The House met at 1:30 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (Wiseman): Order, please!

Admit strangers.

Before we start proceedings today, I want to welcome back to the House of Assembly, in the Speaker's gallery today we are joined by former MHA for the District of Bonavista North, Mr. Harry Harding.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: We are also joined today in the public galleries by two representatives from the Canadian Cancer Society, Matthew Piercy and Maria Callahan, as well as a guest from Daffodil House, Mr. Robert Warren.

MR. SPEAKER: I also want to welcome as well, twenty-nine individuals –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Today we also have twenty-nine individuals from the Island Harbour 50 Plus Club of Heart's Delight and Islington from the District of Trinity - Bay de Verde.

Welcome to our Assembly.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Today we have private members' statements from the Member for the District of Humber West; the Member for the District of Mount Pearl South; the Member for the District of Humber Valley; the Member for the District of Burgeo - La Poile; the Member for the District of Bellevue; and the Member for the District of St. John's North.

The hon. the Member for the District of Humber West.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. GRANTER: Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to stand in this House to congratulate the organizers and participants of an event that took place in Corner Brook during the weekend of March 16. The history departments at both Grenfell Campus Memorial University and Corner Brook Regional High partnered to hold a Titanic Symposium.

A Centennial Remembrance was a student-centered event that marked the 100 anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Corner Brook Regional High's participation comes out of the connection between the high school and the university which is just next door to each other.

The whole aim of the symposium was to promote an interest in history on a personal and academic level. Three high school students presented academic papers at the university on many topics associated with the Titanic disaster. As their former high school principal, I congratulate these students for presenting their individual research in a public forum at a university level, academic papers at an academic conference.

I ask all hon. members to join me in congratulating students: Melissa Kennedy, Matthew Evans, and Cohen Chaulk. I would also thank Ms Michelle Park, a great teacher for always challenging students to go beyond in seeking higher achievement for all of her students.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. LANE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is my privilege to stand in this hon. House to recognize the tremendous success story which is the Mount Pearl Seniors Independence Group. This organization was established in 2007 with a mandate to advocate, plan, and promote the independence, dignity, health, and well-being of senior citizens. They provide programming for 273 members, including weekly activities such as crafts, bowling, a Tuesday friendship club, fitness, a drop-in centre, and a walking program, just to name a few. They also administer a summer odd jobs and snow busters program, as well as other annual activities such as health awareness day, visits to personal care homes, income tax clinic, flu shot clinic, and a monthly caregiver respite centre.

Mr. Speaker, I would ask all members of this hon. House to join me in congratulating the Mount Pearl Seniors Independence Group for the tremendous work they do to improve the lives of seniors in our Province.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. BALL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise in this hon. House today to commend Mrs. Hilda Beatrice Gillingham on the occasion of her 100^th birthday. Mrs. Gillingham currently resides in the seniors' home in Corner Brook and has family members in Pasadena area. She has had an amazing life, raised six children, has twenty-eight grandchildren, fifty-nine great-grandchildren, fifty-eight great-great-grandchildren, and two great-great-great-grandchildren.

Born in Goose Arm on April 26, 1912, Mrs. Gillingham spent the bulk of her life as a homemaker after marrying her sweetheart in 1932. As a young mother and wife during World War II, Mrs. Gillingham became an active volunteer and spent numerous hours knitting socks for the soldiers overseas. She was one of many who sent care packages aiding the soldiers on the war fronts.

Mr. Speaker, every day, seniors in our Province are working, learning new skills, volunteering their time, and supporting families and friends. Their wisdom, their skills, their abilities are being felt in homes and communities throughout Newfoundland and Labrador. Mrs. Gillingham is a great example of seniors who have contributed tremendously over the years unselfishly helping those in need.

Unselfish and noble actions are the most radiant pages in the reflection of a great life. To this, Mr. Speaker, I ask all members of this hon. House to stand with me and commend Mrs. Hilda Beatrice Gillingham on the occasion of her 100^th birthday.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Burgeo – La Poile.

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

I rise today to recognize and congratulate Kenneth and Mabel LeMoine of Channel-Port aux Basques, who will celebrate seventy years of marriage tomorrow, on April 27, 2012.

They started their life together in the beautiful Town of Rose Blanche-Harbour Le Cou and moved to Channel-Port aux Basques in 1953. They raised three children: Hiram, Shirley, and Joan. They are the proud grandparents of three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Mr. LeMoine worked with CN until he retired in 1983.

Mr. LeMoine celebrated his ninetieth birthday on March 11 and Mrs. LeMoine turned eighty-six on January 5. The LeMoines continue to be very active in their community. They will celebrate their anniversary with an open house for family and friends at their residence in Channel-Port aux Basques.

Mr. Speaker, I ask all members of this House to join with me in extending congratulations to Kenneth and Mabel LeMoine on the celebration of their seventieth wedding anniversary. What a milestone! All the best to Mr. and Mrs. LeMoine and family.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. PEACH: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise in this hon. House today to congratulate two students from Swift Current Academy for their outstanding achievement at the 2012 Vista Regional Drama Festival in Trinity a week ago.

Mr. Speaker, there were fourteen students from Swift Current Academy who took part in the 2012 drama festival. They took part in three different workshops and performed in the play entitled The Big Bad.

Special awards were presented to Janelle Maye for Best Actress in a Comic Role and Emma Miller for Best Stolen Moment.

I would also like to take this opportunity, Mr. Speaker, to recognize Ms Lori Ann Upshall and Ms Samantha Drover for their time, dedication, and encouragement to their students. They prepared their students very well for this competition.

Mr. Speaker, I ask all hon. members of this House to join me in congratulating the students of Swift Current Academy for a great performance.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. KIRBY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise today to pay tribute to a man whose sudden and recent death has brought grief and sadness in direct proportion to the warmth and joy he brought to this Province.

Tom Fitzgerald, "Big Tom" at K-Rock, died yesterday morning after a short stay in hospital. My deepest sympathies go to his family, his friends, and his co-workers at Steele Communications in my district on Kenmount Road.

Big Tom co-hosted K-Rock's wildly popular morning show with Mike Campbell and Candice Udle, creating a classic radio mix of humour, personally, information, and music.

On Saturdays, Big Tom's Shed provided a soundtrack for countless camping trips, backyard projects, weekend drives – and, yes, shed parties throughout our great Province.

To an ordinary classic rock fan like myself, he seemed tireless. He was a massive on-air presence, but he also seemed to be an active part of every major fundraising effort in this Province. He even came to the NDP caucus office last December for a K-Rock office pizza and Christmas party.

A big heart, a big laugh, and a big contributor to local radio, Big Tom will be missed.

I ask all hon. members to join me in extending sympathies to his family, friends, and coworkers.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: I would also like today to acknowledge the Mayor of Happy Adventure, Mr. Jim Warren, who is in our gallery joining us today, too. Welcome, Sir, to our gallery.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Statements by Ministers.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER DUNDERDALE: Mr. Speaker, I rise in this hon. House today to recognize and celebrate hope, determination, and courage. Tomorrow is the Canadian Cancer Society's annual Daffodil Day, when we all have the opportunity to demonstrate our collective fight against cancer.

With one in three Newfoundlanders and Labradorians being diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, the disease continues to touch the lives of everyone in this Province. The daffodil, the chosen symbol of support and hope in the face of cancer, represents the determination that cancer can be beaten. Indeed, great strides are being made in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

Mr. Speaker, we will continue to work aggressively to enhance cancer care in the Province and to improve quality in our health care system through investments in equipment and services for prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

Including Budget 2012 investments, the provincial government has invested over $140 million in cancer treatment and prevention since 2004. Our continued support for cancer treatment and prevention is helping to improve the lives of cancer patients and their families throughout the Province as we commend the dedicated medical professionals, volunteers, and organizations such as the Canadian Cancer Society, who work tirelessly to help those fighting cancer.

Mr. Speaker, as we pin this little yellow flower to our lapels, we show support for those fighting cancer and remember those we have lost, but we also stand together in our fight and perseverance, steadfast that through continued research, education, effective diagnosis, and treatment, we will find a way to overcome this disease.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage all members of this House and all Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to wear a daffodil tomorrow, April 27, as a sign of support for those fighting cancer, a symbol of hope that we will find a cure and in memory of those we have lost.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the hon. Premier for an advance copy of her statement today.

I also want to recognize the people in the House of Assembly from the Canadian Cancer Society and to publicly thank them for the tremendous work that they do in our Province. There are angels, Mr. Speaker, amongst us everywhere when it comes to delivering services and treatments to patients who suffer with cancer in Newfoundland and Labrador.

I also, Mr. Speaker, want to use this opportunity to acknowledge and thank the government for their recent decision to reduce the age for breast screening in Newfoundland and Labrador. I applaud your efforts in making that available to women throughout this Province.

Mr. Speaker, I am always inspired by people throughout Newfoundland and Labrador that are suffering from cancer, and show us the courage and determination every day that this disease can be beaten, and are living proof that it can be beaten. I am also inspired, Mr. Speaker, by all of those people in communities around our districts who every day are launching fundraising campaigns, selling tickets, holding raffles, participating in bake sales, doing whatever it takes in their corner of the world to contribute to the prevention and the fight against cancer in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Every time I walk into a room and I see this, I am always inspired by the real compassion and heartfeltness of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to reach out to others in a time of need. Just this past week, Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity to visit Daffodil Place, to meet with a number of the patients that are there and to listen to their stories. Mr. Speaker, it really is a home away from home and it is one of the great monuments that we can be proud of in Newfoundland and Labrador, a service that we are doing for people in their greatest time and in their greatest need.

I encourage everyone to wear a daffodil, as the Premier has said, to live in hope of those that are suffering with cancer, to be a testament every day that this can be beaten, and to remember those, Mr. Speaker, who have succumbed to the disease.

Thank you very much.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Third Party.

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

I, too, thank the Premier for the advance copy of her statement.

I am very pleased to see us marking Daffodil Day in this House, because I know there is not a family in this Province that has not been touched by cancer in some way or another.

We have seen some great progress in cancer treatment in this Province and I look forward to the continued effort, as the Premier spoke about, to improve our cancer diagnosis and treatment capabilities to increase everyone's prospects of surviving.

I also look forward to government's continued advancement of the recommendations of the Cameron Inquiry to bring detection and treatment facilities up to the highest possible standards in the country; we owe it to the people of the Province. I would like to see government, as well, dedicate more resources towards cancer prevention by providing more on-the-ground support for people in adopting healthier lifestyles – and I think we all agree that that is something that should happen.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KING: Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, it is indeed my pleasure to rise today to highlight the positive work being undertaken by the Marine Institute's Centre for Fisheries Ecosystems Research, in part through funding from our provincial government. The work of Dr. George Rose and his team, without a doubt, is making a very positive contribution to our Province's fishing industry of the future.

Mr. Speaker, the work of the centre focuses on offshore and coastal fisheries studies, international collaboration, and fisheries conservation studies. It also helps improve our research capabilities, and supports an ecosystem-based and precautionary approach to fisheries management. To that end, the work of the centre will undoubtedly give us a better understanding of our marine ecosystem to address challenges for the fishery of the future.

Mr. Speaker, in July of 2010, the provincial government announced over $11.7 million to establish this centre. That included funding support for human resources and operational costs, as well as for chartering an offshore fisheries research vessel, the Celtic Explorer. Again, in Budget 2012, Mr. Speaker, we have budgeted $3.8 million for the next installment of our government's five year commitment to this.

The centre's activities in the past year have been quite important and include the inshore cod survey in Trinity Bay, and work on determining cod stock distribution and structure. This research supports the development and implementation of management measures to aid in the rebuilding of cod stocks in our Province, Mr. Speaker. The centre's staff have also been preparing for the multi-species acoustic survey, which is scheduled for this May along the South and Northeast Coast of the Province using the Celtic Explorer.

Mr. Speaker, it is worthy of note that the centre plans to examine further elements of the ecosystem in 2012 through predator-prey relationship studies and work to examine the implications of the high abundance of seals on commercial fish stocks.

Mr. Speaker, our government's commitment to fishery science and ocean and coastal management speaks for itself – Budget 2012 contains investments totalling $4.5 million to expand on this critical component of our fishery.

Our government, Mr. Speaker, certainly looks forward to the work the Centre for Fisheries Ecosystems Research will accomplish in the upcoming year and beyond.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. Barbe.

MR. BENNETT: I thank the minister for the advance copy of his statement, and I commend the Centre for Fisheries Ecosystems Research for all the work they have carried out that will help to ensure the sustainability of our fish stocks. I have to state however, research is an area of federal responsibility and while we appreciate we do need our own independent research, this government has failed to press the federal government to shoulder its responsibility in research obligations. Federal research and fisheries management has been going downhill over time and it would be more cost-effective and provide greater benefit if the feds were to jointly participate in this initiative.

The minister has said we are a small player on the world scene in terms of seafood, which is one more reason why we should not allow the federal government off the hook in terms of their obligation and commitment. Our limited money is best spent on areas where we are responsible, such as a comprehensive marketing strategy, which still has not been advanced by this government despite being in government for nearly a decade.

In terms of research, I also implore the minister not to overlook nor punish other organizations such as the FFAW that are also carrying out important research on our fish stocks. Again, while the centre's work is commendable and it is a good effort, it cannot replace scientific research that is needed on a vast expanse of the fishing grounds, over 750,000 square miles. The major problem we have with the fisheries is that there is a policy vacuum in the fisheries. There is no solid plan for the fishery. We need to do more but we must start with vision and a plan.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for The Straits - White Bay North.

MR. MITCHELMORE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to thank the minister for an advance copy of his statement. We all owe a great debt to the work of Dr. Rose. Government should be doing and funding this important work; in fact, they should be doing more. Twenty years after the moratorium we still have no clear answers or a Northern cod stock. The fishery is our largest sustainable resource and it will be long after the oil is gone, so government is certainly not doing enough to ensure that our fishery is developed to its full potential.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Oral Questions.

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

MR. BALL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yesterday, the Premier revealed that there is another delay in the Muskrat Falls Project. This time it is related to Manitoba Hydro's work on the Decision Gate 3 numbers. Just a few weeks ago, MHI was expected to produce this report in June and now it will not be ready until August.

The question for the Premier is: Over the last few weeks, what has changed to cause this delay?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Almost from October 12 until the House opened, we heard members of the Opposition bemoan the fact every day that the House of Assembly was not opened and issues important to them and to the people of the Province were not being discussed. Now, Mr. Speaker, we have been here since the first week of March and there has been a fair amount of discussion and they have not listened to one word of it – not one word. Mr. Speaker, when we talked about the PUB report and the fact they would not make a recommendation because they did not have Decision Gate 3 numbers, I said on a daily basis in this House that Decision Gate numbers would not be available until June. I am sorry you missed that. How can MHI do an analysis on Decision Gate 3 numbers when they do not have them?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Leader of the Official Opposition.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. BALL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is important that the people of the Province know exactly what MHI and all the consultants have been asked to do, so I ask the Premier: Will you table the terms of reference for the work that you have asked MHI and Ziff Energy to complete on the Muskrat Falls project? Will you please table it?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I would be delighted to provide the terms of reference. What I cannot guarantee to the people of the Province that the members opposite are going to read them.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. BALL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Well, I will guarantee the Premier that we will read them and we would like to have input into them, too.

Mr. Speaker, the Premier recently stated that the governors in New England are still interested in Muskrat Falls power, so I ask the Premier: Are these states prepared to pay the same rate as Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are forced to pay?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, this is the kind of foolishness that one has come to expect in this House of Assembly on questioning around Muskrat Falls. When you understand how a utility operates, how debt is incurred, how that debt is paid down, and the responsibilities of rate payers, Mr. Speaker, then we understand what the cost of electricity is to the people of the Province. We have spent the last year explaining that. You tried to commission this project twice under your own Administrations. You think you would have understood that. Perhaps if they were not trying to give it all to Hydro-Quebec to do, they might have been a bit more successful and they might have understood some of these processes better than they obviously do.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. BALL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The PUB were not allowed to discuss rates. We are not allowed to know what the rates are. Maybe the people in New England know what they have to pay, because we certainly do not. We just wish the PUB were allowed to talk about that, but they were not.

Mr. Speaker, the Innu from Quebec have filed a court action to stop the Muskrat Falls project. They say that the advice of the federal-provincial environmental assessment report was ignored.

I ask the Premier: Have you spoken to the federal government about this issue? Will there be a further delay in the federal loan guarantee?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Natural Resources.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I indicated, I think, when I was asked previously about the legal action ongoing – everyone has a right to bring a legal action to court. Bringing an action to court does not make it valid, Mr. Speaker.

The Province is not named as a party to this action, to the best of my understanding. What we are dealing with is an action that involves the federal government. Mr. Speaker, at this point, there is nothing in the courts or any order from the courts that precludes us from continuing to take the steps we are taking.

I assume, Mr. Speaker, that the Quebec Innu, like the Grand Riverkeeper and like the Sierra Club, will take their matter to court. Once the court makes a decision, Mr. Speaker, we will abide by it.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. BALL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Premier announced in the media this morning that the government is going to send out a householder to convince people that Muskrat Falls is the best option.

I ask the Premier: Can the Premier advise the House of the timing of the release and the budget for this householder?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, we are not sending out information to the people of the Province to convince them of anything. The facts, Mr. Speaker, will convince the people of this Province that Muskrat Falls is (inaudible).

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER DUNDERDALE: Mr. Speaker, what we are going to do is take the information, once it is provided by MHI and any other reports that we have, and we are going to distil that to the people of the Province. The one thing we have learned, Mr. Speaker, is you cannot distil that information through the lens provided by the Opposition.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. BALL: Well, I can assure the Premier of that maybe when she gets the next question here.

The government has committed to using their Budget to distribute materials towards their position in favour of Muskrat Falls. Government should be committed to providing equal resources, time, and space for all positions on this issue in order to educate the people of the Province on other options.

I ask the Premier: Will the Premier commit to providing equivalent resources or half the space in the householder for the Opposition?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the Opposition has asked for a debate in this House. We have provided boxes and boxes and boxes of information; it has been on the Internet. Not that much analysis has come back, Mr. Speaker. They have not been able to demonstrate where Nalcor's processes have been flawed. They have not been able to counter the arguments put forward or the recommendations and the analysis put forward by Navigant, by MHI, by the Consumer Advocate, by Dr. Wade Lock.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

PREMIER DUNDERDALE: In any way have they been able to find flaws in the rationale or gaps in the reasoning or holes in the processes that have been used. Mr. Speaker, they should be using some of their own resources. First of all, your grey power would be a good place to start.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Leader of the Opposition.

MR. BALL: The Premier seems to be in a giving mood. We have the boxes, they were already available on-line, and I do not need someone to tell me how to print or copy and print.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. BALL: I ask the Premier, now that she is willing to give the information, I will ask the question again: The terms of reference for Manitoba Hydro and Ziff Energy, will you give us the terms of reference?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER DUNDERDALE: Mr. Speaker, what we have committed to is to have MHI review all the Decision Gate 3 numbers, to complete the second tranche of work, given that the PUB were not prepared to give a recommendation based on Decision Gate 2 numbers. We will now provide Decision Gate 3 numbers when they are ready, foregoing hours of debate in this House, Mr. Speaker. We are going to give those to MHI.

MHI will have a look at those numbers, will do the same type of analysis they did on the Decision Gate 2 numbers. Nobody had any issue with MHI's work on Decision Gate 2 numbers. They will do the same work for us on Decision Gate 3, it will be made available here and to the public, and we will have a debate here in the House of Assembly.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The Opposition House Leader.

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

During the middle of the election when the Premier was out knocking on doors, she made no bones about telling people of this Province that she would bring in a family caregiver allowance for people who have to quit their job, stay at home, take care of elderly parents and adult children with disabilities.

I ask the Premier today: How could you make that commitment in the middle of an election and renege on it when you got into power?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the one thing the people of this Province know about this government is our word is our bond and we deliver on our commitments.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER DUNDERDALE: Mr. Speaker, what we said in our Blue Book – and I come from a background of social work; I worked for the government for a long time delivering home support to people of this Province, Mr. Speaker. When people were approved for home support, they were told categorically that they could not hire family members to do that work, Mr. Speaker, unless they had an exemption – an exemption that was very, very difficult to get. Only under extraordinary circumstances could you get an exemption. Most people were not prepared to accept home care under those conditions. They wanted somebody to live in the house with them. We are going to make that happen.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The Opposition House Leader.

MS JONES: Mr. Speaker, quite clearly in the Blue Book the Premier stated clients will have the option of receiving care from family members. She did not say that it was going to be a minor extension of an existing program. Family members could always get exemptions. I have gotten them for my own constituents over the years.

Mr. Speaker, people in this Province was led to believe they would have a cheque in hand as a family caregiver in their homes, in their communities.

I ask you again today, Premier: Why did you leave that impression out there with the people in the public when you had no intentions of ever delivering on that commitment?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER DUNDERDALE: Mr. Speaker, I clearly understand the commitment we made as a party in the election, and the people of the Province understand it. She talks about a minor extension of a program. Of all of the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who are in receipt of home support services in this Province, only twenty have exemptions. That is how difficult it is to get exemptions.

Mr. Speaker, there are criteria that have to apply to people when they look for funding under the Home Support Program. Once they meet that criteria and they are going to get funding under the Home Support Program then it will be up to them who they hire to deliver that care.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The Opposition House Leader.

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Last year, the government committed to replace the Waterford Hospital. We did not see any mention of it in the Budget this year.

I would like to ask the minister today: Is there any money going to be committed this year for the Waterford Hospital, and what is the timing for the completion of that facility?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, when we are talking about building a facility such as the Waterford Hospital, that is mammoth undertaking for this government and we are committed to doing it. In doing it, we want to make sure that we get it right. This is a facility that will have to be built in Newfoundland and Labrador that will have to serve for generations. We want to make sure that we get it right. So, we need to do the planning. That is underway, that planning will continue to happen. There is a committee that consists of Transportation and Works, my department, and Eastern Health, that is working to start that functional plan and the design plan once the functional planning is done. There is another group that we are looking to start to get in place right now, which would be an advisory committee to the original committee. Much work will continue to happen this year.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. EDMUNDS: Mr. Speaker, the Province committed to conduct an internal investigation into the Burton Winters tragedy, and the Premier committed to further discussions with Minister MacKay on search and rescue.

My question to the Premier is: Has the internal investigation been completed? Have you received any further correspondence from Minister MacKay, and when will these documents be tabled in the House?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, immediately following the incident, the government committed to do a review of our protocols regarding search and rescue. That review has been completed and reported upon.

Mr. Speaker, I wrote Minister MacKay several weeks ago with a number of questions with regard to the Burton Winters incident. Mr. Speaker, I have received a reply, but the reply raised a number of other questions. We have asked for further clarification – the letter left here yesterday. Mr. Speaker, when I have the complete information I will live up to my commitment to table both the letters and the responses here in the House of Assembly.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. EDMUNDS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yesterday, the Premier said that she would not lower the flags in protest of the closure of the Marine Rescue Sub-Centre, instead she would press her case and make real arguments to the federal government.

My question is to the Premier. The phones are now on call-forward to Halifax, locks are being changed, and, Premier, to whom are you now pressing and for what?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the issue here is the safety of the men and women who work on the water in Newfoundland and Labrador. The fear that is being felt by all of us is that we may not get the same level of response because of consolidation of services in Halifax. Mr. Speaker, we are not losing search and rescue services. They are not being diminished in terms of the infrastructure that is available for search and rescue, Mr. Speaker. So, we need to continue to monitor very, very carefully what is happening in Halifax, and I have a commitment from Rear-Admiral Gardam that he will do that in concert with us to ensure that the maximum standards are all -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. Barbe.

MR. BENNETT: Mr. Speaker, this week's Budget revealed a number of areas where this government is seriously underperforming, including in the fisheries. Estimates show over $2.1 million was allocated for marketing initiatives for our industry, yet only $1.6 million was used by the government.

I ask the Fisheries Minister: Why was so much money left on the table when our industry is in desperate need of a comprehensive strategy to market its seafood?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KING: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I certainly take exception with the member's preface to his question, that we are not putting much money into the fishing industry. I remind him, if he checked the documents, Newfoundland and Labrador invests more than the equivalent combination of Quebec and all other Atlantic Provinces. I say to you, Mr. Speaker, that is representative -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KING: That is representative of a very significant contribution to this Province and shows our support for the fishing industry.

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to answer any and all questions that the member opposite has on anything specific to my department when we go through Estimates; that is why we do those kinds of things. I can assure him that in the coming days and weeks he will hear a lot more about the many positive things that we are going to invest in to support fisheries and aquaculture in this Province.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. Barbe.

MR. BENNETT: Mr. Speaker, this year the fisheries department is seeking $5.5 million, over double last year's amount, to support its marketing initiatives.

I ask the minister: How can we believe that his department can invest over $5 million in marketing when last year they could not handle $2 million? What is the plan?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KING: Let me say this to you, Mr. Speaker, one of our plans is not to open fish plants with no fish to process. We are not going into making widgets, and we are certainly not going to guide the fishery in this Province on the assumption that we can buy herring for nine cents a pound and take a fifteen cent can and sell it for a $1 in a dollar store and make a mint, because if we could do that Bill Barry and many others would be doing it, I say to the member opposite. Do your research before you come to the House of Assembly if you want to gain some credibility, but I guarantee you one thing, the investments that we are going to make in aquaculture, in the Coast of Bays regions in particular, and the investments that we are going to make in partnership with industry on marketing in this Province are going to surprise you and they are going to be positive.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The Leader of the Third Party.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MS MICHAEL: Mr. Speaker, legislative standing committees are an integral piece of the democratic puzzle in every province in this country, every province except Newfoundland and Labrador. Hundreds are describing our Legislature as immature and most agree using standing committees would lead to better public policy.

Mr. Speaker, I ask the Premier: Will she direct the House of Assembly Resource Standing Committee to study Nalcor's Muskrat Falls project proposal?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Natural Resources.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

What we have is a province with a population of 500,000 people. We have forty-eight members who are all equipped to do their job. As a government, we are elected to govern, Mr. Speaker. It is a Cabinet appointed by the Premier. We will make the decisions in relation to such things as affect our people on a daily basis.

The Committees that we have in place, Mr. Speaker, review the Estimates. They can ask questions. I say to the Leader of the Third Party: If you want to govern, get elected.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Third Party.

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

Mr. Speaker, I point out to the minister that I am elected and I am the Leader of my Party in this House.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Speaker has recognized the hon. the Leader of the Third Party.

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

As the MHA for Signal Hill – Quidi Vidi and the Leader of my Party, Mr. Speaker, I point out to this government –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MS MICHAEL: – that this government allocates hundreds of millions of dollars to Nalcor for an unsanctioned Muskrat Falls project. While they do that, questions continue to mount about the alternative ways by which we could meet our energy demand.

Mr. Speaker, there is a belief amongst the public, whether the minister wants to acknowledge it or not –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MS MICHAEL: – that this government simply has not considered alternatives to their preferred Muskrat Falls proposal.

Mr. Speaker, will the Premier direct the House of Assembly Resource Standing Committee to review the many ways in which we can meet our energy needs?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Natural Resources.

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

There were about three questions in that. In relation to the first one, Mr. Speaker, the equity investment, what it means is that money will be available, as the Premier pointed out yesterday. I know the NDP are not involved in budgeting, at least in this Province. What we have to do is put money in the Budget in order to allow – if we sanction the project – that we can proceed, not lose a construction year. The second question, Mr. Speaker, I am a little bit lost on that one but – what was the second question?

The third question, Mr. Speaker, in relation to standing committees – we have committees which deal with Estimates; we will deal with the issues that have to be dealt with, but we do not need standing committees in this Province, Mr. Speaker. We have a Premier, we have a Cabinet, we have Caucus, we have an Opposition. The member opposite will have lots of opportunity in this House to debate.

What is interesting, Mr. Speaker, are her comments yesterday that we are taking our time. What (inaudible) –

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Leader of the Third Party.

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

Mr. Speaker, last year in Estimates, we were told by the Department of Natural Resources that the $348 million set aside for Nalcor was apportioned 75-25 for Muskrat Falls and oil and gas activities. That is $84 million set aside for oil and gas activities. We see in 2012 Estimates, in fact, none of that money was spent.

I ask the Premier: Why wasn't the portion of money for oil and gas spent by Nalcor?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Natural Resources.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

In relation to the money spent, the answer is quite simple; Nalcor made money last year, the price of oil was up, their operating costs were down, they did not need the equity. The equity has to be made available, Mr. Speaker, in case they need it. In relation to the money set aside for the Lower Churchill development last year –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. KENNEDY: – again, what happened was, because of the environmental assessment delays that were encountered, it took time to get to that stage so again, that money was not spent. Mr. Speaker, what we are doing is we are ensuring that there is money there if we get to the point of sanctioning the project. I do expect that after the debate, I do expect that the NDP – we know the Liberals will be – to be voting in favour of this project.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Third Party.

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

Mr. Speaker, this year – first of all, I am glad the minister actually answered a question with facts that time. This year government has set aside $664 million for Nalcor. If the same 75-25 split applies, then this year Nalcor would receive $166 million for oil and gas activities.

Mr. Speaker, I ask the Premier: What percentage of the money is actually earmarked for Muskrat Falls and how much for oil and gas activities?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Natural Resources.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENNEDY: Yes, Mr. Speaker, my answer to the Leader of the Third Party is quite simple; what we have is approximately $650 million that is set aside for Muskrat Falls if the sanction decision is made. There is $75 million, Mr. Speaker, for oil and gas if the money is needed.

Mr. Speaker, what we have – we need capital costs, and there are operating costs in relation to our offshore. Let us never forget that the oil and gas money to a great extent is what is building the hospitals and schools in this Province, that is fixing up the roads, that is providing all of the social programs such as poverty reduction – programs, Mr. Speaker, that I thought that the NDP or the Third Party would be very supportive of. Yet what they were going to do during their election promises was throw the whole thing on its head, change the deals, and drive the oil companies away.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The Member for St. John's North.

MR. KIRBY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Families in Newfoundland and Labrador are facing a crisis in child care. Parents in this Province right now are paying upwards of $1,500 per month for spaces in regulated child care. Now, the Budget says this government is going to have some sort of plan for child care eventually, but at this rate, Mr. Speaker, that is going to be a grandchild care plan, not a child care plan.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. KIRBY: So I ask the Minister of Child, Youth and Family Services: When is this government finally going to act on the concerns of working parents and provide early learning and care programs that families can actually afford?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Child, Youth and Family Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS JOHNSON: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

After six weeks I finally get a question, so thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS JOHNSON: Mr. Speaker, I will tell you what kind of child care plan we are going to have. We are going to have a premature child care plan, because you are certainly not going to have to wait to be a granddad to see this action take place, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS JOHNSON: Mr. Speaker, we have announced in the Budget that we will spend $457 million over the next ten years. Already we have increased spaces since coming into power by 50 per cent, but we are not going to stop there. We are going to increase spaces by 70 per cent more, an addition of 4,800 spaces.

When it comes to quality, Mr. Speaker, we are completely revamping the quality standards, providing opportunities for ECEs to get their Level 1 training. When it comes to affordability, we will be capping fees for child care centres that come in (inaudible).

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The Member for St. John's North.

MR. KIRBY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Provinces that invest in all-day kindergarten are seeing a return on investment in terms of higher school achievement and fewer students at risk of falling through the cracks. Yet, there is no mention of all-day kindergarten at all in this government's Budget.

I ask the Minister of Education: Will he take this evidence seriously now and see that all-day kindergarten is introduced in this Province as soon as possible?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. JACKMAN: Mr. Speaker, we had a three-hour love-in here this morning in Estimates – that is the only way I can put it – trying to educate the members opposite on where we are going with positive initiatives in education. I have said it time and time again in this House, and in Question Period, one of the best areas that we can invest – and research shows it – is in those early years from zero to three. That is where we have started.

Kindergarten – we are looking at it, Mr. Speaker, but we are not there to announce it yet. We are investing in the most critical area, the area from zero to three, for parents and students, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The Member for St. John's Centre.

MS ROGERS: Mr. Speaker, I am getting e-mails and phone calls from artists and arts groups all over the Province. They are astounded by the message sent to them from this government through the cutting of funding to the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council – astounded and betrayed; artists who we are very, very proud of.

Mr. Speaker, they have asked me to ask the Minister of Tourism and Culture: Why on earth did you cut funding to the already underfunded, beleaguered budget of the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DALLEY: Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that they direct their e-mails to the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council who came out yesterday and recognized that there will be no cuts to programs or grants for artists in this Province as a result of the Budget.

Mr. Speaker, in the past three or four years we have doubled the budget from $960,000 to $2.144 million for artists in this Province.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DALLEY: There is an additional $300,000 through Cultural Connections to support artists in this Province. Mr. Speaker, that builds on the $56 million that we have invested in artists and culture in this Province since 2006. They do a great job, we have great respect for them, we have a great working relationship with the Arts Council, and we will continue to support them in any way we can.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The Member for St. John's Centre.

MS ROGERS: Mr. Speaker, before he heads out to Gander for the Arts Council awards, I ask the minister – our cultural industry is vital to our economy and sense of pride. For every dollar invested, two dollars and eighty-six cents is generated. Our Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council is the third-lowest funded in the country.

So I ask the minister: Will he reverse these ridiculous cuts, these short-sighted cuts, and bring the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council funding up to par with the rest of the country?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DALLEY: Mr. Speaker, the people of this Province have a great expectation for us as a government to be fiscally responsible. We are doing that. We went through a budget exercise, mandated through our departments, to look at 3 per cent where we can find efficiencies in our department.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. DALLEY: Mr. Speaker, the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council are an important part of what we do through the Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation. They have a budget; we have doubled their budget in recent years. We have cut $33,000 out of a $2.4 million budget, Mr. Speaker. They can absorb it through administration. The core piece for artists are their programs and their grants, and it will not be touched, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The time allocated for Question Period has expired.

Presenting Reports by Standing and Select Committees.

Tabling of Documents.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. SPEAKER: Pursuant to section 8 and section 10 of the Public Tender Act, I hereby table the report of the Public Tender Act Exemptions for March, 2012, as presented by the Chief Operating Officer of the Government Purchasing Agency.

Notices of Motion.

Answers to Questions for which Notice has been Given.

Petitions.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. Barbe.

MR. BENNETT: Mr. Speaker, I rise in this hon. House of Assembly today to present a petition again on high-speed Internet.

Mr. Speaker, the petition of the undersigned humbly sheweth:

WHEREAS with declining enrolment, distance education by Internet is now an accepted way to deliver educational services to students living in small communities; and

WHEREAS students have little to no say in where they or their families reside; and

WHEREAS many families do not have the ability to relocate so that their children can access educational opportunities in larger centres; and

WHEREAS many small businesses rely on the Internet to conduct business; and

WHEREAS high-speed Internet permits a business to be more competitive than does slower dial-up service; and

WHEREAS no high-speed Internet service exists in the communities of Bellburns, Portland Creek, St. Pauls or Sally's Cove; and

WHEREAS there are no plans to offer high-speed Internet to residents of these communities;

WHERUPON the undersigned, your petitioners, humbly pray and call upon the House of Assembly to urge the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to partner with the private sector and offer high-speed Internet service to these communities.

And as in duty bound your petitioners will ever pray.

Mr. Speaker, the government makes announcements on an ongoing basis about -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Speaker has acknowledged the Member for St. Barbe who is presenting a petition. I would ask members of the House to respect his time and allow him to deliver his petition on behalf of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

The hon. the Member for St. Barbe.

MR. BENNETT: Mr. Speaker, in so many of these small communities that have been overlooked there is literally a line up of communities waiting to sign petitions. The question then, why can't we send a petition with 15,000 people's signatures on it? Surely, that would make a difference. I have to explain: no, it will not really make any difference because it is still only one petition.

I have communities in the northern end of my district - this is the south and the middle. I even have people coming in this week from government members' districts asking if they can have a petition to present. There will be petitions coming forward in the towns from the communities of Lockleven, Highlands, literally all across the Province, because the small towns and communities are being left out.

The government is dishing out gobs of money, literally hurling it out of this building to the big Internet providers without paying any attention whatsoever to the outcome for the small communities. Mr. Speaker, the small communities are being left in the lurch. They are very concerned that when the big spending initiative is over, the high profitability movement is over they will have been left behind. This is a petition from these small communities, that number no more than 1,000 people combined, requesting high-speed Internet be considered for them.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Burgeo - La Poile.

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

I have a petition.

To the hon. House of Assembly of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador in Parliament assembled, the petition of the undersigned residents humbly sheweth:

WHEREAS hundreds of residents of the Southwest Coast of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, including residents of the communities of Margaree, Fox Roost, Isle aux Morts, Burnt Islands, Rose Blanche-Harbour Le Cou, Diamond Cove and La Poile use Route 470 on a regular basis for work, medical, educational and social reasons; and

WHEREAS there is no cellphone coverage on Route 470; and

WHEREAS residents and users of Route 470 require cellphone coverage to ensure their safety and communication abilities; and

WHEREAS the Department of Innovation, Business and Rural Development recently announced significant funding to improve broadband services in rural Newfoundland and Labrador; and

WHEREAS the residents and users of Route 470 feel that the Department of Innovation, Business and Rural Development should also invest in cellular phone coverage for rural Newfoundland and Labrador;

WHEREUPON the undersigned, your petitioners, humbly pray and call upon the House of Assembly to support the users of Route 470 in their request to obtain cellular phone coverage along Route 470.

And as in duty bound your petitioners will ever pray.

Mr. Speaker, over the break from the House of Assembly, two weeks, I had an opportunity to travel around my district. This was one of the main areas of concern that kept coming up, no matter where I went, if I was out on the street, if I was in the grocery store, if I was in a meeting with the town council. It is still there, it is still a huge issue.

There are a couple of different fronts I would go at this. One of the issues that we discussed in the meetings I had with councils – actually, I had a meeting with all the mayors in my district, and one of the things that they are under the gun to complete are the emergency measures plans for their communities. Usually number one in their emergency measures plan is communication; however, they have no cellphone coverage. They cannot even complete their emergency measures plan. If something happens to the regular phone lines in those communities, they have no means of communication.

Again, this is just one area which this covers. I am not even going to get into the employment that people are missing out on because they cannot get calls from work, whether it be Marine Atlantic or the lake boats, because they are living in an area with no cellphone coverage.

Now I noticed the minister did put out a press release this morning where he talked about the rural broadband initiative. I have sent him some letters. I am looking forward to the reply. Perhaps we are going to get a rural cellphone coverage initiative. Again, I know that there are areas of concern here – you have to deal with the feds, you have to deal with private industry – but it was done with broadband. I certainly think we can do it with cellphones too, and again, the cost to do this is going to be minimal for the return that we are going to get both in emergency and safety and in economic benefits. So, again, I call upon the minister. I look forward to his reply. I believe he may have one drafted to me; I look forward to reading it, and then perhaps I will come in again on Monday and I will add to this petition, and see where we are going with it then.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the time.

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

MR. KIRBY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am rising here to present the anti-replacement worker petition.

To the hon. House of Assembly of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador in Parliament Assembled, the petition of the undersigned residents of Newfoundland and Labrador humbly sheweth:

WHEREAS strikes and lockouts are rare, and on average 97 per cent of collective agreements are negotiated without work disruption; and

WHEREAS anti-temporary replacement workers laws have existed in Quebec since 1978 and British Columbia since 1993, and successive governments in those provinces have never repealed those laws; and

WHEREAS anti-temporary replacement workers legislation has reduced the length and divisiveness of labour disputes and the use of temporary replacement workers during a strike or lockout is damaging to the social fabric of communities, the local economy, and the well-being of its residents, as evident by the recent use of temporary replacement workers by both Ocean Choice International and Vale in Voisey's Bay;

We, the undersigned, petition the House of Assembly to urge the government to enact legislation banning the use of temporary replacement workers during a strike or lockout.

As in duty bound, your petitioners will every pray.

Mr. Speaker, today this petition has signatures of people from Bay Roberts, Shears Cove, Colliers, Point Leamington, Carbonear, Corner Brook, Dunville, St. John's, and Little Harbour East.

Gratefully, the strike ended with the trawlermen and Ocean Choice International after an unfortunate ten-week lockout. Those folks were without pay and without work for that length of time because the laws in this Province permit employers to bring in scab labour through the back door and to disallow workers from their right to collective bargaining, at least a fair process.

I know the Minister Responsible for the Labour Relations Agency is attentive to these concerns. I would like to hope that he had some role in the successful conclusion of that lockout. I would urge the minister to see that we get this legislation. I know he has talked about that there are varying sides to this and there are people on one side or the other. I would like to see that all of us here in the House of Assembly are on one side, and that side is the side of working families here in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for The Straits – White Bay North.

MR. MITCHELMORE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I present a petition to reinvest in rural broadband initiatives.

To the hon. the House of Assembly of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador in Parliament Assembled, the petition of the undersigned residents of Newfoundland and Labrador humbly sheweth:

WHEREAS in the District of The Straits – White Bay North, despite the $4 million Rural Broadband Initiative announcement on December 22, 2011, only one community, Ship Cove, is slated for broadband coverage; and

WHEREAS the communities of Pines Cove, Eddies Cove East, Bide Arm, North Boat Harbour, L'Anse aux Meadows, Great Brehat, St. Carol's, Goose Cove, Grandois, and St. Anthony Bight still remain without services; and

WHEREAS many small businesses within the district rely on Internet to conduct business; and

WHEREAS broadband Internet permits a business to be more competitive than a slower, dial-up service; and

WHEREAS broadband Internet enhances primary, secondary, post-secondary, and further educational opportunities;

We, the undersigned, petition the House of Assembly to urge the government to reinvest in rural broadband initiatives in Newfoundland and Labrador.

As in duty bound, your petitioners will ever pray.

We certainly have seen the government make a commitment to reinvest, although it is a lot less than in the previous Budget of 2011, where the Rural Broadband Initiative was much higher. Right now, it is at $2 million in the upcoming Budget. Certainly, correspondence that I have received from the Department of Innovation, Business and Rural Development and its news release shows that the cost of putting in this broadband Internet is getting higher and not reaching the greatest number of communities.

This is where we look at doing things very strategically and investing our tax dollars wisely. That is why I have been calling for an advanced telecommunication strategy, because we need to look at not only broadband, but cellular coverage. Other provinces are doing that. They are bridging gaps. They are really fostering an environment where we can have good, true business growth. When we have over 200 communities in Newfoundland and Labrador that do not have access to broadband coverage that is something that we really do need to step up. I would like to see the government further make those investments. Other provinces have, like British Columbia. They have invested $100 million over a ten-year period. Within five years, they would have 97 per cent cellphone coverage on their highways, with over 1,700 kilometres covered. That is very, very important.

If we are going to look at advancing education in these communities, we really do need to look at a broadband strategy and a cellular strategy. This is something that, if not, we are seeing communities missed. If we look at the communities of The Straits region, there are two communities there that were skipped over, but communities in between were covered. There is the Town of Roddickton-Bide Arm. Roddickton has coverage, but Bide Arm does not; they have since amalgamated. We have a town that does not – part of it does not have coverage. Going in and implementing that coverage is going to be very, very costly. So, you need to have a true strategy where you go in and you do coverage of the area, and not just doing bits and pieces. That is something the government has been doing when it comes to road work and other things. So, we really, truly do need an advanced telecommunications strategy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. MURPHY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It humbles me again to be presenting a petition to government on behalf of some concerned citizens of the Province. I will just read the prayer:

To the hon. House of Assembly of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned residents of Newfoundland and Labrador humbly sheweth:

WHEREAS weather cameras are needed on the Burin Peninsula Highway for the safety of residents who are travelling during unpredictable weather conditions;

We, the undersigned, petition the House of Assembly to urge the government to install weather cameras on the Burin Peninsula Highway.

As in duty bound, your petitioners will ever pray.

Mr. Speaker, I can not put too much emphasis on exactly how much importance this is to the people of the Burin Peninsula, the importance to business – not only in that particular region, but trucking companies and such that are using that highway on a daily basis who like to keep informed on weather conditions. Sometimes, whenever some of these companies are even dispatching traffic on the Burin Peninsula or whatever region of the Province, they like to take a look at the department of highways cameras that they have set up and see what the traffic conditions and the road conditions are like in the various areas.

Mr. Speaker, this petition is signed by people all up and down the Burin Peninsula – indeed, from everywhere in the Province. Some of the communities here: Rocky Harbour, St. Lawrence, Marystown, Marysvale, Clarenville, Conception Bay South, Burin, Bell Island residents, Bay d'Espoir, St. Catherine's, Placentia Bay – I could go on and on and on. These petitions are of importance to the people down there, and we certainly hope that government is going to address it.

I do not think right now that the cost would be too prohibitive when it comes to setting up a highway camera. We do know, for example, there is some cellphone service; in some other areas, it is rather broken. So, it is not going to be hard for government to institute a bit of a survey down there to find out where the signal is best to get a wireless signal through from one of these cameras that are mounted.

Mr. Speaker, again, it humbles me to present this one – and hopefully government will address this situation sooner rather than later, and let's get this one fixed sooner rather than later. It seems to be such a minimal cost that I think the government can address this one very quickly.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The Member for St. John's North.

MR. KENNEDY: I call Orders of the Day, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Orders of the Day have been called.

The motion is on the floor.

All those in favour of the motion?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: Contra-minded?

Motion carried.

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

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to now call the motion before the House for the appointment of the Members' Compensation Review Committee, Mr. Speaker.

Do I need to read the motion into the record again?

MR. SPEAKER: Please, yes.

MR. KENNEDY: Mr. Speaker, the resolution before this House is:

WHEREAS subsection 16(1) of the House of Assembly Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act requires that a Members' Compensation Review Committee of not more than 3 individuals be appointed at least once during each General Assembly to conduct an inquiry and prepare a report respecting the salaries, allowances, severance payments and pensions to be paid to Members of the House of Assembly; and

WHEREAS in accordance with subsection 16(2) of the House of Assembly Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act, the Speaker has consulted with the Government House Leader, the Official Opposition House Leader, and the Leader of the Third Party on the appointment; and

WHEREAS they have agreed with the introduction of this Resolution; and

WHEREAS subsection 16(4) of the House of Assembly Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act requires that a Report, with recommendations, must be presented to the Speaker within 120 days of the appointment;

BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED that Ms Jacqueline Brazil, a Judge of the Provincial Court, be appointed to fulfill this requirement, with the appointment to become effective on August 6, 2012; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that Judge Brazil conduct her inquiry and present her Report to the Speaker on or before December 3, 2012.

MR. SPEAKER: The motion has been heard by the members of the House.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to have a few words on what this involves and why we are engaging in this process. Most members, if not all members of the public in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador will be familiar with the report prepared by Chief Justice Derek Green in 2007, called Rebuilding Confidence: Report of the Review Commission on Constituency Allowances and Related Matters. In the introduction, the report goes on for quite some time, and out of that report comes the piece of legislation which governs us, being the House of Assembly Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act.

Mr. Speaker, it is a large report and there are many recommendations, but in the introduction – and it is not bad if people want to familiarize themselves with what guided Chief Justice Green in making his decision; he talked about the need for accountability by elected members of the public.

I am not going to revisit, Mr. Speaker, what led to this. We all know about the constituency spending scandal. We know how some members were charged and went to jail. We know, Mr. Speaker, that there was an uproar in the public and there was a cry for accountability and an acceptance of responsibilities by members elected in our democracy.

Mr. Speaker, Chief Justice Green outlined the principles, the tough role that MHAs have, but the recognition that once you have put yourself up for election, once you say to a member of the public, give me your vote, then you are going to be criticised; there will be impositions on your family life and your private life. Mr. Speaker, there has to be a mechanism to ensure that there is full accountability. That is one of the keys, Mr. Speaker. We are all paid in this House with taxpayer's money. Our offices, this House of Assembly, it is all paid for with money that comes from the taxpayer of this Province, in one form or another.

So, out of Chief Justice Green's report, Mr. Speaker, came a number of recommendations. One is the establishment of the House management committee. This is televised. Anyone can watch it. We were here yesterday afternoon discussing some of the issues that go on. I think an example yesterday, Mr. Speaker, was someone had not filed their report in sixty days for a twenty-five or a thirty-dollar claim. Because they were outside the sixty-day period, they had to come before the House management committee.

Mr. Speaker, I do not think people realize the actual mechanism that is in place to ensure accountability on behalf of members, the role that the House management committee plays. The House management committee – there are three representatives of government, including myself, the MHA for Stephenville East, and the MHA for Cape St. Francis; we have the Leader of the Official Opposition and the Opposition House Leader. We have the Member for Signal Hill – Quidi Vidi representing the New Democratic Party and yourself, as the Speaker, in charge, for lack of a better term.

Mr. Speaker, that is televised; people see what is going on. Then what we have coming out of that is a whole corporate structure, I understand, here, that if a claim is provided that claim is looked at. They ensure that the claim is appropriate; we ensure that it is consistent with the rules. Mr. Speaker, even though there are times as the House management committee that we can change the rules, there are times that we will say no; we will wait until the next members' compensation committee.

Mr. Speaker, another thing that came out of Green and out of the House management committee is all of the expenses of MHAs and ministers are on-line. Anyone who wants to go in and look at how we are spending our money can go into the House of Assembly Web site, Mr. Speaker, click on to any individual member or minister, and see how we have spent our money. Not only is there a summary, but I think there is actually – if you keep going into it you will find receipts, you will find the claims, the nature of the claims, where we stayed in hotels, where we travelled to. Essentially it is all out there for the public to look at.

Mr. Speaker, there is an openness and a transparency that is required as a result of what took place in Green. Mr. Speaker, then we get to the point, and I think all of us will agree, while members of the House of Assembly are not entitled to special treatment, they are entitled to fair treatment. Contrary to what some members of the public – I have already heard some members of the public; this Committee is not about wages. What the Committee is set up to do, Mr. Speaker, is to look at various aspects of the role of the MHA and to prepare a report respecting salaries, allowances, severance payments, and pensions to be paid to members of the House of Assembly.

Mr. Speaker, I said the MHAs are entitled to fair treatment, but we do not want MHAs determining what is fair. That is how we have set up this – or Chief Justice Green – under section 16, led to section 16 of the House of Assembly Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act, led to this Members' Compensation Review Committee.

Mr. Speaker, at times that has been an encumbrance on us doing our work. I remember something as simple – one time, the former MHA for St. Barbe, he could drive from his district to St. John's, but he was not allowed to stop along the way to stay in a hotel or to have a meal. It was just something that as you develop the protocol, it gets overlooked. There are some things we can change like that.

I remember – and I do not know if the current MHA for Torngat Mountains is encountering this, but I know the former MHA for Torngat Mountains, and I know the Opposition House Leader oftentimes encounters where she will have to stay in Goose Bay overnight, because you cannot get back to the coast of Labrador. They have to come to the Speaker to seek special permission.

Mr. Speaker, a lot of the rules lead to more rules, lead to more procedures, and sometimes it becomes counterproductive. We are giving the opportunity to clear up some of these things with the House management committee, or most of them before the Members' Compensation Review Committee.

I have, Mr. Speaker, with me the report that was prepared in 2009. There was a three member committee comprised of Joe O'Neil as the chair, Brian Barry as a representative, and Cathy Bennett. They provide the report which is available for the public to review. Mr. Speaker, in their report, they outlined at page 9 some of the principles to guide them, which seem to be very sound in terms of striking "a balance between the obligation to be fair to provincial taxpayers… with the need for our elected representatives to be fairly compensated…".

Mr. Speaker, to put things in perspective, I have a fairly tight district in terms of Carbonear - Harbour Grace. I can drive to my district in an hour; go from one end of my district to the other in probably twenty, twenty-five minutes. Mr. Speaker, you will get other members, for example, who have to travel by helicopter to get to areas of their district. There are members all around this House. We have to allow them to do their jobs because constituents want to see their MHAs, Mr. Speaker. We have to have situations where these issues can be addressed. What we have done as we move along is address some of the more minor ones.

Mr. Speaker, then the second principle was, "The standard of accountability and transparency"; and three, "Greater public awareness of MHA compensation, constituency district funding…" and the notorious constituency allowance. Before I made any comment today, I went in and looked at my constituency allowance. I said: What have I spent? Zero. We have gone, Mr. Speaker, from where people spend too much to sometimes where people do not spend anything. Trying to find that appropriate balance, that is what this committee can do, and continued enhancement.

Now, Mr. Speaker, even though this was only October 2009, we have to appoint another committee or person, not more than three persons, because we have just had an election. Mr. Speaker, the proposal in this resolution is we appoint a judge of the Provincial Court. People may ask: Why have we chosen a judge? One, it is a difficult job at the best of times. You take three members of the public, and I remember appearing in front of them, Mr. Speaker. There were numerous people and groups who appeared before the former committee. Some of them were rather strident in their views that MHAs are paid too much, take away their pensions; the views that we not unexpectedly hear, Mr. Speaker, when we have people out there who are struggling to make a go. We always have issues ongoing in relation to issues of people's pensions and things like that.

Mr. Speaker, that committee provided their report, that was two years ago. We said: well, how do we find someone who can bring that level of respect that is required? The office of a judge, Mr. Speaker, demands that level of respect. Some of the qualities of a judge, Mr. Speaker, if there are any judges listening, and I hope they are not because they should be sitting on the bench right now, but they might find it somewhat ironic to hear some of these words coming from me. The qualities demanded of a judge, Mr. Speaker, and which our judges possess, are those of respect, integrity, objectivity, because that is what defines a judge. No matter how adversarial a person you may be as a lawyer, when you go to that bench you have to put it behind you, Mr. Speaker. You have to ensure that litigants get a fair hearing, that they are treated with respect and they are given the right to be heard. Oftentimes, Mr. Speaker, that can be trying, both as a result of the unrepresented litigant and the lawyer or the person in front of them.

Also, Mr. Speaker, a judge, depending on what you deal with, there are different levels of court. Our Provincial Court, the cases they hear are different than our Supreme Court or our Court of Appeal. Also, it has to be a judge, no matter what level of court, has to possess common sense and practicality, because what you are doing, Mr. Speaker, is looking at trying to balance everything. Chief Justice Green did indicate in his report that as we moved along there would be changes, you could address the situation.

Let me use one example, Mr. Speaker, that I know is of concern to many members of the House on all sides. It does not affect me because of where I live. Mr. Speaker, we have members, MHAs and ministers, for example, who stay in a hotel, and it could be up to 180, 200 nights a year. Now, Mr. Speaker, that is what they have to do because the rules do not allow otherwise. The taxpayer is actually paying more money than if we were to say to the individual, here is a lump sum of money, now you go stay wherever you want. We cannot do that, Mr. Speaker, nor are we willing to do that as a House management committee, because it would be seen as accruing a benefit to the individual. So the taxpayer is paying more money than they should have to pay because we are trying so hard to comply with the rules. Now that may be a situation, Mr. Speaker, that can be brought before Judge Brazil and she can look at it and say, balance it all and say, yeah that makes sense to me. That makes sense because not only are you looking at the issue of the cost, but you are looking at the ability or allowing the MHA to do his or her job.

Mr. Speaker, that is just one example. There are all kinds of practical examples. Anyone who has watched the Management Commission, if you have nothing better to do - anyone who has watched the Management Commission will hear all kinds of these situations arise on a daily basis.

Mr. Speaker, what Judge Brazil will be asked to do – now, Judge Brazil, by way of background, I know her. I do not know her that well, and some day I will have the pleasure of appearing in front of her as a lawyer in the not-too-distant future. She may not respond the same –

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. KENNEDY: No, hopefully not.

Mr. Speaker, Judge Brazil brings with her a wealth of experience. She was in private practice for many years and I know was involved in different areas of private practice. She worked with the Department of Justice for a number of years. I think she was appointed to the bench a couple of years ago. She brings with her, as all judges do, those varied life experiences.

What the judge will be asked to do will be to examine, listen to what people have to say. The process will be hers to determine, but we do know that the previous committee had hearings, allowed people to appear, allowed people to have their say, both MHAs and members of the public.

Mr. Speaker, she will determine – and it is my understanding, and I want people to be aware of this – that the date of August is set because she is not available to clear up her court cases in conjunction with the Chief Judge until then. It not a matter of us putting this off; it is a question that she has to be freed up from her court schedule.

Mr. Speaker, there was a determination to proceed this way. I would certainly recommend to this House that the appointment of the judge – we are complying with our statutory requirement. I understand the fact that we missed the appointment by about two days led to media commentary, so it is good that people are watching this. It is good that they are watching what is taking place because – again, I think we can speak for all members of this House; I see some members of this House who have been around for a long time, Mr. Speaker. I think the MHA for the Bay of Islands there is into about his third decade now; I am not sure about that, but pretty close. I know we have MHAs here –

MR. JOYCE: (Inaudible).

MR. KENNEDY: The MHA for St. John's South is into his – I think he could be into his third decade here. Well, it would be 1996, and then (inaudible); yes, that is decades.

We have other members, Mr. Speaker, who bring a wealth of experience and who may want to appear before the judge. I would certainly encourage all MHAs in this House: If you have issues that are impeding your ability to do your job – and they may be minor, they may be irritants – to bring them forward so that you can have them aired in public.

Mr. Speaker, I would certainly support this resolution with the appointment of the judge, and hopefully the explanation here, that this not about MHAs looking for more money. This is a statutory requirement, Mr. Speaker, that is set down. This is not a process that any of us have brought in. This is a situation that is demanded by statute.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am just going to have a few comments with regard to the resolution that has been put forward by the hon. Government House Leader today. As the Government House Leader already pointed out, many of these issues are dealt with through the House of Assembly Management Commission; however, the review of severances, the review of pensions and salaries and allowances to MHAs is certainly not a responsibility that we would take on.

I sit as part of the House of Assembly Management Commission, as do the Government House Leader and a number of other colleagues here in the House of Assembly. Mr. Speaker, we deal with a whole range of issues as part of that Commission. Many of those issues are issues that impact the ability of MHAs to be able to carry out their duties and their jobs to their constituents. Sometimes they deserve to be reviewed, they deserve to have another look, to make sure that government is getting the best bang for its buck in the service that is being provided, and also that MHAs have the ability and the flexibility to serve their constituency in the way that is expected of them.

For example, Mr. Speaker, even in the meeting just a couple of days ago, we dealt with a number of issues with regard to office rentals. Through the Commission, there is a cap on office rental of something like $7,000 a year with HST. Many of the tenders that are coming in today – and I think it is normal practice; anybody out there who is in business today in the Province or leasing space knows what the cost of leasing space is today; the amount of money that we allocate is far below what you are going to get that kind of space for. Almost every time an MHA's office has to go up for tender or renewal, we are finding that we have to look at exemptions to allow for them to be able to rent the office at the lowest available price that they can get under the Public Tender Act in their constituency.

That is just one example of some of the things that need to be looked at as a broader perspective and a broader review, and that is what is happening here. When we had the Green report, and Chief Justice Derek Green came in to review the spending and the spending practices of Members of the House of Assembly in our Province, he not only looked for where there were deficiencies, but he made recommendations on where we could have more efficient operations and operations that would be very streamlined, that would provide for the greatest levels of accountability to the taxpayers of the Province.

Mr. Speaker, while he did a very good job at putting a new format in place, like every format, you have to learn to work with it to really find out where some of the deficiencies and the flaws might be and where there needs to be a little bit of tweaking. What we have discovered is that over time, since we have had the new act adopted in the House of Assembly, we have found that there is tweaking on a number of areas that we need to look at and every two to three years there is a review where we look at a number of these issues.

I am just going to explain a couple of the pieces that I have dealt with. Just to expand upon one of the issues that the Member for Carbonear – Harbour Grace raised, and that was the one with regard to travel. I remember many times travelling from my constituency to St. John's or from St. John's back to my constituency, which happens to be on the Coast of Labrador, but I was not entitled, if I got stuck, to get a hotel room or a B&B. I was not entitled to that. I was not entitled to the meal allowance because I happened to be stranded. Well, you only have to listen to the marine service report to find out how many times the Apollo is either stuck in ice or stuck with wind on the Strait of Bell Isle that could cause you to be in a hotel for a day or two up there trying to get back and forth. That is just one little example.

Then airlines, Mr. Speaker, they have problems as well – mechanical problems, fog problems. I ran into all of that. In fact, I actually left St. John's a number of times, flew over my district, could not land, went back to St. Anthony, waited, flew up to Goose Bay to try to get back to my district, could not get back, ended up in Goose Bay. Guess what is the first thing I would always have to do? Get on my e-mail, e-mail the Speaker of the House of Assembly or the Clerk and ask for permission to go and get a bed to lie down. That was the first thing I had to do, because that is how stringent our rules are with regard to how we are allowed to spend our money.

Now, I have no problem with that, but sometimes this was 10:00 o'clock at night. I remember one time driving back from my district and driving across the Province and running into a fog and rain storm and having to hold up in Grand Falls in a hotel – and this was at 11:00 o'clock at night or something – and trying to get consent before I actually rented the room because I did not want to have any kind of problem.

Those are the kind of things that we have had to deal with. In my mind, that is a little bit over the top. You have to have some flexibility. When you travel from one end of this Province to another, we cover a great geographical distance; but, not only that, we are prone to all kinds of weather conditions. So, you need to have that flexibility. You cannot always get permission to get a bed to lie down when you are stuck or permission to get a meal voucher. Those things I think were going a little bit too far and they are things that we have since been able to address in a much more appropriate way.

Are there still issues that we are dealing with? Of course there are. Just in the Management Commission meeting yesterday, we dealt with a number of claims that were sixty days overdue. Now, I know that there has to be an accountability measure. You just cannot go out and wait five months, six months, and never send in a claim for your expenses, but there are always going to be times – and I have experienced this as well – where you are going to be travelling and maybe you did not get the receipt, or maybe you have ordered something that you need for your constituency office and the receipt did not come in and all of a sudden you are over the deadline, or someone invoices you after the deadline for your claim. That happens all the time. That happens in every single office, I am sure.

When you remember it – I know it happens a lot to me with rentals and I have to constantly be calling the rental companies to get my car rental receipts before my sixty days are up and have it mailed to me so I can get those claims in. Oftentimes, people will be out an invoice or two. When that happens, there is a whole process that you have to go through. There is an internal process that we do not see in terms of what the Clerk's office has to do and what the Director of Finance has to do in approving that particular claim, and then it has to come to a full public meeting, a televised meeting of the House of Assembly to get approval for that receipt that did not come for your newsletter, or your postage stamps, or your rent-a-car in order to get that approved because it was sixty days past.

So, I think there needs to be, again, some level of flexibility where we do not have to reconvene a committee of the House of Assembly and order air time on the cameras to approve a receipt that someone did not get in time. Because that receipt is already an eligible expense. That has already been approved by the House, it has already been approved by the Director of Finance, and it is already an acceptable expense. All we are doing is making the decision whether we are going to allow it because it is sixty days late. So, I think there needs to be some flexibility around things like that.

One of the other issues that needs to be looked at, as well, is with regard to the boundary changes. For example, in the last boundary review – and I will just use two districts, for example. One district is Fortune Bay - Cape La Hune, which used to have the communities of Ramea and Grey River in that particular district. Now Ramea and Grey River have been moved into the District of Burgeo - La Poile. The Member for Burgeo - La Poile did not get additionally compensated for the extra communities they have to cover, the extra geographical distance they have to cover in serving their constituency. That revenue is still going to the member who formerly served the communities in that district.

For example, when you look at Ramea and Grey River, they are both isolated communities. You can only get in there by ferry or by helicopter. The Member for Burgeo - La Poile does not even have the permission yet to access helicopter services because that still lies with the Member for Fortune Bay - Cape La Hune, even though he is now serving those communities. Maybe he does not want to use a helicopter, but the entitlement is there. Even using a ferry, the extra mileage and the extra cost of serving those communities is not incorporated in his budget. It is still in the budget for a previous district. Those kinds of adjustments constantly have to be made and have to be looked at in terms of whether an MHA is getting fair compensation to cover off their particular district.

Mr. Speaker, our budgets today are done very differently than they were done prior to Chief Justice Derek Green's report. Before Derek Green's report, everything was called a constituency allowance. If I had a newsletter, if I travelled on an airplane, if I took someone for a lunch, if I bought postage stamps, if I rented a community hall, if I ordered paper, if I bought a new copier for my office, all of these things were considered your constituency allowance. Now it is all broken down.

That is why when members' say they did not spend anything out of their constituency allowance, because what happens now is that everything is broken down. All of your travel is under one category, all of your office supplies are under another, all of your district travel is in a separate category, and all of your per diems are in one particular column. Everything is broken down. Your constituency allowance is just that small portion, very small portion I should say, which is basically left for the few other miscellaneous things that may not be covered. If you wanted subscriptions, if you wanted to order Freedom of Information requests, take out an ad in a paper, sponsor a lunch for some people from your district who are visiting, or whatever the case may be, lapel pins, flags, different things like that are now provided through the Speaker's Office, and lots of times that does not even have to come out of your expenditure anymore. It is broken down, it is very transparent, and it is all on-line.

Any person in this Province can go on-line and find out what their MHA is spending their constituency allowance on. Where you spend it, almost down to what we eat, actually. We have to even submit what we eat. If I have a hamburger and fries, it has to be written out on the invoice that it was a hamburger and fries. I cannot just bring back the bill for a lunch with five mayors in my district for $50 because they have to know what they all eat now. We have to even put in if they had hamburger and fries, if they had a club sandwich, or a bowl of soup and a sandwich. Everything is very detailed. If you are into that level of detail and you want to see what your MHA is doing and what they are eating when they go out for lunch, well, it is all on-line. If you want to know if we ordered seal somewhere, the seal season is open, and if we had a seal supper, you can go on-line and see if we had a seal supper.

Anyway, that is the kind of transparency that exists in the House of Assembly today. I am not making any of this up. I am not exaggerating any of it. It is factual. It is there. That is exactly what it is. Anyone out there who is going around in the Province complaining that they do not know what MHAs and politicians are spending their money on in serving their districts, there is no reason why they cannot know. It is all there. That was done specifically to ensure confidence in the people of this Province that we are not doing anything we should not be doing. Everything we do is done by rules, policies, and procedures. It is documented. It is disclosed. It is fully available to the public with the click of a button on your computer. Mr. Speaker, I have absolutely no problem with that. I think that is the greatest level of assurance and confidence that we can give to the people of this Province that what we are doing is right and proper.

Mr. Speaker, in terms of reviewing the members' compensation and things like severance, pensions, allowances and so on, this is all very important. We are in a public service as well, not unlike any other public service, and anyone who is in a public service and working in a full-time job - we work long hours, I do not care what stripe you are in the House of Assembly. If you are an MHA worth your salt and you are doing work, you are working twelve to sixteen hours a day, and that is the way it is. You do not go home at 6:00, 7:00 o'clock in the evening and your day is done. You go home, you are returning phone calls, you are reading letters, you are writing letters, you are reading reports, you are getting ready for all kinds of meetings that you have to participate in, and that is the nature of the business. Our jobs are not unlike any other job, except our jobs are more public.

Mr. Speaker, we, like everyone else, deserve to have pension plans and we deserve to have severances. No different than if you were twenty years in a classroom or twenty years in the House of Assembly. By the way, at the end of this term, I will have twenty years as an elected Member of the House of Assembly. I do not feel that my occupation was any different than if I had to have been twenty years in a classroom or twenty years in a hospital. I worked hard every single day. I punched the clock. I showed up every morning. I went home every evening. I did what I had to do. I gave up many weekends and was away from family for many, many special occasions. At the end of the day, I think I deserve to get the same benefits as any other person who works in public service or works in any job in the Province, and I think that is only fair.

What this process is, it is not about salaries for MHAs – and, in fact, if the people out there are saying that it is about salaries for MHAs, why don't they go back and look at the 2009 review and they will find out that what happened in the 2009 review is the salaries of MHAs were frozen. Even when the public service was getting huge increases, our salaries were getting rolled back and we were getting frozen. It is not about MHAs getting higher salaries; it is about MHAs being treated fairly and being treated with the same respect as anyone else in public service and in public life and being treated the same as any other career.

People think that there cannot be career politicians. Well, I have seen many career politicians, but you are there at the mercy of the people. The only difference between me and the person in the classroom is that every four years I have to go back and ask several thousands of people if I can keep my job and if I can continue to serve you every day. The day they say that we no longer want you to serve us, we are going to have someone else serve us, well then I am finished; and that is the way it works.

All we are doing here is, in addition to looking at how we carry out our responsibilities as MHAs and whether we have the ability and the flexibility to do service to the people who elected us, we also look at other things. We look at the pension plan for members. We look at severance programs. We look at allowances. We look at all of those things that are normal aspects of any company, any public service, and any other job or career within the Province. We are not doing this ourselves as MHAs; it is being done by an independent person.

We have a choice to do this by one person or three people. A recommendation was made that it be done by a Provincial Court judge; I have absolutely no problem with that. I have a lot of respect for judges and the role that they play in society in our Province. I have no problem having a judge do a review of what is happening in the members' compensation review within the House of Assembly.

The Speaker put forward a name, a name that is no stranger to anyone in the public service, because Jackie Brazil actually worked in the Department of Justice as a lawyer for a number years, represented the Province in the courtroom on a number of cases. I remember, Mr. Speaker, having to go to court with her at one point, when I was on one side and she was on the other side, and I was testifying against her client at the time. I am sure she has earned her merits as a lawyer in this Province and certainly as a Provincial Court judge. I am sure she will do a fine job in the review of these aspects of members' compensation for the House of Assembly. If not, Mr. Speaker, I guess I am testing fate. So, we will see what happens.

Anyway, having said that, the only thing I wanted to do was to point out a number of these things and the important pieces of it that often need to be looked at and often need to be reviewed. One of the things that were raised as well was the secondary residence allowance, because many of us have two properties. Many of us have a property in our district; many of us have a secondary residence in St. John's. Mr. Speaker, I know for me I have often rented, leased, bought, sold, leased, bought again. I have been through all that in the years that I have been an elected member in the House of Assembly, but I could have chosen to have stayed in a hotel and, in doing so, could have been billing the taxpayers anywhere from$120 to $150 a night for every night I was in a hotel. In the run of a year, I probably spent close to 200 days in St. John's – close to 200 days especially in my role as a leader. As a Cabinet Minister, I am sure you spend at least 200 days in St. John's in doing your work. You just do the math on that. You are talking, if you were staying in a hotel with the cost of your hotel and your meal per diems, you are looking at $250,000 a year. That is outrageous. So, why not have a look at what is a better system? A better system, Mr. Speaker, would be allowing members to have that secondary residence. To be able to rent a decent apartment in the city now I guess is going to cost you $1,200 a month, if you can get it. That is if you can get it, that is the thing; or, if you have to have your family rent a house here, or to actually buy a house.

Many members get elected; we are not unlike everybody else in society. We have mortgages on our family homes, we have car payments. We have all these kinds of things as well. It is not always easy to take out that second mortgage and buy another property in St. John's. The easy answer is to do what you are allowed to do, and that is to go and check into a hotel, but the hotel is the most expensive option. If members had other options, I am sure they would look at other options. It is not about saying we need to look at this because we need to pay out every member $25,000 a year in a living allowance so that we do not have to pay them out $250,000 a year in hotel fees. That is not what this is about.

This is about looking at another way to do this so we can achieve the same goal, we can save some money and we do not put the additional financial burden on members while they are trying to do their jobs as well, and we are not putting the additional financial burden on the government, either. I think there are pieces like this that have to be looked at, and it is only smart decisions by the House of Assembly and by the Director of Finance to want to have these issues looked at. We recognize as MHAs that while we have a good accountability framework now within the House of Assembly, there are still some pieces that need to be tweaked. There is often opportunity for further review and to make other changes, and changes that can result in savings within the House of Assembly but also result in a better delivery of services for our constituents in our ridings and in our districts as well.

Mr. Speaker, I guess I will await the outcome of the review and we will see what happens. Of course, as a Management Commission we will be open to the recommendations that come forward. I am sure we will have some debate around them. I would encourage all the MHAs to provide to Ms Brazil your input, what your experience is in serving your constituency, so that she has the wisdom of your experience and what you are dealing with everyday in her deliberations and in making her recommendations back to the Management Commission and therefore, through them to the House of Assembly.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Third Party.

MS MICHAEL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am glad to be able to stand this afternoon and to speak to the motion with regard to appointing the Members' Compensation Review Committee as we are to do by legislation; a Committee that will review, as both the Government House Leader and Opposition House Leader have pointed out very well, to do what is necessary to review the salaries and other compensations that are received by the MHAs in this House. To review it according to the legislation that was put in place based on the report of the study done by Chief Justice Green. To do it so that we will continue in this House of Assembly to be open and transparent, that everything about our work, everything about our compliance with rules and regulations is open and transparent.

I think that is probably the most important part of the work of the Committee, is to help people see that we are not here trying to be secretive. We are not here to carry on life not aware of the fact that we have to let the people know – I am lost with the word that I want there, Mr. Speaker. Accountable; we have to be accountable for how we spend the money that is the money of the people of the Province, and how we do the work as we spend that money. Putting this Committee in place is extremely important.

One of the things I have always thought, that while it was absolutely horrible that we had the type of scandal that we had here in this Province and in the House of Assembly with regard to the expenditures of money, it was a good thing in the sense that we did have the review that we had –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MS MICHAEL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate it.

We did have the review that we had, we did have the report that came to us from Chief Justice Green and we have put in place quite a system with regard to accountability relating to expenditures by MHAs. I will not go into all the details that my two colleagues have gone into. People watching will have heard that, we have heard it, but there are just a couple of extra points I would like to make.

This is our second time doing this since the Green report of course. The first time I was really quite pleased as an MHA to be able to present to the Committee that did the review back in 2008-2009. We all had the ability, if we wanted to, to go and meet with the Committee or write them, as did the public. The public could do the same thing.

When I went and met with them, because I did do it in person – it was actually August 17, 2009 when I wrote to the Committee and then met with them – there were concerns I had as a member of the Management Commission. They were not concerns I had as an individual MHA; because when you are an MHA here in the capital city region, it is much simpler when it comes to accounting for your expenditures. Our travel is not the same. Nothing is the same.

As an individual MHA, I did not have a lot of personal concerns, but as a member of the Management Commission it was my responsibility, and it still is my responsibility, to listen to concerns of all of the Members of the House of Assembly and to be concerned about how they are impacted in doing the work they do as representatives from the various districts in the Province. There are some districts for which it is really difficult.

I actually have the letter here with me. I remember that one of the things I presented to the Committee back in 2009 – which I still think is an issue – is the definition that we have of a commuting distance for an MHA. There are some Members of the House of Assembly who live just outside of the distance that is allowed for and who would like to commute, but the rules do not allow it. I do know that they are commuting a much less shorter distance than what an awful lot of commuters, people commuting into the city, are travelling on a daily basis. I did present the issue that there should be a re-look at the distance that was allowed as a commuting distance in our rules. I did not do it because it affected me, but I did it because it affected MHAs and they had written letters to us as the Management Commission.

One of the things I do want to say to Members of the House of Assembly is that, as a member of the Management Commission myself, and I know from the discussion we have on the Management Commission as late yesterday, we will bring concerns that have been brought to us to Judge Brazil as she does her work. When we meet with Judge Brazil, we will not be doing it just as MHAs; we will also do it as members of the Management Commission, bringing concerns that we have heard from members of the House.

There was something else that I brought to the Commission the first time that I will be bringing to the Commission again this time. Well, it is not a commission; it is a committee. Maybe some people will not see the connection, but for me it is really important. We get a lot of criticism as Members of the House of Assembly, and I think my colleagues have made some reference to that in their presentations. Sometimes we get criticized because, when the House of Assembly is closed, people think we are not working. We do know that we do a lot of work in our districts when the House is both open and closed. There is work to be done whether or not the House of Assembly is here, but it shows a concern by the public that we are always involved in work that is related to policy and related to legislation, that they do perceive that doing that work is really important and, therefore, earning our money is related, not just to the work we do in our districts but it is also related to the work we do with regard to legislation, et cetera.

That was why I made a presentation to the first Committee with regard to looking at the work we do and looking at the fact that we do not follow our Standing Orders which say that we have Standing Committees that can meet whether we are in the House, whether the House is open or whether it is not open, that Standing Committees have work that they can be doing when the House is not open. I made that representation to the first Committee, and I shall be making that representation again to Judge Brazil, that the money that we are earning is not just as constituency workers. The money we are earning has to do with the House as well. If we had our Standing Committees really operating, as our Standing Orders say they may, and if we were really dealing with policy and legislation on a regular basis, I think it would actually change people's perception of who we are and of the work we do and of the value of our work.

Every other jurisdiction in Canada does have Standing Committees that operate all of the time. If you go, for example, on the Web site for Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, even PEI, who is a much, much smaller jurisdiction than we are, way smaller, you will see their regular record of their Standing Committees, when they are going to meet throughout the year, the witnesses they have brought into the Standing Committees to talk about the issues that the Standing Committees are studying at any given time. You will see on their Web sites that their legislative members are working non-stop on legislative issues, whether their Legislature is open or not. I am going to be making that representation again, because I think it is really important for us to realize that people do expect us to be doing more than constituency work all the time, not just when the House of Assembly is open. We know that there is so much discussion that we could be having that right now is just in the hands of departments and ministers.

I just want to be on record letting people knowing that I will be speaking to that issue again. At the same time, I will also be doing, as I said a couple of minutes ago, I will also be sure that I am representing to Judge Brazil the concerns of MHAs that we have heard in the Management Commission. Some of those concerns I heard the first time and they were not dealt with; I am going to make sure that I bring them forward again. Some are concerns that we are hearing now.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I am glad that we are getting our committee in place. The public needs to know that we are following our legislation. Though we are a couple of weeks late in doing this, I am glad that it is happening and I, too, do look forward to the report that we will get from Judge Brazil. When we were asked about having a judge do the work, I was pleased with that. Some people may say: But it is only one person; but as I thought about that, judges are used to that. Judges are used to hearing evidence, taking evidence, reading, having all sides of something put in front of them, and they are used to taking all of that and having to make a decision. So, for a judge, it is not a daunting thing; it is what judges are used to doing. I do look forward to Judge Brazil doing that work. I think she understands the system that we work under and she has experience as a judge when it comes to making decisions that are based on evidence, and that I would hope would be decisions that will be made fairly and justly.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The House has heard the motion.

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

Motion carried.

The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. KENNEDY: Mr. Speaker, I call from the Order Paper, Motion 1, the General Budgetary Policy of the Government.

MR. SPEAKER: The Leader of the Official Opposition.

MR. BALL: It is my privilege now as the Leader of the Opposition and as the Finance Critic to start the response to the Budget 2012. I understand that I have up to three hours, or twice the time as the Finance Minister, so I guess that will take us probably into Monday now. So, I will use up my time to go through as many areas of government as I can. I have made a considerable number of notes here. It is tough to put any of this in written form, of course, and stand here and really think about – as I really need to be cognizant of the members opposite and those who are listening home.

I would like to start by thanking the staff and the minister in the department for the work that they have done in creating this Budget. The preparation, of course, for a Budget in excess of $7 billion takes a lot of time, and really, it is ongoing throughout the year. I have had some experience with this, both at the government level in a volunteer capacity in the Department of Health some years ago, but yet in my business life as well.

One thing I would like to recognize is on Tuesday morning, on Budget day, as we were preparing for the Budget, the staff that was in the room with us, in the lockup – and we spent about four hours there, Mr. Speaker – the work that they did, and how responsive they were in terms of the questions that we had around the Estimates. There were many questions that day. I must say, they responded to us and all the questions that we had in that room as the Official Opposition. I must say, I was really impressed. Some of them, when you asked the question how long they have been around, some of them were actually very recent employees with the office. The information that we received, I must say, was good.

With that said, I am looking forward to the committee work within the Estimates, because this is where a lot of the information based on our Budget comes out of. For those that are listening, those Estimates Committee meetings are happening right now in the mornings and the evenings with each day.

Mr. Speaker, as the new leader here – and I did mention about the budgeting process – I can remember back about ten, twelve years ago now when things were very different. There was not a whole lot of money to go around; when you were looking at making Budget decisions, it was very difficult, with limited resources, because in most cases, you were looking for ways to make cuts. Since that time, things have changed a bit, and there is a fair amount of revenue that we now have available to us. So, the budgeting decisions have become a little different.

All of what we talk about certainly will require money; when I look back over the last couple of months, when we had really been paying attention, close attention to the 2012 Budget, it really all started, in my mind, at the Board of Trade luncheon. I did go to that luncheon, and I did listen; the impression coming out of that, amongst people who attended that, was that most of the money that we have been spending for the last couple of years was referred to as stimulus money. This goes back, of course, to 2008 when most people, and most provinces, and a lot of countries around the world as we know, were in very difficult economic times. The economy was looking for ways where they could actually stimulate their economies. In most cases, that was actually done by governments. We have seen the government south of the border and indeed, our national government, and there is no question that provinces felt and did the same thing. Keeping the economy vibrant and keeping the economy going, keeping as many people in work as possible was important, because we did not want to slip into a recession. That was a concern that many countries were having.

Mr. Speaker, since that luncheon, and since we were told we would be coming off this stimulus-type spending, we then moved into the Speech from the Throne. In that speech we saw that there would be some changes coming to government and we would be looking for ways that we could actually rein in spending. What happened then, in the days following the Speech from the Throne, many people were getting anxious about what kind of cutbacks we would be actually seeing. What did this all mean to our economy? What did this all mean to the Province? In a lot of cases we were hearing words like austerity and things like that. Many people, as I said, were getting very anxious about what was going to happen in Budget 2012. Well, a few days ago we did find out that 2012 - and I am happy to say that we did not see the kind of austerity measures that many people were thinking about.

When I look back at the budgeting, the process itself, it is not easy for any government, no matter what they do, to do this Budget. When you look at a Province that is so dependent -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER (Verge): Order, please!

MR. BALL: - on so many variables in its revenue stream, it is often very difficult to be able to determine where the revenue numbers will be. By that I mean, because of our offshore royalties, you look at the volume that we produce, it becomes an issue. We can control that to some degree. The currency it is traded in is an issue for us, and certainly the price of oil. All of those are big variables in our Budget and they all play a big factor on where our Budget results will be. We found this within our mid-year reviews.

Last year we saw a significant change in the Budget prediction. We thought it would be, last year around this time, what it turned out to be in November at the mid-year review. Therefore, we understand the difficulty that it is and we search for ways where we can actually kind of control this a little more so that we can take out those swings within our Budget. It is not easy to do. Those funding mechanisms that I talked about, because of the certain things that we cannot control, are not always easy for us to change.

When you start the response to the Budget, there is really no better place to start than within your Statement of Operations or in a balance sheet, if you had it. When I look back at the Statement of Operations, and of course this all comes from Budget 2012: People and Prosperity. This is the actual Budget document, the Budget Speech itself. When I look at this, I look at our revenue to be at $7,210.5 billion in revenue. Of course, this would be our net revenue for the year 2012-2013. The expenses for that year are budgeted to be at about $7.5 billion, which of course leaves a deficit of about $258 million.

When you go down through this, there are certainly a lot of categories and a lot of departments that play their part here. The Program Expenses are about $6.7 billion. One number that jumps out at me, and I guess would jump out at a lot of people as they look at this, is the Debt Servicing Expenses. For the people of the Province, this is a high number at $830 million this year. This number is affected by the interest charges and by the unfunded liability.

Mr. Speaker, when you get into budgeting of $7.2 billion a year, this is the first time, as the minister said on Tuesday, that we have been in a deficit situation in some time. What I would like to take us to next would be the Debt Servicing again, which was $830 billion as I mentioned. This comes from, as I said, the unfunded liabilities and the interest charges.

The other thing that we are getting a fair amount of discussion on in the last few days is the investment into Nalcor. When we look at that, we see there is about $664 million this year with $655 million of it going to Muskrat Falls. It does beg the question when this project will be sanctioned, or if it indeed, in the minds of many, that it is not already done. What we did is we went looking for, where is this money going? We found out that a lot of this money is actually not really going in preparation. It is actually going to fund things like turbines. If indeed they do get to sanction this year, these are things that they would need to order.

As we move through this document, there is one area that is becoming more and more discussed by a lot of different companies right now and a lot of different governments, I would say; that is this area of the unfunded pension and retirement benefits liability. In 2012-2013, we see that number to be just in excess of $5.6 billion. As I said, this is a trend that we are seeing within a lot of governments and within a lot of companies. As a matter of fact, on the West Coast, we have even heard – we know of one of our larger industrial companies on the West Coast, that being Corner Brook Pulp and Paper, having to deal with a similar issue. This is important, because really what this does is, this sits there and this is important, because we have so many people who actually draw from this as part of their pension. It is important to us that we always be cognizant of where this is, and it is important that we do whatever we can to get these unfunded liabilities at least at a manageable level.

When we look at the Budget, the big picture Budget, there is certainly lots of information within the Budget itself, a lot of it not really having a whole lot of time to go through yet; we have only had it for really what has been a couple of days. When you ask yourself, where does the revenue come from? – we know that taxation is about 44 per cent of it, or about $3.3 billion. There is some revenue that comes from investment, about 3.6 per cent of our overall Budget, at $265 million, and fees and fines being $254 million, that being 3.4 per cent. The offshore royalties, which is the big one for us right now, at just in excess of $2.2 billion, or at 30.2 per cent of the overall Budget, other sources being some smaller numbers in the health and social transfers. I will talk about those later, because they are coming under attack from our federal government right now, as we see changes in the 2014 accord, which we will see the federal government make some changes, I believe, there in that area. These are another example of where the federal government is actually downloading expenses to the Province.

Then we go to where the expenses go: How do we use this money? All of us, I guess, as residents of the Province – this is important, because these are the areas that actually affect us in our day-to-day lives, and the people who are out there as residents of the Province. The education sector, for instance, is 10.2 per cent of our Budget and continues to be that way. It takes a significant amount of investment into places like education and indeed health – around $3 billion we understand.

There are certainly lots of other areas that we see where government, in this particular case, where the money goes. Like most people, though, when they create a Budget, what they do is look for certain trends in the economy. This is no different than if you were treating this as your own business. You would look at certain categories, and the specific-type categories within your business, and you would be saying: Where is it that we spend this money? What can we expect? We look for trends. Indeed, some of the trending – this is how you make decisions on where you make investments. For instance, if we were taking this strictly from a business point of view and you were in the retail environment, if there was a certain product that you were actually selling better than others or something that you were not selling much of at all, of course, what you would do is discontinue the stuff that is not being sold and you would actually bring in more of the stuff that you are selling. You look for those trends.

Particularly, with governments, what they use is they select economic statistics that they would see. They would look for things like new housing starts, vehicle sales, and they would say: How is this going to impact our economy? What is it that this means?

Mr. Speaker, near the end of the Budget Speech, there is a full page and it talks about population. When I looked at this in 2011, the latest numbers that we used here, it is 510,000 people that we have in the Province. When you compare that to 2009, it being 508,000, and 2008 being 506,000, you can actually see that the population over the last two or three years has increased a bit. We also know that when we take those trends out a little bit farther, we expect that this trending will level out; this will plateau. In actual fact, within a few years, we will probably actually see, just because of the aging demographics and the smaller family size, our population will at best remain stable.

One of the things that I noticed in this chart in particular was the personal income. In 2011, it uses the number of just over $18,000 – or wages and salary, I should say; wages and salary in millions. These are numbers that we compare. We are seeing this number actually increasing over the last three years. There are some things within this schedule here that I would say – and I will go back to the personal income – we are actually seeing this rise, but on a per capita basis we would see the income in dollars in 2011 being $36,173; in 2010 this being $33,900; in 2009 being almost $33,000; and 2008 this being around $31,000. What we are seeing here is a gradual increase in the per capita personal income. What this tells me is that if I compare this to the unemployment numbers for instance in our Province and I look at in 2011 the unemployment rate being 12.7 per cent, in 2010 being 14.4 per cent, in 2009 15.5 per cent, and in 2008 being 13.2 per cent, these are all key economic statistics that we use and we benchmark those.

We say, what does this all mean? If we see an unemployment rate that is lowering but then we see an annual, per capita average income, what that tells me is that somewhere we are leaving some people behind. This usually means, as I have said, that people are left behind; and we see this, in particular, in many of the rural areas of our Province. We also notice this when we look at the volume of fish landings for instance. In four consecutive years, we have seen a decrease in the volume of fish landings. This is important and has a significant impact as you would know, Mr. Speaker, in many of the rural areas of our Province.

I also see this and what is important – and we also know that just a few short years ago our Province operated three newsprint mills and right now we are down to one. This really stands out to me here, is when you look at the metric tons of newsprint shipments. This is a big factor, and I know for me living primarily on the West Coast and Deer Lake being my home, we rely quite heavily on the success of the newsprint mill, Kruger, in Corner Brook. Our economy for the most part – I know in my own particular community and the surrounding communities, we were built on the forestry industry. Now we actually see that it is not having the impact that it used to; therefore, the importance of diversifying the economy. Yet, we find, in particular in this Budget, we did not really see a whole lot of that; the areas of opportunity being as many people would feel in agriculture and forestry. We are just not really standing out. I think most of the reaction to the Budget is people are saying that, it is kind of like hold the course.

When I continued to look at the Budget that was presented a few days ago, I also looked at one of the particular charts that say where the money comes from. I looked at that – and we know the importance of the offshore royalties and the taxation throughout the Province, but where does it go? This is important and not a surprise to a lot of people, but again, when you look at education and education taking up about 19 per cent of our Budget, our social welfare programs taking up about 12.7 per cent, and general government and legislative type expenses that it takes to operate the government of the Province is about 6.8 per cent. Debt charges – and these would be on an annual basis. The difference here being in the $830 million number that I just mentioned would be the debt charges and financial expenses being just over $360 million. So, there is a difference here between the $830 million, because this does not include, of course, the unfunded liabilities. The protection for persons and property is about 4.5 per cent of the Budget or about $294 million. Transportation and communications: $275 million or 4.2 per cent. Natural resources take up $256 million or 4 per cent.

I will go now to health, which in this particular case is where does the money go, and that is at 37.4 per cent of our Budget, Mr. Speaker. So, it is an awful lot of money that we actually put into, in particular, health and education. We all know, with an aging population, that we can expect the expenditures on health will continue to grow, and it is very difficult to contain them. Especially when you have a federal government in our case here, that past 2016, their role and what they see their role to play in this is to actually rein money back.

So, it is important that we plan for this. Future planning for budgeting, we really cannot push this out much longer, because we already know that the offshore resources are beginning. For the most part, we have reached peak on that in terms of volume, and we will reach peak in terms of the dollar value of that in a few short years. The volume peak would have been back a few years ago, now, in terms of the volume of oil and the amount of barrels of oil that have been produced.

Mr. Speaker, what it does is it means that we actually – in my opinion, at least – really need to look at some better planning. We look at the gross summary – and I will just leave that for a bit; we will get back to that. One of the things about any business or any government that we need to be concerned about – this is the old area that you do hear people talk about. I must say, it becomes quite a challenge, because if you look at the residents, in general, in the Province, and a lot of people would like to live for today and if the money is there, in a lot of cases, people are tempted just to actually spend that money. So, how do you make that decision? Because we realize that most people realize this and see this opportunity that we have with our offshore, and to some degree our mining, although I do believe that our mining royalties will live on past our oil reserves.

One thing you need to do is find a way to actually manage the debt. What I went looking for in preparation for the Budget - and this was on Tuesday morning. One of the first things I asked for was the Consolidated Revenue Fund, which is the estimated interest and debt retirement. What is available for us to retire a debt? Really, when I look at this, realizing that any time you want to retire a debt you must also have to consider that included in this debt retirement you have to factor in the number of penalties that would be attached to this.

Mr. Speaker, when I went looking for this there was $150 million that would become due, and that is at an interest rate of 10.18 per cent. It carries interest just in excess of $15 million a year. From the way I understand this to be, that is a debt that would be retiring in 2014. That would be one of our first options, except for one that I see here for $81 million, just under $82 million actually, that would be due to retire in 2013. That will mean we will actually save just under $5 million a year in interest.

When I looked down at this, there is not a whole lot of opportunity here to retire much of this debt early on. In 2014 there is another $300 million here that is available for us. Within the next two years there is about $530 million that will actually save us $36 million a year in interest; yet, not a big number when you look at the number that is in excess of $300 million. This translates to be about a little less than 10 per cent a year that we would actually save on our interest charges within the next couple of years. It still leaves us with a significant challenge when I look at this and we factor in the unfunded pension liabilities.

When you look at it and you say this is all about choice again, do we use it? We understand there is a cash reserve of somewhere around the $2 billion range. How do we use this money? Do we actually take this money now and look for ways to diversify the economy - which is, by some degree, one of the arguments that we hear around Muskrat Falls. If you are going to use this cash reserve that we have, in my opinion, at least, you get rid of the debt as fast as you can. Then you use at least the money that you would save, for instance, by reducing the interest and debt carrying charges, to help diversify the economy. Of course, there is always a balancing act when you say that. There are a certain amount of penalties that you would have to incur in lots of cases when you look at this. Sometimes it is not as easy as said to be able to do this, but it is important that we always go through that exercise and when it is feasible, that we always make the choice to retire that debt.

Mr. Speaker, that is just a brief overview of the Budget for 2012. When I look at this and I go back then as my next starting point, I say: Well, what did the AG say? When the AG's report came out just a few months go, we were told then and there was a lot of discussion then about the overall debt for the Province. He went on to say that the provincial debt is certainly significant. We all knew that. How big is it? What is the magnitude of this debt? In one of his remarks, it was about $270 million. A surplus of $270 million would be required for thirty straight years. That is a significant challenge when you look at the opportunities we have within our revenue stream and how volatile they really are.

He also went on to say that while the economy remains strong, there are concerns about the sustainability of current and future expenditures. We all know that as years pass, of course, the average age of our population continues to rise. With that comes the challenges around health, and with that comes the challenges, especially in rural areas, where we get a declining population, which is where we are seeing most of our declines in population. The challenge of keeping all of this infrastructure in place becomes more difficult.

In my own district, for instance, we are divided into communities, the major communities being in Deer Lake and Pasadena. Those two communities are doing pretty good and are actually seeing somewhat of a population increase. Yet, when I move out into Hampden, Sop's Arm, Pollards Point, Jackson's Arm, and those areas in the White Bay area of the district, it is difficult to maintain the population there. For sure, the population there is starting to age. We have seen this and then, of course, the challenges around health care that come with this, but when we come off the Northeast Avalon, there is no question that many people who are asked the question – and I have had it said to me on many occasions, Mr. Speaker – that even though we are a have Province where I live, or where they live in this particular case, they really do not feel like they actually live in a have Province. Many people say that we are a have Province simply because of some formulary, that this is a formula that was in place by the federal government, and as a result of that, we are now a have province.

They see the struggles that they have within their own communities in keeping health infrastructure in place, keeping education in place, keeping the roads, the basic roads, and even the basic things that we see on a day-to-day basis, that we expect in our communities – not easy, not easy to keep things going. Even, I know, as I looked at some of the boil water advisories here just today, just to see that we have had boil water advisories on, in some particular cases, up to over ten years. It has been very difficult for communities in many areas of our Province to actually keep those basic things in place.

Mr. Speaker, one of the other things that we keep referring is in how we benchmark ourselves, because – and this is important to do; it is important to always be able compare yourself, where you actually fit with the other provinces within the country. Even though, as a Province, Newfoundland and Labrador back in 2004-2005 had an average per capita debt of around just over $22,000 per man, woman, and child in the Province, we have actually over the years been able to reduce that a bit. From 2005, we dropped to just over $18,000; to 2006-2007, just over $18,000. In 2007-2008, it really started to plateau out a bit at just over $18,000 – $17,923, to be exact. We now know that number for 2010-2011 is at $17,692. So, that is the average debt for every man, woman, and child within the Province. That actually is still the second-highest within the country, second only to Quebec. Quebec, by the way, is at just under $25,000. The only other province, to some degree, that has actually made much headway with this is Saskatchewan. They have been able to reduce their per capita debt significantly over the last six, seven years as well, and theirs currently sits at $10,000.

It is important that we recognize this, because this helps us to make decisions as we move forward about what it is, how much debt we can actually afford to carry, what is a sustainable debt for us. So, when I look at this – and I took the opportunity to go back over some previous Budgets; I went back as far as 2001and, Mr. Speaker, the Budget in 2001, in terms of the revenues, was just around $4 billion. In 2006, that was at $5.6, and in 2011 that was at $8.1. Of course, this has been driven primarily – in 2011, at least – by about $2.5 billion in offshore royalties. We can see the impact this has had on our Province. We can see the significant impact that this has had on our Province. There is no question about that, Mr. Speaker.

I also, in doing the analysis and preparing for this, I did look at the same years by expenses. We have actually gone from $4.4 billion in 2001, in 2006 it was at $5.4 billion, and 2011 it was at $7.5 billion. We can actually see what has happened is most of the opportunity, when it comes to the increased revenue, we have actually used this –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I would remind all members that the Leader of the Opposition still has two-and-a-half hours left for speaking. The noise level in the Chamber is becoming greater and greater, so I would ask all members again for their co-operation.

The hon. the Leader of the Official Opposition.

MR. BALL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I can assure we will not be getting to two-and-a-half hours today.

Where I was, was at the expense side, and back in 2001 at $4.4 billion, and 2006 at $5.4 billion; in 2011, it was $7.5 billion. We see that most of the extra revenue that we have taken that actually went in, we have actually spent that money, so there was some opportunity there to actually take care of some of this long-term debt. I do recognize the fact that we had significant challenges when it comes to infrastructure deficits, because you do not really only have a financial deficit. In many cases you can have a social deficit and you can have an infrastructure deficit. In this particular case, that needs to be addressed. I can assure you that, at least in my opinion, we are fast approaching the time when we really need to be careful, because we really cannot find ourselves in a position – or a situation, rather – that we are actually pushing this debt out to the next generation. We need to make sure that not only by a formula are we a have Province, but indeed, we feel like we are too. One way of doing that, of course, is making sure that we get this debt under control.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I did mention a few minutes ago about the demographics in the aging population. Of note here, people in the Province who are sixty years of age and over was at 19.5 per cent in 2006 and in 2011 that was at 119,000. When you look at that, that is a significant change; it is actually about a 4 per cent change in just four years. It averages out, I guess, to be a percent a year. With that, these are people who are sixty years and older. As we all know, there are many chronic diseases and those sorts of things that actually come with the population as we age. Of course, as I mentioned, what this does is it adds a tremendous burden to health care. So, it is important that we look for ways to actually diversify the economy and we look for it wherever we can.

One of the ones that government had identified a few years ago – and this comes from the AG's report – is that there was a budgeted amount in excess of $200 million over the last five years. This particularly was in the Department of Business and the Department of Innovation Trade. What we found is – according to the AG at least – that there was only $60.5 million of this spent. There is a way here, I believe, that we have to – I am not suggesting that we just actually go out and spend the money, but when you have money available you have to ask yourself the question: How do we use this money to diversify the economy in a meaningful way? How do we go out and find the partners, and where should the partners be? It is not always easy, I am sure. When I go to rural areas and I look at the agriculture sector, which would be around my own area, we have to be as aggressive as we can, realizing that there will be risk associated with this, but there are certain basic infrastructures that need to be put in place in communities that allows this to happen. This is one particular area that I do believe that we need to draw some extra focus and attention on and look for ways that we can actually diversify the economy to actually generate some new revenue for the future.

I said earlier when I started that one of the things I wanted to do was actually divide the many departments within government and take specific examples where we could actually just do as an overall review. I mentioned earlier, when I started my response, that I had some experience working within a health board, especially around budgeting. One of the areas that I would like to start with would be right there with the regional health authorities. Currently within the Province, we still have four. One would be in Eastern, one would be in Central Newfoundland, one would be Western, then we have the Labrador-Grenfell health authority. What they do is they actually run the institutions. For the most part, I would simply say that they run the health care within their particular region or within their particular part of the Province. I know for instance in Western Newfoundland they would actually go from the Northern Peninsula down to the Ramea area, and as far west as the Hampton and the White Bay area.

What I wanted to raise here today, because I did start most of the response about talking about debt and revenue, is we do have some significant debt that still exists within those regional health authorities. As an example, back in 2010-2011, we still had just under $72 million in deficit at Eastern, Central being $19.4 million, Western at $20.2 million, and the Labrador-Grenfell at $20.7 million, for a total of $132 million in accumulated deficits within those particular health authorities. When you look at it and you add this to the big picture – because obviously, these health authorities, no way are they in a position where they can actually pay down this debt without money coming from government. One of the things that government did in recent years, I will say, is that they actually started paying down the current deficit within the health authorities. Yet, we still have this so-called elephant in the room and these substantial debts that actually exist of around $132 million that exists within the four boards.

That is a significant amount of money. The question is: How do we deal with this money? When I look at this, one of the big questions I asked about was the debt that we have in the health authorities and how do we do this and who actually pays for the interest charges for the year. What I am told is that there is a chart where each of those health authorities right now is responsible for the interest charges on the accumulated debt.

Mr. Speaker, when I look at this, I see this really as part of the overall risk of the debt situation, that these are perfect examples as a government that we really need to be taking advantage of to some degree.

One of the things that was done in 2004, we actually went through what was called an amalgamation of the health boards. At that time, it was felt that creating fewer and more accountable health authorities was a necessary step. The whole idea behind all of that was that you would remove some of the duplication in administration and more opportunity for collaboration amongst our health boards. This was certainly the expectation. I believe this was the objective when this amalgamation took place. However, Mr. Speaker, we found out that in actual fact this did not produce the kind of results that were anticipated. In actual fact, what we saw was an increase in the amount of money that was spent on administration and support costs. They actually went up year over year.

Even though the amalgamation of boards back in 2004 seemed like a good idea - and I will admit that you would expect there would be more collaboration. Indeed, I am not sure where the money was spent, but in terms of the whole objective, as I said, in terms of saving money around administration and support, we certainly did not see that. It did not happen. Even the AG back in 2005 and 2006 at that particular point in time started to notice that these significant changes were starting to happen within the health boards.

We had a chart that was given to us of the support and costs for the year. Back in 2002-2003, it was around $304 million, but in 2003-2004 it jumped $13.8 million. After the amalgamation of the boards it actually jumped up to $356 million. It continued to rise to $371 million, then to $384 million, then to $424 million. Right up to 2010-2011, we saw the numbers rise to $485 million a year. These are the administrative and support costs for the four boards for the year. This is a significant number when you realize, in actual fact, that this is health care money we are using here.

If you look at the administration costs alone, this is another area where you subtract the support. When you look at this in isolation of the administration cost, in 2006-2007 it was at $137 million. In 2007-2008, it was $143 million up to $158 million, to $177 million, and to $183 million. This, again, just highlights the fact that – I would not want to say that more is better, but in this particular case less was not better either, in terms of saving money in administration and support costs.

I mentioned a few minutes ago about the amount of money that is currently spent on the interest on long-term debt, and how that actually fits into the annual operations of the Eastern Health board. In this particular case, I was under the impression they were paying significant amounts of money on long-term interest every year – and indeed, that is the case. In the case of Eastern Health, they paid out over $72 million since 2005. Last year alone, they paid out just under $10 million in interest on long-term debt. These are no small numbers when you think about that this comes out of, in a lot of cases, your health care spending. Money that would ordinarily be spent on front line services, we are now using this on interest on our long-term debt. This is important. This is an important number, Mr. Speaker, as we look at the opportunities we have within government to save money or make money more efficient. In this particular case, I think what would happen is that we would actually - if we retired that debt, that debt would be removed and then we would see either more money spent on front line health care, or, indeed, that money could then come back to save government some more money.

One other thing that we have seen when we look at the delivery of health care is how we use the people who work within our health care system. A lot of people like to use the word human resources as an asset. That is one particular word that I, in particular, normally do not use. I prefer that we stay away from, because this is a human resource issue. These are people that we talk about – assets being more, just by particular definition, as being almost something that was a little more tangible, or at least takes the human side out of it.

I want to speak a little bit about nurse practitioners, Mr. Speaker, and how in many jurisdictions, and certainly in some other provinces, we have been able to use nurse practitioners in a way where they can help and have more input into the delivery of health care within the Province. Mr. Speaker, for those who would not know, you would almost ask the question: Well, what is a nurse practitioner? Really, a nurse practitioner is a registered nurse, but in this particular case, he or she would have the additional education preparation and experience and can demonstrate the knowledge and skills. They can actually diagnose, they can order and interpret diagnostic tests, prescribe pharmaceuticals, perform specific procedures. All this happens within a legislated scope of practice.

Normally what happens with a nurse practitioner, Mr. Speaker, is there would be a physician that they would actually work closely with and that would be available to the nurse practitioner as he or she goes about their day-to-day duties. It does not necessarily mean that this physician would actually be in the room next door; they could be available, however, by phone call. This kind of collaboration is required for a nurse practitioner.

Unlike a registered nurse, I would say, the nurse practitioner would have many extra qualifications. I will say that in many areas, the nurse practitioner and the acceptance of a nurse practitioner has been very, very good. I know we have some experience within my own district as an example, especially in the White Bay area, that the nurse practitioner would work there and the general population in that area use the nurse practitioner as their frontline health care provider; I must say she is very well-received and people in the area like the type of care and the health care that is delivered by, in this particular case, the nurse practitioner.

Currently, we have 5,500 nurses working in our Province, but only 110 of those are nurse practitioners. There is an opportunity here, I believe, to use nurse practitioners in a greater way that they could actually help take the burden off our overcrowded health care system. As we know, we hear a lot about the reduction in wait times and enhancement of patient care as a whole and improvement of access to health care providers.

In many jurisdictions I know that the Province's Department of Health have done a great job in using nurse practitioners. I see this as a huge opportunity for us. Nurse practitioners actually work in collaboration with not only physicians and other nurses, but other health care providers as well. There is no question, I think, that wherever you have seen a nurse practitioner that has been part of that health care team, we have seen shorter wait times for people; we have seen, in actual fact, a more cost-effective care. The other thing about nurse practitioners is they do a very good job in a specific area and they actually target at-risk within our population. By that I mean they do a great job working with people with diabetes; they do a great job in working with some of our elderly. Certainly, on women's health issues, I have seen remarkable work that has been done in the past with nurse practitioners.

One of the other things that I think that they bring, they make a huge contribution in our communities, is this whole idea around outreach and education and wellness. This is so important, because it goes back to making the investment in health care early so that not only as you educate people – and not only just young people either, Mr. Speaker, but it is important that all of us, no matter what the condition is, or no matter what the age is, that we can also find ways that we can educate ourselves towards our own personal health care. There is no question that nurse practitioners do a great job in doing that for many people in our Province.

With that in mind, I think it was just recently that the Canadian Nurses Association at a national level put a national campaign out there and the slogan was, the motto of that campaign said: It is about time. When you say it is about time, you ask yourself: It is about time for what? The thing is, in their minds, it is about time that we incorporate nurse practitioners more and more into our heath care delivery system and not only do that, but we actually put them, they put them more in the collaborative practice approach. I know in many jurisdictions, and I know in Ontario, for instance, they have done some very good work around family health care teams; in those health care teams we often see physicians, we often see nurses, we see nurse practitioners, and in this particular case, we often see pharmacists that play an active role in those family health care teams.

As I move from the nurse practitioner and go into the CIHI information, which is the Canadian Institute for Health Information, what they do is they actually use health indicators to determine what the state of your provincial health is, or where do we actually fit, how do we stack up against other provinces. That is always important to know, because when you have those numbers – and I think we have heard ministers in the past say that we need to know, because once we identify the key areas at risk, well, then we can identify, and we can actually target; we can put targets in place to deal with those specific areas.

In this particular case in 2011 – we went through a bunch of indicators; I believe there were maybe about nine or ten of them there, and in 2011 some of the key health indicators were, for instance, where do we stack up as Newfoundlanders with our rate of heart attacks or acute myocardial infarctions? In Canada, the average population of 100,000, there were 209; but, in Newfoundland and Labrador this was at 329, and this put us at the highest rate in the country. It is the leading cause of illness and death within our Province, Mr. Speaker. Therefore, we have the highest rate of heart attacks within the country. Next to us would be PEI, which is considerably lower by well over 20 per cent, by 269 for every 100,000 people.

It is important when you recognize, when you look at the benchmarking here, you would almost see this really as an outliner. This is really out there at 329 people per 100,000 in population. So you say: How do I deal with that? This is an area that we really need to focus on because this is actually creating a lot of problems for our health care system. Because if you have an MI, and as people survive the MIs or the heart attacks, it becomes very expensive to treat those kind of people. It is not unusual, if you see people with heart disease, that they would have other problems that get associated with that; things like circulation problems and you will add diabetes to this, for instance, as well. This is one area, I think, within our health care system that we have identified as a health indicator and that we, as a Province, certainly need to pay a lot of attention to.

The other one where Newfoundland has dropped significantly in the last few years is in the whole area of hysterectomies. Per 100,000 people in Canada, Canada, on an average is 328; and us, as a Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, are at 368 per year. Saskatchewan would be the highest there.

High blood pressure is another area – and that is often referred to by a lot of health care professionals as the silent killer. In Canada right now, if you measure the population, 16.9 per cent of the population would have high blood pressure. In our particular case, we would have 21.6 per cent of our population, and this is the highest rate within the country. This is, indeed, not unusual again to anybody with high blood pressure to cost the health care system an awful lot of money, especially in pharmaceuticals and those sort of things. It is something that needs to be measured constantly because this is what leads to heart disease and heart attacks.

Asthma is another area that we are currently rating in the middle of the pack, yet it is one area that we really need – not only does it affect adults, it can affect children as well. Mr. Speaker, for us at a national level, we compare nationally at 8.1 per cent for Canada and 8.7 per cent for Newfoundland and Labrador.

Arthritis is another one and no surprise here that we have the highest incidence of arthritis in the country next to Nova Scotia. Our degree of arthritis, or percentage of population, would be at 21.9 per cent compared to 15.2 per cent for the rest of Canada. This has a lot to do, no question about it, with our aging population and with so many environmental challenges that many of our seniors have had to deal with over the years. It is not unusual for us as we talk to our grandmothers and some of us, I guess, ourselves to say this is not a good day for their arthritis.

One area, though, where education can really make a difference and where an investment into things like active living and healthy eating can make a big different is in the obesity levels within our population. As a Province, we do not fare very well here. From a benchmarking point of view, if you look at where we stack up in Canada, it would be at 17.9 per cent, and as a Province we are at 26.8 per cent. New Brunswick would be at 28.5 per cent. As a Province, at 26.8 per cent of our population having to deal with obesity, I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, that there is no doubt this will lead to further health problems down the road, especially within our younger population. There is no doubt that weight is a big problem for our population and no doubt it will lead to an increase in health care spending down the road.

Mr. Speaker, another area I want to just touch on here is smoking. At the Canadian level, it is 20.1 per cent and at the provincial level it is around 23 per cent. Of course, I do not have to say a whole lot about the side effects of smoking and the dangers that accompany that. We all know that, in itself, is considered to be a major risk factor, along with high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, and obesity, when you look at the health condition of an individual.

One other area, as Canadians, is when you look at the fruit and vegetable consumption of five per day. At 45.6 per cent, we lay well behind. The only place would be the Territories that are worse than us, so we are at 30 per cent there, Mr. Speaker. This is one area that I really believe we need to spend a fair amount of time and focus on. It is not only always available to us, especially in rural areas, but it has a huge impact on our health if we cannot find ways to actively have more fruit and vegetable consumption within our diet. The leisure activity, physical activity within our population, again is something that we lag behind. As I look at all those risk factors there is no doubt and it is easy to tell why it is that virtually about $3 billion of our Budget this year, of our just over $7 billion, is spent on health care.

What do we do with this? How do we deal with this? There is no question that we need to put preventative measures in place and that early intervention is something that we need to make that investment in. Community education – and I have mentioned this when I mentioned the nurse practitioners – is important because community education goes a long way and is extremely important to improving the health of the people of our Province.

One example of this, and I will use one example before I move on, is I know a few years ago that working in our pharmacy, what we decided to do was to engage some people who had diabetes, to engage them into four or five areas: one being foot care, one being actually shopping better for food, adding some exercise to their lifestyle, and really making sure that they are actually seeing a health care provider on a regular basis. We started with twenty-three people; when the program ended, we had twenty-two. There is no question, in every single case we had a positive impact on the health of the individuals who actually participated.

There has been a lot of discussion over the last few weeks and months about health care; there always will be in this particular Province, I am sure, as well as others. One thing, we went through a significant debate here in the House a few weeks ago, one that obviously – because of my registration as a pharmacist – I was not allowed to participate in. This was the whole idea around special authorizations and how our population gets access to drugs that are really not covered on the Prescription Drug Program.

I just want to take us through a little bit about this, because it actually causes a lot of delays in treatment. In my opinion, at least, right now there is a way to simply solve this so that our population can have easier access to prescription drugs. This is actually administered through the Newfoundland and Labrador Prescription Drug Program. In today's environment, what happens is that the prescription is actually faxed either from the pharmacy or by the individual, or from the doctor's office, to the Newfoundland and Labrador Prescription Drug Program, and there is a request that goes in for this particular drug to become of benefit.

Well, in actual fact, we have always been led to believe that this should be a ten-day turnaround, but in most cases, this does not happen at all, and we have a number – so there, as I said earlier, this really delays treatment, Mr. Speaker. In this particular case, we cannot even find out what the status of an authorization for a drug that people are waiting to receive. We cannot even tell, only by actually phoning in; we have to phone in, leave a message, and we will get a call back. In this particular case, it leaves people, many people, having to travel for, in some cases, hours, to come in and see and wait for those drugs because of delays in treatments. In a lot of cases, when you get a denial, it is typically around a lack of information. You would not know this unless you actually went looking for this information yourself.

So, there are a few things I think we need to consider with special authorization drugs, and because it is costing time, and I believe there is a more efficient way to do it. It would actually get people on the appropriate medication in a more timely way, and we would actually use our physicians a little better, because right now, we have physicians that are actually filling out those forms. It is time consuming; it is a wasted appointment, in many cases, with their doctor. Clients are having to travel a long way to actually see their physician, and they have to go back and forth just waiting for the response on this special authorization. In a lot of ways, it creates a lot of unnecessary paperwork. So, one of the things that we really need to look at – we even have specialists to do that.

Now, in a particular case with drugs that are under special authorization –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER (Kent): Order, please!

The Chair is reluctant to interrupt the Leader of the Opposition during his speech; however, the noise level is making it difficult to hear the Leader of the Opposition. I would ask hon. members for their co-operation, and I would encourage you to take your conversations out of the Chamber.

The hon. the Leader of the Official Opposition.

AN HON. MEMBER: Speak up.

MR. BALL: Speak up, yes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Well, what I was talking about, of course, was special authorizations. In my opinion at least, there is some opportunity there that if we actually streamlined the process a bit, we could have our residents of the Province and the people who need those special authorization drugs available to them in a more efficient manner. By that I mean there are certain guidelines in place for any drugs that are considered to be a special authorization benefit. There are certain guidelines in place, that in order to get this drug, you have to pass.

When a specialist writes the drug, typically by then you could tell, at least electronically, or through the technology that we have in place, whether this individual has been taking this drug or not. It seems to me it is an awful waste, especially within our specialty areas where we have a limited number anyway. At least we should for the first month, do the first month approval, or at least if a specialist writes that we need some kind of mechanism in place, that it gets automatically approved or some way that we can put the technology in place. In today's world where technology is the solution and the answer for many of our problems, this could be something that we could actually do to get this done electronically.

Wait times, Mr. Speaker, I mentioned this earlier, the impact that this is having within our health care system, there is no doubt that wait times are causing a significant drain. One of the areas that we have mentioned in the past is the – the information we have is that one in six people in hospital beds right now are there because there is no long-term care in place, or there are no arrangements or no services or alternative type care ready for them in their communities. What this does of course, it keeps people in the most expensive area within our health system, and that being in our hospitals. If we have one in six beds that are currently used or currently blocked by people who are waiting for services, who are medically discharged and waiting for either long-term care or access to services within the community, this adds costs. The estimates that we have is somewhere around $120 million a year. Of course, most of those community services relate to home care, physiotherapists, long-term care, or even in some cases, places like personal care homes.

When you look at the current health care budget of just under $3 billion, and if indeed this is around $120 million, this is around 4 per cent, but if you take that back to the budgets of the regional health authorities, this is closer to 6 per cent. This is an alarming number. Any time you have an opportunity to make a 6 per cent impact, I think you would need to take a serious look at that and look for ways and measures that you can put in place where you can make better use of that money.

With that said, one of the areas I think we do lack in, of course, is home care. We have been asking questions on this over the last few days about where we are with the family provided home care and the caregivers. I can give you lots of examples. I am sure all of us as MHAs within our own districts can tell where there are many opportunities where we could use our family caregivers. Many people find it difficult. All of us, I believe, can give examples of where we have families who are actually on schedules, Mr. Speaker. You might have a family of four where the son and daughter take turns going in overnight and staying with their families. Not being able to afford to leave work makes it very difficult.

I know in one particular case that I have had to deal with just recently, this particular family, the elderly gentleman had Alzheimer's and was waiting for long-term care placement. His wife really could not handle him and was finding it very difficult. Home care was not available or not enough hours. In this particular case, I think it was about five hours that were identified for the family, but it really was not enough. She was actually afraid to stay there at night with no long-term care beds available, and it was very difficult. These are areas that we really need to take a serious look at or a closer look at family caregivers, I would say, Mr. Speaker, and find ways to include them in this solution. I am looking forward to what has been said in the House today about where we are and where this government is in terms of the family caregiver program.

In this particular Province right now, we have between 5,000 and 6,000 home care workers. Of course, most of them feel they are underpaid. We know in this particular Budget, it is just over $12 an hour. Mr. Speaker, when you look at that wage, there is no wonder it gets compared to the other options they have available to them; yet, they do a tremendous service to our community. It is a great opportunity for us. We see this not only in the home care sector, but in seniors' homes and those other areas where home support workers and home care workers are used to provide that service.

There is no question we have to find a way to get those salaries up. In many particular cases when the only money available to pay them happens to be a senior who is on a restricted income or a very low income themselves, it is very difficult. It is very difficult for those people to find a way. You really cannot charge them anymore for that because they do not have the resources to be able to do it. What happens there is because of the pay around home care workers, the recruitment and the retention is very high on this issue, so we do get a high turnover within the home care sector. The experience now, it is very difficult in this particular case to find the experience that is necessary and that you would like to see taking care of our seniors. It is an area that we really do need to make some fundamental changes because the overall sustainability of our health care system is certainly dependent on a good home care system that we have in place, in particular as the demographics of our population continues to rise.

Of course, I will say, however, that this is not only a problem that we have within our own Province; it is a Canadian wide and, indeed, a worldwide problem. In particular, because we have to drive so far, in many cases, to see a health care professional, I believe it is more important in Newfoundland and Labrador that we get a proper home care strategy in place so that we can actually help offset and help prevent some of the ongoing cost that we have in our society.

We all know and we have all heard about the tsunami facing us, and it is referred to as the grey tsunami by many people. In 2025, we will have one in four people who will be seniors within our Province. This indeed adds a lot of burden when you think about it, because it is at that time when you get your highest health care costs as you grow older. For instance, hospital stay is estimated to be in excess of $1,500 a day now. That translates to be about $45,000 a month. A long-term care institution would be between seven and eight when you look at the cost that it takes to provide that service.

There are many areas within our health care sector where there are significant opportunities for us to take advantage of. One area – and I did mention this – was in chronic disease management. I will just touch briefly on this. This is, of course, the leading cause of death as a group. I mentioned this about heart disease; this being one of those in our Province right now. What we have to do, and one thing that we have been asking for, for a long time is where the chronic disease management strategy is. We saw the framework back a few months ago, but I will say that this is one area where education can make a big difference; educating our population in terms of what it is about chronic disease management. When we make those interventions, it really saves a lot of money and results in fewer emergency room visits and fewer complications. A lot of times it comes down to the education of the person either with asthma, with diabetes, or whatever it is, whatever illness that they have, the education is very important.

I will touch a bit more on diabetes in a little bit here, but the mixed strategies that we need some provincial co-ordination here. In particular, with diabetes, we really do not even have a registry right now that we could actually share and to really put preventative measures in place that could actually make significant type changes that we would like to see.

Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of opportunities within the health care system at least where we can actually make the up-front investment and I think down the road we can actually see significant return. Because it is about outcomes. What we will be looking for and we will be asking a lot more questions about is where the investment into the chronic disease management is. We feel that this is one area that you can get a significant long-term return and could improve the health outcomes for many of our people.

As I mentioned in chronic disease management there, one of the areas of concern for us – and we have an alarming rate and in many cases considered to be an epidemic right here in our Province – is diabetes. There is no question that we have disproportionately large numbers of people within our population, and it is growing, to the point where we had the highest rate in Canada; some of the highest rates of type 2 in the world I understand, where 9.3 per cent of our population, or 47,000 people, are affected by diabetes. It is expected to increase by 4 per cent by 2020, and that is 73,000 people who would have diabetes within our Province.

It is important here because when you look at the progression of this and what does it lead to and how important is it to actually put a proper management plan in place for diabetes, it certainly leads to many other complications and problems down the road in terms of organ damage, kidneys and eyes, and those sorts of things are all affected by people with diabetes in a much more – the prevalence that we have to deal with those, especially kidney disease and circulation disease, is a lot higher if you have to deal with diabetes.

What does it cost our health care system? It is estimated that in 2010 we spent over $25 million on diabetes; we are going to see this rise to in excess of $320 million by 2020. That is an increase of 27 per cent. This really shows the importance of trying to deal with this early on and looking at diabetes. We really need to get the registry in place so we can actually target individuals and try to help them deal with this particular disease. It has been said that the length of stay for anyone dealing with diabetes is four times longer than anybody without it, and many people believe that it is even understated, the cost that this is adding to our health care system.

There is no provincial-wide registry, which I believe would help with a lot of the coordinating, the treatment plans for diabetes; we really need, I believe, to implement an intensive-type strategy and we really cannot wait for this, Mr. Speaker. This is something that we really need a coordinated approach, in a collaborative practice – another area where nurse practitioners and other health care providers can actually play a great role. There is nothing more important in this particular case than education. It is extremely important as we look for ways to deal with diabetes, which is considered to be an epidemic within our Province right now.

Mr. Speaker, I have talked a lot about health care. I just have a few more areas that I want to touch on here, one being the respite care in Corner Brook and no mention of this within the Budget. What it does right now is that – from the Western Regional Health Authority, we really do not have, except for certain periods of time, any respite care available to the people in the Corner Brook area at all. What we have is, in the Western Regional Health Authority, eight respite care beds – four being in the Bay St. George and Stephenville, Mr. Speaker, and four being at the Charles L. LeGrow in Port aux Basques. These would be just eight respite care beds serving all the population in Western Newfoundland. There is a period of time throughout the year that you can actually get two respite care beds in Corner Brook, but that is only for a certain period of time throughout the year. We often get calls from concerned families about this, where it is, because this is just not available for many people and not easy to access; even if you want to access a respite care bed, you have to go through the same assessment tool.

One area I just mentioned earlier was electronic health records and the important role that technology can play in helping make health care more efficient. Really, right now, we have very few physicians within the Province that actually use the electronic health care record. The whole idea here is to create a record that all physicians, or all health care providers, including emergency rooms, can actually, when a patient shows up to that particular department, or to that health care professional – there would be a common record that people would be able to access the health record of those particular patients. That is important, because what it does is it saves time, number one, by not having to ask each and every patient – if it is a different health care provider – about the history on their health. If you show up at an emergency room, that is often the case – where the attending physician which is not your family physician would have to ask you all kinds of information, to the best of your knowledge; in a lot of cases, you are not able to tell. So, you are depending on someone who is going with you to the emergency room to actually provide that information to them.

So, the electronic health record is an investment, I believe. It would mean a more efficient – it is certainly going to mean some disruption. It is going to mean there will be people who will be resistant to this, but we have to start it somewhere, because in the future what we are going to see – and we are seeing this in many areas of the world right now – when your own health care record is actually carried with you on a smartphone, so that when you actually come to the clinic or you come to the emergency room, your health record is with you; you become a partner in it. The historical information that you would have on your own personal health goes with you, so you decide then who you share it with.

We have made some with our PACSs – Picture Archiving and Communications Systems – that we have in place. These are fantastic programs; they have been around now for over ten years, and certainly make it more efficient. Right now, I would be remiss if I did not mention the Pharmacy Network and the information and the work that is doing. We have a number of pharmacies within the Province right now that are already connected, but yet we cannot expect this to happen at the expense of the people who actually have to use this on a day-to-day basis. We need to make sure our health care providers are compensated for the work that they do within this. In a lot of jurisdictions we actually see incentive programs that are put in place. From what I know, we will see our physicians – this is one of the things for sure that they will be asking for.

Where are we within the Province? Within our Province, we have less than 10 per cent as far as I know of the doctors who are actually using the EMR as part of their practice; therefore, it is really not much of an uptake. What we do need to know, and one thing we need to consider when we move into this, is one of the areas we can provide incentives for is that this becomes a consistent type of electronic health record. As they need to be supported, it would be nice to know that these health records can actually interface, that people can use and be familiar with the electronic health record, and that they would be consistent in how we retrieve the information for the individuals who are going to use it.

Mr. Speaker, I touched briefly on the electronic health records, but there are certainly lots of areas within our health care system where technology can help us provide a more efficient and a better health care system. One area that we have heard some discussion, I understand, is the whole idea around ambulance services. I understand the contract has expired, at the end of March, I believe, and there are currently negotiations with the operators and with government to get a new contract in place.

One of the big problems with ambulance operators is just finding staff these days, because it is important that you have paramedics in place. Even within our own area, it is not always easy to get a paramedic. When you think about the ambulance being the first responder in many cases to emergencies, we need to make sure we have trained people in those ambulances and that they can actually provide the level of services that is provided. Within the Province right now, we have six hospital-based providers. We have private companies of thirty-one and community operators are around twenty-one. These provide, as I say, a great service as a first responder.

The biggest area they are facing right now comes to recruitment and retention. Where do you go to find a paramedic? I understand right now it happens in three locations within the Province, at the College of the North Atlantic three times a year, twice a year here in St. John's and at Bay St. George. At the College of the North Atlantic there is a thirty-two week program; yet, I believe they have a capacity to graduate sixty a year. From the questions I have asked, I believe it is significantly lower than that who are actually graduating, but the need for that is much, much more. What we really need to do is find ways that we can train more paramedics so that we can get our ambulance providers in a position where the paramedics are readily available. Then we deal with the retention and the recruitment issues that go with that.

We need more paramedics; there is no question about that. Just yesterday, speaking to an ambulance operator, they are having difficulty. As a matter of fact, we are seeing paramedics who are coming in now from Ontario to provide services to some of our ambulance providers within the Province. I know within Jackson's Arm, in my own district, we see a paramedic scheduled to come in from Ontario.

Mr. Speaker, in 2007, as I was the MHA in the district at the time for Humber Valley, one of the things and the questions that we kept asking about in 2007 was a provincial-wide 911 service. I understand right now there is a consultant who was expected to, I believe, report back in March of 2012, and I have not seen that report yet. This was around the provision of 911 in the Province. From what I understand right now, we are the only Province without a provincial-wide coverage for 911.

When you think about that, and you can ask just about any individual at all, what they should do in an emergency - what would they do in an emergency? I think most people will tell you that you dial 911; yet, in many communities in our Province – we only have, I think the number is 40 per cent of our population that is covered and less than 10 per cent of the communities that are covered with 911. This is very hard to understand, why in 2012 we still do not have this provincial-wide 911. I know the request for a proposal is in, and in many areas right now people are asking for the enhanced 911, commonly referred to as E-911, not the basic services that we have seen here in some parts of the Province.

I will tell you that it does get confusing for tourists. In one area that it struck me a few years ago, was we had a contracting company that was out of St. John's, so they were used to dialling 911 in an emergency. I showed up on the site, it was an emergency that happened there, and they were trying to dial 911. When I told them that 911 was not available in our community, it was very difficult for them to understand. It leads to confusion. Tourists do not understand it. What do they do in a case when they dial 911? I know we are told that if you dial it on a cellphone, you will get an answer, but one thing for sure is that in a lot of cases the operators who are actually taking the 911 calls are not that familiar with the geography. I know, in particular, in certain areas in Western and Central it is very difficult to actually put the lines in place of who actually responds to the emergency.

We have to start to put a mechanism in place to get 911. It has been said for a long time that one of the reasons why we do not have it is simply because we do not have numbers on all our residences and things like that. Well, I can assure you that would not be the case – Newfoundland and Labrador is not the only province in Canada that does not have a number on every single residence. Even though it is important, I believe, at least in my opinion, that we have to start this somewhere if we are ever going to get 911 within the Province.

As we talked about the Budget and we talk about the significant amount of money that is spent on health care, one of the things that we have facing us, we had the health accord in 2014 about to expire. So far we have seen a 6 per cent increase in our actual health transfer that is coming to our Province, and that has added significant dollars to our Budget. Now what we understand, as of December, the Minister of Finance had their meeting, they were going into those meetings – I guess the Harper government had sent out some messages that this was about to change. I do not really have a problem with putting the accountability measures in place on how we spend some of this money. I know provinces in a lot of cases do not want to see restrictions or conditions on this, but I guess if they want to make an investment into health care they have some say into what the health outcome is or how the money would be spent.

What is important here is to know that after 2016 this money will come, they will change the formula and they will actually go to a 3 per cent – they will have a 4 per cent or 3 per cent, and in some ways it is going to be tied to the GDP. So far this 2004-2014 accord money has become very useful. It has been part of our wait time reduction strategy, it has been used to supply medial equipment, and certainly for Aboriginal health within our Province.

This money now, of course, without this, as this money starts to shrink, there is no question that this will have a greater impact on our Province. Our position, there is no question that we need to see the appropriate levels. The federal government has a responsibility and they have that because this is one of the cornerstones of the Canada Health Act and really something that is expected. It is not only the Province's responsibility to provide health care, but the federal government has to play a role as well. It is important upon the Province and our Health Ministers to make sure that we continue to press upon the federal government to do their part. If not, this money will be lost. We have not seen that kind of leadership, at least right now, that is required to make sure.

We do know that other provinces have taken a position on this. I believe our Health Minister stood with Ontario at the time to really send a message to the federal government that this is not something we can support. In actual fact, what this does is download money to the Province, money in many cases there is already a greater requirement for anyway. What we do know is that the 4 per cent will be at 3 per cent and currently it is at 6 per cent. That will be a 50 per cent cut, and that will happen in 2016-2017. This will be dependent on what they call the Nominal Gross Domestic Product, which is GDP plus inflation. Mr. Speaker, this is a lot of information and a lot of it so far on health.

I would like to move into another area that has had a tremendous impact on our Province, and one that we have not really been seeing and have not seen the types of questions or the amount of questions asked that really need to be asked. That is around the federal cuts. When you move off the Northeast Avalon and you get out to some of the rural areas of the Province, the unemployment rates are significantly higher than they would be right here. In a lot of cases, it is still into the 20 per cent range.

Here we are, just recently, we have seen the employment insurance changed. Three pilot projects that were in place are set to expire at various dates. One was the best fourteen weeks, which was your EI claim would be based on the highest fourteen weeks of employment. This is scheduled to end in June. These are the types of cuts that you will see from the federal government. Actually, they are having a tremendous impact on people within our Province.

The whole idea of working while on your claim, which you could actually earn up to 40 per cent of your benefits without penalty, we are seeing here this is actually taking money out of the hands of people who live in rural areas, and really not a whole lot being said about it.

The extended EI benefits project was a pilot project that was happening where you could actually get benefits up to forty-five weeks. This was actually taken –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Once again, the Chair is having difficulty hearing the hon. member who has the floor. Once again, I ask members for their co-operation.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. BALL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The bit of water was – I must take the advantage to –

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. BALL: Yes, there you go (inaudible).

The program that I was talking about was the extended EI benefits project which gave the recipient the opportunity to take EI benefits up to forty-five weeks. Now, we know that this will end in September, 2012. These are EI cuts, but you say: Well, what role does that play within the Province? What happens is this is less disposable income for probably our lowest-wage earners that we have. In many cases they are in rural areas where every dollar counts.

We know, Mr. Speaker, however, that if we want to look at federal cuts, we really need – the one that has affected the Province and has gotten most attention would be around search and rescue. When you look at this, with the loss of the search and rescue – then they come back and say, we are going to put $8.1 million in, but yet they close up the MRSC, the Maritime Rescue Sub-Centre, for a savings of $1 million. It really does not make much sense at all. This annual investment of around $8.1 million was seen as a reinvestment into our Province when in actual fact it was not; it was not that way at all. This was put in place, I believe – this is an annual investment, as I understand it, into the Search and Rescue New Initiatives Fund that was administered by the National Search and Rescue Secretariat and was established in 1988. Mr. Speaker, again, just another area where we have seen some federal cuts.

Again, if we look at the job losses, and we are seeing this within our own Province; it was in excess of 19,000 across the country. We know that in Port aux Basques, for instance, we have seen six jobs lost in the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Right now, these are people who were involved usually around the Marine Atlantic out there. These are six jobs now, six dependable jobs in Port aux Basques that are gone, and two in Argentia. In these particular cases, these jobs have been around a long time. Years ago they were saying that oh, yes, before you leave the Province, what you had to do was get your car washed, because we do not want you to bring the contaminants to the mainland part of Canada. What does this mean now, that those types of risks are not there anymore?

The other area that we have been asking some questions on too is about CAP funding and the importance about this. We understand in Estimates there were some questions asked about this today. I will assure you that the CAP funding is really important. It is really important as most of the services go on-line, we are encouraged to do most of the services and to take part on-line when it comes to filling out forms and applying for certain things. If those CAP sites are no longer available – not everybody, especially in rural areas, has access to Internet or Internet services. It is ironic when you look at it in some ways that you are encouraging people to go there, and then on the other hand, you remove that from the particular area.

The other area is the Old Age Security where we have seen the change – if you were born after April 1, 1958, the OAS will not come into effect until you are aged sixty-seven years old. Mr. Speaker, these are just a few examples of where we are with the federal cuts.

The one that I want to spend most of my time on would be the Maritime Search and Rescue Sub-Centre, and the whole idea of this centre closing out for about $1 million really does not make much sense. When you look at this and you look at some of the comments that were made in the House today, I cannot honestly say that I do not share the view that we are as safe as we maybe believe we are.

This Maritime Search and Rescue Sub-Centre was put there for a reason; I understand it was put there in 1977. When you look at the range and the coverage and the responsibility of this centre – there is just under 30,000 kilometres of coastline within the Province that they have had a responsibility for. That is a significant responsibility. When you look at over 500 calls a year, that is a fairly active sub-centre when you think about it; 85 per cent of the search and rescue incidents, for instance, in Canada are related to the Maritime environment. All you need to do is look at the numbers and it is easy to justify why this particular centre is so important. Just merely to save the $1 million to move this centre to Halifax, in this particular case, Mr. Speaker, really does not make a whole lot of sense.

Currently, what we have right now are three centres. Actually, right now we have five centres, but three major ones; one would be in Victoria, and one in Trenton, and of course, the other one in Halifax. Then they were supported by the one in St. John's, and one in Quebec City. Now, the one in Quebec City is not closed yet; I know with our meeting we were told oh, yes, it is going to close, but yet it is not closed. What we do know is that as of this week, the one in St. John's is closed. There has not been a whole lot provincially, at least not enough to satisfy me to some degree, that has been said about that.

So, Mr. Speaker, some of the facts about the MRSC and the area that it is actually responsible for; when I was reading through this, one of the things that jumped out at me was that 70 per cent of search and rescue incidents in Newfoundland and Labrador are related to the fishing activity. I am not surprised, of course; yet, when you look at it, if you are engaged in offshore fishing activity right now, at least at one point you knew that this centre was available to you. It is no longer there. We had 500 distress calls on an annual basis – which involved, by the way, about 3,000 people.

When you look back at our history, we have had a long history of maritime tragedies. When you look at areas where the Marine Search and Rescue Sub-Centre would have been involved in some of the searches or some of the rescues, one that always comes to mind, in terms of a positive one, would be the one off Cape Harrison in Labrador just a few years ago when people were – because of the great work that was done at the local centre here – successfully rescued as a result of the work, as I said, that was done there. When you look back at it, this is just one example, I am sure, of the great work that is done at that centre. Speaking to some of the staff there over the last few months, they could give you lots and lots and lots of examples of their experience that they have had in successful rescues within the Province.

In this particular case, the Marine Search and Rescue Sub-Centre at least played a vital role. Even though there was not a lot of staff there, it still played a crucial role in when you look at protecting the offshore safety and the thousand workers that we have working there in such a volatile and harsh environment. I can assure you that this search and rescue centre on its closing will be missed, and these people will at some point in time – and not to predict the inevitable, but I would not want to be the one that would actually stand up when you know, because you will always wonder if indeed this could have made a difference.

I am going to finish up in a few minutes, but I want to continue on about search and rescue. I want to talk just for a few minutes about the Burton Winters case in Labrador. I had the opportunity to go to Labrador near the end of February, and I must say the message that came loud and clear to me from the people in Makkovik and the other areas of Labrador that we visited is that they were not looking for a southern solution for a northern problem. What they wanted to be part of was the solution that would impact Labrador in this particular case. What they were asking for was that more search and rescue available to them in Labrador. Of course, the Griffon helicopter was the answer, or the response, by the federal government in all of this, but in actual fact, that was not any addition to the service at all; this is something that has been there and has been there for years.

As we wait for the results of the inquiry that has been done provincially – I understand it is probably done or at least getting close to being done right now – this young boy, that in this particular case, we have found out that the events that we thought were there were not the way it actually happened at all. This is what we believe is one good reason why we need to see an inquiry done into this and really no reason at least for a public inquiry not to be done, even though we have been told that we need federal government involvement. I have talked to people – in particular, judges, in some cases, that have led inquiries; they have made it quite clear that in their opinion, if the desire and the courage and the will was there to actually do an inquiry on this, it could easily be done, and they would call the resources from the federal government in to participate.

As a matter of fact, I think they have agreed, at least from a federal point of view, to be able to do that. We have seen some changes in protocol, but really, in my opinion at least, this is merely lip service. When you look at a callback policy now, it is: Don't call me, we will call you. That is really not much of a change at all that we have seen in terms of the search and rescue in Labrador. I really do not believe at all that people up there are anymore comfortable in believing that they are safer today than they were before.

This is an incident that took place on January 29. It is unfortunate that this young man had to walk nineteen kilometres. Of course, on February 1 his body was found. It is unfortunate. I think we owe it to the family, to the people of the Province, and indeed to the people of Labrador, that we get to the bottom of this and find out what happened there. What measures could we put in place that could actually make a difference? In my opinion, at least, Mr. Speaker, the best way to do that would be through a public inquiry. We know the family is still looking for answers. There have been certain petitions. We hear every single day here in the House of Assembly, people asking for an inquiry into this and improvements in search and rescue services within the Province. Adding the third Griffon helicopter to Goose Bay is certainly not something they see as a solution at all.

We do know, too, that the inquiry in itself would help us all have a better understanding of what actually happened on that day. What we do know is that we were told weather was a factor. In this particular case, through The Fifth Estate, through that production and the information they have been able to find, that it was not the issue we thought it was. Indeed, the helicopters would have been safe to fly if indeed they were available to respond.

We have seen this in the past. We go back to Cougar 491, when the primary equipment that we thought was in place to respond to a severe search and rescue call just was not there. With the Cougar 491 tragedy, they were on a training mission in Sydney, Nova Scotia. No one even knew. We asked the question when we met with the officials: Is there a communication? Is the communication co-ordinated to the point where if the search and rescue is not available, if this equipment is not available, does anyone in the Province know? They said: No, it did not exist. There is no communication plan in place. There is not even a call made to let offshore workers know that the primary responder for search and rescue is not available. These are things that I am sure would come out in an inquiry and maybe just simple in a lot of cases where you could see those changes, and actually we could have a positive impact in the delivery of search and rescue services within the Province.

Mr. Speaker, I know I have some time left, a little over an hour, so if it is okay with the Speaker, we can adjourn now.

MR. SPEAKER (Wiseman): You are adjourning the debate now?

MR. BALL: Now, and pick up on Monday.

MR. SPEAKER: The motion on the floor is that we now adjourn the debate.

All those in favour of the motion, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: Against?

Motion carried.

The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, on Monday morning at 9:00 o'clock, the Resource Committee will meet in the House to review the Estimates of the Department of Environment and Conservation, and on Monday evening at 6:00 o'clock, the Social Services Committee will meet in the House to review the Estimates of the Department of Health and Community Services.

Mr. Speaker, having gone through that, I do now move, seconded by the Minister of Transportation and Works, that this House adjourn.

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

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

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: Against?

This House now stands adjourned until Monday, at 1:30 in the afternoon.

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