that Tommy Douglas was very much aware of what we were doing with health care when the CCF in Saskatchewan and later the NDP championed the national health care system which we all are so proud of.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

There is no point of order.

The hon. the Member for Waterford Valley.

MR. H. HODDER: There is no point of order whatsoever, and I thank you for ruling that way. It just goes to show that the member does read the occasional bit of good literature.

Mr. Speaker, I want to get back to the topic today because we are talking here about the fact that my colleague from Trinity North mentioned that there are 200 seniors on the waiting list for home support. These people are at risk. They are vulnerable. They are waiting to get into a care facility. He also mentioned 150 more need home support that they are not now receiving. In other words, they need more help than they are now able to get from the current system. There are 450 of our seniors on a waiting list for admission to nursing home care; that is a long-term care facility. These are the people who have been assessed. There may be more who have not been assessed or they are awaiting assessments as we are talking.

Mr. Speaker, we want to note that many of our seniors - and my colleague noted this as well - we are keeping our elderly in hospitals because there is no place for them in our long-term care facilities. I spoke to a doctor a little while ago in a rural hospital setting. He said they had like eight or ten beds. Unfortunately, he said, four of them are occupied by seniors who they cannot move out because there is nowhere to put them. In other words, one half of that rural hospital's capacity, bed wise, was taken up by seniors who had no choice. They could not send them home. They were too sick to go home. They could be accommodated in a nursing home facility but there was nowhere for them to go.

Mr. Speaker, we want to note as well, here in the St. John's region, there are people who are waiting to get into long-term care facilities. We have people who are into a facility, for example, like the Miller Centre, and they are waiting to be transferred to another institution, and they have great frustrations because - in one case, a constituent of mine was waiting for nine months from the time that they were admitted to the Miller Centre and told that they were on a waiting list to be transferred to Agnes Pratt or St. Luke's, or somewhere like that. They were nine months waiting for that transfer to occur, in spite of all the representations that were made on their behalf by family and by other members of the community.

Mr. Speaker, we also note that my colleague noted the personal care homes. Just recently, I visited five or six personal care homes, some of them in my district and some of them in the District of Conception Bay South. I talked with some of the operators there, and they told me the tremendous struggles they have trying to make sure that they can maintain a certain level of care, that the wages that are paid are not very high, and certainly they have trouble maintaining the staff quotas they would like to have in terms of the consistency of staff. It is a real struggle. Many of these people who operate these personal care homes find it very difficult. In fact, some of them have had to close up their businesses and try some other ventures. That is very unfortunate, because there is such a great need out there for these kinds of facilities.

Mr. Speaker, I also want to note, as well, that this government, in looking after our seniors - I want to note their actions on one drug, for example. I quote again from a study which talks about the cost of medications. The other day I was having a conversation on this, I was talking to a doctor and he said: I have patients who have to make a choice between either having food on the table or having medications. In some cases they have to make a very careful balance between what they have to spend on food and what they have to spend on their medications. That is a very difficult thing. In fact this doctor said: In some cases they neglect their medications which results in their being admitted to hospital where they can get stabilized and then we send them back to their homes again. Mr. Speaker, that is certainly not very cost-effective and it is very, very unfair to our seniors who have, in their senior years, to make choices as terrible as that. Yet, it does happen.

I just wanted to mention, in the short time available to me, this government's position on one drug. We made representations in questions by my colleague, the Member for Ferryland, several years ago, on the drug Aricept. Aricept has been shown to be very effective in stabilizing patients who are in the early stages of Alzheimer's. We know that in Newfoundland and Labrador, the latest study shows that there are 5,600 of our seniors diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in this Province. We also know that 1,500 of them are mild to moderate, in the early stages. We also know that this government has been asked over and over again to add Aricept to the drugs to be covered under the Province's prescription program, but they have not done so.

I do believe that we are now only one of two or three provinces that do not cover that particular drug, and that shows where our priorities are. That shows what we really think, when we say that we will make choices between ad programs to try to enhance the Premier's image or we are going to make available a prescription drug to our seniors where the cost is $5 per day. It will cost $5 per day per patient for us to make that drug available on the Province's prescription program. However, it is not done. My colleague has been asking questions on it for years and years and years. When the Minister of Finance talked about making choices in her budget last year, she obviously did not mean to make the choice, perhaps, that she has made. Certainly, the effect has been that this government makes choices. Unfortunately, the Alzheimer's patients of this Province who could be helped with as little as $5 a day invested by this Province, it is not done, resulting in many cases with the patient's disease getting worse much faster than it would ordinarily happen. In some cases these patients have to be admitted to institutions months and maybe years before it would otherwise occur if the drug had been made available.

I call upon the minister and I call upon the government; it is time to look at what you are going to do in terms of a long-term plan - as the motion reads today - a long-term plan that will try to address the long-term care needs of our Province's aging population. We have not been as kind to our seniors as this government would have us believe. It is totally inappropriate when we say to our Alzheimer's patients and their families that we will not invest $5 a day so that your mom or your dad can live in comfort and can be reasonably happy, and can live in their home for as long as possible. Rather, we make choices. The choice we make in this case means that we have made other choices and the choices we make do not favour our seniors.

Also, remember the comments I made as well about our seniors in some cases with very low budgets having to make choices between getting their prescriptions filled or putting food on their table - and that happens. Doctors tell me they see it all the time. It is a sad commentary, and that is why we on this side today are very pleased to support the motion put forward by my colleague from Trinity North, because we see what is happening and we need an overall comprehensive, long-term plan put forward by this government so that we can make sure that our seniors get the kind of treatment that they deserve and that they should have, and which we should be proud of in this Province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Youth Services and Post-Secondary Education.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS KELLY: Mr. Speaker, I am proud today to stand in this Legislature after listening to the debate back and forth across the floor all afternoon and to say that I hope this afternoon we will be able to speak back and forth about how we all care for the people of this Province, and that it is important what we are debating, but as you look at this resolution - some of this resolution, I can absolutely agree with.

"WHEREAS the percentage of the province's population over the age of 65 is increasing faster then any other Province in Canada....." We all know that is true, and it is putting pressure on our system and it is going to get worse.

Another statement, "AND WHEREAS an aging population requires specific attention to medical treatment, quality of life issues, affordable prescription drugs, home support services and other direct and indirect supports...." We all agree with that. We know that is the reality and we know that these needs are going to increase because of the demographics in this Province. It is said, actually, that our Province will have this demographic influence at least ten years ahead of any other Province in Canada.

Then, though, they go on to say, "AND WHEREAS the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is not responding to the health needs of the seniors in our Province...." That is absolute nonsense. I beg to differ, Mr. Speaker.

Then they go on to say, "THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador make public immediately a detailed action plan to respond to the long-term care needs of our province's aging population." Now I ask: What do you think we are doing every day of the week, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day? We are committed to the health of everyone in this Province, especially our seniors.

The Member for Trinity North thinks that an immediate action plan will solve the problems of our seniors. I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, we need more than a plan. We need the fiscal resources to do it. We know the problems and we know the solutions. The problem is a lack of financial resources. We are committed to do a plan, I tell the Member for Trinity North. As a part of our Strategic Health Plan, we have committed to do this action plan, but the people of this Province know that with the financial resources we have, we provide already a very high level of service for the amount of money that we have to invest in health care.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS KELLY: I would like to use my district as a example of well-used resources. We are in the process of spending $69 million to enhance the facilities at James Paton Memorial Hospital. The expansion part is done, and soon now the renovations. As they move into the new part, we will start on the old part. Lakeside Homes, one of the best seniors' facilities in this Province, bar none, has just been renovated. The rooms have been improved greatly to add to the quality of life for the seniors who are residing there.

As a matter of fact, I think it is a week from this Friday that we will be cutting a ribbon to reopen this facility and to note the work that has been done there. This is a facility that has incredible staff. The volunteers in the community all around the region who support this facility are phenomenal.

There is a need for a personal care home in my district. There is need for them in other parts of the Province too, but there is a particularly pressing need in Central Newfoundland right now in the District of Gander for a personal care home. I hear about it week in and week out, especially from other seniors, for instance, who are at Golden Legion Manor, who are knowing they are going to need a different level of care shortly.

I have been working with an entrepreneur who tells me, yes, we will get a personal care home for Gander, and the programs that this government has in place are what is making it possible. We will have a personal care home there, and even in light of the diminished and the need for more financial resources, we are still doing new programs for seniors, day in and day out, with the limited resources that we have.

I speak to the Member for Bonavista North. He has an incredible facility, Bonnews Lodge, in his area that are addressing the needs of seniors, and while they have waiting lists, we know that the facilities we have now are well-utilized and our seniors are well cared for.

You know, I am beginning to believe some of the things that I am hearing about our Official Opposition. I have heard, I think, on the radio several times last week about this two-policy party; a party that says we have to increase spending - and we hear that every day; we heard it in Question Party today - but, at the same time, we have to decrease taxes. How can you stand across from us and talk about the many millions and millions of dollars that need to go back into our health care system, then talk about decreasing taxes, then say we have too much of a deficit and say that we are irresponsible? It does not make any sense with the level of services that are being provided in this Province now, with the limited resources we have, I think we have much to be proud of.

We have to continue, though, Mr. Speaker, to improve services to our seniors. We all know that. These services, though, must be comprehensive. They must be in the urban areas. We know that there are long waiting lists here in St. John's but they must also be in our rural areas. They must be comprehensive. We do. They must include more home support, more independent living arrangements like at Golden Legion Manor in my own district; more personal care homes like the need has been identified for in my district; more Level III and psycho-geriatric facilities. We have some of the best in the country right now and we know that we need more. We also need to look at new models of care. That is why we hope when the Romanow Commission Report comes out tomorrow, we will be better able to move forward with all of the needs for seniors and their health care needs in our Province. All are needed.

But, Mr. Speaker, we have to realize that the federal government has to take some of the responsibility for the lack of health care funding in this Province. In spite of the money that was put back into the health care system by the federal government last year, they are still putting in $90 million less each year than they were in 1994. Since 1994, because of these cutbacks by the federal government, this government has put more than $500 million into this Province's health care system. Now, you do know have to be a genius to figure out, with the type of deficit that we have right now, that if the federal government had not done this, we would have the money to invest in the new programs that we know are needed for seniors and others in the Province. We agree with you that we need these new programs but we also know we have to have the fiscal capacity to do it. If the federal government had not made these cuts, this Province would not have a deficit right now. We would be doing some of the programs that we are talking about here this afternoon. So, it is no wonder we are all holding our breath until 11:36 a.m. tomorrow morning, Thursday, when we know that the Romanow report will be released in this Province.

AN HON. MEMBER: 11:36 a.m.

MS KELLY: 11:36 Thursday morning. I heard it on the radio this morning as they were describing that they were doing it.

I would like to speak just for a few minutes about the recently released government report, Healthier Together, our Province's Strategic Health Plan. That plan sets out our goals for the health and community services system. We recognize, Mr. Speaker, that we are facing challenges in the delivery of health care. However, we are absolutely committed to our people. We are committed to addressing those challenges and our Strategic Health Plan will help us do just that, working as a team with the people of our Province.

As a part of the Strategic Health Plan, we will be developing and strengthening services in the area of long-term care and supportive services. We will help to address the needs of the seniors population by developing a new long-term care and supported services strategy. This strategy will identify more options for care and alternate community based models. We know there are new models out there. With my background as a community health nurse, for years and years we have been working on developing more and more home support programs. There are new models out there that we would like to try, but we have to have the resources to do it. This new action plan will outline this, but there is no point in an action plan like this resolution is calling for unless you have the resources to be able to implement it. We will work as diligently as we can with the dollars that we have, but our hope is that the Romanow plan will show us how we are able to move ahead.

Another component to our new, recently released, health care strategy is to develop a wellness strategy. We want to improve the health and well-being of individuals and communities, including our seniors. Part of the work in the wellness strategy will help address some of the health difficulties in our seniors population. Instead of simply treating illnesses, we will work with people to ensure that their health is protected.

Many opposite this afternoon have talked about the waiting list. We know there is a wait list for, in particular, the home support program. This is not new to this program. Home support is an important component of our continuum of services and it will be reviewed as a part of our health care strategy.

I ought to point out some of the things this government has done for the people of this Province, especially those who need long-term home support. Since December, 2001, just a year ago, we have brought over 500 new clients into the home support program. The budget for the program for last year was $70 million. Since 1997, government has increased its funding by approximately 60 per cent in this program area alone. The budget of 2002 - the budget we are working with now - $2.7 million annually was put into this budget to enable home support clients and agencies to increase the wages of home support workers. We know it needs to go further, but this year we were able to find - in spite of the very tight financial situation we find ourselves in - $2.7 million towards this initiative.

In December, 2001, government allocated an additional $575,000 to provide home support services to clients who fit the criteria as an emergency. That is, those who require services to be discharged or who have no means of financial support and who were at risk in the community. We know there is still a waiting list over and above that, but, you know, these are significant amounts of money that we have put into this program this year in spite of the deficit that this Province has.

I should also note, we are talking today like this Province has an inferior level of service. This Province has one of the best health care systems, bar none, in this country.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS KELLY: The waiting list that we have now for facilities and for home support are not unique just to Newfoundland and Labrador. Right across this country we have these problems, but as I have said, they will come to this Province faster. Because of the demographics we know that we are going to be ten years ahead of everyone else with the difficulties and the challenges being found in this Province, with the increasing age of people in our Province. Because of the huge health care needs in our system, we know that we have to find partners to help us. We all know that the federal government will have to step up to the plate and we hope, as I have said previously, that this will happen with the Romanow Report tomorrow.

As my colleague, the Minister of Finance - I have heard her very frequently say: it is easy to be all things to all people when you have no responsibility to anyone. We have the responsibility for the people of this Province and we take that responsibility to our people very seriously. As I have outlined, every spare cent that this government can find, we put into this.

In Question Period today they talked about the deficit. Why do we have a deficit? We have a deficit because we care for our people. Don't forget, this is the government who has increased the health care budget by 47 per cent since 1996, and we will continue to do our best with the limited resources, Mr. Speaker, that we have in this Province.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak on this resolution presented by the Member for Trinity North on the very important issue of long-term care needs of our aging population. Unlike the previous speaker who, I have to say, has a very Pollyannaish view of the world with her pronouncements about how good things are. It almost sounded like the ads we were getting in the papers in the last couple of weeks, at the great expense of the public, about good things happening in Newfoundland and Labrador. You would wonder, Mr. Speaker, why there are so many people complaining if all these good things are happening, as the minister seems to have indicated.

The whole issue of health care, and particularly health care as it affects our senior citizens, is coming to crisis proportions for a number of different reasons, Mr. Speaker. One of them is obviously - as the previous speaker, the minister has suggested - that there is a cutback in federal funding. We acknowledge that has been a very serious problem. It started quite some time ago. In fact, one of the previous Ministers of Health, who sat on the other side when the changes were being contemplated to the CHST back in 1993-94, described it as the end of medicare as we know it. Now, that was about seven or eight years ago, Mr. Speaker, and it has taken that long for us to have a reaction that brings things to a crisis and to a head, which we hope will result in a very positive report tomorrow by Roy Romanow who has been appointed, as we all know, as a one person commission to advise the Government of Canada on what to do about health care. So we are looking forward to very positive results and positive recommendations from Mr. Romanow, which will hopefully be the impetuses for the federal government to get back in to taking its responsibilities for the health care of Canadians and to deliver the kind of program that Canadians want. This is not something that is any secret, except to the Fraser Institute and to various other people, including Senator Kirby, who seems to think that Canadians want a private health care system as opposed to a health care system that is the one we have built up and come to expect because of the public nature of it. The five fundamental principles of health care - which I have to say this Province and this House of Assembly supported unanimously as being potentially included in the Constitution of Canada as a constitutional right. The five principles of public accountability, publicly funded, universal, comprehensive, publicly delivered and accessible system.

Mr. Speaker, the minister was talking about how she could not accept the fact that one of the whereas' in this resolution says, "the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is not responding to the health needs of the seniors in our Province." The minister referred to a bunch of statistics. Well I have some statistics too, and I am not quoting from notes that someone prepared for me. I am quoting from a document that is called: Health Scope - Partnering for Health, produced by the Department of Health and Community Services. It has a nice picture of the minister there. It is dated September, 2002. In this document, by the way - and I want to commend the minister for producing it. It is, "Reporting to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians on Comparable Health and Health System Indicators." In fact, it even has a letter from the Auditor General. The Auditor General not only monitors, apparently, the activities of the Minister of Finance, but the Auditor General was asked to look at the results of applying specified auditing procedures to verify that the statistics used here and the reports used here, in fact, conform to the compliance with the requirements and guidelines for indicator presentations provided by the federal/provincial/territorial reporting.

Mr. Speaker, this is not just government statistics put together for some public relations purpose. This is not massaged by communications experts. This is not something that they would print in their ads in the paper when they are trying to convince people that good things are happening. This, in fact, is a report that was presented and supposed to accurately reflect the reality.

I want to refer to page 53 of this report. In this it talks about home and community services provided by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. Under home support services the report says this, "Home Support services are considered an essential part of the continuum of health services. Home Support allows people with health or functional deficits to live independently, and in many cases, prevents hospitalization and/or institutionalization." We are talking about providing support to people in their homes who need support to be able to live independently. That is an essential part of a home care program in this Province, which this Province has, and which we have argued, and I argued to the Romanow Commission, which I appeared before. Back on April 15 of this year, when I appeared before the Romanow Commission, I argued strongly for the need for a national program for home care that requires national support and recognizes that there is a shift towards less funding for hospitals, a reduction in the number of hospital beds available, the need for community support and funding to provide home care services.

Mr. Speaker, we all know that the St. John's home care board instituted a wait list last summer, but this is not just a St. John's problem. This report, produced by the Minister of Health and Community Services, with his picture upfront, produced by the government, says on page 53, "During 2001/02, 1,376 individuals were admitted to the Home Support Program. This is down substantially from 1,957 the year before..." - down 600 from the year before. Then the report goes on to say, "...with the major reason being provincial policy changes in admissions to the program due to fiscal restraint." That is what it says, that the number of admissions to the home support program were down by 600 from the year before with the major reason being provincial policy changes in admissions due to fiscal restraint.

Mr. Speaker, the Pollyanna pronouncements of the Member for Gander, the Minister of Youth Services and Post-Secondary Education, are totally inaccurate. This government is, in fact, reducing services for home support services for people in need; whether they be senior citizens, whether they be children in need of support, whether they be people who have functional disabilities, children, youth and their families. These services are offered to persons with disabilities, to seniors, to children, to youth and their families. These services have been cut by this government, and cut substantially because of policy changes.

Mr. Speaker, when we hear those kind of pronouncements and the protestations of the minister that everything is being done, the reality is something quite different when we see an audited statement issued by the minister himself, in September of this year, just two months ago.

So, Mr. Speaker, I have to support this resolution because it demands an immediate plan. We are all hopeful - and I heard the minister's speech earlier today - that the federal government, in response to the Romanow Commission Report tomorrow, will respond positively. There will be a massive cry across the country for the Government of Canada to do that, certainly from this party, and I would hope from every party in this Province, to expect the Government of Canada to do the right thing. We are expecting a very positive report from Mr. Romanow on that point. Given the kind of information that has been reported in the press, given the kind of initial pronouncements that Mr. Romanow had been making, as he did here in his speech at the University about a month ago, certainly indicating that his understanding about the role that the private sector plays in the United States compared to what we expect here in this country, the kind of pronouncement that he has made about the need for a comprehensive program, the need to address the pharmacare needs of Canadians, when we have seen, Mr. Speaker, in this Province, across the country, in fact, the drug costs have gone up by 87 per cent since 1991. An 87 per cent increase in the cost of drugs, increase in this Province and across the country, principally - well, there are many reasons for it - but some of the reasons have to do with policy changes at the federal level with the drug patent program, with the drug patent protection brought in by the federal Conservatives followed by the Liberals and supported to the nth degree so that drugs costs have increased nearly 90 per cent in the last ten years. That is something that has to be addressed as well.

But I want to talk for a few minutes, Madam Speaker - I only a few minutes left - about the plan that this government announced and the Premier announced about a month or so ago about funding for long-term care facilities. The Premier is suggesting that we embark on a program which he calls a public-private partnership to allow the private sector to put up $200 million to build long-term care facilities in Corner Brook, in Clarenville area, and in the Avalon area. This is something that just came out of the blue; right out of the blue. All of a sudden we are going to have a $200 million program, public-private partnership to do this. That was announced without any public discussion or consultation or any consideration of the cost of this. We are looking at $200 million, which I think deserves to be spent on this. Why does the Premier feel that a public-private partnership, which I am going to talk about in a little bit of detail, is the answer? Why aren't we looking to our own sources of financing for the money for long-term care facilities that we definitely need?

There was tabled in this House a couple of days ago a Report on the Newfoundland and Labrador Pooled Pension Fund. The Pooled Pension Fund has all of the public pensions in this Province put into a pooled pension fund where there is $2.2 billion of pension monies invested by the Pooled Pension Fund, by the teachers' pension fund and by the public service pension fund. These are invested in the stock market, they are invested in bonds, they are invested in Government of Canada bonds and they are invested in other bonds.

Why should we go to the private sector and say: You put up the $200 million and not only will we pay you $200 million, we will pay you a private market interest rate on these bonds, because you have to buy them somewhere, you have to go somewhere to get them, plus we are going to give you a profit on the enterprise, so you have a premium. So, instead of using government bonds, instead of using a part of our pension funds, for example, in the form of government bonds, for long-term care facilities, we are going to go to the private sector and allow somebody out there, who can afford to go and put up $200 million - maybe it will be Fortis, maybe we will have Fortis out there that has all kinds of money that they get from the Newfoundland Power operation, from the rate payers. Maybe they will put up $200 million and the shareholders of Fortis will be delighted, because not only are they going to get all the money they are getting from the rate payers who are paying into Newfoundland Power light bills, but now they are going to get the Government of Newfoundland paying money to them, over and above what they can get on their own bonds, paying to Fortis to go to their shareholders, so they make a profit on a public service that should be provided by this government.

We are going to see, like we saw when this government, or the previous government, the same crowd over there - well, there are a few different faces, but the same crowd opposite - when they decided to build health care facilities across this Province. They decided to go through the tri-cities experience, where we had a waste of government money. Never mind the tendering issue. The tendering issue is part of it and that cost the government and the public a lot of money, the way they handled that, but the real cost on top of that, Madam Speaker, was the cost that was added in the long term, the extra $20 million or $30 million that this Province would have to pay over the long term to pay for those facilities, leasing them from the private entrepreneurs who built them.

That is what would happen if we go into the public-private partnership where the public, in fact, is providing the profits for the private sector instead of doing things ourselves when we actually have the money to do it. I do not think the people of this Province would be too upset about a deficit if the money was actually going to build long-term care facilities in this Province instead of being wasted on government ads and other frivolities that are totally unnecessary. If we had long-term care homes, I do not think people would be worried about a deficit in relation to that. If we knew the government was spending money wisely, I do not think that would happen.

Madam Speaker, the resolution calls for an action plan. Obviously, we have to get the money from somewhere. Obviously, we are looking to Mr. Romanow and the federal government to come up with a proposal and to deliver, but we need to have a plan in place and this government should lay that plan on the table so that we know what they plan to do, not just Pollyannaish pronouncements from the opposite side, but actual reality, concrete plans about how they would solve the problem for the aging population of our Province, for the health care needs of seniors, for the home care needs of seniors, for the home support needs of seniors, and for the long-term care facilities that we need in this Province.

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

MADAM SPEAKER (Ms Hodder): The hon. the Member for Trinity North.

MR. ROSS WISEMAN: Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I just want to rise and conclude debate on what I think is a very important resolution because it deals with a very important issue for the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and one that is impacting - I suspect that every single person in this House has someone, a mother, father, grandmother or grandfather, who is facing this very difficult choice today as to what is going to happen to them because of their aging and their ill health.

I just want to thank all the members who made a contribution to this debate today. I want to acknowledge a couple of points in particular. I acknowledge the minister, in his opening comments, made some suggestion that, even though we are calling for a plan today, if he were in a position to actually deliver one, we would be very critical of it on this side of the House. I say to the minister: If, in fact, you did have a plan today that did lay out in some detail a sense of direction , and not just a visioning document, as you did earlier, then we would in fact gladly endorse it, I say to the minister. We would gladly embrace it. If you had a clear sense of direction of where we were going, we would gladly embrace it, and I make that commitment to the minister. If he, in fact, is prepared to deliver to this House immediately a detailed action plan to respond to this very significant issue, and if it has some substance and it has some future direction and it has a plan that is laid out, we will in fact gladly embrace it, I say to the minister.

One of the things, though, that I was really amazed at, was when I heard the Minister of Youth Services and Post-Secondary Education make two comments that were very - actually, it was kind of ironic because they are somewhat contradictory. First, she says that we cannot do any planning, we cannot develop a plan, until we have the money - so, until we get money, we are never going to do any planning - but later in the same conversation she suggests that we in Newfoundland and Labrador are about ten years ahead of the rest of the country in our need to start planning, because in fact our population is aging at a much more rapid rate than the rest of the country so we need to be out in front. In fact, we need to be leaders in planning, not just the opposite. We just cannot sit back and wait until we have a big pot of money and nothing to do with it until we start planning, I say to the minister. So, we do need to have the strategy, we do need to have the plan, and we need to know where we are going. If they are going to wait until we have a lot of money and not know what to do with it, then we are going to be sadly mistaken.

I say to the minister, when he asked earlier about some suggestions, already, I say to the minister, in 1994 his former colleague, whoever was the Minister of Health and Community Services at that time, joined with other Health Ministers around the country to put together what they felt were the guiding principles for ministers and jurisdictions across this country, the guiding principles that should be used as they plan for an aging population. Those guiding principles included a respect for dignity and independence, participation of the elderly, and fairness and security.

I say to the minister, in whatever plan he chooses and this government chooses to develop, I would suggest strongly that they use those five principles as the guidepost to develop their plan and develop their strategy. If you do, Mr. Minister, and if you were to use those principles and bring back a significant and substantial plan to this House, the hon. members on this side of the House will only be too glad to embrace it and endorse it, because I think all of us in this House owe it to the people of this Province to, in fact, develop some kind of strategy. Unlike the Member for Humber West who suggests that health care issues are not something the politicians should be talking about, I suggest to the member just the opposite.

AN HON. MEMBER: Humber East.

MR. ROSS WISEMAN: Humber East, I am sorry.

Health care and services to seniors is, in fact, a significant public policy issue. In fact, Madam Speaker, anything that I have read, any surveys that I have read and public opinion polls that I have read about in the last twelve months all suggest that health care is the number one issue facing Canada today. It is a number one concern for people of Newfoundland and Labrador, and I suggest to the member opposite that it is an important public policy issue and as long as it does concern the people of this Province, and as long as it is a serious public policy issue, we, on this side of the House, will continue to raise it in this House. We, on this side of the House, will continue to pressure the minister to ensure that he responds and this government responds to the kinds of issues that are critical to the people of this Province, and more particularly when they are issues that affect a very vulnerable group of our population, a group of people who we owe a great deal of debt to, because they have been our past. They have shaped the foundation, they have shaped the future, or they have created the foundation that shaped the future of this Province, and to them we owe a tremendous debt.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to be able to introduce this bill today, and I thank the hon. members who have spoken in support of this bill, and I ask the entire House now to join with us -

MR. BARRETT: It is not a bill.

MR. ROSS WISEMAN: Resolution, rather. I thank the Member for Bellevue for the correction.

I ask everybody in this House now to join with me in endorsing this resolution before the House today.

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MADAM SPEAKER: The debate is concluded.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MADAM SPEAKER: All those against, ‘nay'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MADAM SPEAKER: The motion is defeated.

MR. LUSH: Madam Speaker, I do not have to move the adjournment today, it being Wednesday, but I do want to give notice under Standing Order 11 affecting tomorrow's proceedings, that the House not adjourn at 5:30 p.m.

MADAM SPEAKER: This House now stands adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, at 1:30 p.m.