The House met at 1:30 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (Fitzgerald): Order, please!

Admit strangers.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Today the following members' statements will be heard: the hon. the Member for the District of Mount Pearl North; the hon. the Member for the District of Lewisporte; the hon. the Member for the District of Kilbride; the hon. the Member for the District of Ferryland.

The hon. the Member for the District of Mount Pearl North.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise in this hon. House today to recognize the significant achievement of a resident of Mount Pearl, Mr. Gary Martin.

Gary has been a resident of my district for many years and is well known in the sports community. Gary has recently been named an RBC Local Hockey Leader. This honour is awarded to those individuals who have shown dedication and commitment in the area of Minor Hockey. As a coach, leader and official involved with Minor Hockey in Mount Pearl, Gary has certainly demonstrated a level of commitment that is second to none.

Aside from bragging rights, Mr. Speaker, Gary has earned a trip to the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, as well as the honour of being a Torch Bearer for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Gary also reserves the right to donate $10,000 to a minor hockey cause of his choice.

Mr. Speaker, I ask all members of this House to join me in congratulating Gary Martin on this prestigious award, and commend him on the hard work and dedication he has given to Minor Hockey in Mount Pearl. We, as a community, are lucky to have him.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise in this hon. House today to congratulate Elsie Voila Rideout, known as Aunt Elsie, from Campbellton on reaching the ripe old age of 100. Aunt Elsie was born on May 17, 1909 to Archibald and Vicki Hillier. She married Maxwell Rideout in 1931 and they had five children. Aunt Elsie was a very hard working individual and travelled with Max around the coast on their mail and passenger boat, The Margaret Rose.

They started the first restaurant in Campbellton in the 1940s on what is now Harbourview Hill. In the 1950s they moved the business to the Campbellton River where it was called the Drive In, now known as The Bistro.

Aunt Elsie was famous for her hooked rugs and she would spend up to eight hours at a time working on them. Elsie and Max had the first telephone in town, they also had the first radio and the first car, which was a 1929 Chevie. Max died in 1997 and in 2002 Elsie decided then that the fourteen room house was a little too large for her, so she moved to a private senior's home and later to North Haven Manor where she now resides. She sold her house in 2003 and it is now known as The Inn on the Hill bed and breakfast. The home is still kept in its original form and still lovingly known as Aunt Elsie's place.

Mr. Speaker, I visited Aunt Elsie this weekend at her room in North Haven Manor and she still has a wonderful smile.

Members of the House, please join with me in congratulating Aunt Elsie on reaching this great milestone.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DINN: Mr. Speaker, about twenty-five years ago Craig Pendergast and Brian Murphy and a few other residents of Donovans Road were appalled at the mess of garbage that had accumulated in the woods and along the beach of Second Pond. The area was a mess with car wrecks, old appliances, chesterfields and other assorted litter which built up over years of illegal dumping. They decided to do something about it. They organized the whole neighbourhood, and formed the Donovan's Road Action Group and with the financial help of local businesses, the Gould's Town Council, the Gould's Lions Club, they hired trucks and equipment to clean up the illegal dumpsites and car wrecks.

In the early years they had to work long hours to get ahead of the mess. Every year since the Donavon's Road Action Group has its clean up usually in June. Today St. John's Clean and Beautiful is a major sponsor.

All the neighbours and especially the children look forward to it because it has evolved into a social event that includes a barbecue and prize distribution after the cleanup has been done.

Mr. Speaker, I ask all hon. members of this House to join me in thanking this group, especially Craig Pendergast and Brian Murphy, for nearly twenty-five years of dedicated hard volunteer work to keep the Second Pond area the natural beauty it is.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HUTCHINGS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in this hon. House today to recognize and congratulate Brandi O'Keefe, a Level II student from Baltimore School in Ferryland.

Brandi has been selected as Newfoundland and Labrador's 2009 Lester B. Pearson Scholarship winner. This qualifies Brandi to attend Lester B. Pearson College of the Pacific in British Columbia starting in September 2009.

Lester B. Pearson United World College of the Pacific is a unique two year pre-university school for 200 students selected from around the world based solely on their personal merit, potential and demonstrated commitment to engage actively in creating a better world. All students attend on a full scholarship and live together while studying the International Baccalaureate program and pursuing explicitly the mission of the United World Colleges to make an education a "force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future."

The International Baccalaureate is a demanding academic program and only above average students can be expected to cope with it and at the same time participate fully in the life of the college. This honour is awarded to talented young students who demonstrate high academic achievement and have an active and proven interest in the world.

Mr. Speaker, I ask all hon. members to join me in congratulating Brandi on being awarded this prestigious scholarship and wish her a successful and enjoyable tenure at Lester B. Pearson College of the Pacific.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Statements by Ministers.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Justice and Attorney General.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. T. MARSHALL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise today to provide information about Budget 2009 and initiatives in that Budget which support the efficient operations of both the Provincial Court and Supreme Court in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, the Provincial Court is a court of record and therefore it must ensure that documents are maintained and accessible as they could be required for future proceedings. To maintain the integrity of the court records, Budget 2009 has funded a new Manager of Information Management position. As well, management of financial information of the court is essential to its operations, so we have also funded a new Manager of Accounting position, which is something that the Provincial Court has sought for many years. Both of these positions are important to the functioning of our court system and we are pleased to fund them in Budget 2009.

Mr. Speaker, we also recognize that the Aboriginal people of the Province face language barriers during court proceedings. Prior to this year, the Provincial Court in Happy Valley-Goose Bay had a full-time Innu Court Clerk and a part-time Inuit Court Clerk, both of whom provide counter services in Aboriginal languages. As a result of Budget 2009 both positions will now be full-time. This action will ensure that both Aboriginal groups receive court services in the appropriate language.

Mr. Speaker, the complexity and the number of new estate transactions has increased in recent years. In order to ensure the proper functioning of the Estates Office of the Supreme Court, government has created the position of Assistant Estates Administrator. This new position will support the day-to-day operations of the office.

It is also incumbent upon government to provide appropriate court facilities within the Province. This year we are providing $666,000 for pre-planning of new court facilities for the St. John's area, and $7 million to complete the courthouse in Corner Brook. As well, we will provide an additional Deputy Sheriff position for court security in the Corner Brook courthouse.

Mr. Speaker, our courts are vitally important entities of the justice system, and these are wise investments in that system. Government has responded to the needs of both Provincial Court and Supreme Court to ensure the proper administration of justice for all those involved in the court system.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the minister for an advance copy of his statement.

Anything we can do in this Province, of course, to improve efficiencies in the court system and to ensure that people have access to proper language and language interpretation skills are certainly beneficial to the system.

I would point out to the minister, in addition to the interpretive skills that we are currently providing in Happy Valley-Goose Bay we do have a situation, for example, in the Clarenville women's correctional facility where there is a high proportion of Aboriginal women there. I do not know if the interpretive services are available at that institution, so it would be nice to know that as well.

I also note that the minister is talking about investing substantial dollars in pre-planning for a new courts system in the St. John's area. We are well aware, of course, that there was a consolidation study already underway which apparently the minister already has the draft of, and we are supposed to have the final study submitted to the department by the end of May. We look forward to seeing a copy of that, and hopefully we will not have to go through too many FOI requests to get it.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

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

I, too, thank the minister for the advance copy of his statement. It is good to hear these various initiatives being spoken about today. We know that they are in the Budget, but we understand the need to have them picked out and spoken to.

I especially am happy to see the information with regard to the positions, the Court Clerk and part-time Inuit Court Clerk, becoming full-time; and that will be full-time and permanent, I would take it, as long as the need is there.

I think that we all recognize the need to help the Aboriginal peoples overcome the language barriers that exist for them in dealing with institutions like the legal institution and with the court system. Aboriginal people in Labrador in particular are over-represented in the court and corrections systems, and if we are going to deal with the issues that they are facing then recognizing the barriers that they face, particularly the language barriers, is one way to do that.

People need to understand their laws and rights fully in order to exercise them, and sometimes these laws and rights that we have also clash with the culture of Aboriginal peoples as well, so I hope that this is a step towards helping to get a better understanding, also, of the cultural aspects that they face as barriers in dealing with our legal system.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Further statements by ministers.

The hon. the Minister of Human Resources, Labour and Employment.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to inform my hon. colleagues of this government's commitment to student summer employment in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, a student summer job is often a young person's first exposure to the labour market. It is a great way to establish good work habits and an understanding of the value of earning a living. Recognizing this, Budget 2009 included an investment of $3.45 million towards the delivery of a student summer program for high school and post-secondary students throughout this Province.

This year, Mr. Speaker, provincial government funding will enable over 600 high school, Level I, II and III students to secure work with not-for-profit organizations, community agencies and municipalities in approximately 480 summer recreation, heritage and community improvement projects.

In addition to supporting high school students, Mr. Speaker, the provincial government also assists individuals attending a post-secondary institution - or those planning to attend one in the upcoming year - secure meaningful summer employment with both not-for-profit and profit employers.

Through our Student Work and Service Program, students gain up to fourteen weeks of on-the-job experience. In addition, Mr. Speaker, students also receive a $50 tuition voucher for each week worked. For example, if a student works for the full fourteen weeks, then they will receive $700 to the overall cost of their tuition. This is an excellent way for students to gain valuable work experience and save for school, thereby reducing their debt burden.

I am pleased to announce that this year we will match 1,155 post-secondary students with employers for meaningful summer employment.

Also this summer, the provincial government will continue its financial support of the Conservation Corps of Newfoundland and Labrador. A grant of $597,800 will fund up to twenty-five Green Team projects and employ 100 youth and students primarily in rural areas of the Province.

These Green Team projects are aimed at addressing environmental and cultural heritage issues and are run in partnership with local community organizations and the corporate sector. Through this program, our youth and students will contribute to conserving the environment in our Province while developing their own skills and enhancing their environmental awareness.

In closing, Mr. Speaker, the provincial government is pleased to support student summer employment again this year and I would like to wish all our students a safe, enjoyable and rewarding summer.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. BUTLER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I want to thank the minister for an advanced copy of her statement. I can assure you that we are very pleased to see this program proceeding again this year. No doubt about it, it is a very important project for our Level I, Level II and Level III in the high school, and also those who will be going on to post-secondary. I am sure each and every member here has received calls from constituents as well as the various organizations wondering if there will be funding this year, and it is good to see this happening.

Mr. Speaker, we also reference in this one about the Green Team projects. I have seen how that program is very valuable to a district, teaching our young people the environmental issues in our Province. I can honestly say that there are other projects taking place in my district. I am sure we all heard talk of the group Gaia, the work that they are doing environmentally, not only in their high school but throughout the surrounding communities.

Mr. Speaker, we just want to say that we are pleased to see this program going ahead again this year. Any program that is to help our students in this Province is always welcome and we wish them every success throughout this summer.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

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

I thank the minister for the advanced copy of her statement. I, too, echo how good this program is and how our community groups benefit from the program, especially when you look at the one involving high school students in particular because these are the summer students that mostly get used in my district by the community groups who use them.

Also, in our office, we have benefited from the Student Work and Service Program with the hiring of post-secondary students. I was glad to see actually a memo today saying that caucus offices are going to be able to have somebody again this year and I am pleased about that.

There is one thing in the memo - and I just received this, just before coming in. So I did not have time to check it and I would like the minister to check. It was my understanding that the post-secondary students received $50 cash every week plus the $700 voucher. So I think there is an error in the way that - the minister is nodding yes, so I think she recognizes that. I just wanted to make sure that the $50 cash was not being stopped.

So I thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Further statements by ministers?

Oral Questions.

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow at 7:30 a.m. government will be locking the nurses out and effectively throwing our health care system in this Province into chaos.

Mr. Speaker, with only hours left to reach a settlement, I ask the Premier today: Why would your government want to hold the health care system hostage on non-monetary issues when these issues could be settled under binding arbitration?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Well isn't this the pot calling the kettle black. As a Liberal government who ten years ago legislated nurses back to work, took away binding arbitration and at that time offered 7 per cent. Our offer that was on the table, which was part of the package, was over four times that. If nurses end up legislated back because they choose not to go back to work, our template offer will be three times the 7 per cent that a Liberal government legislated nurses back.

From a lockout perspective, there is no lockout. Nurses have given us notice of strike. When you go on strike, you go on strike. There is nobody locking nurses out. We are invoking an essential services contract that was agreed to by the nurses, that the nurses signed, and we are invoking it because the President of the Nurses Union, Ms Forward, has indicated that she wants to put greater pressure on the health care system. So the very reason that we are invoking the essential services contract is to protect health care in this Province.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

But we are talking about the situation in the Province today, Premier, not what happened in the past. We are talking about people today in this Province that are lining up in the O.R. rooms.

I ask the Premier, again, Mr. Speaker, we are not dealing with monetary issues, we are dealing with policy issues, we are dealing with wording issues and I ask the government opposite: Why will they not go to binding arbitration and avoid a strike in this Province and allow the health care system to continue?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, we just left Grand Falls and the central region where over 700, 800 people lost their jobs. I spent the weekend watching television, looking at General Motors workers trying to hold on to what they have: trying to hold on to their jobs; trying to prevent their salaries from being cut away completely; trying to hold on to their pension benefits; trying to hold on to their health care benefits.

We have offered starting nurses $60,000 a year coming right out of school. Our experienced nurses are going to $75,000 a year, $74,000 and change. They will be the second highest in the country; they will be the highest east of Ontario. Our recruiting nurses will be either the first or the second. So Quebec and all the Maritime provinces, Atlantic Canada, will be number one or number two.

This government has stepped up in spades. Not only did we answer the recruitment problem, we answered the retention problem. We dealt with educational leave. We added steps on the front end. We added steps on the back end. We also nearly tripled standby and shift differential and that was all part of the package that included the two principles and they want to go to binding arbitration. We can do no more and we are at a loss to understand why nurses are not taking this deal.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

But the issues that are driving this right now is not monetary issues, Mr. Speaker, it has to do with policy issues.

[Applause from the Gallery.]

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Order, please!

I remind our guests in the galleries that they are always welcome to come and observe the proceedings here on the floor of the House of Assembly but they are not to take part, to show their approval or disapproval of anything that happens here on the floor. So I ask guests for their co-operation or I will have to ask them to be identified and have to be removed from the galleries. For your co-operation, please.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Government had already agreed to concessions around monetary issues. These are issues outside of that and we have asked this question time and time again of government but we have not gotten a clear answer.

I ask again today: Please explain to the people of this Province, to the people who use our health care system, exactly why government wants the market adjustment clause in this contract?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, in addition to everything else that we have done for health care in the Province, whether it is from an information technology perspective, whether it is the hundreds of millions of dollars that we are spending on infrastructure, whether it is the over $100 million that we spend on pharmaceuticals, all the other money that we put into equipment. What we have done for health care professionals is not only have we given the highest raises across the country, which is the template, which is over 21.5 per cent compounded, which is unheard of in the rest of the country in these difficult economic times, we have actually gone up two notches on the front end to make sure that young nurses actually want to work in the nursing profession here, and that is over 31 per cent. We have also then taken and recognized the experience of our senior nurses and have increased a step there, so that they are nearly at $75,000.

Then we went down the list and we said, what else is important to nurses, because I have met with the nurses. I have met with individual nurses. I hear from nurses all the time. There was educational leave, and we set up a special committee and we gave enhanced experience credits.

Then we looked at shift diff which was a really big issue the last time around. We said, okay, we have to do something with that; and the same way with stand by fees. We nearly tripled that.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. Premier to conclude his answer.

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We have done everything we can to make it a very generous package.

Coupled with that was the deal with regard to the two principles. There was never agreement where you can cherry pick this and cherry pick this and cherry pick this and have it your own way. That is not the way it works.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

When government realized the critical situation that faced nurses in this Province and the recruitment and retention issues, they did the right thing. They stepped outside pattern bargaining and they negotiated a deal.

I ask the government again today: Why do you arbitrarily want the right to negotiate with nurses singly on where they should be placed in the system and how much they should get paid for certain jobs? Why not allow those clauses in that agreement to be settled independently so we can put this behind us?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, I sat with the ministers in a boardroom on the eighth floor, and I guess we must have met with sixteen or twenty nurses from all over the Province. That was a year ago. I asked those nurses individually: What are your issues? Some of them said: We are working double shifts, we are tired and we are exhausted. Some of them said: We can't even plan our daughter's wedding because we don't know if we are going to be able to get off work to go to our daughter's wedding. If there are funerals, we can't get off work.

That was a recruitment problem. When you get into specific areas of the Province where you have recruitment problems - and that was the major issue that came from the nurses' union from day one when we started this process, about seventeen months ago. We felt we had to have the flexibility, as we do right across government in all of the other unions and all the other professions, that when there is a need, when there is a demand, we have to be able to offer an attractive salary to ease the very problems that nurses say exist; the fact that there would be extra people there, there would be extra staff to work, so that if a nurse did have to get off for her daughter's wedding she could. That is the reason we stepped up there.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is obvious that there is no really clear justification or answer as to why government will not deal with those two particular clauses in another fashion. To say that everyone else accepted it is not a good enough response.

Mr. Speaker, nurses were prepared to provide services in our health care system minus the overtime shifts, but government has decided, I say, Premier, in our opinion, to lock these nurses out.

I ask you today: Why would you choose to lock these nurses out when they were prepared to work regular shifts and provide the service to the people of the Province?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to correct something up front. There is no lockout. You cannot have a lockout when individuals have already served notice of a strike, so there is absolutely no lockout in this particular case here.

Each of the health authorities have entered into an essential service agreement with the union. It has been agreed to and negotiated – signed off, in fact, by both parties. There is a section in those agreements that spells out – and the union has signed off on this – indicating what will happen in the event of a strike. So, they serve notice of a strike; section 7 of those agreements tell you exactly what will happen when there is a strike.

One of the things that is spelled out in that agreement is the essential employees: employees who will be actually assigned to certain work situations, assigned to various units, in the event that there is a strike.

Clearly, (a) we have the nurses union saying that there is a strike, and if there is a strike then obviously those provisions in that agreement must prevail.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Minister, will you admit today that we have a health care system in this Province that is being run on overtime, and when that overtime was going to be pulled back the system was at risk of collapsing? Does that not sound like a system that needs work, needs repair, and does not need to have closure invoked upon it?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Mr. Speaker, in Newfoundland and Labrador unions have a legal right to strike. We respect that. We respect that very much. That is why one of the things that we obviously want to do as a system is to respect that right to a legal strike, while at the same time providing a level of comfort and security to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador that they will have at least emergency services, and people who need critical care in the event of a strike, that that is going to be provided. These essential service agreements spell out what will be essential during a legal strike situation.

Any time we have an offer to do something different than that, it puts the health system in a very untenable situation. Unless we are assured, unless we can be certain, as a Province and as a government, as a people in this Province, that essential services will be provided during a strike, then we have a responsibility as a government to invoke whatever agreements we have in place, such as essential service agreements. We have a responsibility to invoke those agreements, particularly when they have been signed off by the union.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the government has already stated that recruitment and retention of nurses was a key part of their ongoing negotiations, but they also stated that any settlement that would be imposed upon nurses will not include the extra monetary benefits that were previously negotiated.

I ask the Premier today: Besides having some personal vendetta with nurses in this Province, why would you want to remove the monetary benefits that were designed by your government as part of that negotiation to address recruitment and retention in the first place?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, my mother is in hospital now. She has just had surgery. That was, I think, last Wednesday. Since then, at St. Clare's Hospital, she has received absolutely outstanding treatment from the nurses who took care of her. They are courteous, they are capable, they are professional, they are efficient, and they are tending to her every need as they do with every other patient who is up there.

Let me tell you something: There is nothing personal about this under any circumstances whatsoever. I have the greatest respect for nurses, and I will continue to have the greatest respect for nurses, but we are in a situation here where the nurses' union have chosen to go a legislative route.

If nurses decide today, or if nurses decide any time over the next three or four weeks during the strike, that they want to accept the contract, the contract will be there as it was offered in the beginning, all of the items included; however, if the nurses' union chooses to put us in a situation where we have no alternative than to legislate then their goal, as I said all along, is to go to court, which is the national agenda; their goal is to hopefully win a court case and end up in arbitration. If that is their goal - and this is where it could end up if they win the case - we have no other choice than to legislate the template under those circumstances.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Mr. Speaker, I say to the Premier, it is always a choice, and it is your choice to make as a government. If you really want to show respect to the nurses, as you say today, I would ask the government to give a commitment that any agreement, whether it be through legislation or otherwise, would reflect the monetary negotiated package that was originally sought with nurses to deal with recruitment and retention.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, the choice is with the nurses. We told the leaders of the nurses' union over a month ago that we were giving a final offer. It was a very generous offer. We stepped up on absolutely every area we could. We went beyond the template, significantly beyond the template, because we recognized that there were certain needs for nurses in recruitment, retention, and all of the other needs, so we went as far as we could.

We actually started this process seventeen months ago because we felt that the most critical issue in the Province was nurses, and recruitment and retention. That is why we tried to negotiate seventeen months ago. That dragged on. Both parties did their very best. I remember even last May - late May, June - we met with Ms Forward and basically said we would like to get this matter resolved now. At that time she had indicated that she could not pull a negotiating team together for the summer. Then we sent into September. We have tried everything since, but it appears that no matter what we try there is a national agenda here to have this matter tested in the courts, and Newfoundland and Labrador will be the example. If that is the goal then there is nothing we can do about it only make a very generous offer and ask nurses to accept it.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Again, Mr. Speaker, there is always something government can do, and binding arbitration is the answer.

Mr. Speaker, this heavy-handed approach of removing benefits like this from the negotiating package will have a further impact. Most of the eighty students this year who will be graduating indicated that they will not stay in the Province under the NAPE-CUPE contract template.

I ask the Premier today: If you are serious about recruitment and retention issues, and addressing those issues, why not commit to the additional provisions to try and get most of those eighty nurses, if not all, to stay and work in Newfoundland and Labrador?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am told that one of the comments made outside on the steps earlier today was that this strike is unnecessary. Well, I certainly agree with that, Mr. Speaker. Twenty-one and a half percent is a very generous offer in itself, and addresses recruitment and retention, but when you look at an offer of 31 per cent that would make our nurses, the senior nurses, the highest paid in Eastern Canada, I do not know what more we can do, when you look at the fact that we have broken pattern bargaining, as we were requested to do.

Mr. Speaker, we have tried to demonstrate to the nurses that we appreciate the work they do and we care about the situation. Unfortunately, as the Premier has pointed out, a package offer was made and it is not a matter of, well, we will take what we like and we will go to binding arbitration on what we do not like. It is a package, Mr. Speaker, and that package has been rejected.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Mr. Speaker, I have to remind the minister that the offer, he says, stands. Well the offer stands, Minister, only if it is your way, if it is your government's way. Outside of that, the offer is off the table. So, Mr. Speaker, this is about punishment, not progress, when it comes to dealing with the nursing issues and the issues in the health care sector.

Mr. Speaker, I ask the minister again: How does he propose to launch some kind of a package that will entice those eighty nurses who are graduating this year to stay and work in Newfoundland and Labrador if you are going to drop the entire monetary piece that was associated with this?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Another one of the comments, apparently, that was made outside today was: See you in court.

Well, Mr. Speaker, this is not about court for us. What this has been about from day one is addressing the recruitment and retention issues, and 21.5 per cent is still a very generous offer. Another comment was made that we are the only Province without an agreement. Well, we are also the only Province that put on the table a 31 per cent offer, 27 per cent for senior nurses, and, by any extent, 21.5 per cent should be able to address recruitment and retention.

The fact that the union chooses not to accept our offer and takes the position, we will see you in court, as the Premier has pointed out, is very unfortunate. One has to wonder, Mr. Speaker, is it really reflective of the majority of nurses out there or is it simply the agenda that the union appears to have?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

But this is a government who always likes to get one up on the nurses. So, minister, why not get one up on the nurses today, stop the opportunity for them to go to court and go to binding arbitration and have this issue settled once and for all?

MR. SPEAKER: If this is a question, I ask the hon. the Leader of the Opposition to pose it now.

MS JONES: Yes, Mr. Speaker.

I said to the minister, the government likes to get one up on the nurses: So why not get one up on the nurses in the court challenge you keep referring to and send these issues to binding arbitration immediately? That eludes the opportunity for them to be able to do that.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENNEDY: Mr. Speaker, it appears to be some kind of misconception or a perception that we want to go to court or that we are somehow afraid to go to court. Mr. Speaker, the case that is continuously referred to by the president of the union is one that imposes a duty to bargain in good faith. Well, I would suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that a 31 per cent offer is certainly a very good offer. That the right outline in that case, Mr. Speaker, is to process, not outcome. Essentially, at the end of the day there is give-and-take in negotiations. We have given, Mr. Speaker. We broke the template. We have increased the wage offer to 31 per cent and we have increased shift differential and standby rates. So, Mr. Speaker, if you want a deal, then there has to be some give-and-take.

I refer the hon. member to her comments in 1999 where she said: You will get all the concessions you want but that is a very idealistic world. There has to be give-and-take. Her comments about the president of the union, Mr. Speaker, are certainly opposite of what she is saying today.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Mr. Speaker, the minister needs to be more concerned with what he is saying today. He is the one who the entire health care system is resting on your shoulders today and your government's shoulders to fix these problems.

Mr. Speaker, we already know that the four health authorities have finalized some contingency plans. We know that last week the minister had a thick binder on his desk over there called the strike plan for the health care sector.

So maybe the minister can tell me today if you have read that plan and maybe you can update the people of the Province as to what level of care they can expect during this lockout and whether any other services besides emergency cases will be dealt with?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I indicated in the House last week, each of our four authorities have indeed developed a contingency plan using the essential service agreement as a guide to determine the number of staff that they will have available in each of the units throughout Newfoundland and Labrador, in each of our facilities, whether it is an institution-based or community-based programming.

I said last week as well, that emergency services and critical care areas, particularly, we are going to be really focused on. In fact, the staffing levels in most of those areas remain consistent with what they might be today.

People will still get their chemotherapy treatment that they need, people who are on dialysis will continue to get dialysis services, and will be able to – the system is designed, and that is why these agreements are in place. These agreements are in place to ensure the people who need essential services get them. People who need emergency services get them. People who are now in a hospital setting needing critical care will get them, and those people with chronic disease that need ongoing intervention will continue to get that service.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

In light of the fact that there were failed communications attempts during the Cameron Inquiry by government and Eastern Health to communicate with the public, hopefully there is a better plan in place around this particular crisis in our system.

I ask the minister, Mr. Speaker, because there are a number of patients waiting to hear whether their booked surgeries and their treatments will take place. So I ask the minister: How far in advance of schedule procedures will patients be notified of any cancellations?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Each of our four authorities started to take action to respond to the notice. There is a seven day notice was provided by the nurses' union. When the authorities received those notices they started a process then to start to make the adjustments in the planned schedules starting this week, tomorrow.

I understand that public notices have been advertised in newspapers, and there are some radio ads, where people are being advised of clinic changes, provided with toll-free numbers to contact, inquiries to be directed to a particular phone number, calls are being made to patients to cancel procedures and postpone procedures.

So that process of advising the patients and the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, both through public service announcements and through direct contact by the authorities, is a process that started when the seven day notice was provided.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I ask the minister, as well: Will the operating rooms be functioning at emergency only capacity or will there be any additional capacity available to address non-emerging procedures and treatments that people have been waiting for?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: We will rely very heavily on the clinicians who are providing support and services to patients, to determine when a patient needs to have a surgical procedure performed that might be important to have it done sooner than later, something that cannot be postponed, cannot be delayed. That is why we rely on those individuals to make that clinical judgement.

Elective procedures will be cancelled, but we will rely on clinicians to make the determination whether or not it is safe for the patient to have their surgery delayed for an extended period of time. When those clinical people make that judgement call, it is our responsibility as a system to provide that response, and in fact, the essential service agreements make a provision for that to happen.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

One of the clinics that will be impacted by this lockout is the diabetes clinic in the Innu community of Sheshatshiu. Diabetes, as we know, is a major factor for Aboriginal people, and this clinic gets a great deal of use in the community.

I ask the minister: What services will be available to those patients during this lockout?

MR. WISEMAN: Just to correct the member opposite, because she is fuelling a notion out there that this is a lockout. It is not a lockout, Mr. Speaker. We are acknowledging, as the Nurses' Union have said, this is a legal strike, and it is a legal strike. So it is not a lockout.

With respect to the clinic in Sheshatshiu, nursing services in that clinic will be impacted as a result of this strike. Physician services will continue, the clinics will continue, Mr. Speaker, and physicians who work in that clinic will continue to provide services. All of the other individuals who work at that clinic will continue to be there and support the services of that clinic.

Sheshatshiu is a short distance from Happy Valley-Goose Bay, and services are available in Happy Valley-Goose Bay as per the essential services agreement, I say, Mr. Speaker. So those individuals who have chronic illnesses that need to be managed will be provided a level of support during this period of a strike.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

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

Mr. Speaker, it is the right of all unionized workers involved in the collective bargaining process to expect an arbitration process if negotiations reach an impasse. The Nurses' Union and government have reached that impasse.

Mr. Speaker, I ask the Premier: Why is he determined to deny the nurses the legislated right of binding arbitration?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Mr. Speaker, when there is a notice of strike, like we have been served with last week, our primary responsibility is to ensure that the safety and well-being of patients are provided. That is one of the reasons that our health authority, working with the Nurses' Union, negotiated essential service agreements.

So we have mapped out in those agreements what level of service will be provided by a board, by an institution, by a community and by a service. Within that agreement as well, there is mapped out the number of nursing people that will be provided. The agreements will reflect the number of nursing people that will be provided by the union.

In some cases, the Regional Health Authority, in providing individuals who are trained as nurses, who are now working in management positions, who have done some refreshers, are now going to be able to work with those unionized employees to continue to provide safe care to the patients who need it, as outlined by these essential service agreements.

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

MS MICHAEL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the nurses' union asked for binding arbitration before they gave notice of strike. That happened after the government said no to binding arbitration.

I ask the Premier: Why is this government afraid of going to binding arbitration?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: The first and foremost consideration, as I said a moment ago in response to a question from the Leader of the Opposition, we respect the union's right to a strike. We respect the collective bargaining process. The union have made a decision that they want to go on strike and they have served notice, as a provision that the legislation provides for.

Our responsibility, then, together with the health authorities, is to ensure that we have an arrangement in place; we have an agreement in place, a formalized agreement signed off by both parties, that here are a list of programs and services that are deemed to be essential during the event of a strike. Our responsibility in respecting the union's right to strike and respecting our responsibility to ensure that patients in Newfoundland and Labrador continue to get a level of service that protects their health and security in the event of a job action.

These essential service agreements lay out for us, and lay out for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, the level of service that can be expected during a work stoppage like we are about to have.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

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

Mr. Speaker, once again the minister and the government refuse to answer the question of why they are saying no to a binding arbitration. I point out to them that this is not being lost on the people in this Province.

Mr. Speaker, the nurses wanted to go on an overtime strike which means a nurse would work only his or her regular forty hours a week. Mr. Speaker, this Province's four health authorities have made it clear that they are unable to function without nurses working massive overtime.

Mr. Speaker, now that we have confirmation of this horrible state, I ask the Premier: What plans does government have to fix this glaring problem?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: I just want to refer the member opposite to the question provided by my colleague a moment ago with respect to recruitment and retention. One of the things that we acknowledge: we need to deal with recruitment and retention in this Province. That is why we have made such a generous offer. Unprecedented, I say, Mr. Speaker. Nowhere else in this entire country, not only within the health sector but with any other unionized environment in this nation in recent past have we seen an offer of 31 per cent, have we seen an offer of tripling certain benefits like standby and shift differentials. Unheard of, I say, Mr. Speaker.

Clearly, our government recognizes our responsibility and recognizes the need to deal with recruitment and retention. That is why we stepped up to the plate and made such an attractive offer. I think our offer - the offering in and of itself - speaks volumes to our intention to try to deal with recruitment and retention, and we would ask the union to accept that offer as being what is very generous and more generous than anywhere else in the entire country.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I understand we have time for one more question, so I ask the Minister of Health: There are over 200 nurses scheduled to complete their clinical placements in the Province's hospitals - a lot of them were supposed to start today - and this lockout will delay these plans and affect many who are supposed to graduate this summer. I ask the minister: What will be the impact of this lockout on the nurses who could have continued their training and their work terms, by the way, under the overtime strike provision?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Mr. Speaker, I am resisting taking the time up in Question Period to keep correcting the member opposite but I think it is important, because it is an important message for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador to understand that this is not a lockout. This is a legal strike that the nurses' union have served notice on government that they will start a legal strike tomorrow. It is not a lockout.

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the clinical placements of new graduates, unfortunately, with disruptions like we are going to be experiencing as of tomorrow there are going to be some benefits that some of these students may have had that now will be postponed for awhile. Mr. Speaker, it is our intent to ensure that those clinical placements are still provided. The orientation and training that those individuals get are going to be critical to their ability to continue their careers and be contributors to our system, so I say, Mr. Speaker, those arrangements will be made when the strike is over.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The time allotted for questions and answers has expired.

Presenting Reports by Standing and Special Committees.

Tabling of Documents.

Notices of Motion.

Answers to Questions for which Notice has been Given.

Petitions.

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

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

It gives me great pleasure to rise and have a comment again today and present the ninth petition on behalf of the residents of the area from Rose Blanche to LaPoile, right on up to the Codroy Valley, and that is with respect to dialysis services. I have made this petition a number of times. The people out that way, by the way, including the Town Council of Port aux Basques, are waiting even for a letter of acknowledgement from the Minister of Health and Community Services that he is aware of this problem. Everybody out there is, of course, particularly the patients and the families that are impacted by this situation.

We have, at any given time, eight to ten people who commute from their homes to Stephenville or Corner Brook - usually it is Corner Brook - to avail of the dialysis services. Three times a week, regardless of what the weather is, they are required to do this. Many of them need someone to travel with them. They need an escort because they are just not physically capable of handling the trip themselves. Some of them are not in a position to drive, for example. Some of them commute by way of taxicab. Others have their family commute with them. In any case, the bottom line is that we need to have some kind of treatment facility available in the Port aux Basques region.

The minister, as I say, does not seem to be aware of it, even, let alone trying to resolve it, but the people out there came up with their own resolution of it, and solution to the problem, if the minister were prepared to listen. For example, you need both a technical component and an equipment component. The people in that area have already said they would be prepared to raise the money for the equipment themselves. We have staff there in the facility who are prepared to be trained to provide the dialysis. We realize it takes some period of time. For example, you would need eight or ten people, of course, to have a rollover in case of vacations and whatever. The staff there are prepared to undergo that training. It takes anywhere from six to eight weeks to do the training. We realize you cannot do it all at one time, but they are prepared to go about it in a rational, logical fashion, so that is there, Mr. Speaker.

Again, we have not had as much as an acknowledgment from the minister. Maybe if he can at least let us know that he is tuned in and aware of the problem, we can certainly discuss the details of the solution with him. The folks at Western Health are now engaged. I understand that they have, in fact, gotten a committee together, finally, and we are looking at where to put it into the building. Apparently it takes a certain amount of space to accommodate the equipment. To do this you need chairs for the people who are receiving the treatment and so on, and that study is underway. We are also aware that there are different kinds of dialysis for different people. Some can avail of home dialysis; others need to have the satellite type treatment. We realize that, and that is being worked out; but, to get things rolling, we at least need to have a commitment from the minister and the department that once these solutions are finalized they are prepared to back it. Otherwise, we may have a lot of labour in vain.

Obviously, the people who need this treatment on a daily basis are certainly entitled to avail of medical services in this Province as well as anyone else located anywhere else in this Province.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Further petitions.

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

MR. BUTLER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is a pleasure today to be able to stand with another petition for the residents of Long Island with regard to the causeway petition that has been put forward, Mr. Speaker.

I know that from time to time we get many petitions sent forward to us and, just for explanation for the minister, in case he does not understand it, usually when you receive petitions and you are critic for a different department you bring them forward on behalf of the people who live in that particular area. I know those petitions have been sent to members on the government side as well as others on this side of the House, so anytime I get an opportunity to stand and represent the people of this Province, I will do that, Mr. Speaker.

I know back in 2003, it was announced that those people would have a causeway for Long Island, and we know that has changed. Today we are hoping that the minister – I know he is planning on meetings with those people, they had to cancel them on a couple of occasions due to the weather conditions - but when they do meet, Mr. Speaker, that they can come to a successful conclusion. Not just the people of Long Island but all the communities in the surrounding area are also signing those petitions because they know those people have a very legitimate concern.

They are asking that they would be reconsidered for this particular causeway because there are many issues that come forward from time to time that are not in the best interests of the people who live there.

As they said, they had a ferry service for some twenty-six years and in their petition they are asking that a new ferry be supplied to them. What they are really saying in the petition is that they would prefer a causeway because they believe that this link is the most feasible in the long term for government. They bring forward various issues, whether it is with regard to health care or students or transportation of goods. In each and every petition that we receive, Mr. Speaker, there are many people who sign those petitions on their behalf. I believe, as critic for the department, those people deserve nothing less.

They are just asking that government reconsider the issue. Where there was an announcement made for this causeway and now it has been cancelled, they are asking that government reconsider their issue, that a fixed link be built between Long Island and Pilley's Island in Green Bay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Further petitions.

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

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

I appreciate another opportunity to present a petition on behalf of the residents of François, Gray River and Ramea, with respect to the shortage of trained staff at the Ramea Medical Clinic.

There are supposed to be two nurse practitioners there. We only have one, and that lady has, in fact, been there for some years. She is a resident of Ramea and is quite happy and quite contented there. The problem, of course, is she can't work twenty-four seven 365. We have a constant ongoing problem of trying to have sufficient support staff for her.

Now, in some cases we get an LPN. There is an LPN, in fact, who is now engaged on a full-time basis, but an LPN can't perform all of the services, of course, of a nurse practitioner. Even though we are undergoing some training with the nurse practitioner right now – and I think it is a matter of six or eight weeks that it takes to train a nurse practitioner. She is, by the way, voluntarily engaged in doing that training. She needs to go to Calder in Burgeo, as well as in Corner Brook, to get some of the training that she needs. She still won't be able to perform all of the services of a nurse practitioner.

Basically, that clinic is down to 50 per cent of its personnel. There is a shortage in Port aux Basques, for example, as well as in Stephenville and Corner Brook, but as opposed to having one out of a system in those larger areas, when you take one of the two away, you obviously have a more drastic problem here.

We proposed a solution to the minister again. They talk about recruitment and retraining, and it is not a complicated solution. They already, right now, you allow anyone who is a first-year graduate or someone who is from outside the Province to avail of the recruitment bonuses. It is not permitted, right now, to allow anyone in the Province to avail of that.

Our suggestion is, if you are dealing with rural Newfoundland – and government acknowledges we sometimes have needs that are different in rural communities than we have in larger communities, for example. So our suggestion and the community's suggestion that was posed to the minister was: Why not allow the recruitment bonuses to apply to anyone who is in the system, who might avail of that opportunity to go serve a period of time in the community of Ramea?

Again, it is a matter of informing the minister, letting the minister get tuned in. This is my eighth time doing this. I do not know if he is tuned in or not yet. Everybody in Ramea, everybody in François, everybody in Grey River is tuned in. I think I have tuned in the other 512,000 people in the Province, but whether the Minister of Health knows about it or not now is anybody's guess, because he has not even acknowledged yet that he is aware of the problem.

Anyway, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity. I will continue to press this most urgent need upon the Department of Health and the Minister of Health and Community Services, and hopefully, hopefully, some time in the near future he will either respond himself or have someone in the department or someone in Western Health address this problem.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Further petitions?

Orders of the Day.

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, I move Motion 5 that this House not adjourn at 5:30 p.m. today, Tuesday, May 19, 2009.

Further, Mr. Speaker, I move Motion 6, pursuant to Standing Order 11 that this House not adjourn at 10:00 p.m. today, Tuesday, May 19, 2009.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The motion is that this House do not adjourn at 5:30 o'clock p.m. today Tuesday, May 19.

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: The motion is carried.

A further motion that this House do not adjourn at 10:00 o'clock p.m. today Tuesday, May 19.

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: The motion is carried.

The hon. the Government House Leader.

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the hon. Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board, to ask leave to introduce a bill entitled, An Act To Amend The Income Tax Act, 2000. (Bill 29)

I further move that the said bill be now read a first time.

MR. SPEAKER: It is properly moved and seconded that the hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board shall have leave to introduce a bill entitled, An Act To Amend The Income Tax Act, 2000, Bill 29, and that this bill be now read a first time.

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

The motion is carried.

Motion, the hon. Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board to introduce a bill, "An Act To Amend The Income Tax Act, 2000," carried. (Bill 29)

CLERK: A bill, An Act To Amend The Income Tax Act, 2000. (Bill 29)

MR. SPEAKER: Bill 29 has now been read a first time.

When shall Bill 29 be read a second time?

MS BURKE: Tomorrow, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Tomorrow.

On motion, Bill 29 read a first time, ordered read a second time on tomorrow.

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the hon. the Minister of Environment and Conservation, to ask leave to introduce a bill entitled An Act To Amend The Wild Life Act. (Bill 30)

I further move that the said bill be now read a first time.

MR. SPEAKER: It is properly moved and seconded that the hon. the Minister of Environment and Conservation shall ask leave to introduce a bill entitled, An Act To Amend The Wild Life Act, Bill 30, and that Bill 30 be now read a first time.

Is it the pleasure of the House that Bill 30 be now read a first time?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

The motion is carried.

Motion, the hon. the Minister of Environment and Conservation to introduce a bill, "An Act To Amend The Wild Life Act," carried. (Bill 30)

CLERK: A bill, An Act To Amend The Wild Life Act. (Bill 30)

MR. SPEAKER: Bill 30 has now been read a first time.

When shall Bill 30 be read a second time?

MS BURKE: Tomorrow, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Tomorrow.

On motion, Bill 30 read a first time, ordered read a second time on tomorrow.

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the hon. Minister of Natural Resources, to ask leave to introduce a bill entitled, An Act To Repeal The Government-Kruger Agreements Act. (Bill 31)

I further move that the said bill be now read a first time.

MR. SPEAKER: It is properly moved and seconded that the hon. the Minister of Natural Resources shall have leave to introduce a bill entitled, An Act To Repeal The Government-Kruger Agreements Act, Bill 31, and that Bill 31 be now read a first time.

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

The motion is carried.

Motion, the hon. the Minister of Natural Resources to introduce a bill, "An Act To Repeal The Government-Kruger Agreements Act," carried. (Bill 31)

CLERK: A bill, An Act To Repeal The Government-Kruger Agreements Act. (Bill 31)

MR. SPEAKER: Bill 31 has now been read a first time.

When shall Bill 31 be read a second time?

MS BURKE: Tomorrow.

MR. SPEAKER: Tomorrow.

On motion, Bill 31 read a first time, ordered read a second time on tomorrow.

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, from the Order Paper we call Order 11, second reading of a bill, An Act To Amend The Highway Traffic Act. (Bill 10)

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that Bill 10, An Act To Amend The Highway Traffic Act be now read a second time.

Motion, second reading of a bill, "An Act To Amend The Highway Traffic Act." (Bill 10)

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. O'BRIEN: Yes, Mr. Speaker.

I move, seconded by the hon. Minister of Human Resources, Labour and Employment, that Bill 10, An Act To Amend The Highway Traffic Act be read now a second time.

As you can remember, in the fall session I brought forward, in regards to me being the Minister responsible for Government Services and thus responsible for this bill, The Highway Traffic Act in general. I brought forward some amendments in the fall that I consider to be very, very important to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador in regards to safety on our highways.

Just to mention a couple of them to refresh people's minds in the House of Assembly, is that we doubled the fines in regards to speeding in construction areas. We saw that over the last number of years with all of the construction and the highway repaving of our provincial highways and on the Trans-Canada Highway, people did not keep it in their minds that there are people out there on highways working for us, that is the people of Newfoundland and Labrador in regard to upgrading our highways and making them safe and fit to drive on because we have invested a lot of money in regards to provincial roads at that time.

We amended some other parts of the act too, as well, in regards to other safety issues. One to do with buses and the placement of exits in regards to those buses and that kind of thing.

Mr. Speaker, the amendments that I am brining forward today, which are a continuation of the ones that we brought forward in the last session, for the most part are housekeeping items to remove unnecessary red tape, duplication, obsolete provisions and providing a clearer language where we all can understand the Highway Traffic Act as it pertains to our highways and the regulations thereof, especially our police officers too, as well. Sometimes when you read a piece of legislation you can certainly interpret it one way, one person can and another person can interpret it another way.

There have been a number of revisions to the Highway Traffic Act over the years but the last major revision to the act occurred in 1989, which is a long time ago. We have seen a lot of growth in Newfoundland and Labrador since then. Our highways have certainly expanded. We see more traffic on our highways. So, we have to keep up with the times too, as well, in regards to the legislation pertaining to the highways of our Province and our provincial roads. The amendments are a continual process to change them and make sure that we are not outdated and using redundant provisions.

One of the things that I would like to highlight in regard to some particular changes is with the seatbelt use. We are proposing eliminating two seatbelt exemptions for a person driving a vehicle in reverse and for people entering and exiting a vehicle frequently. In that regard, Mr. Speaker, data and research have shown that when a person is driving in reverse without a seatbelt they can be seriously injured too, as well, no differently if they are going in a forward motion. It depends on the speed that they are moving at. We have the responsibility to make sure that people are safe within their vehicles. So we are proposing the elimination of being able to take off their seatbelt when driving in reverse.

The other one is in regard to people who have to leave their vehicle in regard to - I am just trying to remember exactly an example of what that kind of a driver would be. Maybe a taxi driver would be one of them. Anyway, that is fine enough in regard to having to remove themselves from their vehicle or enter their vehicle on numerous occasions, but serious accidents can certainly happen in between those occasions as well.

In the meantime, with the consent of the hon. Minister of Municipal Affairs and the hon. Minister of Transportation and Works, we have agreed that we would leave in place the provision that allows a garbage truck collector to be able to not wear a seat belt because we find, especially in the cities and towns that we have, that these people actually stand up while they driving and they get out and then put the garbage in and then they drive the vehicle standing up. What we also have reflected in the amendments is that when they are moving from their collection area to a waste site or a collector area that they would have to wear a seat belt in that regard from point A to point B, and anything over twenty kilometres an hour as well; because, again, their safety is utmost to the people and to us as a government so we have to make sure that they respect the law in that respect and also that they are safe. The bottom line of it is that any injury they would have would come off the bottom line of the town or the city that they are working for, so we would not want any of those injured as well.

We must remember, even though these amendments are certainly housekeeping amendments and red tape reduction amendments - and clarity in the act - that the Highway Traffic Act is there for a reason. It establishes the safe operation of a vehicle in regard to our provincial highways and the Trans-Canada Highway itself, and it also sets the structure of Motor Registration as well in regard to how that whole operation works and provides the services that it does to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I am going to sit and listen carefully to the hon. members across the House who might have any comments in regard to this proposed amendment to the Highway Traffic Act, and hopefully I can answer at this particular time any of the questions that they may have in regard to clause per clause.

I could go down clause per clause right now, but I think that would probably be a waste of the valuable time of this hon. House, so I would like to actually take the questions and then hopefully I can come back with the answers where they are clear and they are comfortable with the act itself.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I will sit and I will listen carefully to the hon. members.

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

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

It is a pleasure to be able to stand today with regard to Bill10, An Act To Amend The Highway Traffic Act.

I know the minister mentioned the legislation that was brought forth here in this hon. House last fall with regard to dealing with issues with drivers speeding and not obeying the rules in areas where construction was taking place. No doubt about it, that was an honourable move that was made by this House last year to correct that situation. Because all too often, and I am sure we have all experienced it, not only on our major highways but throughout our districts where there is construction ongoing from time to time, individuals have very little regard for the signage that is up, very little regard for the individuals, whether they be workers with the Department of Transportation and Works or whether they be working with some individual construction company, to see how they operate their vehicles on the highway. As a matter of fact, from time to time I have even had the opportunity to see where police cars were on each end of the construction site so that they could give a warning to the individuals.

When you see people, whether it is getting ready to paint the lines on our highways, whether it is paving or upgrading or ditching or what have you, I think it is a major issue that safety would be first and foremost in the minds of each and every driver here in the Province when it comes to seeing the workers on our highways.

The minister also mentioned the legislation with regard to the issues of bus safety, another very important factor. We know it has been brought forward, I think it was in 2004, by the Auditor General, and again in 2009, and we bring it forward here in the hon. House from time to time, issues that we have presented to us by callers, whether they be parents or even from some of the drivers themselves who are working for some of those bus operators.

Again, it is a very important piece of legislation to know that the concerns are being put forward, because the cargo that we transport on those school buses is our most valuable resource, and we all say that. It is our young people, and nothing could be any more important than to see that their transportation back and forth to school is being dealt with.

Mr. Speaker, at one time the bus transportation was always within our smaller communities and going at very low speeds, but now we know here in St. John's and other areas we are transporting our students on the main highways where it is 90 kilometres to 100 kilometres, so it is very important that bus safety would be brought forward in the manner that it was.

The other issue I think that was involved in the last piece of legislation - before I get into Bill 10 today because it all ties into the rules and regulations for traffic on our highways - was the surrender of driver's licences and various issues pertaining to I guess drivers who were not in the proper form when they were on our highways. That is very important, because all too often - and I am a firm believer that our police force do their best, whether it is the RNC or the RCMP or whether it is the inspectors through the department. They do their best and you cannot be everywhere at the one time, but I think there should be more inspections. All too often - we see it coming up close to Christmas, we see it coming up again like this past weekend, the twenty-fourth of May weekend. I think it is crucial that periodically throughout the year on times when drivers are not expecting anyone to step forward and have the highway blocked where they can check out and see, because all too often when they set up those roadblocks we hear about how many people were convicted of having an alcohol level that was not acceptable for driving on our highways, where from time to time they found out that they did not have a driver's licence or they did not have any insurance on their vehicles and so on.

So, Mr. Speaker, it is very important, and I will get into the one that he mentioned with regards to seatbelts and the exemption when I get to the particular areas of Bill 10, An Act To Amend The Highway Traffic Act.

We know that under this bill, under the analysis it shows different issues that are being discussed here, whether it is registration of vehicle requirements with regards to dealer plates and how plates are attached, the terminology with regards to markers and stickers and so on, and how they are attached to a vehicle, the overtaking of another vehicle and so on.

So, Mr. Speaker, there are quite a few issues with regards to this piece of legislation that is very important. It also comes down to seatbelt use and so on, and reporting, whether it be by registered nurses or optometrists and various professional people on the reporting of incidents, whether an individual is safe to drive a vehicle and so on.

Well, Mr. Speaker, there is one thing I have to say about Bill 10, and that is in the explanatory notes. All too often we get a piece of legislation where there is only one notation explaining probably a fairly lengthy bill or it could be a short one, but this one here under the explanatory notes, it goes right through each and every clause and explains what is happening and what is about to take place, the sections that are to be deleted, any additions to it or if it is just an error in some spelling or punctuation or what have you. It is very detailed, and I can assure you it really helps. When you are going through a bill sometimes it can be confusing but when you see it in this format, I have to say it makes it all that much easier.

"This Bill would amend the Highway Traffic Act to update various provisions to reflect current practice, to consolidate requirements and eliminate redundancies."

That is what this bill is about, Mr. Speaker. I guess it is really housecleaning to some degree but also bringing in other very important clauses to be added to this bill. Changes taking place in the act have more to do with the cleanup of the act, to make language consistent throughout the act and to make it easier for interpretation.

We see this happening with several pieces of legislation through the spring and fall session of last year and also for this session. I am sure what government is doing is bringing each and every bill up to a standard where it is with more modern day language because some of the pieces of this act, I can assure you and I am going to touch on some of them with regards to different sections, where once there was a rule that if you were going to pass someone you had to honk your horn and so on. So, different clauses like that will be eliminated from this bill.

"Clause 1 of the Bill would repeal and substitute paragraph 2(q) of the Act to make it consistent with current drafting practice. This clause would further repeal the definitions of "transporter" and "transporter plate" as these terms are no longer used and are not required."

Like I said, Mr. Speaker, that is where most of this legislation in this particular bill is coming from, is to eliminate different words that were used at one point in time but will not be used in a fashion as they were in the past.

Under clause 2 of the act which "would revise section 10 of the Act to ensure consistency in the use of the term "marker". We are also used to the terminology of stickers from time to time and the language referred to a sticker can mean anything. Someone could try to pull a fast one. Yes, I got a sticker on my vehicle, but there could be a wording on it from some company or from anything with regards to it but if you call it a marker, I guess this is where government is coming from and there will be no confusion in the future to have to deal with that because stickers on a plate are now to be known as markers under this piece of legislation.

"In clause 3 of the Bill, subsection 11(2) of the Act would be amended to delete the requirement that registrations be signed in pen and ink." We know, with the technology we have today, we can go online. We don't have to sign anything. There are certain times we have to sign, yes, but in the past it was in the legislation that you had use pen and ink to sign any documentation, any application, that you made, whether it was an application for your license or anything within the department. We know now, Mr. Speaker, that this is not needed anymore. I know I go online, and I am sure many people in this Province do, because the minister, only last week, explained the new format that is being used. All you do now is go online, and as long as you have your pin number and your insurance number you can order the stickers for your vehicle. I have to say, within a matter of less than a week I had mine back. The process that we are going through now is completely changing to what it was in the past, Mr. Speaker.

Under 11(5) of the old act, the registrar may prescribe different forms of application to be used in respect of the registration of different vehicles or classes of vehicles or in respect to the same vehicle or class of vehicles used for different purposes.

Mr. Speaker, we know that from time to time when we get something in the mail the registrar's signature has to be on it, but that doesn't have to be signed with pen and ink anymore. I guess, it is just photocopied or whatever process is used to see that that is required. The requirement now to sign with electronic pen is really not pen and ink. It is not really reflective of a signature.

Mr. Speaker, furthermore the application process and different sections of the application ask for a signature, so in actual fact the application is an appropriate signature.

Under clause 3, that is what is being done here. We eliminating the fact that we are always having to sign with pen and ink. That requirement is not needed anymore.

"Clause 4 of the Bill would repeal and substitute section 12 of the Act to streamline registration requirements. The proposed change is consistent with changes made to the definition of "resident" in an earlier amendment to the Act." This is where we come into, Mr. Speaker, with regard to section 13 of the old, where they talk about a commercial vehicle. The commercial motor vehicles owned or operated by or on behalf of a non-resident should not be operated in the Province unless it is registered under this act.

Mr. Speaker, there is a change now with regard to this, because under clause 4 this is what has to be done. We all know that each and every vehicle has to be registered, and there are guidelines that have to be followed with regard to whether you purchase a vehicle outside of the Province. To bring it back home is one thing, or if you are living in another province and you travel here to the Province, to come back home and to stay here, if your vehicle was registered in another province, you have ninety days to take care of that.

Mr. Speaker, section 5(1) of the bill would amend 16(1) of the act to require compliance with section 16 for the purpose of registration. So this piece of legislation goes into great detail with regard to registration and the use of either one plate or two plates in certain instances.

I am of the impression that, for clarification, I think, a truck - a vehicle, a car, we only use one plate, but with a truck you can have two plates. Also with regard to 16(1) this just allows the registrar to not allow approval of registration because of fines owing or arrangements to pay from a person. The Department of Justice recommended it would be clear under no circumstances.

Section 22 of the act would repeal clause 6 of the act. This section, which requires dealers to accompany prospective buyers when test driving unregistered vehicles, is impractical and unnecessary as the prospective buyer is already required to have a driver's licence.

So the old act, what it was saying here, is that if an individual went to a dealer to buy a vehicle they would have to have someone in the vehicle with them. I do not think that is required any more under this piece of legislation. I would say that is highly outdated.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) time.

MR. BUTLER: We will continue on, regardless of what some hon. members think. You have an opportunity to go through the bill, and I can assure you that I will take the time, if possible. I might not need it all, Mr. Speaker, but I will take most of it anyway.

I have to say that when someone takes a vehicle for a test drive they do not have to really have anyone accompany them. That was probably the way of the past, but not any more.

Clause 7 of the bill, subsection 23(1) of the act would be amended and subsection 23(2) would be repealed. These provisions, which require a dealer to keep a written record of a vehicle upon which a dealer's plate is used, placed an uncertain administration upon any dealership. So, under this piece of legislation, in clause 7, that will not be required.

When we go to clause 8, these provisions are now outdated under sections 28(2) and (3) of the act. They refer here to "…a lost identification plate or a vehicle licence would more appropriately be returned to the registrar or the nearest traffic officer." That is very appropriate. What better place to return a found plate than to the registrar?

The other issue that we find from time to time, and I know this is very important throughout the Province, what we are finding here now, a lot of people, rather than register their own vehicles, they have a system in place where they take the markers – I am going to use markers for my first time now in referencing something, seeing it is in this legislation – where they actually take the markers from the individual plates.

As a matter of fact, I had a constituent come into my yard one day who was dealing with an issue. When he returned to his car, he looked and they had the full corner clipped off his plate. Rather than take their time and try to peel it off, they just had a pair of snips or whatever and took the full corner off and were gone with the issue.

Mr. Speaker, I know it is a job to bring in legislation or anything to deal with that, but in some cases people might know the person owning the plate and they would return it to the proper authorities. People are up to everything, and that is one of the issues that is very troublesome for many people who go through the correct process and register their vehicles legitimately.

Section 30 of the act would be repealed and substituted in clause 9 of the bill to reduce the level of detail respecting the attachment of plates to any vehicle. I have to say, Mr. Speaker, that is probably only a minor issue for many people but it is a very important issue, bringing in the legislation that your plates have to be attached to your vehicle in a very appropriate place and in a certain format. Because many people, you see them from time to time going around and they have them tied on, they have them on different areas of their pickup, and there is one purpose for that: because, when they go back home they can take that plate off and put it on another vehicle. I think it is good to see this in here, to make sure that plates are attached properly to a vehicle. That would eliminate that situation.

In clause 10 of the bill, section 34 of the act would be repealed and substituted to ensure consistency in the use of the term "marker" throughout the act. I already touched on that, Mr. Speaker, but the terminology of sticker is not going to be used any more and marker is used throughout this piece of legislation.

Clause 11 of the bill would repeal section 41(4) of the act. This subsection does not reflect current practices.

Subsection 45(3) would be repealed in clause 12 of the bill, as it is redundant.

Like I said earlier, many of the clauses in much of our legislation now have to be repealed, because legislation that was applicable at one particular time is not any more, for whatever reasons, whether it is the technology that we use, the different formats that we use, Mr. Speaker.

Clause 13 of the bill is another issue where 46(3)(a) and (c) of the act, these provisions are contained elsewhere in the act.

Some of the clauses that are being eliminated here are for the very reason that they are repeated, or the explanation is given somewhere else in that particular bill.

Clause 14 of the bill would repeal 48(1)(g) of the act. The registrar has methods to determine physical and mental competency to drive in other provisions of the act.

This is the same issue here, where that has been dealt with in another clause of the act. This is removed because other sections really address this authority of the registrar to determine the state of a person and their ability to drive. Really, it is again to clean it up and make it more consistent with other clauses throughout the act.

Clause 15 of the act would be updated and reflect more or less current practices. In this particular case, sections 49(1) and (1.1) of the act – by this change being here, it would cut out various frauds by not using appropriate signatures and so on.

Mr. Speaker, clause 16 of the act would be amended with subsections 50(2) and (3) of the act, as those provisions are now outdated. The more appropriate route for return of a lost driver's licence would be through the registrar or the nearest traffic officer within the Province.

Mr. Speaker, in number 17 the bill would repeal and substitute section 56(3) of the act. This subsection, which requires inspections of a driver's licence of a person renting a car, would be update to reflect current practices.

I think today, in this age, it is very common, if you go in to any dealership to rent a vehicle - and from time to time I have had, I guess, the experience to have to do that - you do have to show your driver's licence, and rightly so, and this is reflected in clause 17 of this act. I guess, from time to time, people have gone in, whether it is with false IDs – now it is a job to do that, because your photo is on your driver's license and it eliminates a lot of those issues.

The amendments in clauses 18 and 19 of the bill would repeal references to the Registrar's Advisory Committee in the Act. This committee was established, Mr. Speaker, back in 2002, I think it was, but they never, ever met and it is now redundant as there are other processes in place to fulfil the functions which were required of this advisory committee. I guess government in their wisdom, and the minister and the department, knowing that this is not required any more have seen cause to eliminate this particular section.

Section 21, Mr. Speaker, "Subsection 81(1) of the Act is repealed and the following substituted:" It has to do with a registrar shall suspend licence. It goes on to say in 81(1), "Where (a) a judgement for damages arising out of a motor vehicle accident is rendered against a person by a court in the province or by a court in the jurisdiction outside the Province; (b) damages have been assessed against the person; and (c) that person fails, within 15 days from the date upon which the judgement became final, to satisfy that judgement, the registrar, upon receiving a certification of that final judgement from the court in which it is rendered, shall suspend the driver's license and vehicle license of that person." That is under section 21, subsection 81(1) of the act.

I know, even by doing this, Mr. Speaker, we will still have individuals who have gone through the court system, their licenses have been suspended, but they will still take to the roads. That is why I mentioned earlier, the more inspections we have on our highways, what we know as the roadblocks and so on, the more of those we have the better it is, the better it is to make our highways that much safer. I know what is happening here, that the person, if they fail within fifteen days, and rightly so, this should be dealt with, Mr. Speaker.

In Clause 22 of the bill, section 96 of the act would be amended to repeal the requirement for audible signals when passing. That is the one in the old act where it says: when you are passing a vehicle you have to honk your horn. That was a practice years ago but today we do not do that because I would have to say, if you were coming in over Veterans Highway or coming into the city here and you are passing a vehicle at the speed we travel this day and age, there would be a lot of honking of horns coming in over those main highways. You no longer have to do that and in Clause 22 of the bill, section 96, this is what has been done here.

The other one, Mr. Speaker, Clause 23 of the bill would repeal section 138 of the act, and this section is antiquated and redundant. The protections of animals are contained in section 139 of the act. This piece of legislation that is being taken away here has to do with, I guess, that we do not see it anymore on our highways in Newfoundland unless someone's cow or horse happens to get out of the pasture or what have you. What it was, when animals were roaming fairly free, anyone with a traction engine coming upon an animal on a highway had to take their time. They had to give them, I suppose in laymen's words, almost the right of way. Today we do not have that.

It is just another example, this piece of legislation that we are dealing with here in section 138, of cleaning up the act by including all the language in that particular area when it comes to the wellbeing of our animals I guess, Mr. Speaker. Under Clause 23, that was what was in the old legislation. That is where the government and the department is coming from to take care of that piece of legislation.

Under section 25 and section 26, they would consolidate section 174.1 and 174.2 of the act to address redundancy in these sections. What we are referring to here, Mr. Speaker, under Clause 25 section 174.1, where it says, "A medical practitioner licensed under the Medical Act, 2005, a nurse practitioner as defined in the Registered Nurses Act, 2008 or an optometrist licensed under the Optometry Act, 2004 shall report to the registrar the name, address, date of birth and clinical condition of a person 16 years of age or older attending the practitioner or the optometrist for medical or optometric services who, in the opinion of the practitioner or optometrist, is suffering from a condition that may make it dangerous for the person to operate a vehicle - it says in section 2, "An action shall not be brought against a medical practitioner, a nurse practitioner or an optometrist for complying with subsection (1)," and, "A report referred to in subsection (1) is privileged for the information of the registrar only and shall not open for public inspection."

Mr. Speaker, I guess the minister will respond when he closes debate in second reading. I have, I would not say a major concern about that, and that is clause 25 section 174(1) with regard to the Act is repealed and the following substituted. While I have a major concern, I guess we all know from time to time mistakes can be made. It may be that an incorrect report can be put in. A doctor, a nurse, or whomever in that field, could put a report in that may be incorrect. God Forbid, but we have seen it happen through not only our medical profession but in other aspects of our daily living where something can be done and it would be incorrect. What happens then, if this report was an incorrect report, diagnosed for the wrong reasons or what have you?

I know of cases in my area where people went to the hospital and came back with a diagnosis that was not even their file. They came home and went through this hard time, I guess. We are saying here, that no action should be brought against them. Nobody wants to see, with anyone in their professions, a law suit go against them. I do not know if there should be something here to add to that section rather than just that, if this report comes in saying they are unable to drive, just in case there is an error. Maybe there should be a timeframe or what have you, maybe an appeal process even, where the individual could go back and challenge that and try to get it clarified, not altogether for the sake of legal action against anyone. I would not want to go that far with it, but I think there should be some avenue open there with regards to this issue.

"Subsection 27(1) of the Bill would repeal paragraph 178(5)(a) of the Act to eliminate an exemption on the use of seat belts while driving in reverse. The benefit of seat belt use in slow speed collisions does not substitute this exemption." Where the minister is coming from here, I think: it is there now that you could remove your seat belt when you are traveling in reverse, but now it is going to be enforced that you have to keep your seat belt on. Personally, I think that makes a lot of sense because many times you could be backing up and going slow yourself but –

AN HON. MEMBER: That would be ‘backupable' legislation.

MR. BUTLER: That is more or less a piece of ‘backupable' legislation.

Mr. Speaker, it is not the person who is backing up probably. Someone could be coming in another direction at a fairly hefty speed, not knowing what they are doing, and strike that particular vehicle. Just because that person does not have their seat belt on they could receive serious injuries as well.

When it comes to the seatbelt section of it, when we talk about the seatbelts, I know the minister said that the only option that is open now is someone who is, say, a garbage collector in the various towns. I understand that they have to get in and out of their vehicles, but I notice in my area and probably in other areas, a lot of them do not get back and forth into the cab. There are little side pieces where they can stand and hold on and so on, but I do not think that eliminates the driver because he is usually always to the wheel. He would have to wear his seatbelt, and those individuals, once they are travelling from the community to the – once they travel to the site wherever the waste is to be delivered, they would have to use their seatbelts.

Anyway, Mr. Speaker, another issue seeing we are on seatbelts. I am not saying the law will ever be brought in, but - and I mentioned this earlier - where our school buses are on those highways now where they are travelling at tremendous speeds, and maybe there are many reasons why there are not seatbelts in school buses but I have a major concern. When they are in the smaller communities going from point A to point B but now when they are on those major highways, Mr. Speaker, I think all too often now there is – the option is there - the major problem is that if there should be a serious accident with sixty or seventy students on a bus with no seatbelts, I think it is something that we should look at, Mr. Speaker.

Section 29 of the bill would amend 174 1(4)(a) of the act to update a reference. It is like I said earlier, a lot of the pieces of legislation within this particular act is doing just that.

Section 25 of the bill would revise to ensure consistency in the use of the term marker. This is something that is right throughout the bill where individuals have to get used to the new term, and section 29 of the act will do just that, where individuals have to use the word term - to make sure that they use the word marker rather than sticker in the future.

Mr. Speaker, one of the last clauses and one of the final comments I guess that I have to make on this particular issue is with regards to "Clause 30 of the Bill would repeal and substitute paragraph 195(1)(n) of the Act to clarify that provision and revise it consequential to changes proposed in clause 10." Clause 32 of the act is a proclamation for that particular clause.

Other notes of interest, Mr. Speaker, the amendments that we mentioned earlier or changes to the act in the fall of 2008, they are not yet proclaimed but we know that changes to a particular bill can come into force. Therefore, they are not actually in law yet, but hopefully before long they will. As I said, there are a lot of clean up words and phrases to make it consistent and simpler to the understanding of the general public.

Having said that, Mr. Speaker, Bill 10, An Act To Amend The Highway Traffic Act, is an act that covers quite a few areas. Some of them key components, some of them very important. More of it is housecleaning and cleaning up the phrases and the issues that have to be dealt with.

So, Mr. Speaker, having said that, I want to say that those amendments that we are looking at here today in Bill 10, in conjunction with the bill that was dealt with in the fall, which has not been proclaimed yet, I would have to say it is in the right direction. It is to make sure that our highways are safer and that people, when they register their vehicles, when they travel back to the Province, that each and every individual and every vehicle is registered properly.

I have to say, I do not see anything wrong with this bill. Just to bring up a couple of issues there, and hopefully, the minister will be able to respond to that when he takes his place.

Thank you very much.

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

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

Just a few comments, not a lot, on Bill 10, An Act To Amend The Highway Traffic Act.

My colleague, the Member for Port de Grave, has gone through every clause and explained what every clause is, and I do not see the necessity for my doing that as well but there are a couple of things that I want to look at in particular.

Obviously, much of this bill is simply repealing outdated regulations. I think maybe the Member for Port de Grave may have mentioned some of the outdated ones. Some of them – all of them actually, the outdated ones, are very, very obvious.

I do not know if the Member for Port de Grave mentioned, one in particular that really struck me when I read it – I think he may have – but when an engine and person astride a horse meet, and what should happen when an engine and a person astride a horse meet? Now I do know that that can still happen today on some of the roads in the Province but I do not think that it happens in the way that was envisioned by the old legislation. So, that is just one example of outdated regulations.

The bill itself is a bill which has a lot of housekeeping things to deal with. I think it also is probably, as far as I can see from some of it, part of the red tape reduction. A lot of the amendments, many of them actually, are to clarify the term: marker, which has been used to replace the previous term: sticker. Because sticker is now going to be called marker then there were a lot of clauses in the act that had to be changed to reflect the different word that is now going to be used. So there really is not much to say about this act from that perspective. It is mainly housekeeping and some red tape reduction.

There is one thing though, probably two. One that I am not quite understanding – and when the minister stands I would like him to give some explanation. Under clause 6, it is repealing subsection 20(2) of the act and that is, "Where a bus or school bus or a commercial motor vehicle is being operated for demonstration purposes it shall be accompanied by the dealer or an employee of the dealer." The note on clause 2, the explanatory note says that this regulation is being repealed because it is impractical and unnecessary. I guess I would like a bit more of an explanation of why it is impractical and unnecessary, and that might be connected to why this was a regulation in the beginning.

It seems a bit logical to me because of the nature of commercial vehicles, buses and school buses that there could be some logic to wanting the dealer or the employee of the dealer present for the demonstration purposes of one of these vehicles. If the minister could give me just a bit of an explanation on that, I would appreciate it. It is not a big issue, but I am sort of curious because it would have seemed to have been a bit of a safety feature. I understand the explanatory note, because it says the person doing the test run could not do it without being a licensed person. Nevertheless, knowing why it was there in the beginning and why the drafters of the legislation think that it is actually impractical and unnecessary to keep it in there, I would just like an explanation on that.

There was one section in the act that was not totally clear to me initially. I did speak to the minister about it. Clause 25 of the act is referring to section 174.1 of the act. The old section is being repealed and a new section is being put in. While I understood the section that was being put in I misunderstood the subsection that came after it. I am going to speak to it simply because it can be confusing, and it took me reading it a couple of times and reading it with the minister before it dawned on me what it means. I just thought, for the sake of people who would be affected by this, that it is important to make sure we all understand what this clause is about.

Under clause 25, the old section in the act is being repealed, and what is now going in is 174.1(1), "A medical practitioner licensed under the Medical Act, 2005, a nurse practitioner as defined in the Registered Nurses Act, 2008 or an optometrist licensed under the Optometry Act, 2004 shall report to the registrar the name, address, date of birth and clinical condition of a person 16 years of age or older attending the practitioner or optometrist for medical or optometric services who, in the opinion of the practitioner or the optometrist, is suffering from a condition that may make it dangerous for the person to operate a motor vehicle."

Then subsection (2), "An action shall not be brought against a medical practitioner, a nurse practitioner or an optometrist for complying with subsection (1)."

After reading it a couple of times and reading it with the minister, it became clear. Obviously, if somebody has to be reported, they may take it as an action against the practitioner. They may say: you don't have the right to do this. You don't have the right to report me and say that I can't drive. Subsection (2) actually protects the practitioner who may have to report the person.

I think it is important that the practitioners understand that the amendment to the act protects them, so that somebody who is reported on cannot take an action against them, or if they try to they don't have any basis in law for doing so.

I was glad to have that clarified for me with the minister, and I think it was important for me to point it out.

Having spoken to those two points, I really don't have anything else, I don't think. Wait now. I have one more tag here. No, I don't have anything else that is questionable. They are all common sense, and obviously that is what this is bill is about, making the act more modern and with common sense in place of some of the outdated language.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Government Services. If he speaks now, he shall close debate.

The hon. the Minister of Government Services.

MR. O'BRIEN: Mr. Speaker, certainly I listened carefully to my hon. colleagues across the House in regard to their support for this bill in regard to what it stands for. When both myself and my hon. colleagues referenced the amendments that we brought forward in the fall session, we addressed some safety issues for our driving public, so I guess it is mostly today amendments that will marry up with those amendments and then be proclaimed at a later date - not too much later, because I think they are very, very important to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

There were some questions in regard to (inaudible). One referenced clause 25, which is there for the protection of the medical people themselves, the optometrist or the practitioner. That is nothing new, actually. They are protected now as it is but we wanted to make it clearer in the act where they are required by law to report, so we want to make sure that they are fully protected under the legislation as well.

Also, there was a question in regard to misdiagnosis, if that could be addressed as well. Under the act right now, any report that would come in from a practitioner or optometrist would be reviewed fully by our medical consultants. That is number one. Number two, they can actually appeal that on a second opinion. They can go to another practitioner and come with a second opinion and appeal it on that, and that would be reviewed by our medical advisory people as well.

Also, they have access to the full report as well. All people do: the person, the practitioners and the optometrist. They can actually, if they had to - which I cannot recall or my staff cannot recall any case that went as far as going to the courts to have it overturned, but there is a process that they can go through and certainly their rights would be protected as well as protecting the particular professional person as well.

One of my colleagues across the House, the Member for Port de Grave, mentioned in regard to buses having seat belts as well. That is an issue that has been the subject of research and some debate across Canada and elsewhere. We all know, I suppose, as well, or I might point out that buses are designed in a certain way for the protection of their occupants. It is all moulded and rounded inside. It has no sharp and jagged edges. The seats are attached in a different way than the norm. Buses in general are (inaudible) by Transport Canada and other professionals, and are certainly thought to be very, very safe in regard to the occupants, but we will continue to monitor any research or any new developments in that area but we will not be mandating that all our school buses would require seat belts at any time in the near future. We will wait on any research or anything that might come forward through other jurisdictions on that as well, but I do want to point out to the general public that just because they do not have seat belts does not mean that they are not safe, because they are designed in a special way for that reason and for the occupants that they are carrying.

The only other clause that was referred to was clause 6, by my hon. colleagues. I think it was the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi who referenced clause 6 with regard to requiring a person to accompany a person who is doing a test drive on a commercial vehicle. The reason why that was considered to be inappropriate is that, first off, the dealer has the responsibility and would not allow a person to drive a commercial vehicle unless they had the appropriate class of licence. That is the reason why it is thought to be inappropriate and not practical, because if we go in and test drive vehicles we have a licence to drive a vehicle so we can go to any of the dealerships here in St. John's or across Newfoundland and Labrador and test drive a vehicle by ourselves, with our spouse or whoever we might want to take in a vehicle with us, just as long as we have the appropriate licence thereof. The same thing applies here in regard to having an appropriate licence. That is the reason why it is impractical, but then the dealers can also require that one of their employees would accompany that particular person. They can do that at any given time themselves, as well, so we would leave that discretion up to the dealers. They have every right to do it, and certainly they do double-check and check the person's appropriate licence before they are allowed to operate the vehicle.

If that answers the questions, Mr. Speaker, I will take my seat and close second reading.

Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: Is it the pleasure of the House that Bill 10 be now read a second time?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

Carried.

CLERK: A bill, An Act To Amend The Highway Traffic Act. (Bill 10)

MR. SPEAKER: This bill has now been read a second time.

When shall the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House?

MS BURKE: Today, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Today.

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The Highway Traffic Act," read a second time, ordered referred to a Committee of the Whole House presently, by leave. (Bill 10)

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, we will call, from the Order Paper, number 23, second reading of a bill, An Act To Amend The Provincial Court Act, 1991. (Bill 28)

Motion, second reading of a bill, "An Act To Amend The Provincial Court Act, 1991." (Bill 28)

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Justice and Attorney General.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. T. MARSHALL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is my duty today to speak to second reading of Bill 28, which is basically a very straightforward bill, a very simple bill and a very short bill. The bill reports two things. One is a housekeeping measure to correct an error that was inadvertently made in the last session of the House when we amended the Provincial Court Act. The second thing we are asked to do is reduce the tenure of the chief judge of the Provincial Court from ten years to seven years.

The first section will deal with the tenure. Section 7(1) of the current Provincial Court Act says that the Lieutenant-Governor in Council, which is the Cabinet, shall appoint a judge as chief judge. One of the Provincial Court judges gets appointed as the chief. Subsection 2 of section 7 says the term of office of the chief judge shall be ten years.

We are proposing in this bill to reduce the term from ten years to seven years. The former chief judge of the Provincial Court is Judge Milton Reid, Judge Reg Reid as he is generally known, he has now retired from the position of chief judge after many years of service to the Province.

Before we appointed a new chief judge, officials in the Department of Justice had a look at the term and there was a feeling that the term of ten years might be too long. It certainly was the longest term of any province in the country.

Before the act came into effect in 1991, the Provincial Court Act, the term of the chief judge was set by the Lieutenant-Governor in Council, and that was the Cabinet, but when the act came in, in 1991, the term for a chief judge was set for ten years. Since 1991 there have been two chief judges of the court. The first was Chief Judge Donald Luther, who served this Province from 1991 to 2001.

Judge Luther, I remember well. He was a young lawyer who came to work in my former law firm. He went to the bench – there was a time when government was attempting to induce young lawyers to become magistrates or Provincial Court judges – magistrates in those days. They were looking for people who had law degrees. I remember having a discussion with Judge Luther as to whether he should accept an appointment to the bench, given his relatively lack of experience in practicing law, and we disagreed.

I felt that before someone went to the bench they should practice law for a certain period of time and have some experience and live a bit and get to know their fellowman before they place themselves in the position where they were judging that fellowman. He disagreed, and I think he was right. He served the Province very well as a Provincial Court judge, and then for ten years as chief judge. I am told that the Provincial Court, under his leadership, was a very modern and forward thinking institution in this Province.

Chief Judge Milton Reid, who I had the pleasure of working with in my capacity as Attorney General and Minister of Justice for three years, and then again, since the end of last year. He indicated to me a desire to – he was ready to retire. Thankfully, for the people of the Province, he has agreed to remain as chair of a committee under the criminal code. I forget the proper name. I think it is the mental health review board. So, we will have the benefit of his leadership and his ability.

The current ten years, as I have said previously, is the longest in the country. The average term of office for a chief judge in Canada, or in other Canadian jurisdictions, is seven years. Ontario is a year longer than that. Ontario has an eight year term. Many provinces, including New Brunswick and Alberta and Quebec and Manitoba, all have seven year terms. So the proposal of a shorter term of seven years as opposed to ten, the department feels would allow for revitalization of the court. It would allow for opportunities for a change of leadership for the Provincial Court judiciary, and as well as a new direction from the court.

I believe Nova Scotia, and possibly two other provinces, still have the Lieutenant-Governor in Council. Cabinet, by regulation, determine the term of a chief judge. I think one of the jurisdictions, they appoint for a five-year term and it is renewable, but given the principle of the independence of the judiciary, I feel difficulty with the concept of renewing an appointment of a chief judge because you can kind of hold it out of the judge: A chief judge did not do what government wanted. The appointment would not be renewed, and I think most people would feel that that is unseemly. So the desire is to go with a fixed term and the question is what that term should be. It was felt that ten was too long. Some put forward the view that it was five, but it was agreed that we would go with the seven, which is what most of the other jurisdictions in the country have.

Mr. Speaker, the government has taken great steps to revitalize the provincial court system. My predecessor in this position established the task force on criminal justice efficiencies, which made a number of recommendations, were targeted to increase the efficiency of the provincial court here in the City of St. John's.

This report was commissioned and it was supported with over $700,000 in Budget 2008. Included in the funding was money for Legal Aid Commission to offer counsel of choice to individuals who are facing murder or manslaughter charges, an intake officer for Legal Aid Commission or provincial court and a trial co-ordinator at provincial court, as well as a paralegal for the Crown Attorney's office.

Mr. Speaker, we now believe that it is now an appropriate time to make this change in term of a chief judge from ten to seven years under the Provincial Court Act of 1991. As I said, Chief Judge Reid is retiring, or he did retire on April 30, after a successful tenure in that role. At the present time the associate chief judge is serving in this role in an acting capacity, pending the appointment of a new chief judge. It would be improper, I believe, to attempt to reduce the tenure of a chief judge while there is a chief judge in office. So right now we have a vacancy and prior to making this appointment of a new chief judge, we feel it is time to bring forward this legislation to reduce the tenure of a chief judge now from ten years to seven years.

So in this light, the timing is correct to bring this amendment before the House for debate prior to the appointment of a new chief because to make the change of tenure now or to make the tenure while the chief judge was in office would raise concerns about interference with the independence of the judiciary.

So, Mr. Speaker, that is it. It is a very simple bill. It is a very straightforward bill and I would urge its passing.

Thank you.

Oh, wait, sorry. I forgot to deal with a housekeeping issue.

Members of the House will remember that in the last session we amended the Provincial Court Act to change the make up of the judicial council. We separated the investigative role and the prosecutorial role of judicial council from its decision making role. We separated the investigative and the prosecutorial role from that of the decision maker.

If you will remember, we created two other bodies. We created a complaints review committee which consisted of three people. They would review the complaints that came in. We also created another group called the judicial complaints panel, and there were two adjudicative tribunals under that panel. We have a situation where the judicial council members consisted of the chief judge, the President of the Provincial Court Judges Association, there is also a member of the Law Society and there are two members who are appointed by the minister. They are appointed for a term of three years and are eligible for reappointment.

With respect to the judicial complaints panel, they were also appointed for a term of three years and are eligible for reappointment, but what we did not do was with respect to the complaints review committee. We established a complaints review committee. We established that that would have three members as well but we did not establish what the term was. We, through inadvertence, left out the fact that the members of the complaints review committee would also be appointed for three years and would be eligible for reappointment.

So, Mr. Speaker this bill is to reduce the term of the chief judge from ten to seven years. It is to correct the inadvertent error that was made last year, and to provide that the members of the complaints review committee will be appointed for a term of three years and eligible for reappointment.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

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

I appreciate an opportunity to have a few words with regards to Bill 28. I would concur with the minister that it does not appear to be overly complicated. It just has two clauses but I would like to take an opportunity to have a few comments of course, we being in second reading. It is about provincial court; it is about chief judge's position; it is about persons who are laypersons who play a role in the administration of justice in this Province, albeit they are not legally trained. I speak, of course, in particular with reference to section 2 here, which solidifies the term of office of those laypersons who will be part of the complaints review committee.

The minister referred to Judge Luther, who is now retired, of course, Judge Donald Luther. He was, in fact, a chief judge of the Provincial Court in this Province. I did now know him as earlier on as the minister. The minister dates me there a little bit, I guess, he has a few years on me, but I did come to meet him, and when I did come to meet him he was, in fact, the chief justice of the Province. That was in the early 1980s.

That was unique, in and of itself, not only because he was so young, I would think, that he was a chief judge of the Provincial Court - he was probably the youngest we had to date when he was appointed such - but he was from the West Coast, and I do believe the persons who filled that position before that time always came from the capital city. Now, maybe that had something to do with the fact that the Minister of Justice at the time was from the West Coast too. That was a lady by the name of Lynn Verge, who was the Minister of Justice, was a member of his hon. House for many, many years and the leader, I do believe, of the Progressive Conservative Party, and that is when the appointment came about back then.

He certainly proved himself, I would suggest, over his term of office. He did an admirable job. In fact, I don't know if he wasn't there for two successive terms. I know he was the chief judge of the Provincial Court when I first met him. He was certainly the chief judge of the Provincial Court in 2000-2001 because I had the benefit of dealing with him as the chief judge of the Provincial Court besides the administrative issues and funding issues of the Provincial Court, but I recall in particular there were two very sensitive issues that hit this Province in 2000 that led to his involvement. I am referring, of course, to the death in Little Catalina when there was a shooting by an RCMP officer, and there was another death in Corner Brook when there was a shooting by an RNC officer. Both of those led to judicial inquiries, both of which were undertaken by Chief Justice Donald Luther. He took the time that was needed and required and he submitted two very detailed reports. Also, what he submitted, of course, the recommendations that he made and so on, became very beneficial to the system here.

I think he was also involved, probably, in one of the inquiries that took place with regard to Come By Chance, and an explosion that took place out there at one point. I think he was involved in that as well, but he certainly was involved in the two shooting incidents that took place in the Province in 2000, and I had the benefit of dealing with him.

I just question, I guess, and it seems to be a bit of – and I do not mean to minimize it by the term – a crapshoot in terms of the selection of the term seven. I was going to ask the minister what is the particular rationale as to why seven. I guess it depends on who you talk to, because I am not aware of any situation to suggest, or if there is a suggestion to suggest, that ten was too long. I am wondering if the minister could elaborate on that, or did somebody just decide that we do not want ten any more; we think seven is a better number. I am wondering why seven is a better number, other than the fact that it is deemed sometimes to be a lucky number by many.

We have operated under the system of ten for years. Did something go wrong that made ten not acceptable? I think that is a legitimate question. Why, all of a sudden, are we looking at seven? Does it mean that we do not have the faith and confidence in a person to do it for ten? I do not think that is the rationale. We had the faith and confidence to put that person in for seven. Why would we disagree or not want him, all of a sudden, to do the ten-year term?

I notice the minister has given me the comparisons and said, well, in Ontario they do it at eight; in other jurisdictions they do it in seven. I am not sure what he said it was in Nova Scotia.

MR. T. MARSHALL: (Inaudible).

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Five in Nova Scotia, the minister tells me.

I am just curious as to why, exactly, seven, other than the fact that we would just like to change it. Is there some logical, rational explanation for wanting such a change, or do we feel in the Department of Justice today that seven years is too long to let anybody be in that position?

I am aware, of course, we have tagged seven years to a lot of positions in the Province. For example, I believe many of the Officers of the House of Assembly have seven years tagged to them. The Child and Youth Advocate, I believe, is a seven-year term. I believe the Ombudsman, or the Citizens' Representative as we call him today, has a seven-year term attached to him. Maybe it is a case of the government just wants to standardize the terms of these individuals to be be in these positions. I think it begs for some explanation as to why we would, all of a sudden, look at that issue.

For example, if we look at other positions in our Province, and I am referring to other chief justice positions, we have the Chief Justice of the Court of Appeal, who is commonly known as the Chief Justice of Newfoundland and Labrador. That person, as I understand it, once appointed to that position, is there for his or her term on the bench. If it happens that the individual has fifteen more years to go on the bench, I am not aware of any circumstance where we have limited the term of the chief justice of the Province.

I am aware, for example, that Chief Justice Wells, who was a Premier of this Province, who I happened to article with in Corner Brook many, many moons ago, became the Chief Justice of the Court of Appeal, the Chief Justice of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and I do think he went there some time around – I know he went to the Court of Appeal around 1997, I do believe. I think he became the chief justice of the Province before 1999. I was sworn into this House in 1999, and I believe there were two justices who turned up for the swearing in, in 1999. I believe that was Chief Justice Wells and, at that time, Chief Justice Hickman. If that is the case, if he was there in 1999, he stayed about ten years as the chief justice. So that was his term.

So I am wondering why the federal government, provincial government, like: What are the criteria that they might have looked at to decide? And why do they feel that it is okay and acceptable if you appoint someone to a chief justice position that they stay there for life? Life being, of course, as long as you are on the bench. I am wondering what rationale we would have for differing from that. That, as I understand it, is a federal appointment, no doubt, to that position, as opposed to the Provincial Court judge, which is a provincial appointment.

Again, the minister alluded to the terms around the country provincially. I am just wondering why - is he aware of any information that I do not have? It is a learning experience for myself and I think people would be curious to know: Why, across the whole country, when we appoint a chief justice of a superior court, ten plus or whatever is acceptable, there is no limit, but yet when we deal with Provincial Courts we feel a need to impose some limitation period. Why, and what has happened to make us feel that ten is longer any good and we need to revert to seven? I understand we have had ten for thirty years. What has happened to justify or require a change of that number?

For example, we have a new chief justice of the Trial Division and we have a new chief justice of our Court of Appeal. In fact, Chief Justice Wells retired, as I understand. It was at the end of February, I do believe. That position has been filled by Chief Justice Derek Green, who was, as we know, the chief justice of the Trial Division.

We are all familiar, particularly anybody who has been in this House, for example, with Chief Justice Green, because he acted as a commissioner who inquired into the incidents involving the MHAs and spending. So he did that, and did a very thorough job of it. In fact, I noticed, when I read the appointment notice which appointed him, that there was a great reference made to the fact that he had done that job. Because, of course, when the federal government, I guess, were making their decision as to who should be the chief justice of this Province, I would think there were a number of candidates. My understanding is there is no particular requirement that the chief justice would have to come from the Court of Appeal. There have been cases where they go sometimes directly from private practice into chief justice of a province, or a private practice right into Court of Appeal, as opposed to Trial Division or to Provincial Court.

So, there is no such requirement there that he had to go there, but obviously, by referencing what he did in relation to the integrity act that we now work under in this House, that was no doubt considered a valuable piece of experience that Chief Justice Green had which would qualify him to hold the mantle as well as chief justice of this Province. Plus, of course, the administrative abilities and experience that one would need, he had already acquired that from being chief justice of the Trial Division for many, many years. Of course, if you look at anybody's inclination, shall we say, or judicial background and training and smarts, I am sure there was a lot of worthy candidates but none who were any better in that department than Chief Justice Green who has shown himself over the years, not only to be an able practitioner but as a judge to have written some of the best thought out, well-reasoned judgements that ever was written in this Province. So, no doubt, that was a big factor as to why he was chosen.

Now, anybody who knows of course that if you get appointed to the Supreme Court of this Province you do not have to retire, I understand it, until seventy-five. There is no such thing as sixty-five being a legal requirement that you have to step down or anything. I guess if you become infirm or you lose your mind or whatever, yes, you will go and there are provisions to get rid of you and take you out of it so that you cannot do anything irresponsible, but there is no requirement that a judge of the Superior Court had to step aside at sixty-five. I understand that Judge Green, I do not think he is any more than sixty. So, by my account, if he decides to stick around he could be chief justice of this Province until he is seventy-five years old, which will be fifteen plus years.

Again, I raise the question: Why are we picking seven if it is okay for the chief justice of the Province to be around for twice that amount, fifteen? What is the magic in picking a number and what is the justification for rolling our number of ten back to seven? I also notice that the replacement, because Chief Justice Green has been elevated from chief justice of the Trial Division to chief justice of the Court of Appeal, there needed of course to be a replacement as chief justice of the Trial Division and that replacement is Justice David Orsborn, as I understand it. Again, a very well-known practitioner in this Province for many, many years who served a number of years very capably, very ably, as a judge of the Trial Division in this Province. Now he has been elevated to chief justice of the Trial Division and I am sure he will excel in that capacity and position the same as Chief Justice Green did. From anyone that I have spoken to on the bench or off the bench or associated with the practice of law and the court systems in this Province, Justice Orsborn garners nothing but the utmost respect from anybody who has had any dealings with him. Again, I reference the age issue. My understanding is that if you are chief justice of the Trial Division, there is no limit again. You are there until you are seventy-five if you want to be.

There is a position, if you are a Supreme Court Justice, called a supernumerary. I believe the way that works in the Supreme Court system is, if you work ten years as a justice you are permitted to accept this supernumerary status. I think it requires you to work half time. I am not exactly sure of the parameters here. I think you get paid full time but you have to work at least half time.

Someone outside the legal profession might say: Well, gee, that is a great system. I don't have to retire, I get my full pay, and I work half time. That is a pretty good system. That system does exist. It is called a supernumerary system. A lot of judges, after they have worked their ten years in the Supreme Court, do take that route. I don't know if stressful is the word, but it is certainly a very onerous position to be a justice on the Supreme Court. Very complex cases have to heard. The workload, as I understand it, is just horrendous to most of these judges. They have to work long hours, long days, particularly when you have to get research done and deal with some of the complex issues and write your judgments. A lot of people do, in fact, follow that course.

To come back to my point again, neither of these Chief Justices is required, as I understand it – and I stand to be corrected here by the minister – have to leave their positions because of any tenure rule or any termination limit.

I am just wondering again: Why, if the two Chief Justices of the Superior Courts can be there for as long as they are sitting on the bench, do we feel the need to reduce the Chief Provincial Court Judge from ten to its current seven?

Now, I had the pleasure of dealing with Chief Justice M.R. Reid as well – the minister has referred to him – known as Chief Justice Reg Reid, of course, married to a girl from my hometown of Port aux Basques, many, many years ago, long before I ever met him. I wasn't aware of that until I did meet him. He is married to a local girl from out in the Port aux Basques area. He is a very quiet gentleman. By demeanor he is very quiet, never too outspoken, and he was very soft spoken in his demeanor. If he had something to say, he made his point. I never, whether I was dealing with him or heard of anyone else dealing with him, heard of him to be a rowdy, shouting, forceful type of character. If he had something to say, he made his point and so on. He is gone now, he has had his tenure. If my memory serves me correctly, I believe he was in the judicial system for forty-plus years in total. He happened to serve, in the last ten years in the position, as a Chief Judge of the Provincial Court in the Province.

Chief Judge Reid, and they distinguish, of course, between the Provincial Courts and the Supreme Courts by calling one chief judge, where in the superior courts they call them chief justice, but Chief Judge Reid, I do believe, came in under the same system, the old magistrate system, as Judge Luther I referred to earlier. He was not legally trained. He was a social worker, I believe, by trade, or a teacher, who many, many years ago, back in the 1960s, became a magistrate, and back in the 1970s we had a gentleman who was Minister of Justice at the time, Alex Hickman, and while he was the Minister of Justice of this Province he said we need to bring the judges of our Provincial Court up to speed when it comes to other provinces in Canada.

For example, for years and years in other provinces of Canada you could not be on the Provincial Court unless you had a law degree, and that was not the case in Newfoundland. Part of it was, of course, we never had our own law school, and we still do not have our own law school. When you did not have your own law school, not everybody in the early years of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s could get legally trained, so we never had many people who were legally trained and there was no legislative requirement in our Provincial Court at that time that you had to be legally trained. There was no such thing as Provincial Court. It was all called the Magistrate's Court. It was only later that it even got to be called a Provincial Court.

Anyway, Chief Justice Reid was one of those old, we will call it, magistrates. I believe he was getting on in years; not to say he was that old, but he was getting on in a few years. He was a family man and had been a magistrate for a number of years when Minister Hickman brought in the proposal about sending these magistrates to Dalhousie to be legally trained. What he worked out, what Minister Hickman worked out, with Dalhousie University Law School was he said: Look, can we buy a number of seats or reserve a number of seats in Dalhousie and each year we will take some of our magistrates, send them off to law school and get them trained?

That happened, and there were a whole pile of them. Chief Judge Reid was one of them. I know Judge Gordon Seabright was another one of them. There was a whole pile of them: Judge David Peddle, who is now with the Family Court in Corner Brook, and Judge Luther was another one. A whole pile of them went to the system to be legally trained.

I will never forget my own experience with Judge Robert Smith. He is well known to both the minister and myself. When I first practiced on the West Coast, I appeared in Provincial Court in Port aux Basques, after I got called to the Bar, and the judge I appeared before was Judge Robert Smith. Not only does he have a big heart but the gentleman has a big body. He is a gigantic gentleman, but he is a very soft-spoken gentleman as well. When I appeared before him, he had just finished law school. In fact, he was not finished law school; he told me he was in the process of it. This was during the summer and he had to come back and he was doing a bit of work during the summer term. I appeared before him as a young gaffer, of course, at that time. I believe I was twenty-three years old, and here I was with a law degree and he did not have one, and he was a few years older than myself. I guess, being a young lawyer, legally trained, you tend to think you know it all and you get a bit cocky, as they say. I appeared before him, but he told me after: Mr. Parsons, before I went to law school I thought everything was grey. I figured that by going to law school and getting a law degree it would make everything black and white. Unbeknownst to me, all law school did was make everything greyer.

It did not help him at all, he said, when it came down to being able to make decisions any more easily. Anyway, he did make his decisions and most of them were usually thoughtful. He is still practising, as I understand it. He is still practising here in the City of St. John's, unless he has taken his leave very recently. I know he had a very young family later on in life and he still has kids who, I believe, are of school age. I do believe he is still practising down in the Provincial Court here in the city. He was, at least a few months ago, unless he has taken a retirement since. Anyway, he is still working. He was one of the judges, as well, who came in under the old system on the West Coast when I first met him.

I ask the minister, that begs the question of why we are looking at that particular change. I have not heard any reason as to why, other than to say we want to do it. That is fine, I guess; that is the government's prerogative. If government feels today one way versus how they felt ten years ago or twenty years ago, that is fine, that is the prerogative of government, but I have not seen any or heard any explanation as to why it would be required or necessary.

I would think in some cases it might be an impediment. At the present time, as I understand it, they have a new position which was created here. When the former minister was there, I believe, the act was amended to allow for an associate chief judge. That individual, Mr. Pike, who was a well-known practitioner in this Province, filled that position, was appointed by government to be a Provincial Court judge and became the associate chief judge. I understand that since Chief Judge Reid has moved on into retirement, that associate chief judge has been filling his position. I guess they will make a decision as to whether he continues to fill that position, or whether there is some other process that government goes through to determine who becomes the chief judge, but he is currently, as I understand it, filling that position.

Just to throw it out as a suggestion or a question, I guess, if you have someone who is of a high calibre - not to say that the other persons were not. I believe they all were: Chief Judge Reid and Chief Judge Luther, for example, who have moved on. What if you have someone who is very, very good, like Associate Chief Judge Pike? What if he becomes a chief Provincial Court judge? Maybe seven years is not long enough. Maybe you would wish you could keep them beyond seven. Because we know right now we have a lot of major changes that the Provincial Court system is embarked upon and we need somebody, I would think, that is the minister's best interest and the department's best interest and government's best interest to see that if we have the right person at the helm we want to see that it gets carried out.

Now, I do not know if seven years is long enough - that is another call - but I just throw it out that it is going to take a period of time to make all of these changes. If you have the right person there, why would we limit that person to seven years, particularly when they are as young as Mr. Pike should he become the chief judge? He has only been recently appointed, so basically if he becomes the chief judge you are going to have him there for that time period and he has one or two - it is not long enough for him to be pensioned on the bench. I do believe now it takes a requirement of fifteen years, so here you are putting a person in a position whereby, should that happen, he takes seven years of his life to be the chief administrator, put all of these amendments in place that are coming, and then at the end of seven years he is forced to move on and become a regular judge. I do not know if that is in anybody's best interest, particularly if they are as good.

The act as suggested here now, the amendment as suggested, does not seem to provide for any provision for reappointment. What if you feel at the end of the day that this individual would be a perfect candidate for reappointment? Not only does the act contemplate that he will not be reappointed; it is very explicit here that he will not be, I would think. You are there for seven years and that is it, boom, you are gone.

I do not know if government ought to have left themselves - do we come back in seven years' time, if Judge Pike turns out to be great, if he turns out to be the chief judge, and then amend the act again, or do we just simply say now subject to reappointment? At least then the government has reserved the right, when they are making this change, without having to come back for legislative changes, to reappoint the person if that person is good. Because if he becomes the chief Provincial Court judge we find ourselves in a situation where we are making him the chief judge, he has only been on the bench for about a year, he would have served eight years in total as a judge, and he does not qualify for a pension on the bench - which I am sure he would like to get. He is not an older gentleman; he is only a younger gentleman. I would say he is probably in his forties. So it seems to me that it is not a wise move to set it up so that this person, after giving seven good years of the tumultuous time, might find himself in that situation.

I just throw that out there and that leads me, of course, before I move on to the other piece of the equation, to the issues of exactly what the new Chief Judge is probably going to have himself into. I refer to the report of the Task Force on Criminal Justice Efficiencies. Now that report was done, it was commissioned by the former Minister of Justice, the member for Carbonear, the current Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board. He commissioned this task force back in I believe it was 2007, and he gave that committee a time line and asked them to submit the report. It was actually given to the minister in February of 2008.

Now, like most of the reports that government gets, they are not too keen on giving them to the Opposition or making them public. I think this government had a stated Blue Book commitment that, what we are going to do with reports is, we will get them and we will look at them for, I think, thirty days and then we will put them out to you. I think it was as sixty-day max turnaround on reports, but dare I say it, there are very few government reports that have ever been turned around in the committed time frames that this administration said they would do. Usually we never see them, some of them.

We found out through the Minister of Health, of course, that a lot of the ones that went into the Department of Health and Community Services found their way to the nearest shelf and were put upon the shelf. We experienced that, no doubt, when it came to stuff like the youth mental health issues in the Province, when we raised questions here in Question Period about it, and the Cameron Inquiry. A lot of the reports that were done and commissioned were put on a shelf. I am pleased to see that this one did not languish on the shelf too long. The minister got it, we asked for it and I think we were denied three or four times. We probably had a few FOI requests, Freedom of Information requests, to try to get it. Ultimately the minister decided that there are no big earth-shattering secretive things in this task force report that we cannot let the public be aware of.

They had good people, by the way, on that committee. Some very good people were appointed by the minister at that time to this task force, and I would just like to refer to them, actually. I have already alluded to Chief Judge Reg Reid of the Provincial Court. He co-chaired that report along with the then Deputy Minister of Justice, who was Mr. Chris Curran. Mr. Curran, of course, has since departed the Department of Justice. I think he has now become the Registrar of the Supreme Court for the last number of months and the Deputy Minister now is Mr. Don Burrage. Anyway, both of these individuals who were involved in this report are no longer where they were at the time. Chief Judge Reid has retired, and Deputy Minister Curran is gone down as Registrar of the Supreme Court.

Also on the committee at that time we had Mr. Nick Avis Q.C., and as I alluded to Mr. Avis here last Thursday, when we had our marathon session. One of the bills that we debated was the Legal Aid Act. Mr. Avis, of course, in addition to being a practitioner here in the city – I think principally in the areas of criminal law and family law – works out of an office in Churchill Square. He has been here for some years. I first met him on the West Coast. When I met him first, in fact, he was working with Legal Aid. He went into private practice first, on the West Coast, then he transferred into the city here, and he has been practicing in the St. John's area now for the last number of years; ten or fifteen years. He was on there, and he was there because he is, in addition to being a private practitioner, very familiar with the criminal justice system, and has a lot of dealings in the provincial court system. He is also Chair of the Newfoundland and Labrador Legal Aid Commission, and he has been in that position for some years. In fact, I was the minister who appointed him originally, and I am pleased to see that this government saw fit to him continuing to be there. There has been a lot of progress made under his watch, since he went there, I believe, first in 2002, and he has been there now seven years.

Again, I raise the question to the minister - the seven-year thing pops up - I hope it is not a case that because he got seven years at the helm of the Legal Aid Commission, we are going to give him the flick, because we certainly know he has done a fantastic job there. He is in the process, based upon the latest report that they filed, of doing even more in the years to come. I would hope that seven years do not become an impediment and a bar to someone offering and contributing themselves to the Province, as opposed to being helpful in some way. Which way, I cannot figure out.

I understand Ms Heather Jacobs was there. She was, I do believe, an assistant deputy minister in Justice, responsible with administration issues. Mr. Pike, who I referred to as being the Associate Chief Judge, who was appointed after filling out and doing his time with this task report, he was appointed as a Provincial Court Associate Chief Judge, and a Mr. Philip LeFeuvre – I guess I pronounced that right – and Erin Breen, both represented the private bar and the Law Society on that committee.

The reason, of course, the committee was so structured, I would think, is because you wanted input from the different avenues and facets of people who work in the court system.

You had the Chief Judge of the Provincial Court in Judge Reid, you had Mr. Curran and Ms Jacobs who dealt from the departmental, governmental, administrative point of view, and you had Mr. Avis who operated from the Legal Aid point of view, and then the two general practitioners, along with Mr. Pike, who was also a private practitioner, who could tell you what it was like from the point of view of the private practitioner.

You also had represented here by the government officials, of course, the prosecutorial section, because the system only works in the provincial court if all pieces of the wheel and all the cogs in the wheel are moving at the same time. It is not just about judges. It is about the administrative staff in the provincial court system. It is about the prosecution staff who play a big role. It is about the police services that feed into the system, do the investigations and lay the charges. It is about the defence prosecution piece that fits into the system. And it is about legal aid who often are the people who represent a lot of people in our system.

The common phrase that I have always heard is that the provincial courts are the workhorses of the judicial system. There is no doubt about it. I would think, in this Province, 90 to 95 per cent, 90 per cent for sure, of the court work in this Province is done in the provincial court. We might not see it as citizens. I am sure anybody who watches the evening news, you always see what is going on. NTV and CBC have a report segment saying some of the high profile cases that are going on at the time. For the most part, nobody understands or appreciates just how heavy the workload is.

By the way, there are only twenty-four of them throughout the Province. We have pretty big turf to cover. I think we have two up in Labrador, one in Happy Valley-Goose Bay and a recent one. I think we do have someone in Wabush now; we have one out in Stephenville; we have a couple or three in Corner Brook; we have some in Grand Falls-Windsor; we have some in Gander; I do believe we have one in Clarenville; and the rest I believe are here in the City of St. John's.

You have a pretty big workhorse when you consider you have twenty-four people who look after 90 per cent of the criminal justice work in this Province. That is what this act is we are dealing with today. These are the people, this is the law that governs the judges and the provincial court system that I am talking about here, 90 per cent of all of the criminal justice system.

Back to this report that was done, because I think it is very crucial here and I deliberately, specifically, want to tie that in to my comments about the seven years, because I think it might be foolhardy of the government to try to limit somebody who is going to have the task of taking the recommendations of this report and implementing them. That is not to say that the report has to be done before the seven years is up, it should be. That talks about timeliness, actually, but it is not just this report. There may well be other requirements that come about and, as we know, as time changes circumstances change. Therefore, we may need somebody at the helm here who does not only have to implement these, want to make sure that they work properly, and also be cognizant of the changes as they occur to make sure they continue to be done on a timely basis rather than the situation we found ourselves in after twenty, thirty or forty years, the system had bogged down.

That is why the report came about and that is why it was titled, Criminal Justice Efficiencies: how do we get efficiencies? Now it is pretty simple to understand that by looking for criminal justice efficiencies there was an acknowledgement and recognition that there were lots of criminal justice inefficiencies and how do we get rid of the inefficiencies?

I would just like to refer to a couple of the recommendations that were made in that report. By the way, under that report the particular emphasis was on the St. John's Provincial Court: How could they come up with some practical recommendations to increase the efficiency of the court? Reduce delays in the system without compromising the fundamental principles of justice. Because it is no good to say we want to increase the timeliness and how fast the system works, if, in the course of speeding it up, we compromise somebody's rights. That is not what it is all about. The basic principle is that we all have certain rights. We want to see that their rights are preserved, that everybody has access to their rights but we want to see it done in a timely framework but not so timely that we forget what their rights are and allow people to avail of those rights.

For example, how much time did it normally take from the time when someone was apprehended? Joe Blow goes out and commits a crime in this Province. Now, from the time that Joe Blow was apprehended to the time when he was dealt with by the courts. I bet there are a lot of people in the Province who do not have any idea how long it normally takes to process that through the system.

Right now, for example, if someone is charged with an offence in this Province it takes anywhere from ten to twelve months, from the point that the offender was apprehended to where the court sentences that person. That is average. That used to be the average when this report was being done, ten to twelve months, and that is not serious stuff. That could be somebody who is charged with a breach of the law who fully acknowledged for example that I did wrong, want to get on with their lives, want to own up to the fact that what they did was incorrect or illegal even and get it disposed of. Even those persons, they were looking at ten to twelve months to get their cases dealt with. Under this task report they feel that it could be reduced. Instead of ten to twelve months on average, it could be reduced to three to four months. Now hopefully that is where we are going to get to over a period of time.

They also point out that we are not going to get there simply by wishing we can get there. You have to make certain moves. You have to put certain resources in the system to make sure that we do actually accomplish that goal. So there is a recognition that it takes far too long now to process cases. There is a recognition of what an acceptable time frame would be and I believe there is even a recognition by the Department of Justice who have had the report based upon some of the things they have done that yes, the resources need to be put in. I have seen evidence myself, since the report came in, that the justice department is actually doing that. I saw that.

Even today, the ministerial statement we had today alluded to money going into the system which would address some of the issues like Aboriginal interpretive services, for example; new court facilities being built, new money being put into case management, file management, and the accounting management in the court system. So that is an indication of - that speeds it all up too but the report here was more based upon the charging apparatus, the disclosure apparatus between the prosecutorial service and the defence counsel, how that all intertwines and works vis-à-vis the judges and the court system. How do you book a courtroom? How do you do a conference, case conference? How do you expedite and move the case along? What if a case, for example, cries out for a plea bargain? Now some people in the public when you mention the word plea bargain, they have a big problem with that. What do you mean plea bargain? If somebody commits an offence, it says right there if you broke the law what the punishment could be. It could range from a to b to c to d. What do you mean by plea bargain?

Well, what it means is it is a system whereby the prosecutor and the defence counsel actually get together and they say: okay, let's look at the facts and let's look at the individual who is involved. If we take this case, these facts and this individual through the whole process, what are we likely to end up with as a sentence at the end of the day? There might, for example, be ten charges against that individual coming out of one incident. He might have, as a result of one drunken incident, for example, he might be charged with impaired driving, he might be charged with causing an accident, he might have assaulted a police officer when he was arrested. So there could be anywhere from eight, ten charges that came about as a result of one incident. Now if you were to take each of those eight or ten charges and go through the system fully with each of them you could be in court, no doubt, for your ten to twelve months at least.

So plea bargaining is a system whereby the prosecutor and the defence counsel get together and say: Just a minute now. Rather than tying this up in the court system for months on end, this is what you are looking at if you went to court on them. This is what we are prepared to do. In order to expedite the situation so that you do not keep the court system tied up for ever and a day and because we get this through the system fairly quickly, but yet we have to serve the ends of justice in terms of having some punishment, rehabilitation, whatever the requirement is in the particular case, why don't we agree upon this? That happens by the way. The prosecutor and the defence counsel get their heads together and they say this is what we will do. They take that and they go into a courtroom and they tell the judge, this is what we agreed to. We submit this. The prosecution says it is fine by them, defence counsel say they agree to it, and it is up to the judge whether he or she accepts it. They do not have to, no requirement that the judge accept it.

We, for example, recently had a case, well-known case, very publicized case in the Province where a certain individual in Central Newfoundland. There was a plea bargain arrangement between the prosecution and the defence in that case with respect to certain charges in Central Newfoundland. The judge listened to it, made the news media of course weeks on end, and the judge, at the end of the day, said: Excuse me, I am not going to listen to either one of you. I am not going to take your recommendations as to a plea bargain. He said: I am not going to do that. So now each of you make your submissions to me as to what you think is appropriate, but I am not listening to your plea bargain. So they did it, and the judge in question did make a sentence of his own choosing. He chose something other than what had been presented to him as a plea bargain. Of course, I understand that has since been appealed. The gentleman in question is out on remand or bail until such time as the case is heard now in another level of court.

That is a case of how the system works. So if you do not have these plea bargains you can really, really bog the system down. I do not know the percentage of how much or how many cases in our Provincial Court system are actually subject to plea bargains, but based upon my own experience, I assure you, that I would think a vast majority of the cases that go through our system some way or other have been subject to discussions, negotiations and plea bargaining between defence counsel and prosecution.

Some of the other issues they looked at, of course - and I will not get time here, I only have eighteen minutes. I will not get time to go through all of the recommendations, but that is just an example of the type of thing that could tie down the system and clog it if you do not find some way to get through the efficiencies.

Number one recommendation, they looked at: Those accused of crimes should be released to appear in court approximately two weeks after arrest by police. In other words, sometimes the police arrest people and there are weeks and weeks and weeks before they get released. So they are recommending, in this report, that they should be released to appear approximately two weeks after the arrest by the police. Now, of course, there are going to be circumstances when you cannot do that, and a lot of times that is going to depend upon the seriousness of the offence. Obviously, if you have someone who is charged with first degree murder, it is a different situation than if you have someone who is picked up for some robbery type case probably. The criteria, of course, depends on what the charge is.

Number two, they said, important and detailed information about the legal aid process should be made available to people upon release by the police. That would seem to be a no-brainer. It makes sense that if we have a legal aid system and that is supposed to be one of the service arms, we will call it, that makes our system function efficiently, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that if a person is picked up by the police, put in the drunk tank, for example, and yet the police release them but do not give him or her the details about legal aid, that is going to compromise the system. It is going to slow it down. If that individual goes home, they will probably get talking to their family and their friends and they will say: Well, where do I go from here? What do I do now? All of a sudden, they have to go and reinvent the wheel. How do I get into touch with legal aid? Where are the legal aid people? What is duty council all about? What can they or can they not do for me? Whereas if all that information had been given to them before they were released, it should have saved a whole lot of time. That is recommended, of course. I am referring to the summary of recommendations, but in a summary form that is what they are talking about here.

I would think that one was fairly easily achieved. You did not need any budgets to do that one. You did not need any continuing legal education courses. You did not need any retraining of the police forces to say, look, here is a pamphlet on legal aid. When you let John or Jane go, give them the pamphlet, so that they know all about legal aid. It does not take a lot of doing to get that one done.

Number three, the disclosure process should be streamlined through the use of police checklists, electronic formatting and vetting by paralegal personnel employed by the prosecution service. Disclosure, of course, is a mandatory requirement under our criminal justice system. If you are charged and the police have certain information on you, they are required to disclose it to you before you have to put in your plea. Therefore, if you are months and months and months getting the information, the disclosure information, you are months and months and months before you get to make a plea, so you cannot do one unless you have the other. How do you speed up the disclosure process? Well, one of the things here - and I notice they particularly use the word ‘paralegal' personnel. I would think a lot of this information that you disclose is pretty straightforward. Yes, there might be some stuff that a prosecutor, a person trained in the art of prosecution, a person who has exercised prosecutorial discretion repeatedly, would need to have some input into, but normally a lot of this disclosure information a paralegal, properly trained, could help put that package together and those elements of the package together fairly quickly.

I know we ran into it in some of the cases that were before the court, the one involving Mr. Byrne and the other individuals. From the media that I was reading, it was a constant, constant request from the defence counsel involved in those cases that, we cannot do anything with the case until we get the information of disclosure. You cannot blame the prosecutor. If you only have so many prosecutors, and if the prosecutors do not have paralegal assistance to help them with it, there is only so much that is humanly possible. We are not talking here about a minor file. We were talking, in those cases, of reams and reams, and suitcase upon suitcase, of information that needed to be reviewed to decide what could or could not be released. It takes time to do that, and you cannot expect one person to be able to have the time to do it all.

Number 4 says, the Crown review of police files should be made at the first opportunity, so that there is an early discovery and termination of cases that are without a reasonable prospect of conviction.

It is not saying that you do not take all the time that you need to take with the complex ones. It does not say that when it is necessary, you do not do what you have to do, but by taking that initial look at it, what the police put into you, a skilled, trained, experienced prosecutor could look at the police information sheet and what the police officers have in that file, and very quickly be able to say, this is going somewhere, or this is going nowhere, when it comes to conviction. Right away, if you made that early determination, and if you made the determination that it is not going anywhere, you obviously take it out of the system. The more of these you take out of the system, the more efficient the system works.

They also said number 5 was, as early as possible in the process, the prosecution should provide to the defence its intention regarding election in cases of hybrid offences and the penalty sought.

If you have an individual who is charged with what they call an indictable offence, police could go either way. They could go by summary conviction or go by indictment. What they are saying here is, do not take an undue period of time as a prosecutor before you tell the defence which way you are going to go, because it might make a big difference. Indictable offences are treated much more seriously in the courts. The punishments and sentencing that they attract is much more severe.

If I am an accused individual and I am waiting and I am not saying anything because, number 1, they have to give me disclosure, and, number 2, I have to know which way they are going to go, by indictment or by summary, the quicker they tell me which way they are going, the quicker I am going to be able to make a decision. For example, if they wait six months to tell me that we are going by indictment, and then I know, six months in, that this is a very serious possibility, and I see how they are treating it, ah ha, now I am going to want Legal Aid. Now I am going to want to go get a defence counsel to defend me.

Make that decision early on is what is suggested here, because if the Crown decided that in a timely fashion and decided that it was going to be summary conviction, I, as the accused person, might say: Okay, I know now what range of sentencing I am facing, so rather than belabour this issue I am going to take this and I am going to plead guilty now, because I know that the range of sentencing is far different than if they had chosen the other way.

That is not rocket science again. You question, when you look at a lot of these things, why they were not happening. I always assumed that they were happening as best as possible and in a timely fashion, but it is quite clear from the recommendations in the task force report that they obviously were not happening in that fashion.

Mr. Speaker, the sixth one, Crown attorneys should inform the defence of their best offer in return for a guilty plea as early as reasonably possible in the criminal process. That is a pretty straightforward one too. If we have a system, and I am the accused and nobody tells me until I am ten or twelve months in what they are looking for in terms of a sentence, I cannot make my final decision. But if the prosecutor tells me after three or four weeks, even after a month or a month-and-one-half, look, these are the facts, if you plead guilty this is what we are prepared to recommend to the judge, this is what we are seeking as a penalty - and these people pretty well know spot on what it is you are going to get. These are not prosecutors who are dealing with a charge the first time out. When a prosecutor down here, particularly in the Provincial Court of St. John's, tells you that if you plead guilty and I am going to ask for this, he or she has a pretty good idea that is what you are going to get. They have done enough of these.

Judges, by the way, usually come to garner a respect for these prosecutors because they know they have done enough. The circumstances are always different, but not withstanding the specific differences there is usually a generality, there is a pattern as to what crimes attract what sentences under certain circumstances.

That leads me to a comment, as well - I have often heard people say in the public, and I have had them come to me, for example, and I have heard them go to other practitioners saying, I want to get a private lawyer. I do not want a legal aid lawyer. I would say: Well, why don't you want a legal aid lawyer? What is the problem with a legal aid lawyer? You already told me that you do not have the money to be able to pay the lawyer of your choice. Maybe we would all like to get F. Lee Bailey or Clarence Darrell, or who we think is Clarence Darrell or F. Lee Bailey in the system, but it takes money to get those lawyers.

I have often said to people: If you have no money yourself, isn't it better to have a legal aid lawyer so at least you have someone with you who understands the system, whereas you do not understand the system? For some reason, and this is a very misunderstood reason on my part, some people think that legal aid lawyers do not know their stuff as well as practitioners in private practice. I would venture to say, no question, go so far as to say that is not true, absolutely not true. In fact, when you are dealing with a legal aid lawyer you are most often dealing with a lawyer who has far more experience and practice in that area than the guy in private practice.

I might be in private practice, for example, and do two robbery cases a year, situated in a place like Port aux Basques, whereas if you go to a legal aid lawyer, chances are they did ten or twelve, so obviously they have far more experience and more cases that they have done and examples that they have done than somebody who is not always practising criminal law.

As I say, I think that is misnomer, that is a misunderstanding, it is unfortunate, and I would certainly dispel that myth to anybody who asks me. If you want a legal aid lawyer, don't worry about the level of practice you are getting, don't worry about the level of experience you are getting, because they usually have far more than a lot of ones you go to, particularly if you go to a GP practitioner, I would say, as opposed to some of the more specialized practitioners.

The other one there, they talk about legal counsel working at the beginning of the court process from both the prosecution and legal aid services should be carefully selected. That is going to be a tough one, I would say to the minister. That is going to be a tough one as to – and I know what they are getting at. They are saying, ideally, the people you choose to do this work need to be able to make decisions under pressure and have the confidence and substantive knowledge required to do what is necessary to bring a case to an early and just conclusion. That is great, the ideal is great, but it is going to be tough because there are two parties, at least, involved in this. We talk about the prosecution and the legal aid services and we are saying that, ideally, both of these people have to be like that, but the circumstances vary.

A lot of times it is going to be the client who tries to dictate the speed at which something happens. So quite often, I would submit, the defence counsel, whether it be private Bar or it be legal aid, is pressured, stressed and encumbered by the wishes and the wants of the client as opposed to a prosecutor who sees things much differently. The prosecutor has one client, and that is to see that the ends of justice are met, that the system is fair. Legal counsel, on the other side, is a bit different, so I think that one is going to be a little bit difficult to apply.

Number eight, unnecessary delays, this is where you have put some money in, I say, Minister, you talk about a centralized electronic scheduling system, case assignment to courtrooms and judges. The one I have not heard much about since, and it would be interesting if the minister can educate us on that, and that is the per diem judges. My understanding was that that recommendation, because we only had twenty-four and because we did not always have enough, and to get rid of some cases or get rid of the backlog at least, the thought was to put some money in the system whereby some of these Provincial Court judges who were retired, we would bring them back as per diem judges to deal with some of this backlog and to get things on a good workable functioning go-forward basis. I am wondering where we are, if the minister could inform us where we might be with that, with the per diem judges.

I have not heard anything, and I realize it is a budgetary process, and it might even be a legislative process. For example, once a person is already retired as a judge, what is involved in getting them reconnected to the system so as to be able to do that? Maybe some thoughts from the minister and some information in that regard, because it is a great idea I think. You have a lot of judges who do not want to work full time but they might well be prepared to come back and work on a part-time basis to help out the system if it is strained, and I certainly gather from this that on occasion they are strained. I know from the West Coast, for example, I have had lots of issues where people have complained that they have a charge - I believe the average court circuit now, for example, going to Port aux Basques is something like four to five months. If something goes wrong, that a court date is set, say it is scheduled to be there in February and they have not been there since November, if something goes wrong and that judge who is assigned there comes out of Stephenville cannot make it out for February that is it, you are gone. You are off the road. Everybody who was lined up, lawyers who were prepared to deal with the situation, prosecutors have to rechange schedules, accused persons who sometimes even had to come back from the mainland or other places to have their cases dealt with, witnesses who were involved, that causes nothing but utter disruption. I can see a situation whereby, just because the assigned judge in Stephenville had a problem and could not do it, if you had a per diem judge you still might be able to go and fill in and look after that issue rather than disrupt everybody's lives. Forget about just how long you are extending it out and so on. So that certainly continues to exist out on the West Coast.

Of course, audio and video conferencing, the Minister of Finance mentioned that he was up in Goose Bay last year and saw video conferencing going on in Goose Bay, and I gathered from his comments it was the first time he had experienced that, but we have certainly had that on the West Coast for some years. It is quite common now in Provincial Court cases that if you cannot travel, you have a video system in town; we used to do it at the public library. It did not have to be a great big courthouse with any fancy technology. As long as you could see each other, you could hear each other, and you could authenticate that what you were saying was true and correct and so on, it was no big deal. Why should a person have to travel, for example, from Port aux Basques to Corner Brook to put in a guilty plea on a simple case, for example, or to decide upon a court date? Travelling three hours in, three hours out, waiting whatever time period it was, just to say that your case is going to be heard on January 10 next year. They have made great strides in that and we need to make even more. There are lots of things, I would submit, that can be done by way of teleconferencing and audio and video systems.

My last comment before my time expires, Minister, I will come back to subsection 2 and that is about the term again for three years for laypersons. I am wondering where the magic is in the three-year term again. I am all for, and agree with, the fact that we have laypersons here, because we are talking about a complaints review committee and that, I would take it, is anybody who has complaints with the system. So, rather than just having a judge or lawyers dealing with these complaints, obviously we need somebody who represents the public interest to be listening to this as well, so that it is obviously open and transparent, and my understanding is that we appoint people from the general public - they are not lawyers, they are not judges - so that the public perception and oversight piece is there. I am just wondering, again, why the three-year piece.

I know, for example, on our own Audit Committee of the Management Commission, which is chaired by the Member for Topsail, I do not know if there is any timeline on their appointment. I know it says that the House, through the Management Commission – or, in fact, in that case the law requires that the outside laypersons are appointed by the Chief Justice of Newfoundland and Labrador, so the Member for Topsail chairs the committee. She is the government representative. I happen to be on there as another representative who was selected by the Management Commission. I am not there because I am an Opposition member or anything. I am there because it was voted upon by the members of the committee, the Management Commission, and there are two other laypersons. They were chosen by the Chief Justice of Newfoundland, the former Chief Justice in that case, Mr. Wells. He chose a lady by the name of Ms Gardiner, Janet Gardiner, and a gentleman by the name of Mr. Don Warr, and they are the laypersons on the Audit Committee, and I do not believe there are any timelines to their appointment. Maybe there is, and the Clerk can certainly correct me, but I am wondering about the three-year piece in this particular case for the Department of Justice. Why was three years deemed to be the magic number?

With that, Mr. Speaker, I take my leave.

Thank you.

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

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

Just a few words on Bill 28, so that it goes on the record that obviously we support this amendment. It is pretty straightforward, as the minister pointed out.

It is my understanding that the change for the Chief Judge, the repeal is changing from ten years to seven years. I understand that this change in term brings the term of Chief Judge here in Newfoundland and Labrador more into line with what is happening in other provinces in Canada. Because we had the longest term than any other jurisdiction, I understand. Eight jurisdictions across Canada have either seven or eight years. I understand that British Columbia and Nova Scotia set their own terms, and theirs are, I think, five years.

There seems to be agreement throughout the legal world, and I think this includes judges as well, that ten years is pretty long. There is quite a bit of work involved in being the Chief Justice. I think a lot of it is onerous paperwork, and I think limiting the term to seven, which seems to be a bit of the norm, makes all kinds of sense. It also makes sense from the perspective of revitalization. We all know, from different experiences, that if an individual is in a position too long, we question the new ideas, the freshness of ideas, that may be going on.

One of the big complaints of the Senate, of course, in Canada, is that people go into the Senate and they are there for life, and we have lots of questioning of that whole thing of being there for life, especially if somebody goes in at young age, in their forties, which is happening now with some members of the Senate. I know that the Chief Judge would not be there for life, but I am just using the parallel of the benefits of limiting somebody's position or years in a position, so that new ideas come and there is a freshness and there is a revitalization. The shorter tenure, I think, will allow for that and will allow for new people to be recognized.

I would like to point out, in this age of where we are trying to have gender equity and recognize that women and men have different points of view, that it would be very interesting in every seven years, to be able, maybe, to have the opposite gender to the one who was there, so that you are bringing that difference as well into the position of the Chief Judge. I know not everybody understands the need to do that kind of thing, but I think those of it who think about it do realize that in actual fact, yes, it is true, that we men and women do have different points of view because we experience life differently.

There are different reasons, many reasons, I think, for having to shorter tenure for the Chief Judge. I think, for me, that would be a big one, that you are bringing in different points of view, you are bringing in the other gender, opposite to whomever is in there at a certain point. It makes absolute sense to have the tenure has become a shorter one.

I think the timing for that is good. It is also good right now, because we have an acting judge right now. The previous judge I think resigned last August. It would be good to have the tenure changed in time for the appointment of a new permanent Chief Justice. I suspect that is one of the reasons why we have this here on our tables right now today, on our desks, to deal with, so that when the new permanent person is named the new tenure would be in place. I suspect that is one of the reasons we have it and I see the Minister of Justice nodding with regard to that.

The other piece is the Complaints Review Committee. My understanding, from reading the act, is that in actual fact there was not a term in there at all. I think what is interesting to note is that in the act we are dealing with today and the term of office being recommended as three years, it also goes on to say that those members are eligible to serve for additional terms and it does not say how often. In actual fact, somebody could be on the Complaints Review Committee for a long time being reappointed every three years for ad infinitum. I doubt if anybody would want to stay on it forever, but I do not think one need have a restriction on the number of times one is appointed, because these kind of things people also get experience on them and it is good to keep experience as well.

Having the term of three years, it gives a moment at which somebody has to stop and think: Do I want to continue on? It gives the minister, I guess, who does the appointing, the moment for thinking: Well, do we want some new fresh blood on the Complaints Review Committee. I think that setting the three-year term without restricting how often one can be reappointed is a good thing to do.

I am not going to say anything else about this, Mr. Speaker, because it is a straightforward bill, and obviously I will voting for it.

Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: If the minister speaks now, he will close the debate.

The hon. the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. T. MARSHALL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It has certainly been a pleasure listening to members opposite, the Opposition House Leader and the Leader of the New Democratic Party and their comments.

I agree with the comments of the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi. She may recall that when we brought the legislation in last time, because the system, the procedure, was a little complicated, there was a chart done that showed the change of policy, where we were changing it from just having one judicial counsel to making the change where we would keep the judicial counsel, but for the determination of complaints against judges we were setting up this new Complaints Review Committee.

That committee, if I recall, had the power to dismiss a complaint, they could resolve the complaint with the consent of the judge and the person who is complaining, or the third option was refer it to another body called the judicial complaints panel for adjudication. I think we are going to have two panels, six people on the judicial complaints panel, three would serve on each tribunal.

The members of the judicial counsel, other than the Chief Judge, of course, who by virtue of this office would serve on that committee, would have a term of three years and be eligible for reappointment. That was also done with the judicial complaints panel, with the lay representatives of that particular body, but we forgot to do it with the Complaints Review Committee. As the hon. Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi pointed out, this amendment will correct that.

I am glad to see, in terms of the other section of the amendment dealing with the term of the Chief Judge, it looks like the Opposition House Leader disagrees with the intent of the bill to reduce the term of the Chief Judge from ten years to seven years. I am glad to see the Leader of the NDP, the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi, agrees with that. I agree with her comments. I agree that making the change, reducing the term from ten years to seven years, will bring about a revitalization of the court, as she said. It will allow opportunities, obviously, for a change of leadership and new leadership and to bring about a new direction, and it is important that we have diversity on the Provincial Court. That is something I feel very strongly, and the suggestion of having an alternating female chief judge and then in the other seven years a male judge. I think that is a great idea.

We look forward to seeing someday an Aboriginal chief judge in addition to Aboriginals on the court, and also people who come from different parts of the Province. A concern that I had was that the judges on Provincial Court were people from the same area, who all went to the same schools, who all socialized with each other. It is good every now and again for somebody who does not come from that milieu, someone that comes from rural Newfoundland, someone that may have been a fisherman or a forester and later on in life had gone on to law school. People of colour, to add diversity, people of different religions, to bring a different viewpoint to the court.

The Opposition House Leader mentioned, there is one thing he said. I just want to endorse what he said so that people out there can really understand that there is a misunderstanding that is taking place, and that is to deal with the legal aid lawyers. I have heard it too, people say: I do not want a legal aid lawyer. I want a lawyer that has been in private practice. When in reality, the legal aid lawyer is the lawyer that has the most experience in criminal law in this Province. That the best lawyers, certainly the ones with the most experience, are legal aid lawyers. So this understanding, that legal aid lawyers are somehow inferior, is totally wrong. I think some of the best criminal lawyers in the Province are long-time legal aid lawyers.

I know the Opposition House Leader mentioned Mr. Nick Avis, who is Chair of the Legal Aid Commission. Mr. Avis was a legal aid lawyer himself when he started practice. I think his first job was with legal aid. Now he is in private practice and yet he serves as Chair of the Legal Aid Commission, and therefore brings to that commission an understanding of the job that the legal aid lawyers do but also brings a different perspective now. A perspective of what it is like to practice privately, when your income is based on what you bill, the work you bring in and what you bill, rather than a regular salary paid by the government.

I think when the Opposition House Leader was speaking I could not help but think how small the legal community in this Province still is, even though there has been a tremendous growth. He mentioned Judge Robert Smith and his dealings with Judge Smith. Judge Smith, of course, is from Corner Brook. As a matter of fact, Judge Smith married my wife and I many years ago.

I do recall receiving a phone call at one point from one of my predecessors as the Member for Humber East, Dr. Tom Farrell who was a minister at the time, and he was looking for recommendations of people who would be willing to go to the bench, to become magistrates. At the time they had brought in a policy of taking these new appointees as magistrates and sending them to law school. I was very pleased to put forward Judge Smith's name at that time and he has served the people of this Province extremely well over the years. I understand that he has recently retired from the court but he has stayed on as a per diem judge, as the Opposition House Leader indicated.

The per diem judge was brought in by my predecessor as a means of dealing with the backlog of cases that were accumulating at Provincial Court. There are a number of Provincial Court judges who because of the per diem judge change this was an inducement for them to decide to retire. This will help alleviate backlogs in the Provincial Court system.

The Opposition House Leader was concerned about seven years. He pointed to the Court of Appeal and he pointed to the Supreme Court Trial Division. Of course, they are federal judges. We have two sets of judges or maybe three sets of judges in this Province. Some are appointed by this government, by the Lieutenant-Governor in Council and the Cabinet on the recommendation of the Minister of Justice who must pick a name or select a name from a list of people who are determined by a group called the Judicial Council, which I previously mentioned, they accept applications from people who want to be judges. They do the interviewing and they make the determination whether or not a particular person is qualified or highly qualified to be a judge or not qualified at this time.

I think most people do not know that when there is an opening for a Provincial Court judge in the Province and while the Minister of Justice is the one who makes the announcement, in reality what is happening, the minister can only pick a name from a list of qualified applicants as determined by an independent body called Judicial Council. The minister recommends a name from that list and sends names to Cabinet, and the Lieutenant-Governor in Council to Cabinet makes the final decision.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to pay a tribute to Chief Judge Reid. Chief Judge Milton Reid, more commonly known as Reg Reid, served as chief judge of this Province for about nine years. He elected to retire earlier, and I did have discussions with Chief Judge Reid about the term. I have also spoken on occasion with other judges. I know Chief Judge Wells of the Court of Appeal elected to step down as chief judge for the Court of Appeal after a period of ten years. He indicated, when he accepted the appointment, that he felt a period of time of more than ten years was too long, and he decided to step down after the ten years.

As I indicated earlier, when we look at what is happening in the rest of the country, when we see a minimum of five years, that is the lowest term, we are the highest at ten years. There was a feeling that this is too long. There is a feeling that there is a need after a certain period of time for revitalization, for a new person in the position, for a new direction. Noting that the average across the country was seven years, that is the basis upon which we made the decision.

Mr. Speaker, with respect to that, I thank the hon. members for their comments, and I move second reading of the bill.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Is it the pleasure of the House that Bill 28 be now read a second time?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

Carried.

CLERK: A bill, An Act To Amend The Provincial Court Act, 1991. (Bill 28)

MR. SPEAKER: This bill has now been read a second time.

When shall this bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House?

Now? Tomorrow?

MS BURKE: Later today. Now, I guess.

MR. SPEAKER: Now?

MS BURKE: Now or later today.

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The Provincial Court Act, 1991," read a second time, ordered referred to a Committee of the Whole House presently, by leave. (Bill 28)

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

MS BURKE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We will continue with the Order Paper, Order 13, second reading of a bill, An Act to Amend The Children's Law Act. (Bill 13)

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that Bill 13, An Act To Amend The Children's Law Act now be read a second time.

Motion, second reading of a bill, "An Act to Amend The Children's Law Act." (Bill 13)

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Justice and Attorney General.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. T. MARSHALL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is my pleasure to stand here today and to introduce An Act To Amend The Children's Law Act.

In introducing that act, I have here a photograph that appears in the Evening Telegram of November 22, 2008. There is a picture of a young mother and a beautiful baby named Rosalind, and I can tell you if that baby is not the most beautiful baby in Newfoundland and Labrador she has to be well up there. This is about her and what we need to do to help her and her family.

While we are dealing with this bill To Amend The Children's Law Act, and in particular the amendment is to repeal subsection 5 of section 7 of the Children's Law Act, we start off by looking at a different legislation. We look at the Vital Statistics Act. This is about, to put it in context, where you have a couple who are unmarried and a child is born of their relationship, what happens in getting the name of the father on the birth certificate. The Vital Statistics legislation in this Province provides that, where a woman gives birth to a child and the father is a person to whom she is not married, a person shall not be registered as the father of the child unless the mother and the person acknowledging himself to be the father jointly request it.

The process, I understand, is that there is a form that has to be filled out, which is signed by the mother and signed as well by the father, whereby they jointly acknowledge that the person signing is the father. The purpose of this section of the Vital Statistics Act is to ensure that a person is not named on a child's birth registration if there is a dispute between the parties as to the question of paternity, any question as to the parentage of the child. If there is not a dispute, if there is not a disagreement, both the mother and the father sign the form and the form is sent in to Vital Statistics and both names of course appear on the birth certificate.

What if there is a dispute? What if the father, for example, denies paternity? Well, there is a procedure set out in the Children's Law Act. It is set out in the section of the Children's Law Act whereby any party who is called an interested party, can apply to the court in this Province for an order, called a declaratory order, that a man is or is not, in law, the father of the child.

Under section 7(2) of the act - and I am referring to the Children's Law Act - if the evidence is presented by the person of interest, and the evidence shows on a balance of probabilities that a man is or is not the father of the child then the court can make a declaratory order. This order can then be sent to the Vital Statistics Registrar and the father's name would be on the birth certificate as well.

There is a third situation that where the court finds, based on evidence presented to it, that there is a presumption – if certain evidence is presented to the court, then section 10 of the act says that there is a presumption of paternity. If certain evidence is presented there is a presumption of paternity, and unless the contrary is proven on the balance of probabilities the man is presumed to be the father of the child, so it is a rebuttable presumption. If the evidence if there, there is presumption of fatherhood unless evidence is provided that, on a balance of probabilities, rebuts the presumption.

That is how it works. Either the father and mother jointly sign the form. If there is a dispute there is an application for paternity for a declaratory order under section 7 of the Children's Law Act. We all know the evidence that is presented. Most people know about blood tests that can be obtained in this modern age to prove paternity on a balance of probabilities.

In the case of Baby Rosalind, however, the father had died before the birth of the child and before the birth was registered, so the mother went to Vital Statistics, got the form and wanted to fill out the form. Of course, the father could not jointly fill out the form because he was deceased. The mother then went to the judge. She was told that she should go see a judge and she was told about the declaratory orders of parentage that exist under the Children's Law Act. She went to seek such an order, and unfortunately the judge indicated that he could not hear her request because under subsection 5 of section 7 it states, "A declaratory order that a man is in law the father of a child shall not be made under this section unless the father and the child whose relationship is sought to be established are living." Because the father in this incidence was dead the mother had no remedy. She had no remedy whatsoever.

The purpose of this bill is to eliminate or repeal subsection 5 of section 7 so that the court will now be permitted to make a declaratory order of fatherhood when the alleged father is deceased. There are also some consequential amendments required. Subsection (6) will also need to be repealed as it provides an exception to section 7(5), which will no longer be necessary if subsection (5) of section 7 is in fact repealed.

Furthermore, there is another consequential amendment which may also be required to section 8(2) of the Children's Law Act to clarify who may give consent to genetic testing of a deceased person.

I am told, Mr. Speaker, that this particular problem arises quite often. The problem where the father is dead has resulted in a situation where children, like Rosalind, cannot get their father named on the birth certificate. The purpose of this particular section is to allow that to happen.

Repealing this section, section 7(5), will eliminate the requirement that the father of the child must be living in order for the court to make a declaratory order. Currently, if the father is living, the court can make the order in either two ways, as I said earlier. If evidence can be brought in on the balance of probabilities that he is the father, or alternatively, if a presumption exists, then the presumption is not rebutted by evidence to the contrary.

One concern that has, in fact, been raised is; if the father is deceased who is there to protect the interests of the father. The protections for the father are found in the judicial process itself. A person must make application to the court in order to have the deceased declared as the father. A person making the application must prove sufficient evidence to the court, prove that the deceased meets one of the presumptions of parentage in section 10 of the act, or alternatively, to provide sufficient evidence, either affidavit evidence or oral evidence, to the court to allow the court to make a determination on the balance of probabilities that the deceased is the father.

The protections that are inherent in the court process: Every application requires that the executor or the administrator of the deceased's estate be named as a respondent and served with the application; and if there is no executor or administer of the deceased father, then the rules of the court will allow the court to appoint a person to represent the estate of the deceased for the purposes of the application. The rules of the court also allow an interested party to apply to the court as an intervener. An interested party may include family members or friends of the deceased.

Mr. Speaker, procedural rules should prevent a court from making a declaratory order without representation of the deceased's estate or his family, but there is also additional protection in the act. Section 9 of the act permits the court, on application, to discharge the declaratory order of parentage if evidence that was not made available to the previous hearing later becomes available.

In a situation where there is no administrator or executor appointed for the deceased's estate, and the court could not appoint a person to represent the estate, it is possible that a declaratory order can be discharged, if a representative from the deceased's family applied to the court and provided sufficient evidence to the court to discharge the order.

Similar legislation exists in Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia. We shall ask the court to make declaratory orders in circumstances where the father is deceased. The legislation in Prince Edward Island, in Ontario and in New Brunswick and Manitoba also allows the court to make a declaratory order when the father is deceased, but in those provinces they limit that ability to circumstances which give rise to a prescribed presumption of paternity.

Mr. Speaker, while these situations are rare, I mention the incident in Stephenville where a young father passed away before marriage and his fiancée was left to seek to have him listed on the child's birth certificate as the father. The incident was publicized in The Evening Telegram and I note that the mother, who was very disappointed, indicated that she was going to contact her MHA, who I see sitting over there, and I cannot say his name but he is the hon. Member for Port au Port, and I understand that the mother now lives in the district of the –

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. T. MARSHALL: I am told the child's grandmother is the Chief of the Federation of Newfoundland Indians for St. George's and the mother lives in the district represented by the hon. Government House Leader.

So, with the representations made from the hon. Member for Port au Port and the Government House Leader, the government was certainly sparked into taking action in the event that such an incident should ever happen again so it can be addressed in a timely manner.

Mr. Speaker, I believe the proposed amendment is a very necessary one. Without this amendment a deceased father in the Province cannot be named on the birth registration of his child. The amendment addresses a circumstance that was not contemplated at the time the Children's Law Act was initially drafted.

From time to time situations like this do arise, when it becomes clear that the legislation has to be updated and amended, and I am pleased to bring in this legislation to do so in this case. We have recognized a need to improve a situation via legislation, and while this amendment will in no fashion bring back a loved one it may help in the process of grieving as well as the recognition of parentage.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for this opportunity to discuss the amendment to this act, the Children's Law Act, to remove or repeal section 7(5) and I ask for the support of all members of this House in the passage of this bill and I look forward to the discussion.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

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

I appreciate an opportunity to have a few brief words on this particular Bill 13. We will be voting in favour of this piece of legislation. It is not overly complicated.

The minister alluded to some examples which brought this about, but it was my understanding that the most prominent reason this was brought about and certainly pointed out was the case of Andrew Bagby. We all know about the baby Turner case and the inquiry that took place. That was a case, for example, where the mother had actually killed the father. In that particular case the grandparents wanted some kind of declaratory relief in the courts, but unless they could prove, of course, have a declaration from the courts that they had some standing vis-à-vis being grandparents and so on, that was not possible. I understand that was one of the principle reasons why this was promoted and came about, in addition to the minister's examples that he has given as well.

In that case Mr. Bagby and his wife wanted to approach the court for custody of the child and, because they had no standing because of the legislation the way it existed, they could not do that. Now this will change that. So, anything that makes that possible - because we have to remember, the bottom line is the Children's Law Act is all about what is in the best interest of the child. Anything that promotes that and achieves that goal we would certainly be in favour of.

Therefore, there is no need to comment further on that regard. We are repealing the old section which said you had to be alive or living to go for that declaratory relief, and we are just taking that out. That makes imminent sense, we would suggest.

I also notice there is a new section being added, saying that nothing in this section prevents an application under this section before the birth of a child. There may well be cases, I would think, lots of them, whereby you might want to know whether someone is or is not the father before the birth. There could be all kinds of reasons. It could be custody issues and access issues that are going to come up immediately following birth. There might be rulings that a court might make around the mother, for example, who is carrying the child and so on. If you have to wait until the birth takes place to prove that you are the actual biological father, that could cause some problems because the court might say until the child is born you cannot have any say in it, and that is not always in the best interest of the child also, so that one is the reason for that one. We certainly have no problem with that whatsoever.

The other piece, changing gears, it says that where a person named by the court is incapable of consenting to genetic testing – because most often you would ask somebody for their consent for the testing and you would hope that they would. If they do not, there are provisions that you can order that the testing would be done, but in some cases, no matter what kind of order you make, you cannot get it if the person is – as in the case of Mr. Bagby, again - deceased.

So there has to be some provision whereby consent, if consent cannot be given by the person for some reason, due to his or her death, in that case that person's executor or administrator or nearest relative shall be considered sufficient.

Again, we drafted the Children's Law Act some years ago. As we well know in this House, we do not always get it right the first time. We have to come back from time to time, and as different specific circumstances come to light, to make amendments so that we can accommodate those unexpected circumstances, or circumstances that were not contemplated on the initial drafting, and that is what we are doing here.

I am sure this is going to cause some further headaches in the future, as well, because no doubt when you get into DNA and genetic testing and whatever, and someone does it and someone is deceased and some friend or relative is permitted to go for declaratory relief, that opens up all kinds of issues as to who is entitled to what in whom's estate, depending upon the findings. Again, the bottom line is seeking justice, whether it be in criminal law or whether it be in estate law, or wills law or anywhere else, and this is advancing that interest so we would certainly be supportive of it.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

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

Obviously this bill, the Act To Amend The Children's Law Act, makes all kinds of sense for the reasons that have been outlined by the minister, and also by the Opposition House Leader.

I want to raise a concern with regard to section 8 of the act, the amendment to section 8, and I will read out the amendment. "Where a person named by the court is incapable of consenting to genetic testing due to his or her death, the consent of that person's executor, administrator or nearest relative shall be considered sufficient."

The concern I am raising is the issue of what happens if the executor, administrator, and/or nearest relative are hostile to the person who is making the claim. I am going to give an example of something that I was involved with some years ago, where the woman who was claiming the paternity for her child who was unborn was left without her partner because of an accident, and there was going to be a financial settlement after the accident. The parents of the man who had been killed denied that their son was the father of the woman's child. She could not prove anything around that unless there was DNA testing, and she did not have the right to have that done. The other thing was that, not only would that be necessary but the parents were saying: Well, he had no intention of marrying you. Her thing was, they had a commitment to each other. They were not cohabitating in the sense that he had totally moved in with her but they were cohabitating in the sense of a sexual relationship. The parents were saying that there was no commitment and in actual fact, in the settlement that happened, the parents were the ones who got the money and the woman who was pregnant with the child of that man got nothing and was really destitute. What if she had, under the new law, made a claim and gone to court and it was the parents of that young man who would have to agree to the genetic testing? They will not agree, so where does she stand? She still has no rights. I am just realizing this, this afternoon actually, or else I would have spoken to minister about it before today but things have been a bit hectic.

I do have a concern. I understand legally why that is there, but could there not be an overruling by the court? Could not the court say that, you know, it has to happen? It is a real concern that I have, remembering this situation, which was a very real situation. I do not know if the minister has thought about that, I do not know if those who put the legislation together have thought about it, but where is the protection for the child and the mother of that child in a case where the executor, administrator or nearest relative are hostile to this happening and they are the ones who have to make the decision, who have to give the consent? It bothers me.

I think that kind of situation would be more common than uncommon, I am afraid to say. There are many times when parents do not agree with the person who their son or daughter is in a partnership with. You can get people who act meanly. This was a situation that caused great stress to me, as a person dealing with the woman who was in the situation.

I put that forward to the minister. I would like a bit more thought going into the question that I am putting forward. Maybe he has an answer already. That is the only thing that I am questioning with regard to this bill, but it is a serious question for me, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: Order please!

If the hon. the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General speaks now he will close the debate on Bill 13.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General.

MR. T. MARSHALL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

If I understood the question properly, if the executor of the deceased father's estate, or his nearest relative, refused to give consent to the DNA testing then the court cannot make an order. However, under section 8(3) of the act it allows the court to draw an inference that it considers appropriate from the said refusal. In the end this is decided based on the evidence, so the court can draw an inference from the refusal of the executor of the family to allow the testing to take place.

With that, I will thank the hon. members opposite and urge passing of this legislation.

MR. SPEAKER: Is it the pleasure of the House that Bill 13, An Act To Amend The Children's Law Act, be now read a second time?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

The motion is carried.

CLERK: A bill, An Act To Amend The Children's Law Act, Bill 13.

MR. SPEAKER: Bill 13 has now been read a second time.

When shall this bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House?

MS BURKE: Now, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Now.

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The Children's Law Act," read a second time, ordered referred to a Committee of the Whole House presently, by leave. (Bill 13)

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, I would like to call Order 14, second reading of a bill, An Act To Amend The Judicature Act, Bill 18.

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that bill 18, An Act To Amend The Judicature Act, be now read a second time.

Motion, second reading of a bill, "An Act To Amend The Judicature Act." (Bill 18)

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General.

MR. T. MARSHALL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is a pleasure to get up again. My God, I almost feel like I am in the Opposition I get to speak so much.

Mr. Speaker, this particular act is meant to do a number of things. It is going to amend the Judicature Act, and it is going to reorganize the trial division of the Supreme Court into two parts. One will be a general division that will have a responsibility for all matters at the Superior Court level in this Province other than family law matters; and it will create a new family division that will have responsibility, obviously, for family law matters in areas of the Province that currently are served in that regard by what is called the Unified Family Court and new areas that are to be set up.

Secondly, the areas of the Province where the family division would exercise its authority would initially be the same as that currently exercised by the Unified Family Court, but it can be expanded by the Cabinet by regulation, who would have authority to pass regulations, increasing the number of areas in the Province where this act would apply. The first would be in Western Newfoundland.

Thirdly, the subject matter jurisdiction of the family division is changed to reflect current developments in family law jurisprudence and to modernize the language commonly used in family law matters. As a consequence of all of the above, the Unified Family Act will be repealed; and that is fourth thing.

Mr. Speaker, in this Province, apart from the Avalon Peninsula and the Bonavista Peninsula, where there is Unified Family Court, family law matters are shared between a Provincial Court and the Superior Court. The law itself is shared. The appointment and the payment of judges is in two different courts and the structure and processes of the courts that handle family law cases. We have the superior court in this Province or the trial division of the Supreme Court and we have the Provincial Court. Unified Family Courts take that jurisdiction over family matters and combine it into one court at the Superior Court level. Unified Family Courts, specialized courts, are designed to reduce the time and the conflict and the cost of litigation because that could be harmful to children, it could be harmful to members of families in situations that are violent.

It does this by providing one court with jurisdiction to hear all issues that are raised in each family law matter rather than having to go between different courts to get a resolution of the different issues. Secondly, easy access to a full range of family justice services such as education and mediation and counselling and alternate dispute mechanisms based on consent rather than the adversarial approach. Also, there will be specialized judges who are experts in family law. There will be a user-friendly environment with simplified procedures.

Mr. Speaker, Unified Family Court was created in 1979 under the Unified Family Court Act. Initially it had been a private project. I think the first family court or the first Unified Family Court in the country I believe was here in St. John's. Then, in 1979 the act was passed. The geographical jurisdiction of the court, however, was limited to St. John's and environs and in 1998 was expanded to include the Bonavista Peninsula. In St. John's you have the Unified Family Court, in the Avalon Peninsula and the Bonavista Peninsula, but everywhere else in the Province, in Central, in Western, and in Labrador you have to go to two different courts. You have to go back and forth.

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the change of name from the Unified Family Court to family division, it has long been the presumption that the term Unified Family Court is considered inappropriate and not in keeping with the realities of family disputes. Unified is not a term easily reconciled with the facts that families are often brought into the UFC whose circumstances, not of unity, but of division and of conflict. So after meaningful consultations with the Supreme Court judiciary, it was determined that an efficient and effective solution to address this presumption is to create a new family division, as is the case of six other jurisdictions across the country that have a unified family court model.

The next amendment would allow the Cabinet of the Lieutenant-Governor in Council to expand the area where the family division will have jurisdiction via regulation. As I said, it is presently defined under the act to include the Avalon and the Bonavista Peninsula, but this amendment will now give the Cabinet flexibility. It will allow the Cabinet to expand the area and it would do this incrementally here in stages to include other areas of the Province.

We are actively engaged in consultations with both the Supreme and the Provincial Court with respect to the geographical expansion of family division, following which directions will be sought from the Lieutenant-Governor in Council as contemplated by the amendment.

Mr. Speaker, the federal government in 2008 appointed a new family court judge, Mr. Justice David Peddle. He was formerly a judge of the Provincial Court. He is now the new judge of the Supreme Court. He is an experienced jurist and he will serve the family division well in his new position in Corner Brook because the intent is to expand Unified Family Court, under the new name, out to the West Coast.

Mr. Speaker, when I first became the Minister of Justice back in 2003, the first thing that was on my desk was an attempt to expand Unified Family Court right across the Island and into Labrador. The federal government, the minister, Martin Cauchon, under the child-centred family justice project was going to appoint a number of family court judges right throughout Canada. I met with the hon. Irwin Cotler, who was the federal Minister of Justice at the time, and he indicated to me that our Province would receive four family court judges. We would use those judges, and the Province would provide the resources and the funds in order to expand the courts right across the whole Province.

Unfortunately, we did not get the four new judges. A new government took over in Ottawa and they took a different approach. I met with Vic Toews, who was the successor to Mr. Cotler as the federal justice minister, and his concern - he did not know if we needed federal court judges or new judges. In the end, what happened is that we got one judge. That was in December of 2008. Mr. Justice David Peddle was, in fact, appointed.

It has been said that family justice or family law in Newfoundland is dealt with in a patch quilt manner. Where it is like a quilt. In one way in St. John's we had a unified court, and everywhere else in the Province people would have to go back and forth between two courts to seek the justice they needed.

I was pleased that our government put, I think it was $800,000 in the budget last year, to expand family justice services right across the country. We said we would do that, even if we did not get the judges. Obviously, we would like to see the appointment of two more federal judges. One to service the people of Central Newfoundland, and one to service the good people in Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, the final amendment deals with subject matter jurisdiction. The amendment proposes some modifications which would afford the opportunity to catch up with developments in family law jurisprudence and modernize the language commonly employed in family law.

The most significant amendment is the power of the proposed family division to deal with matters relating to resulting trusts or unjust enrichment involving persons who have cohabitated, including relief by way of constructive trust or monetary award.

Mr. Speaker, common-law couples who have separated, have their custody and support issues adjudicated at the Unified Family Court, but all matters relating to property have to be dealt with in the Supreme Court Trial Division. This is an inconvenience to the parties. It is costly to the parties, as many support issues are intertwined with property issues. Oftentimes, applications might be filed with the Trial Division requesting transfer of a property matter to the UFC, which of course, is additional cost to the parties. All other Unified Family Courts in Canada have the power to address resulting trust or unjust enrichment matters, and that is why we are bringing forth this amendment.

There are also privacy concerns. In the Trial Division, it is open to the general public. In Unified Family Court, the court is closed and only available for members of the families or the people involved in the dispute. Family law matters are not criminal in nature and it does not serve anyone well, and it does not serve the public, nor the families involved, to have these issues determined in a public fashion. In fact, Mr. Speaker, conducting such business of the court in a public fashion may be detrimental to the families involved.

Finally, as I said initially, the end result of all these amendments we are putting forward, that it is now appropriate to repeal the Unified Family Court itself.

Mr. Speaker, these proposed amendments are constructive. I am pleased that our government has been preparing for this initiative for some time, with $800,000 for the Poverty Reduction Strategy to expand family law courts and family justice services throughout the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Hopefully, we will get the extra two judges from the federal government in due course.

Thank you for this opportunity, Mr. Speaker. I look forward to the support of all hon. members in the passing of this bill.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

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

I appreciate an opportunity to have a few words. Again, I do not intend to belabour this particular piece of legislation, Bill 18. We will be supporting it. The purpose, of course, of second reading is to make any comments you might have of a general nature.

I listened to the comments of the minister. There is no doubt that we have some substantial changes to go through in reorganizing the family law system in this Province. As he pointed out, we have Supreme Courts that do so much by way of the Unified Family Court. We have Provincial Courts that do so much. Even in our own Province, there is a lot that goes into the family law structure. A certain amount of it fits under Health and Community Services even. A certain amount fits under our court system. A certain amount fits under our Child Welfare system.

We just recently had the Government House Leader herself appointed to a new department called Child, Youth and Family Services. No doubt, you just cannot put family issues under one umbrella neatly. They have a lot of different facets to it. There is a divorce component. There is an adoption component. There is a child component. There is the parentage component we talked about. There are a whole bunch of issues, and trying to grapple with where they fit neatly has always been a challenge. We realize, and the courts realize, that you must now have a court system that can accommodate them in different areas throughout this Province in different ways but still get the job done.

We do not think, by any stretch of the imagination, the passage of this legislation is going to make everything be okay automatically. We think it is a growing pain situation. We definitely need to have these changes in order to accommodate the realities of today. Rural Newfoundland versus urban Newfoundland and so on, but at the same time we fully acknowledge and recognize that it will require some tinkering and further amendments in the future in order to make things work. This is a necessary step in that right direction and no doubt, over time we will see how the new court system works in Corner Brook. We will see how the integration of Provincial and Supreme Court family situation jurisdictions work out, but we see nothing wrong with advancing in that direction and we will be voting in favour of it.

Thank you.

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

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

I am glad to have a chance also to speak to this amendment to the Judicature Act. Again, this is something that makes total sense.

When the Unified Family Court was set up, it was set up as a pilot project back in 1979 in the St. John's region, and now it is in St. John's and parts of the Bonavista Peninsula, but I think the time obviously has come to say we no longer have a pilot project here; we have something that is an essential part of the system, the legal system, and what this act does is to do that, to form the new Trial Division with the general division and family division under it. I will not go into details because the minister certainly has explained the legislation. It is not a complicated legislation but because it is a legal document dealing with legalities - it is not just that it is a legal document but the topic is also legalities - for anybody wanting to read it, it is pretty detailed and tedious to read but everything that is in it is needed in putting the new structure together.

Under the old structure, for example, if there was going to be expansion outside of St. John's for the Unified Family Court you had to have amendments to the act in order for that to happen. Now, with this new structure, expansion will be possible through regulation and will not be dependent on a time of year to implement it. It can happen at any time and it is a regulation that can be dealt with, so there does not have to be a change to an act in order for expansion to happen.

Another thing that is happening under the new act which is important is the changes to section C of the Unified Family Court Act. Section C of the Unified Family Court Act has been updated in section 43.9 1(e) of the Judicature Act to conform with the federal Divorce Act of 1985. So, in this new section in the Judicature Act, this section now includes common law partners. Previously, common law parents could go to the Unified Family Court for custody, access and support decisions but they had to go to the Trial Division if they owned a house together. The UFC was private, but Trial Division was public. Now, all family divisions can hear common law property disputes so you do not have a division in two different sections of the Trial Division for things that are related to the couple and to the family.

As well, changing to a family division system, as this act does, is in line with seven other jurisdictions in the country. The thing that is so beneficial about this and the changes that have been made is that many small disputes will get solved a lot more quickly in the new structure and we also see an end to the Unified Family Court being seen as a pilot project. The expansion of the family division to the whole Province is something, I think, that many people would want and are looking forward to. I know the minister mentioned the western part of the Province as the first place where the expansion is going to take place. It would be nice to hear if there is a full plan in place for the whole expansion. Maybe the minister can tell us that, how far along the plans are with regard to the expansion. I look forward to hearing that from the minister.

Having said that, Mr. Speaker, I think the other places – I just want to add one more point – the government does intend to expand the family court system to the four other Supreme Court districts: Grand Falls, Gander, Happy Valley-Goose Bay and Corner Brook. The minister mentioned that the West Coast would be happening soon, so I guess what I would want to know is how soon will the expansion happen to the other districts, not just to Corner Brook?

You cannot hear me?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MS MICHAEL: Maybe if the minister could put in his earphone so he can hear what I am saying, because I am directing a question to him. He is having a hard time hearing. Maybe I can ask the minister if he can hear me now, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask members if they would be kind enough to keep their conversations low. The minister is trying to entertain questions being asked by the hon. Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi. I ask members if they would be kind enough to just allow the questions to be asked and take their private conversations outside.

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

MS MICHAEL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The minister has indicated, and of course we know that one of the important things that is going to happen because of the new act is that there will be an expansion of the family court system to the other four jurisdictions, the Supreme Court jurisdictions: Grand Falls, Gander, Happy Valley-Goose Bay and Corner Brook. Is that correct?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MS MICHAEL: Well, he can let me know.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MS MICHAEL: Stephenville? Okay, the West Coast will be Stephenville, not Corner Brook.

I guess I am wondering, how soon will the expansion happen to all four districts? I think the minister mentioned the West Coast would be coming next. I would be happy to hear how fast it is going to expand to all of the districts in the Province.

Having said that, Mr. Speaker, I think those are all the comments I want to make on the act.

Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: If the hon. the Minister of Justice and Attorney General speaks now, he will close the debate in second reading of Bill 18, An Act To Amend The Judicature Act.

The hon. the Minister of Justice and Attorney General.

MR. T. MARSHALL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the Government House Leader and the Leader of the NDP for their comments.

With respect to the question from the Leader of the NDP, our ability to expand the program depends on when we get the federal judges, because these judges are federal judges appointed by Ottawa.

We thought we were going to get four, but we have only gotten one. The first decision will be to expand to the West Coast. Judge David Peddle, who is a judge of the Provincial Court, he has now been elevated to the Supreme Court. I understand he is going to Corner Brook, I believe it is next month, in June, and he will be ready to sit when the new courthouse is open there. Our ability to do it in other areas will be dependent on if and when the federal government provides us with additional judges.

I would encourage the Leader of the NDP to join with me, and maybe the Opposition House Leader will join with us as well, in writing a letter to Minister Nicholson in Ottawa to suggest that two more judges be appointed to this Province.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Is it the pleasure of the House that Bill 18 be now read a second time?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

The motion is carried.

CLERK: A bill, An Act To Amend The Judicature Act. (Bill 18)

MR. SPEAKER: Bill 18 has now been read a second time.

When shall Bill 18 be referred to a Committee of the Whole House?

MS BURKE: Now, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Now.

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The Judicature Act," read a second time, ordered referred to a Committee of the Whole House presently, by leave. (Bill 18)

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, Order 10, second reading of a bill, An Act To Amend The Labour-Sponsored Venture Capital Tax Credit Act. (Bill 3)

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that Bill 3, An Act To Amend The Labour-Sponsored Venture Capital Tax Credit Act, be now read a second time.

Motion, second reading of a bill, "An Act To Amend The Labour-Sponsored Venture Capital Tax Credit Act." (Bill 3)

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am pleased to rise in this House to introduce amendments to Bill 3, The Labour-Sponsored Venture Capital Tax Credit Act.

The Labour-Sponsored Venture Capital Tax Credit Act was enacted in December 2004. Amendments being introduced today relate to our recent commitment in Budget 2009 to enhance the Labour-Sponsored Tax Credit.

Mr. Speaker, prior to enhancements announced in Budget 2009 the program had provided a 15 per cent provincial tax credit for individuals who invest in a labour-sponsored venture capital corporation fund with a maximum annual contribution of $5,000. Investments will also be eligible for a matching 15 per cent federal income tax credit with the same maximum eligible investment limit each year.

Mr. Speaker, an LSVCC fund is required to invest in emerging Canadian growth companies with less than $50 million in assets and 500 employees, and at least 75 per cent of salaries and wages paid to residents in the Province. A minimum of 75 per cent of capital raised in Newfoundland and Labrador must be reinvested in businesses in this Province within three years after the capital is raised.

Mr. Speaker, our government is committed to ensuring that our Province remains competitive and that we are able to attract new business and investment that stimulates the economy.

Significant progress has been made in recent years to provide greater tax competitiveness including an enhanced payroll tax exemption, the elimination of the sales tax on insurance premiums, and reduction of personal income tax rates. Newfoundland and Labrador currently boasts the lowest personal income tax rates in Atlantic Canada and is among the lowest in the country.

In keeping with this commitment, in Budget 2009 our government announced enhancements to the Labour-Sponsored Venture Capital Tax Credit Program. Effective April 1, 2009 the provincial tax credit rate for individuals who invest in the Labour-sponsored Venture Capital Corporation Fund increased from 15 per cent to 20 per cent. In addition the maximum annual contribution per year has been increased from $5,000 to $10,000. The venture capital fund registered under the program, GrowthWorks Atlantic Venture Fund, was certified in January 2005.

Mr. Speaker, amendments to Bill 3 are intended to put these enhancements in legislation.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

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

We have had an opportunity to look at this particular piece of legislation. It is rather complicated for someone who does not come from an accounting tax background. You have to do a fair amount of research to try and get your head around it, not like some other areas you might be familiar with. Even pronouncing it, actually, when it talks about, An Act To Amend The Labour-Sponsored Venture Capital Tax Credit Act, is a mouthful in and of itself.

We understand the basic premises of it. In fact, I guess you can Google pretty well anything today and get an explanation, a fairly common sense, down to earth explanation of what it is. I Wikipediaed, in this case, the definition of it, instead of Googled, and sure enough there is a great definition of Labour-Sponsored Venture Capital Corporations, how they work, the principle of them, and where they started. We are one of the later jurisdictions, of course, to buy into it but it is a great tool, another tool in the arsenal for anybody who wants to encourage enterprise in their jurisdictions and so on.

The only question I would have and pose - we agree in principle with what is happening here. It is basically a tax rate change that is occurring here, Mr. Speaker. We had some extended debate when we talked about bringing in the legislation some time ago. The only question I would have of the minister is; I am just curious as to why we need a legislative change in this case to change the tax rates. It was my understanding that in a lot of cases we could change the tax rates under certain legislation simply by regulation as opposed to necessarily having a legislative change. Now I might be wrong on that, but I just throw that out there.

Is there something about this particular piece of legislation that requires a legislative change on the rate structure as opposed to other financial bills, tax bills, which there are some provisions made in those cases to change the tax rates without necessarily having to bring it back to the House of Assembly? It can be done by regulatory changes.

That is the only issue I had, because if it is done by regulation there is certainly a publication process to that. We heard about the announcement of this rate change in the budget process. We are here now following through on that budget commitment. If that is done through a regulatory process, that is publicized, goes through the gazettes and so on, accessible to anybody on the websites, I am just wondering why it is necessary to actually go through the procedure of a House of Assembly change on a rate if it can be provided. Maybe the best move would be to change the act to say that regulatory changes can be made by regulation as opposed to coming back each and every time the government should decide that they want to change the rate.

That would be my only question, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you.

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

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

I am quite pleased, actually, to speak to this bill, An Act To Amend The Labour-Sponsored Venture Capital Tax Credit Act.

I have been aware of the GrowthWorks Atlantic Venture Fund since it was first put together and I was always pleased with the fact that we have legislation covering that fund and pleased to see the changes that are being suggested for the fund, because the current amendment, which will raise the investment ceiling to $10,000 and the provincial tax credit to 20 per cent, is something that will be an incentive. This is the hope, I think, of the change, that the increase will encourage growth in the fund.

Why I think the fund is so important is because its goal is to have investment capital to put into companies in Newfoundland and Labrador. To me, it is the basis for a community economic development model when you can have an investment fund that has a goal that really is concerned about – of course, this is Atlantic-wide, it is not just Newfoundland and Labrador; it operates within the four provinces. Such a fund, with a goal of giving money to local companies, certainly is the basis of community economic development, that the local companies know there is a place where they can go in order to get funded, will, get investment into their business. It is different than getting just funds, like ACOA money, for example, which makes it different and makes it something that smaller companies have to learn about. They have to understand what the purpose of the fund is.

So far, the fund has invested in one company, Venture Marine, and the objective of the fund is through labour associations in particular, because this is where this comes from. It comes from the labour movement. Through labour associations, residents of Newfoundland and Labrador will be encouraged to make equity investments in small and medium-sized Newfoundland and Labrador based businesses. The businesses that they look for are businesses that are going to create and maintain jobs. They want businesses that will encourage long-term investment in local communities. The fund has a real vision with regard to growth of communities, and that particularly would be growth of rural communities.

The businesses also that the fund looks at are businesses that provide another source of capital to facilitate job creation, growth and development, and certainly for rural Newfoundland and Labrador that is something that we need right now.

The fund also looks at companies that will strengthen the provincial economy by providing venture capital to Newfoundland and Labrador companies which assists with the growth and development of the businesses. If the businesses are rooted in the community and the businesses grow, then the communities are going to benefit from them as well.

The fund also looks for companies that build a lasting and productive relationship between labour, business and government for the benefit of Newfoundland and Labrador. I know there have been some attempts made in recent years for business, labour and government to work more closely together and there are many ways in which that can happen. This investment fund is one way in which business, labour and government are starting to work together. There are other countries, for example, the Scandinavian countries, where a lot of effort goes into business, labour and government working together so that all interests are considered when dealing with policy, for example. In this case, you have labour, business and government working together through this investment fund to benefit, economically, communities in Newfoundland and Labrador and small and medium-sized businesses that are part of those communities.

The investment offers an opportunity to invest in emerging Newfoundland and Labrador companies involved in the growth of strategic sectors in the provincial economy. The fund is close to the ground. It is here. We have people from Newfoundland and Labrador on the board of the fund and the people who are on that board are close to the needs of Atlantic Canada and close to the needs of the businesses in Atlantic Canada.

The fund as well, just like other investments, is also an opportunity to receive tax deductions and credits not offered by traditional RRSP contributions. So there are a lot of benefits to this fund. Obviously, not everybody knows about this fund. It is something that we have to get the word out more and more about the fund because the more this fund grows, the more that it is going to benefit the Province, the more it is going to benefit communities. It is a bit hard to get businesses used to this kind of investment, this venture capital investment because it means that they do not have the same control as they would get when getting a grant from ACOA, for example. So it is not the same as a grant system. It is an investment system but it is extremely important.

So I am very, very pleased to stand here today and to approve the change that is being suggested, the change particularly in the amount of money. The new limit that one can invest in a year and also the percentage change from 15 per cent to 20 per cent.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board. If he speaks now he will close debate on second reading of Bill 3.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board.

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I will undertake to find the answer for the Opposition House Leader that he has asked in the Committee stage.

MR. SPEAKER: Is it the pleasure of the House that Bill 3, An Act To Amend The Labour-Sponsored Venture Capital Tax Credit Act, be now read a second time?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

The motion is carried.

CLERK: A bill, An Act To Amend The Labour-Sponsored Venture Capital Tax Credit Act. (Bill 3)

MR. SPEAKER: Bill 3 has now been read a second time.

When shall Bill 3 be referred to a Committee of the Whole House?

MS BURKE: Now, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Now.

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The Labour-Sponsored Venture Capital Tax Credit Act," read a second time, ordered referred to a Committee of the Whole House presently, by leave. (Bill 3)

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the hon. Minister of Natural Resources, that the House resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole to consider Bills 3, 10, 13, 18 and 28.

MR. SPEAKER: The motion is that this House do now resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole to consider certain bills and that I do now leave the Chair.

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

The motion is carried.

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

CHAIR (Collins): Order, please!

The hon. the Government House Leader.

MS BURKE: Mr. Chair, we will call Bill 13, An Act To Amend The Children's Law Act.

CHAIR: The Committee of the Whole is now ready to debate Bill 13, An Act To Amend The Children's Law Act.

A bill, "An Act To Amend The Children's Law Act." (Bill 13)

CLERK: Clause 1

CHAIR: Shall clause 1 carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, clause 1 carried.

CLERK: Clause 2.

CHAIR: Shall clause 2 carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, clause 2 carried.

CLERK: Be it enacted by the Lieutenant-Governor and House of Assembly in Legislative Session convened as follows.

CHAIR: Shall the enacting clause carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, enacting clause carried.

CLERK: An Act To Amend The Children's Law Act.

CHAIR: Shall the title carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, title carried.

CHAIR: Shall I report Bill 13 carried without amendment?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

Motion, that the Committee report having passed the bill without amendment, carried.

CHAIR: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MS BURKE: Mr. Chair, Bill 18, An Act To Amend The Judicature Act.

CHAIR: Bill 18, An Act To Amend The Judicature Act, is now ready for debate.

A bill, "An Act To Amend The Judicature Act." (Bill 18)

CLERK: Clause 1.

CHAIR: Shall clause 1 carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, clause 1 carried.

CLERK: Clauses 2 to 12 inclusive.

CHAIR: Clauses 2 to 12 inclusive?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, clauses 2 through 12 carried.

CLERK: Be it enacted by the Lieutenant-Governor and House of Assembly in Legislative Session convened as follows.

CHAIR: Shall the enacting clause carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, enacting clause carried.

CLERK: An Act To Amend The Judicature Act.

CHAIR: An Act To Amend The Judicature Act.

Shall the title carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, title carried.

CHAIR: Shall I report the bill carried without amendment?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

Motion, that the Committee report having passed the bill without amendment, carried.

CHAIR: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MS BURKE: Mr. Chair, I would like to call, An Act To Amend The Provincial Court Act, 1991. (Bill 28)

CHAIR: Bill 28, An Act To Amend The Provincial Court Act, 1991.

A bill, "An Act To Amend The Provincial Court Act, 1991." (Bill 28)

CLERK: Clause 1.

CHAIR: Shall clause 1 carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, clause 1 carried.

CLERK: Clause 2.

CHAIR: Shall clause 2 carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, clause 2 carried.

CLERK: Be it enacted by the Lieutenant-Governor and House of Assembly in Legislative Session convened as follows.

CHAIR: Shall the enacting clause carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, enacting clause carried.

CLERK: An Act To Amend The Provincial Court Act, 1991.

CHAIR: Shall the title carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, title carried.

CHAIR: Shall I report Bill 28 carried without amendment?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

Motion, that the Committee report having passed the bill without amendment, carried.

CHAIR: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MS BURKE: Mr. Chair, I would like to call, An Act To Amend The Labour-Sponsored Venture Capital Tax Credit Act. (Bill 3)

CHAIR: The Committee is now prepared to debate, An Act To Amend The Labour-Sponsored Venture Capital Tax Credit Act. (Bill3)

A bill, "An Act To Amend The Labour-Sponsored Venture Capital Tax Credit Act." (Bill 3)

CLERK: Clause 1.

CHAIR: The hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board.

MR. KENNEDY: Yes, Mr. Chair.

In relation to the question raised by the Opposition House Leader, we certainly looked at the various options that were available. We thought that this was the best way to go at this time. However, in the future we will certainly consider the comments made.

CHAIR: Shall clause 1 carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, clause 1 carried.

CLERK: Clause 2.

CHAIR: Shall clause 2 carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, clause 2 carried.

CLERK: Be it enacted by the Lieutenant-Governor and House of Assembly in Legislative Session convened as follows.

CHAIR: Shall the enacting clause carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, enacting clause carried.

CLERK: An Act To Amend The Labour-Sponsored Venture Capital Tax Credit Act.

CHAIR: Shall the title carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, title carried.

CHAIR: Shall I report Bill 3 carried without amendment?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

Motion, that the Committee report having passed the bill without amendment, carried.

CHAIR: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MS BURKE: Mr. Chair, I would like to call, An Act To Amend The Highway Traffic Act. (Bill 10)

CHAIR: The Committee is now prepared to debate Bill 10, An Act To Amend The Highway Traffic Act.

A bill, "An Act To Amend The Highway Traffic Act." (Bill 10)

CLERK: Clause 1.

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for Port de Grave.

MR. BUTLER: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just have one question. With regards to clause 12.(3), it says, "Notwithstanding subsection (1), a person who enters the province to take up residence may operate a vehicle in the province for a period of not longer than 90 days before registering the vehicle as required by this Act."

While we were debating today, I had an e-mail from an individual who wanted to know, if a person goes outside the Province and buys a second-hand vehicle that has plates from another Province, do they have the ninety-day time frame as someone moving here? That is the question.

CHAIR: The hon. the Minister of Business.

MR. ORAM: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will endeavour to find out what the answer is to that question for you. The minister is going to give us the answer on that in just a few minutes.

CHAIR: Shall clause 1 carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, clause 1 carried.

CLERK: Clauses 2 to 32 inclusive.

CHAIR: Shall clauses 2 to 32 inclusive carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, clauses 2 through 32 carried.

CLERK: Be it enacted by the Lieutenant-Governor and House of Assembly in Legislative Session convened, as follows.

CHAIR: Shall the enacting clause carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, enacting clause carried.

CLERK: An Act To Amend The Highway Traffic Act.

CHAIR: Shall the title carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, title carried.

CHAIR: Shall I report Bill 10 carried without amendment?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

Motion, that the Committee report having passed the bill without amendment, carried.

CHAIR: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MS BURKE: Mr. Chair, I move that the Committee rise, report Bills 3, 10, 13, 18 and 28.

CHAIR: The motion is that the Committee rise and report certain bills, report progress, and ask leave to sit again.

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

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

MR. SPEAKER (Fitzgerald): The hon. the Member for Placentia & St. Mary's, and Deputy Chair of Committees.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. COLLINS: Mr. Speaker, the Committee of the Whole have considered the matters to them referred and have directed me to report Bills 13, 18, 28, 3 and 10 carried without amendment.

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair of the Committee of the Whole reports that the Committee have considered the matters to them referred and have directed him to report Bills 3, 10, 13, 18 and 28 carried without amendment.

When shall the report be received?

MS BURKE: Now, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Now.

On motion, report received and adopted.

MR. SPEAKER: When shall the said bills be read a third time?

MS BURKE: Tomorrow, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Tomorrow.

On motion, bills ordered read a third time tomorrow.

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the hon. the Minister of Natural Resources, that the House do now adjourn.

MR. SPEAKER: It is properly moved and seconded that this House do now adjourn.

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

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

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