April 29, 1999 HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS Vol. XLIV No. 14


The House met at 2:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (Snow): Order, please!

Before we begin our routine proceedings the Chair would like to acknowledge the presence in the Speaker's Gallery today of Mr. John Ryan of Whistler, British Columbia. On May 1, 1999, Mr. Ryan will embark on a cross-Canada tour to raise money for Spinal Cord Regeneration Research while creating an awareness of the challenges in the lives of our quadriplegic citizens. Accompanying Mr. Ryan is his wife, Penny McLeod, who also serves as event co-ordinator for the Regeneration Tour. On behalf of all the Members of the House of Assembly, may I extend best wishes to Mr. Ryan as he starts his tour on Saturday from Cape Spear.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, if I may, I would like to join you - and you have spoken eloquently on all of our behalf - in extending greetings to John and to Penny who will start their tour here in St. John's, Newfoundland at City Hall on Saturday. Please give my greetings to the Mayor when you begin this journey.

John Ryan is an extraordinary individual, Mr. Speaker. He is going to make about 100 miles a day in a -

AN HON. MEMBER: One hundred kilometres.

PREMIER TOBIN: One hundred kilometres. I am getting very ambitious for you, John. In a unit which is called the Freedom Rider, which is totally, 100 per cent, hand-propelled. He will be moving right across this country from St. John's, Newfoundland all the way back home to Whistler, B.C.

John is an extraordinary athletic and in the past had excelled in a whole wide variety of athletic endeavour. He brings that competitive spirit, that drive, that determination and that great energy to the task that he is embarking upon Saturday. That task is twofold. Firstly, to continue to raise awareness, arising out of the injuries and the challenges facing those with spinal cord injuries and head injuries, and secondly, to raise money for spinal cord research and for assistance for those with spinal cord and head injuries.

We in Newfoundland and Labrador have been proud in the past when other celebrated and courageous Canadians - I can think of a number, but let me just mention two, Terry Fox and Rick Hanson - have started their journeys here to send these individuals on their way with our warm wishes, and hopefully with the result of our generous spirit as well as we contribute to your fund raising efforts.

John, may I say to you and to your wife Penny, you are welcome here in Newfoundland and Labrador. We are very proud you have decided to start your journey in this Province. I know I speak for all the people of Newfoundland and Labrador when I say our best hopes and good wishes go with you. May your journey be successful and may you realize your dream of making the kind of contribution that will lead to a regenerative cure for those who suffer from spinal cord injuries. Good luck on your way.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I, too, join with the Premier in wishing you well on your journey across this country. I am delighted that, unlike many federalists who think that Canada begins in Halifax, it begins here in Newfoundland and Labrador, and I am proud that you have acknowledged that.

It certainly gives me great pleasure, because on the day that I was elected as the head of a service organization in this country we were approved to be one of the sponsors and endorsers in the Rick Hansen Man in Motion World Tour back in Toronto in 1985 when it started at its very beginning.

We participated in that process across the country. As national president at the time I know what is involved, and the efforts put forth in that area, to further the goal of research and to find, hopefully, a cure for various injuries that people have been afflicted with.

I wish you well. I hope you will have a very memorable time, and it will be very successful from a financial and a personal point of view.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

Statements by Ministers

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I will rise after Question Period today to put forth a motion to change the Province's official name from the Province of Newfoundland to the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

I think we all acknowledge that Labrador is an important and vital part of this Province. It has unique geography, history and culture. It is a vital and important part of the future of Newfoundland and Labrador. Government has taken several steps toward recognizing this reality, beginning with the passage of the Labrador Act in 1964.

This Act provided for the official recognition of Labrador in the Provincial Coat of Arms, on government stationery, and in government publications. This has created an inconsistency in the Province. We have after all a Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. However, under Term 1 of the Province's Terms of Union with Canada the name of the Province provided for is the Province of Newfoundland.

In April 1992 the House of Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution calling on government to take the necessary steps to change the name of the Province to Newfoundland and Labrador. A Select Committee of the House was established to review the matter, and public hearings were held throughout the Province. A clear consensus emerged for the name of the Province to be changed.

The first item addressed in Government's Throne Speech of March 20, 1996, was changing the name of the Province. We have now brought forward a resolution to amend Term 1 of the Terms of Union to reflect the new name of this Province. Should the House adopt this resolution, we will be asking the federal government, the federal parliament, to introduce the resolution for confirmation by the House of Commons and by the Senate.

House of Commons and Senate approval will complete the historic work initiated by the 1927 Privy Council decision which defined Labrador, the Labrador Act (1964), the 1992 House of Assembly resolution and the 1992 Report of the Select Committee of this House of Assembly.

Changing the name of the Province is a symbolic but, I believe, important recognition of Labrador's status as a full partner in this Province. Labradorians have requested this change for decades. On behalf of government, and I hope all members of this House, I am pleased to initiate the final steps toward granting that request. Having both major parts of the Province reflected in our name will promote the unity of our Province. It will enable all of our citizens to work together to meet the tremendous challenges and indeed the opportunities that lie before us.

The name change is an appropriate way to mark the Province's 50th anniversary as a part of Canada, and I hope the members of this House will join me in passing this resolution needed to make the name change a reality.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This side of the House has no problem whatsoever, I say to the Premier. As he referenced, back in March 1996 I had an opportunity to speak on that day here and I supported it. That was the very first statement I think in the Throne Speech read by His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor. I have called on it since, I've said: Where is the name change? We have had three Throne Speeches since. Finally the Premier now is going to move, and we support that. We would have supported it, I say, three years ago. We support it now, that Labrador is an integral part of this Province.

It is the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. We all refer it as that. Let's get it officially on the record. That would require, I think, a constitutional change. Maybe it was not appropriate to have too many constitutional changes going to Ottawa, one after the other. It seemed like it was a common thing for a while, but at least hopefully now we will get this put to rest and we will rightly be able to claim, in name, that Labrador is the integral part of this Province that it has always been.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. COLLINS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I must say that I am very pleased to see that the name of the Province will be changed to include Labrador. It is going to be a great day when that happens; however, I think it also signifies how slow government works when it takes fifty years to accomplish a name change.

Maybe with the name change will come other things that people from Labrador have been requesting in terms of services and other things that are lacking in Labrador, along with the development of our abundant resources that was mentioned by the hon. Premier, along with these resources being developed with the best interests of Labradorians in mind.

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

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today to address a matter of some urgency.

In an interview with CBC Radio in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, broadcast this morning, the Innu of the Quebec North Shore gave notice to government that they intend to seek a court injunction to stop the construction of the Red Bay to Cartwright road. The Quebec Innu are saying that the road would cross territory included in their land claim.

Mr. Speaker, while the Innu in Quebec have filed a land claim with the federal government which extends into Labrador, the Province has not accepted that claim for the purposes of comprehensive land claims negotiations.

Our priority has been, and will continue to be, land claims settlement with resident Aboriginal groups in the Province, namely the Labrador Innu Nation and the Labrador Inuit Association.

A short section of the road between Red Bay and Cartwright does cross territory claimed by the Innu Nation of Labrador. Mr. Speaker, the Labrador Innu have not opposed the construction of the road.

Mr. Speaker, the Red Bay to Cartwright road is a project of major importance to the Province and the people of Coastal Labrador.

On April 22, Minister Langdon announced the project had been released from environmental assessment. The Innu of the Quebec North Shore were given every opportunity to participate in the provincial environmental assessment process, as were all interested members of the public.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, the Quebec Innu did make representations to the Minister of Environment, representations which were given due consideration. Their actions, as reported in the media today, are regrettable and without foundation.

Mr. Speaker, government recognizes that the people of Labrador and the companies that do business in Labrador need an improved transportation network. The Province is committed to proceeding with the construction of a vital link in that network in a manner that will respect and protect the pristine environment of Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, the Province will vigorously defend its position in the courts should the Quebec Innu decide to pursue court action. We are determined to build for the people of Southern Labrador, the road from Red Bay to Cartwright.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We have been advocating for some time the importance of putting a road through. In fact, I have asked questions in this House on several occasions prior - and sufficient funding, I might add, to be able to complete it from Goose Bay to Cartwright and not have an exodus of people out through Quebec. Let's tie our Province closer together.

So, there is a billion dollar gap there. It was not acknowledged at the time, I might add, and said there was money there when we gave up the rights of the ferry service - or Canada gave it up - to this Province, that it would be done.

We certainly support moving on with it. It is what the people of this area want, but I want to certainly say to the minister and to the Premier that there are outstanding issues to be settled with the Innu and Aboriginal people in other parts of Labrador also. That has to be done. It has to be given a fair hearing, appropriate consideration for Aboriginal rights within that province. In this area it is overdue. The people have been calling for it for some time now, and we certainly support the action that government is taking at this time on this particular project.

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

MR. COLLINS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I, too, rise in support of the initiative by the government to get this road moving and get it open. There are very few places left in the country today that are not accessible by road. The portion from Cartwright to Red Bay is certainly critical to the people in Coastal Labrador, and indeed all of Labrador and the entire Province.

I think it is also important that plans be made to link up the portion from Cartwright to Goose Bay so that all of Labrador is connected up. At the same time we have to recognize that the road that exists right now from Labrador West to Goose Bay still needs a fair amount of work done to make it totally accessible, particularly during this time of the year with spring thaw.

Certainly I think that this House should support any initiative by the government to -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. COLLINS: - pursue the road being completed.

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

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to give my hon. colleagues an update on the Voisey's Bay project in light of Inco's Annual General Meeting held in Toronto yesterday.

As we have stated numerous times, this government remains committed to obtaining full and fair benefits for the people of this Province from all of its natural resources, and Voisey's Bay is certainly no exception.

While there have been no formal negotiations with Inco since July of 1998, the Premier and I have met, informally, on a number of occasions with Inco's president. Government is ready to return to the table to consider any reasonable proposal which provides appropriate benefits for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. Our goal is sound resource management and sustainable development, and we were pleased to see that the recent environmental panel report supported this view.

Yesterday, Inco stated that Voisey's Bay remains a significant development opportunity, and that the company is prepared to resume discussions with the Province to achieve a project that will meet the needs of both the Province and the company.

Inco has indicated that they are reviewing alternative concepts to make this happen. We welcome the opportunity to review any reasonable proposal which will facilitate this project proceeding.

In the meantime, Mr. Speaker, we understand that Inco has been affected by low nickel prices over the past year or so, and in fact reported a first-quarter loss in 1999 of some $16 million. That said, nickel prices are continuing to recover and are almost back to the level they were a year ago. As well, Inco stock is currently at twelve-month high levels. As government has noted before, commodity prices are cyclical, and a deal should not be struck based on any one point in a particular cycle.

In an effort to provide an environment conducive to development, this government is also progressing in its land claim negotiations with both the Inuit and Innu.

Voisey's Bay remains a world-class nickel-copper-cobalt deposit, and I am confident that it will be developed. It is this government's responsibility to ensure that this development occurs in a sustainable manner which will benefit the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the minister for a copy of the Ministerial Statement. Certainly on this side of the House we are glad to see that, although formal negotiations appear to be on hold, at least there are some informal discussions and negotiations between the Administration opposite and representatives of Inco.

I think it is important that the public of this Province be apprised at all times. Although discussions may not be formal in the classic sense, even informal discussions, they at least will allow the public of the Province to know exactly what is taking place with respect to such a significant project. The public of this Province will not have to ask repeatedly, in view of the fact that there are such significant lapses of time when the public of the Province knows what is happening with respect to our Voisey's Bay project.

I would encourage government to certainly apprise the public of this Province on a more routine basis, on a more regular basis, with respect to even informal negotiations and discussions.

We are glad to see that at least there is development on that scale, and it is hoped that government can be more forthright and more frequent in its apprising the public of this Province -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: - exactly where we are with respect to this very important project.

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

MR. COLLINS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I guess the sooner that this deposit is developed the better off we will be as a Province, in all areas. I get kind of worried when I see the words "alternative concepts", with no explanation as to what they may entail.

I think it is important that the programs and the training for the jobs that will arrive as a result of Voisey's Bay being developed begin immediately, because we do not want to end up in a position where we have to bring workers into the Province simply because we do not have workers trained to avail of the jobs that will happen once this development goes into operation.

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

MS THISTLE: Mr. Speaker, the current round of collective bargaining is nearing completion. Since active negotiations began last year, we have achieved twenty-seven signed collective agreements, with an additional five tentative agreements. Within the last two weeks, the Collective Bargaining Division of Treasury Board successfully concluded tentative agreements with the Provincial Association of Interns and Residents, CUPE's Group Homes and Transition House Workers and the Association of Allied Health Professionals. In total, we have thirty-two agreements with almost 32,000 public sector workers.

In addition to the tentative and signed agreements, there are six more bargaining agents in various stages of negotiations with Treasury Board and two contract where negotiations have not yet commenced. These negotiations are progressing and we expect to conclude other agreements in the coming weeks.

Mr. Speaker, when government entered this round of collective bargaining, we were up front with all unions and the general public. After a period of wage rollbacks, freezes -

[There is a commotion in the gallery.]

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Chair would like to inform the visitors to the gallery that interruptions of this nature will not be tolerated. Visitors are welcome here to view the proceedings in the House, but they are not to interfere or interject, at any time, with the proceedings that are happening here on the floor of this House.

MS THISTLE: After a period of wage rollbacks, freezes and severe expenditure restraint, we said, from the start, that we were in a position to afford only modest wage increases. We would have preferred to be in a position to give higher increases to all public employees, but quite simply we were not and are still not in a position to do this.

Government has had to take difficult decisions to achieve a sound fiscal position, maintain stability in core public services and targeted reinvestments in priority area, notably health and education. We must not forget that Newfoundland and Labrador still has some of the highest rates of taxation in the country. We can only spend what we can afford. This is what we are doing.

As well, on an ongoing basis, government wants to work with unions and professional groups to better serve the public. Within the means available to us, we will continue to do so.

Thank you.

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

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

I am delighted to know that the minister believes that collective bargaining processes are nearing completion in the Province. I thought today that the minister would be standing in her place and announcing the withdrawal of Bill 3.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. H. HODDER: When I knew there was a statement coming, I said: Well, this is the announcement to withdraw Bill 3. That did not happen. Then, I thought there would be some indication that they would be prepared, even at this late date, to send the nurses' bargaining processes to binding arbitration, but that is not there either.

What we have here is a continuation of a sham that has been made of collective bargaining in this Province. Government usually gets a big, bully, boot approach. We see the strong-arm tactics. We know that the government has ignored the Public Service Collective Bargaining Act.

This statement does nothing more than simply bash the nurses of this Province for standing up for their rights.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. COLLINS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I certainly hope that this government does not expect congratulations for doing what they are supposed to be doing, I guess, by signing collective agreements with other unions. What would we expect other unions to do? Be treated to the same treatment as the nurses of this Province were treated? That is an indication to other unions that they had better toe the line.

We are talking about money, and being the highest taxation. We receive more money from lotteries in this Province than we do from nature resources. I think that is an indication of something not being right.

I tell this government that they will be remembered not for doing what they should be doing; at the next election they will be remembered for not doing what they should be doing.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

Oral Questions

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My questions today are directed to the Premier. When I arrived at Confederation Building this morning, and when other people arrived at Confederation Building during the day, they were greeted by a sign affixed to a number of doors in this building, Mr. Speaker. I will just briefly read the sign. It states in bold print: "NOTICE - The use of banners, placards, sticks, noise makers such as whistles and horns and similar items is not permitted inside the Confederation Building complex."

Obviously, this is an attempt by government to silence the protest of the Province's nurses, who announced yesterday they would be demonstrating prior to the House opening today, simply exercising their fundamental democratic right.

Mr. Speaker, this Province has a history of orderly protests in full compliance with the laws of this land. I ask the Premier: Why is your government suddenly so afraid that it has resorted to these kinds of anti-democratic measures?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, as to the specific question raised by the member opposite about what conduct is permitted or not permitted in the building, he will have to take that up with the building security officer because I can tell -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

PREMIER TOBIN: Because I can tell the member opposite that, quite frankly, I am not in the business of putting up signs and determining what happens in the lobby or does not -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible)!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

PREMIER TOBIN: The member is asking a question. I am trying very hard to answer. His colleague is heckling from his right arm.

Mr. Speaker, that is not something that I determine or that anybody consulted me on. I do not know if the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation can answer further.

I can say this. This is a fairly and very democratic institution when today, in Question Period, the member is able to put the question, and of course the Chamber is filled by many visitors, many of whom are nurses, as they ought to be here.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for St. John's East.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Mr. Speaker, the Premier may have heard of the Constitution of Canada, specifically the Charter of Rights, which guarantees all Canadians, and I quote, the "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication."

In practice and in law, this fundamental right includes the right to simply wave a banner or to hold on to a placard or other similar means of expressing a belief or an opinion.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Mr. Speaker, the Premier says he may not have directed it. However, as Premier, he can certainly be concerned about it and do something immediately about the fact that open, free, democratic fundamental rights of our citizens are being pounced upon.

I ask the Premier: Why is this government treading on the constitutional rights and freedoms of our people, whose only crime it is is to freely express their convictions to their government through their members of the House of Assembly here in their own Chamber, in their own House?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, the Member for St. John's East can try very hard to make a great crisis of democracy out of the circumstance. We are sitting in the House of Assembly where free debate and expression occurs. The galleries are full of those individuals who were a moment ago outside in the lobby wanting to protest and demonstrate, and who are free to do so, think, say and do whatever they want. They are here in the gallery today. To try and make some kind of Charter challenge out of whatever rules of proper decorum are determined for the security of the building is a stretch.

The member opposite who is familiar with the Charter, as am I familiar with the Charter, would know better than to try and suggest there is some kind of Charter challenge here. If the member wants to hear from me an assurance that every citizen of this Province has the full right to expression or demonstration to make their views known in every way possible, I certainly subscribe to that totally.

In fact, I have been accused of being too democratic. Some people suggested the fact that we have had two elections in the last three years and a referendum was too much of a democratic exercise. I do not think it was.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for St. John's East.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

In the forty years of history and tradition of the Chamber on this site, I say to the hon. Premier, never have signs like this been affixed and placed in the entrances and exits of this building.

We have seen how this government dealt in dictatorial fashion with members of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary simply by banning their right to wear a tiny little ribbon, I say. Now with one broad swipe the government is outlawing the very banners and placards that have been used for decades by the police, by nurses, by our senior citizens, by environmental rights' individuals, hydro supporters -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Even, Mr. Speaker, by schoolchildren, I say to the Premier. What paranoia, I ask the Premier, has suddenly gripped him that he is trying to insulate himself and silence all protest and opposition?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I will undertake to have whomever is responsible for building security and whomever has made the decisions with respect to the conduct of people in the lobby be available to talk to the Opposition parties. I would suggest that the minister who is responsible for the building will address the item.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, this is an incredible stretch by the member opposite, to make the kind of silly suggestions that are now being made. When his party was last in government they arrested and jailed union leaders.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER TOBIN: When his party was last in government they had provisions in back-to-work legislation that they would fire employees who disobeyed back-to-work legislation. When they were last in government they did not put a sign up saying: You must follow certain decorum in the building. They locked them out of the building when they were last in government.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, if hypocrisy is looking for a name, the name is St. John's East.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for St. John's East.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I remind the Premier of the Constitution Act, I remind the Premier of the Charter of Rights. I remind the Premier that on this sign outside that he himself personally saw, I am sure, if his eyes were open upon his entry here today, the use of banners and placards in the peoples' building, in the lobby of this building where we have had schoolchildren carrying banners and placards as a matter of tradition and practice, are now being banned in this building.

I will put it simply to the Premier. Forget the rhetoric. I will forget the rhetoric. Will you take them down? Take down the signs.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I am glad the member opposite in the breathtaking space of two minutes has admitted that his question is mere rhetoric.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I have not seen such a performance since he stood here talking about raises for public service pensioners one second and got up and voted himself an increase ten seconds later and saw no conflict between the two. It was the Member for St. John's East.

I have no problem with any demonstration, full demonstration, full expression of any democratic expression in the lobby of the building. None whatsoever. I am not a security expert. If the security people say there is some conduct that ought to be properly circumscribed in the building, I can only say why don't we as members of the House call the security people forward, ask them what their proposals are, why they put whatever proposals or restrictions they put in place. If we agree with them, well and good, and if we do not, let's change them.

The suggestion that the Premier of the Province is making up signs governing the activities of protesters in the lobby of the building is a stretch indeed. I will look into the matter. It is certainly not something I spent my morning determining. I was actually spending my morning, if the member wants to know -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I will take my chair.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for St. John's East.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: In conclusion, is the Premier now saying he is giving his undertaking as the Premier of this Province that he will look into this issue and do what it takes to have these signs removed?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, that is exactly what I just said. I have to say to the member opposite I think his performance and his behaviour today, and the kind of histrionics he is trying to rise to today, are beneath the member. The member is an officer of the court. He knows better than to cite Charter challenges in the context of whatever rules govern the use of a public building. That is for the security people of the building to deal with.

I will undertake that the security people explain to members on all sides of the House precisely what procedures they put in place, and why, and if there are some difficulties with those we will look into them.

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My questions today are to the Premier. Premier, you -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. SULLIVAN: I say to the Premier, you failed to win public support on the nurses' dispute and I ask you not to be blinded by your vindication against nurses. Stop viewing this from the Confederation Building and start viewing it from the hospital bed.

I ask the Premier: Will you act immediately to resolve this issue, or do you intend to let this continue and use the sick people as pawns to swing public opinion away from nurses?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

MS J.M. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We take our responsibility very seriously and we have been working with the boards. We will continue to work with the boards, and we invite the nurses as well to work with us as we try to put in place a very speedy process for the implementation of the 125 new positions and the 200 conversions that will help address nursing workload issues.

We see this as a priority, Mr. Speaker. We have also spoken to our health care boards about addressing other issues around retention and recruitment and we, too, take that very seriously.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

One hundred and twenty-five positions will not solve the problems in health care in this Province, and you know it as well as I do.

Premier, during the election campaign -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: Don't worry, I will get to that.

Premier, during the election campaign you told nurses that you were surprised to learn of the conditions under which they worked. In fact, you went so far as to thank them for their protests and for informing you and the people generally about their situation. We are not sure why the Minister of Health left you in the dark about nurses' concerns up to that point.

I want to know, now: What has the Premier done personally to inform himself about the nurses' concerns at Corner Brook that are leading these people to take such drastic action? Or, Premier, are you back in the dark again?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

MS J.M. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As we are speaking here today in the House, the board is meeting with the nurses at Western to go through the various list of questions. We have put forward, as well, our numbers with respect to conversions and new positions for those nurses, to hear from their health care association representatives, through Dr. Eric Parsons, and they are going to be going through those issues.

We have been made aware of those issues and we know that the workload issues have been made very clear by that particular branch and across other places as well in the Province. We will also be working with each of those boards to identify the numbers to address those particular issues.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The CEO, Dr. Parsons, indicated that the corporation alone cannot solve those problems. There has to be something, basically, that government has to do to solve this problem. That is who pays the piper.

I ask the Premier: Will he not admit that issues concerning nurses in Corner Brook are the very same ones that you pushed off the bargaining table back in March, when you legislated a collective agreement? The same issues and the same problems are there, Premier. Won't you admit that, had you sent this matter to binding arbitration or some other resolution mechanism, whatever it may be, as we and the nurses were recommending, the current crisis could have been avoided and we could start rebuilding our health care system instead of doing crisis management?

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

MS J.M. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

There was never any indication at any point during negotiations that we would move off the 7 per cent. What there was an indication of, to the very moment that the strike began, was that there was an opportunity to address many issues around workload, around work life issues, through other means of compensation.

The compensation was used all throughout the course of the election, and it was used all throughout the course of negotiations, because we were committed to staying with the 7 per cent but we were also committed to dealing with issues off the 7 per cent.

Everyone in this House knows, and in the Province knows, there was a lot of money left on the table, money that could have been put forward through compensation.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

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

My questions are to the Minister of Mines and Energy, relative to the Voisey's Bay development.

It has been reported today that informal discussions have been started to try and determine key issues for negotiation. Today's National Post reports that the Inco president is willing to compromise on the Voisey's Bay project, and he suggests that this Province should also consider budging from its current fixed position.

I want to ask the minister: What areas is the minister considering for a compromise, and to what extent is a full smelter or refinery a part of those discussions?

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

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am sure that the Opposition and everybody else joins with us in hoping that we do have success in some negotiations with Inco in the not-too-distant future.

I would hope that no one would misinterpret any comments coming out of the Inco shareholders' meeting yesterday. There was no mention of any formal negotiations with Newfoundland and Labrador and Inco. There was recognition, as in my Ministerial Statement today, that there have been informal discussions in which both the Premier and myself, as minister, have engaged the president of Inco and others to try and get some sense for what they may bring to the table as an actual formal proposal at some point in the not-too-distant future for us to consider.

The whole notion of informal discussions is that basically you try to find out through meetings that officially never occurred; because, if they do occur and they are formal, then you are subject to and expected - we fully expect to and will - give full detail of any formal proposal brought to the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador by Inco, and any formal response to that which the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador would make.

At this point in time there is nothing that has been presented to the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador from Inco for us to consider and, therefore, nothing for me, as the minister, to respond and report as to what we are therefore thinking about or suggesting that may have changed in the time since last summer.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for Waterford Valley.

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

Mr. Hand, Inco's chief negotiator, is quoted in today's National Post as saying: We have not ruled out further processing in the Province.

I want to ask the minister: Will the minister confirm that Inco, in your informal discussions, has proposed the building of a prototype smelter to test new smelter technology which will use small quantities of concentrate as a substitute for a full smelter system?

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

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I think all of us would acknowledge that the general comment from the president of Inco basically indicates a significant change in the direction that Newfoundland and Labrador has been suggesting, contemplating and awaiting, that they will do some smelting here. Remember, now, the last official position was that there was going to be no smelting in Newfoundland and Labrador. It was not viable, it was not feasible, it could not be done.

We are encouraged, as I am sure the hon. member asking the question is encouraged.

Again, any time that Mr. Hand, or anyone else on behalf of Inco, would like to tell the public of Newfoundland - even before they tell myself and the Premier - if they want to tell the public of Newfoundland or any one of us exactly what it is they are going to propose, we would gladly hear the proposal and deal with it in time.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for Waterford Valley.

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

The minister and the Premier have constantly said that they have the financial analysis which shows that a smelter-refinery complex in Newfoundland is viable. This financial analysis, however, was made on behalf of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, but the people have not seen all of the details.

I ask the minister, in view of the informal negotiations which are ongoing now, and he has admitted to that, will he today make public the complete financial analysis that he has prepared and said he has ready? Will he disclose all that publicly so the people of Newfoundland and Labrador can be advised as to what the full details are as to the viability?

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

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I think it is beginning to show a little bit that the hon. member has not really been in charge of anything since he was the mayor of Mount Pearl some fifteen or twenty years ago. Because obviously an analysis has been done in a very serious manner to determine the economic viability of something as important as the Voisey's Bay project, in which Inco itself, a company on the stock exchange, publicly traded, provided confidential information with respect to its operations, its funding, its financing, so we could do a realistic analysis of whether or not they could support a project in Newfoundland and Labrador that included smelting and refining. The hon. member would know that it is not appropriate at any point in time for anybody to then take that information and release it to the public.

The only people who can release that kind of information to the public are the executive and the shareholders and the actual company that runs Inco itself. If they want to disclose to the public, and to all of their competitors, and everybody else in the world, how they run their business, how they raise their money, what their financial status is and so on, then they are free to do that, but we are not free to take information.

I am sure when the hon. member was the mayor of Mount Pearl and he was negotiating with anybody, the one thing he did not do was take the last proposal that even the municipal workers gave him at the table and pass it out to the Mount Pearl Pride or some other local paper and let the people of Mount Pearl look at what was being said every single minute of every single day with respect to an issue of negotiation.

Mr. Speaker, this is a very serious negotiation. It is a very serious issue for Newfoundland and Labrador.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. minister to conclude his answer.

MR. GRIMES: It is also nice and convenient to say: Tell us everything that is being said every minute of the day so we can judge as to whether what they are saying is what we like or not.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. minister to conclude his answer.

MR. GRIMES: He knows, and I am sure he is going to stand and admit it, that he would never conduct a very sensitive negotiation that way himself. It is only politics again that is coming out of his mouth here today.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Conception Bay South.

MR. FRENCH: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My questions today are for the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs. Minister, yesterday we marked the national day of mourning for workers killed or injured in the workplace.

As you will recall, and most of us in this House will recall, on March 25, there was a fatal fire at the Come-By-Chance refinery. We have also come to learn that since that fatal day there have been seven or eight charges laid under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. The government received the report from the fire commissioner: not only, I think, from our own department, but from the expertise that they brought in from out of the Province. Understandably, those close to the people who died are very interested, I say to the minister, in this report.

Minister, I spoke to Mrs. Murray yesterday or Mrs. Kieley here in this building, and I spoke to her again last night. I have spoken to her many times over the past several months. She would like to know if there would be a copy of the report that has been written by these experts. Is a copy of that report available for her?

I raised the issue, I say to the minister, three times in this House, once on March 20, again on March 30, and again on April 30. I would like to know, Minister, why is the government withholding the details on this particular tragedy from the families of the deceased workers? They are very anxious. I know in Mrs. Kieley's case she is very anxious to receive a copy of the report as to exactly what happened. I ask you today, when can her family, at least, expect a copy of this report?

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

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I think all of us in this House have a great appreciation for the pain and the difficulty that was brought about by the tragic circumstances of the fire in Come-By-Chance just over a year ago. We share the concern of the family and their interest in having full disclosure regarding and surrounding these events.

There is, however, in the legal context of doing things appropriately a process that has been laid out previously by my predecessor in the House regarding the conduct of investigations and the subsequent release of information.

The steps are these. First of all, there was an RCMP inquiry or investigation, I should say, into the incident. They have recently reported that as a result of their investigation there will be no criminal charges laid. We moved immediately, or Justice did, as a result of investigative work that was done by the Department of Environment and Labour and Government Services and Lands and my own department, to lay certain charges as a result of irregularities found by virtue of our investigative work. These charges are now before the court. At what point these charges are disposed of by the court we have committed to a third step in this process and that is a judicial inquiry. We have committed to that, and once we can get to that stage that will happen.

However, we are not at liberty, by virtue of normal protocol, to release the reports that we currently have until matters before the court have been disposed of and we move to the point of a judicial inquiry. At that point, the judge who is appointed will do due diligence to his part of the exercise that we have committed ourselves to and in due course, while regrettably sometimes it takes a lot of time, the information that will be appropriate to be released to the public and to the families will be made available. The process is in train, the first phase has been completed. Charges under the provincial regulations have been laid. Once they are disposed of by the court a judicial inquiry will commence and at that point -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the member to conclude his answer.

MR. MATTHEWS: - we will know further when the reports will be available.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for Conception Bay South.

MR. FRENCH: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I say to the minister that I fully understand there have been no criminal charges made but there have been charges laid under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. I fully understand those charges.

I guess, Minister, I can appreciate what you are saying. I hope you can appreciate the anguish that certainly the Murray and the Kieley family are in. Because I am not only talking to Mr. Kieley's widow but I am talking to some of his brothers and so on, and they are very anxious to receive a copy of the report that was done by the people out of Halifax who your predecessor commissioned to do this report. I would like, if it were possible, to certainly be able to give them a copy of that.

I would also like to ask you this. Do we have any idea as to when this judicial inquiry will take place? Is it going to happen maybe within the next month or will it be six months or are we talking a year? Do you have any idea of exactly the time frame that we are talking on this judicial inquiry to deal with this very serious tragedy?

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

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We share the concern that this whole thing be dealt with and concluded expeditiously, and an indication of that concern on our part was this. Immediately we got the RCMP report released, the very next day we moved to lay charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act and other regulations that we had responsibility for.

I think it is important to recognize that we are just as interested, probably more so than most, to have things move as quickly as we can. It was the very next day we moved to lay charges once the RCMP report had been received and they indicated there was no criminal charges to be laid. We support the notion of getting the information and the work done expeditiously.

As to the time lines for a judicial inquiry, I cannot define them in any sense. I can simply say this, though, that immediately that the court disposes of the charges that were laid under the provincial statutes, immediately that those are disposed of and appropriate appeal times, I would imagine, expire, we will be moving through the Minister of Justice to appoint or see that there is appointed a judge to do the judicial inquiry.

MR. SPEAKER: Time for one quick question.

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

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

My question is for the Minister of Environment. Minister, for several months there has been raw sewage entering the Gander River. It is a world-class river, an angling river, salmon river. My question is this, Minister. Can you bring this House up to date as to what is being done about that problem? What information is available regarding the pollution and the sewage that is entering that river, and how is it affecting the ecosystem there?

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

MR. LANGDON: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The two treatment plants, one in Appleton and one in Glenwood, are outdated and are not in working order right now. From the department's point of view we are doing extra monitoring. We are working with Fisheries and Oceans, and in addition to that we are working with the Department of Municipal and Provincial Affairs. We are working with the Member for Gander to find a resolution to that particular problem.

MR. SPEAKER: Question Period has ended.

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

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

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I just thought it is important to advise the House at this time that at least somebody has understood that the issue that was raised between myself and the Premier during Question Period was of extreme importance. This is to simply advise the House that I am told - just advise - that the signs at the entrances to the lobby of this building are now removed.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

To that point of order, the hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I am glad the hon. member has advised the House that the signs, as he describes them, have been removed. I think it makes the point that I made to him earlier. These are obviously decisions made by building security. They are not -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

PREMIER TOBIN: The member did put a direct question. I think it deserves a direct answer.

They are not decisions made by me nor did anybody consult me about these signs, and if they have since been removed, well and good.

MR. SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

Presenting Reports by

Standing and Special Committees

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

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have for tabling in the House six copies of the Financial Administration Act, Section 26.4 forms, which authorize pre-commitments of money for the purchase of educational textbooks in the amount of $4.5 million for the current fiscal year in which we are now in. These were decisions made on March 29, 1999. They are done in the normal course and are usually tabled at this time each year.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Notices of Motion

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, further to my earlier comments in the House at the beginning of the day I would like to move the following motion. I would ask that it be moved and seconded by the Opposition House Leader, if he concurs:

WHEREAS section 43 of the Constitution Act, 1982 provides that an amendment to the Constitution of Canada in relation to any provision that applies to one or more, but not all, provinces may be made by proclamation issued by the Governor General under the Great Seal of Canada where so authorized by resolutions of the Senate and House of Commons and of the legislative assembly of each province to which the amendment applies; and

WHEREAS Term 1 of the Terms of Union of Newfoundland with Canada provides as follows:

1. On, from, and after the coming into force of these Terms (hereinafter referred to as the date of Union), Newfoundland shall form part of Canada and shall be a province thereof to be called and known as the Province of Newfoundland.

NOW THEREFORE the House of Assembly of the Province of Newfoundland resolves that His Excellency the Governor General be authorized to issue a proclamation under the Great Seal of Canada amending the Constitution of Canada in accordance with the Schedule set forth below; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that, upon approval and adoption by this House of this Resolution, the Speaker be directed to forward a true copy of this Resolution to His Excellency the Governor General certifying that the requirements of the Constitution Act, 1982 respecting the adoption of a Resolution by the House of Assembly of Newfoundland have been met.

Amendment to the Constitution of Canada

1. The Terms of Union of Newfoundland with Canada set out in the Schedule to the Newfoundland Act are amended by striking out the words "Province of Newfoundland" wherever they occur and substituting the words "Province of Newfoundland and Labrador".

2. Paragraph (g) of Term 33 of the Schedule to the Act is amended by striking out the word "Newfoundland" and substituting the words "the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador".

3. Term 38 of the Schedule to the Act is amended by striking out the words "Newfoundland veterans" wherever they occur and substituting the words "Newfoundland and Labrador veterans".

4. Term 42 of the Schedule to the Act is amended by striking out the words "Newfoundland merchant seamen" and "Newfoundland merchant seaman" wherever they occur and substituting the words "Newfoundland and Labrador merchant seamen" and "Newfoundland and Labrador merchant seaman", respectively.

5. Subsection (2) of Term 46 of the Schedule to the Act is amended by adding immediately after the word "Newfoundland" where it first occurs the words "and Labrador".

6. This Amendment may be cited as the Constitution Amendment, year of proclamation (Newfoundland and Labrador).

Mr. Speaker, that is the motion. I think by agreement there will not be speeches in the House on this resolution, signifying the unanimous consent of the House that such a historic motion changing, officially, the name of this Province - the Province of Newfoundland, officially - to the name of Newfoundland and Labrador should go forward without debate, without amendment, and with the unanimous support of this Assembly.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Is the House ready for the motion?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: Against?

I declare the motion carried unanimously.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. TULK: I think all of us would like to see that it is recorded in the record of the House that the motion was passed unanimously.

Petitions

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is my pleasure today to present a petition, and there are approximately 150 signatures on the petition. The prayer is:

To the hon. House of Assembly of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador in Parliament assembled, the petition of the undersigned nurses of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador asks for the House of Assembly to accept the following prayer:

We, the nurses of Newfoundland and Labrador, have honestly and openly conveyed our concerns about the failing health care system in this Province. In good faith, and under the collective bargaining process of this Province, we attempted to negotiate these issues with the Liberal government. Premier Tobin and the Liberal government showed their lack of respect for nurses' concerns and made a mockery of this Province's collective bargaining process by legislating nurses back to work without binding arbitration.

If the Liberal government honestly wishes to pursue constructive dialogue with the nurses of this Province in an attempt to help solve the existing health care crisis, we wish to inform the House of Assembly this can only be made possible if: (1) the Liberal government admits they have made a mistake in not acknowledging the depth and scope of the crisis facing health care in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador; and (2) that the hon. House of Assembly repeal Bill 3, and the Liberal government resume bargaining in good faith with the nurses of Newfoundland and Labrador by using the collective bargaining process that existed before Bill 3.

Mr. Speaker, one of the basic understandings in collective bargaining is that there has to be a recognition that there is a major problem or concern out there. The only indication we really had that there was a concern that was recognized by this government was during the election campaign. I have the news clippings to show that. The Premier said he is now aware of the serious problems we have, in the problem with nursing shortages and overwork. He is aware of it. He went on, and I will not go into some of his quotes. I have said them here in the House before, some of the things that led us to believe that there would be a recognition of the concerns that have been raised by nurses.

I spoke to a nurse yesterday. A nurse was here in the gallery yesterday - I spoke to her during a recess of the House - who told me they were called to go into work on triple-and-a-half time. On one unit in a hospital - I spoke to another nurse - there were four there working on double time. There are people called back. One particular one, in charge, had worked twelve consecutive days.

I made reference yesterday to the Coronary Care Unit shut down at the Grace Hospital, four days last week, not one patient. Three at the Health Sciences Centre. They called and wanted to have three sent over. We cannot do it; we have no nurses available to go to work in critical care.

An angioplasty was done, even the day before, and they could not take a person in there. The people working there - there were five in intensive care. There are six intensive care beds, and really another five beds under intensive coronary care, and they were all empty. Those five beds were empty, and five out of the other six were full. Another person came in at ten o'clock because a new patient arrived, to have a full six.

On top of having that, there were not sufficient nurses to be able to care one-on-one for the people who were there. One patient needed two nurses. A nurse arrived at about 10:00 p.m. and another one got in at twelve o'clock, just to get them up to a level where they could function. One went home after fourteen hours there. They took a break after over five hours. One patient needed two people, two nurses. One person was so sick, the attention of two nurses had to be given. At the same time they were monitoring two people down on the floor, under telemetry - hooked up to monitors, monitoring them.

It is not humane to have people under those conditions. It is not humane for the people working and it is not right for people who are sick in hospital.

How do you tell a person who has waited several months for heart surgery, is all ready, and is told: We have no nurses to care for you after the surgery. The Thursday before last a person was told: We cannot do your surgery because there is no nurse available to care for you after the surgery.

After all the cost and effort to put six dedicated beds into coronary care at the Health Sciences, to make efforts with the profusionist issue, to get it resolved, and the anaesthetists on times have cancelled surgery - to get an extra surgeon into this Province - we still are not doing any surgeries, really, that would have required that third surgeon.

It has meant diddly-squat, I can tell you. It has mean diddly-squat to have the third one, when each of the two that are there could do five each. We are still not averaging ten. We did less than 500. Four hundred and eighty-nine, I believe, was the number last year, less than ten per week.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. SULLIVAN: By leave to finish?

MR. SPEAKER: Does the hon. member have leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

MR. SPEAKER: No leave?

MR. SULLIVAN: No leave? I didn't hear. Has someone called back leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: By leave.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Why is this happening? It is not happening now because we do not have doctors in cardiac surgery, for example, and a lot of these others. It is happening because we are not doing enough to ensure we have a staff of permanent nurses that are able to take care of the people in this Province. We are understaffed.

When understaffing leads to overwork, it leads to higher sick leave, it leads to extra costs on the system, and that is contributing to sick leave costs. It is counterproductive. It is contributing to double time. Imagine, triple-and-a-half to get someone in. That is how desperate; they are going to pay you triple-and-a-half time to come in and go to work. That is spending money when we could - nurses want a normal week's work, to work a normal day, under normal pressures, and make a decent living. That is all. They do not want to have to be working, called back over several days in a row. It is not fair, and something has to be done.

I will say, in closing, this government still has not realized the crisis. If not, they have realized it and they have failed to do something about it. There is only one way it can be dealt with, because there are nurses going out of this Province every day. Just like the doctor crisis - they still cannot fix the problem with doctors because they left it too late. It is happening with nurses now; it is going to be too late.

When you look at your TV, you read it in the newspapers, you hear the real people - families - people leaving in tears because they have to leave this Province and get a job when we will not hire enough people to provide care for the people who are sick.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Conception Bay South.

MR. FRENCH: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to rise today in support of the petition that was presented by my colleague. I must say, I certainly agree with the petition and I believe that something has to be done, and has to be done rather quickly, in support of the nurses in this Province. I think the time for trying to put people down or to keep people down is here, it is past, it is over.

There are people, as my colleague has said, who are in the Health Sciences Centre, or they are in various hospitals around, who are waiting on such things as open heart surgery. As a matter of fact, I know of somebody who has been in there now two weeks and has been waiting to be moved from one particular hospital to another in order to have open heart surgery done. Every day he just seems to get cancelled and get pushed back. I think, Mr. Speaker, that's very sad. It is a very traumatic thing, not only on the patient himself but on his family and on his children, that he has to wait this particular length of time.

When it comes to the paying of nurses - and I talked to some of them in the last several days and over the last several weeks - we see triple-time-and-a-half being paid and people on callback. We have people in one hospital who are called to work weekends at another hospital. People who are cross-trained, is the way they explained it to me, to work, say, at St. Clare's or the Health Sciences and can also work at the Janeway. They are now finishing up their shift for the week at one of these hospitals and on the weekend for two days they are going to go to work at the Janeway Hospital.

Again, I think that is very sad when people have to work those hours. I believe at the end of the day, after somebody works so many hours and puts so much time and effort into their position, there comes a point in time where there is burnout, where somebody doesn't function properly. I think once people sit and work these hours and punch in this amount of time then I am not sure that anybody, whether that be in the nursing profession or any other profession, that people can really do their job to the best of their ability.

So I call on the government to either rescind this particular bill which I voted against, Bill 3 - which I do not support of course, never would, never will - and I think it is time that we got back to the bargaining table. We cannot, after all, leave it up to health care boards. I heard Dr. Parsons on today from the West Coast of the Province, how they are discharging people and they are sending them home.

I know of cases in my own district where people have been in and had surgeries done. One lady in question, several months ago, had a mastectomy done, was sent home with some fifty-seven stitches in her body and was told: Hopefully the public health nurse can get in to look after you. That is not good health care when the lady woke the next morning covered in blood. She was very concerned, very frightened, very afraid, as she was and as was the rest of her family.

It is not that these people, nurses, are not doing their job because they are, and I have the highest amount of respect for them. It is the system and it is the government that is causing this problem. I think it is time that it came to an end. It should not come to an end tomorrow or next week or the week after, it should come to an end today. I think the time for the hard-headedness is over. We see people in our hospitals who are suffering. The man I talked about who has now been waiting - if he does not go today, come Monday the gentleman will have been waiting three weeks for open heart surgery and that is a shame. That is a real shame that somebody, because of conditions, has to wait three weeks to have this much needed surgery.

I don't think, Mr. Speaker, there is anything else I can say. It is just to implore this government to get off its horse and let's get back to the bargaining table and let's try and settle this in the manner in which it should be settled. I think it is quite evident -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. FRENCH: - that we cannot browbeat these people back to work. So I thank you for your time.

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

MS THISTLE: Mr. Speaker, yesterday I stood in my place and said that this government made a difficult choice, a choice of bringing in back-to-work legislation, Bill 3. Are we going back to the bargaining table? No, we are not going back to the bargaining table. No, we are not going to repeal Bill 3.

I have to say to you, Mr. Speaker, that this government made a very difficult decision. We had a responsibility to act upon, a very serious responsibility.

[There was a commotion in the gallery.]

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Chair will recess the House until the galleries are closed.

Recess

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the President of Treasury Board.

MS THISTLE: Mr. Speaker, I would like to continue my response to the petition raised by the Member for Ferryland, the Opposition House Leader. I thank you for the opportunity despite the interruption that you had no control over.

As I was saying, government was faced with a decision almost a month ago. That decision has been made and I believe now it is time for all of us to move forward. I think what is important today is looking at a way to ensure that those 125 new nursing positions get into the system as quickly as possible, and also the 200 casual positions being converted to permanent positions. Once those positions are in the system I guess then we will look at the benefits derived from that move.

I know there are nurses out there that have concerns, and maybe the time is not right yet for nurses and government to come together, but eventually that will happen. This government wants to work with nurses. We want to work at identifying the problems out there and we want to work at identifying means and ways to resolve the problems.

As I said yesterday when I stood in my place, the legislation that was passed almost four weeks ago was to a unique situation only. It does not mean that ones going on in the future will be in any way influenced by that one, nor should it influence any other collective agreements.

What we need to do now is get our whole complete health care system up and running, and running smoothly. As I said yesterday, that takes nurses and all other professionals within the health care sector to make that happen. It cannot happen on its own. We have to get together, we have to show cooperation as a government, and through the Newfoundland and Labrador Health Care Association, through institutions, and also with the professionals working in there. The issue of retention and recruitment, the issue of workload, the issue of twelve-hour shifts versus eight hours, these are the kinds of issues that we need to work at as a government and also with nurses.

What I would like to say in conclusion in my response to your petition today is that government is ready when nurses are ready, and we are willing and we want to get back. We want talk about the concerns that on the minds of nurses all over this Province and we want to work on the concerns so that nurses can go back and enjoy their work and we will have a smooth running health care system.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I stand today to present a petition. The petition reads:

To the hon. House of Assembly of the Province of Newfoundland in legislative session convened, the petition of the undersigned residences of Newfoundland:

WHEREAS route 235 from Birchy Cove to Bonavista has not been ungraded since it was paved approximately twenty-five years ago; and

WHEREAS this section of Route 235 is in such a terrible condition that vehicles are being damaged, including the school buses serving schools in the area, and school children are finding their daily trips over the road very difficult;

WHEREFORE your pensioners urge the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to upgrade and pave the five kilometres of Route 235 from Birchy Cove to Bonavista;

As in duty bound your petitioners will ever pray.

Mr. Speaker, this is a petition that again I bring forward on behalf of the residents of Birchy Cove, Newmans Cove, Upper, Middle, and Lower Amherst Cove, who use this section of road every day.

I have brought petitions forward here on other days from students who go to Matthew Elementary and Discovery Collegiate in Bonavista. I do not know where we have come to when we have to go and have people get into letter writing campaigns, sending in petitions every day, have students themselves sending in pleas and writing letters to government and saying: Please, Mr. Minister, would you look at the condition of our road? Please, Mr. Minister, would you provide us with a road that is safe to drive over, and a road whereby we can get aboard our school bus and arrive at school in the morning without being sick and with losing our breakfast.

Mr. Speaker, the people in this particular area have had several meetings wondering how to go about bringing their plight to the government of the day.

It was only the Saturday before last, I went to Newmans Cove and I met with about eighty to eighty-five residents, including some children, who gathered at the fire hall there and wondered what else they could do in order to bring the condition of this road to the attention of government.

They talked about blocking the road. They talked about going out and saying: No traffic from here on goes over this particular road until it gets repaired.

Instead, they took the responsible approach. They said: No, we do not want to do that. We do not want to deprive people of the opportunity to get to work. We do not want to inconvenience anybody and have them go miles out of their way in order to access government services, or hospitals, or their workplace in the Town of Bonavista.

They did not want to interfere with the delivery of goods down over that particular highway and, I suppose, most important of all, they did not want to interfere with the students going to their particular school.

What they decided to do was that they would get into a letter writing campaign, to write the minister, each and every one of them, to slow the traffic down, and to hand out pamphlets so it again could be brought to the minister's attention.

Mr. Speaker, there is something wrong when people go and petition the government not to put concrete barricades through their town and the government of the day spends millions of dollars to allow it to happen. There is something wrong when we go and build roads, double-lane highways, where people do not want them built. There is something wrong when we go and put in bypass roads and spend hundreds of millions of dollars when we do not provide people in other parts of this Province with a decent road to drive over in order for them to get to school.

This particular road is in deplorable condition. It is something that should have been done years ago, I say to people opposite, and here again this year, in correspondence from the minister, they are told that this section of roadway will not be included under capital costs of this government again in 1999.

They are saying: If you do not have enough money, Minister, to pave or to recap and upgrade the five kilometres from Birchy Cove to Bonavista, then how about coming and looking at the worst two to two-and-a-half kilometres - very reasonable - through the communities of Upper Amherst Cove, going out to Tickle Cove, Open Hall, Red Cliff. The roads are in terrible shape.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. FITZGERALD: Mr. Speaker, what they are saying is that this is the worst section and, because it is the busiest section, this is what we have identified as needing to be done and needing to be done now.

Mr. Speaker, I ask the minister to reply to the people of this area and to respond to their needs.

Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member to take his seat.

The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture.

MR. EFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Just a couple of minutes to respond to the petition put forth by my hon. critic from Bonavista South.

AN HON. MEMBER: Your buddy.

MR. EFFORD: Yes, my buddy.

Let me give the hon. member some examples of what happened in the past, what the policy of the previous government was from 1985 to 1989, and what the policy of this government is today.

I remember sitting over in the Opposition from 1985 to 1989. The deputy, deputy, deputy leader is sitting there today. The former Premier was minister. The twenty-nine day Premier was minister in the government from 1985 to 1989 when I sat in the Opposition, and because I asked questions on a daily basis about the health care system, the social services system, about all the other problems in the Province, from 1985 to 1989 not one nickel of any infrastructure money - roads, municipal affairs, any organization - went into the District of Port de Grave; not one nickel in four years. The same thing in Fogo.

What is this government doing? Ask the Member for Baie Verte what he is getting this year for roads. Ask what the Member for Port de Grave is getting, and who has the greater share.

MR. TULK: Ask what the Opposition House Leader is getting.

MR. EFFORD: Ask what the Opposition House Leader is getting this year, and a number of other members on the opposite side.

This government is fair.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. EFFORD: This government is fair to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture.

MR. EFFORD: (Inaudible) resurrection of the past. It is factual.

This government is spending the money available, paid by the taxpayers of the Province, on a fair and equitable basis around the Province where the need is shown. The former government did not do that. They did not spend one nickel. It is your party which you represent, it is policies which you represent.

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

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

On a point of order, the hon. the Member for Bonavista South.

MR. FITZGERALD: Mr. Speaker, there is something wrong within the confines of this Chamber when you put forward a petition, signed by students, children of this Province, and you hear a minister of the Crown get up and respond to that petition and talk about what government did in years gone by, where nobody here on this side sat, and he is saying now that those students should be held responsible -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. FITZGERALD: - and they should be made to suffer because of the actions of somebody on this side of the House. That is deplorable.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. FITZGERALD: That is deplorable, to hear that, and I will be sending a copy of this down to the school to be read. That is ridiculous. Shame!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member to take his seat.

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

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

MR. TULK: Mr. Speaker, that is not what the hon. gentleman said. I have to stand and correct it. What the hon. gentleman said is that was the way the former government acted. This government, I think he said, is acting in a very equitable manner.

The hon. gentleman also tried to deny his history. The truth of the matter is that his deputy, deputy House Leader sits there, and he was one of the prime architects of that policy, of Brian Peckford's government. The policy was: Starve them out if they do not vote PC.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

There is no point of order.

The hon. the Member for Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair.

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise today to present a petition on behalf of the parents and students in the community of L'Anse au Clair, in the Labrador Straits area. The petition reads:

To the hon. House of Assembly, Province of Newfoundland, in Parliament assembled, the petition of the undersigned residents of the District of Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair humbly showeth;

WHEREAS the school board has not demonstrated that by moving our students to Forteau will get rid of multi-grading; and

WHEREAS they have not sufficiently demonstrated that they will improve the quality of education; and

WHEREAS the board publicly stated that the only reason to close St. Andrew's Elementary was to improve the quality of education for our students.

WHEREFORE we the undersigned hereby declare that we will not participate in any further discussions regarding closing our school. Furthermore, we want the board to have St. Andrew's Elementary school designated as small and necessarily existing.

This is signed by a number of people from the community of L'Anse au Clair. Mr. Speaker, this is an issue that has been ongoing since 1996. It was at that time that the board made a decision that they would close St. Andrew's Elementary and that the students would indeed be bused to a nearby school in Forteau.

After the decision was made the board did go in and meet with parents in the community and they had an open discussion. At that time, the parents were supportive of the idea, because what we had was a school with twenty-six students from grades kindergarten to VI with 1.38 teaching units in the system.

They did set up a committee and the committee negotiated with the board on certain conditions that they wanted to have met in order to support the idea of transporting their students. Some of those conditions obviously involved curriculum in the schools and computer programs that they wanted to have offered to the primary-elementary levels. It also included adequate cafeteria space for the students that would have to be staying over for longer periods of time and so on.

In addition to having a dialogue on the level of curriculum they wanted, they also had input into the type of structure that would be there. We had put an addition on the school in Forteau for a couple of reasons. One, to accommodate some of the students from L'Anse au Clair, and also the other reason is that the extension was needed in Forteau to accommodate the already existing growing numbers of students that were in that particular school. So the people in L'Anse au Clair also had input into the expansion, so it was a joint process that was ongoing between the board and the people in that community.

This year, however, the parents in L'Anse au Clair felt that the conditions they had attached when they agreed to have their children bused were not being met adequately by the board. They were not being addressed to the satisfaction that they would have wished, and therefore they decided to oppose the school closure for St. Andrew's Elementary.

That is, I guess, basically the history of this whole particular issue. Since that time I have tried to liaison between the school committee and the school board in order to bring both groups together to discuss this particular issue. It was a very trying experience because it seemed that the board was reluctant to defend the decision they had made and to offer rationale for the continuation of what had been put in place.

Since then, however, they have met with them. They have made a presentation to them on the importance of the education for their particular children, no matter what school they go to, but in particular, they want to see their school kept open. What has occurred since then is that there will be a further meeting that will take place between the board and between the parents in this particular community later in May.

I would like to say that I support the parents in their initiative to find a better education for their children, to have improved curriculum for their children, and to ensure that wherever their school that their children go to is that they be able to avail of the maximum program that they can avail of in that part of the Province, or in our Province in general. I support that for all students in my district.

I should also say that this is not an issue about one school, because the Labrador Straits area have been going through some difficult times with this transition on the reformed system as have most every other area of the Province. I think in a lot of cases most of the issues that have been controversial in that area could have been dealt with in a conciliatory process if there had been more discussion between the board and the parents in a pubic forum, where a lot of these things could have been dealt with.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MS JONES: Can I have leave, Mr. Speaker?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: By leave!

MR. SPEAKER: By leave.

MS JONES: Thank you.

Unfortunately the process did not occur in that way and what we had was actually schools and communities feeling threatened by neighbouring schools and communities, which made for a very unfortunate situation. Because people in that particular area for some time lost the true sense of what was happening, and that was the sense of reforming the education system for the betterment of our children and not necessarily for the betterment of where a building would or would not be.

Mr. Speaker, what I would say to the parents in L'Anse au Clair is what I have said to them in public meetings when I have met with them, what I've said to them in newspapers and through the open line programs, and that is that I can only encourage them to continue a dialogue with the board, to continue their efforts to ensure that they get the best possible education for their children, because that is where their energies should be focused. That is the most important goal here to have accomplished, and I can only wish them luck in trying to bring that about.

I think you have to realize that when you have a school with grades kindergarten to VI and only twenty-six students and 1.38 units that something has to change, whether it be in that school or outside of that school. There has to be change, because obviously the needs of the students are not being met in the way they should be met. So whether it includes putting additional teachers into that school or putting them into a program that is already sufficient to meet the needs of students, well then, one or the other has to be done.

I can only encourage them to continue their discussions and support them in their endeavour to ensure a better quality of education for their children.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

Orders of the Day

MR. TULK: Motion 1, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Motion 1. That is the Budget debate.

The hon. the Minister of Finance.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is my pleasure to arise at the insistence of the House to open the Budget Speech.

MR. GRIMES: He is going to read it again. Read it again.

MR. DICKS: My sympathies are more with the member opposite who is suggesting I sit down.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is another occasion to review some of the things we mentioned in the Budget. The first, of course, is the extraordinary performance of the Province and the progress we have made over the last several years. As members will recall, in the last two fiscal years prior to this one the economy had been shrinking substantially. We had had GDP deficits of 2.3 per cent and 1.3 per cent in each of the last few years. However, growth resumed last year and we had growth in the vicinity of 5 per cent, which was the foremost in the country, and we expect that again this year. The economic performance of Newfoundland and Labrador will either equal or be close to the strongest economies in the country, and we expect that Ontario or ourselves will again lead the country.

This is obviously leading to sustained growth in the Province. We have had very strong financial figures in a lot of corporate areas, as well as gradually increasing salary levels in the Province. One of the ironies of progress financially is that, generally, provincial government revenues do not keep pace with the level of increased domestic activity in the economy, and that is because much of the revenues we would otherwise arrive are deducted from our equalization.

Equalization is a financial balancing mechanism that the federal government instituted some years ago to make up for deficits suffered in provinces during periods of economic decline. The reciprocal aspect of that is when economies improve and revenues rebound then, of course, some of the monies are clawed back, so that in many cases we receive less than 10 per cent of the benefit of any increase in provincial government revenues.

Having said that, we believe we have made some substantial progress because in the end no person wishes to be dependent. Certainly at a provincial level we do not wish to be dependent over the long term on handouts from Ottawa, be they in the nature of equalization, CHST or otherwise.

For the meantime, notwithstanding that, we do and remain dependent on Ottawa. The relative strengths or reduction in these transfer payments will affect our abilities to provide services to our people and also will affect the amount of compensation, for example, that we can offer to individuals who work for the government and programs for which the public look to the government to satisfy their basic needs.

One of the interesting aspects of the government's handling of the economy has been that for the first time in well over fifteen years we are starting to see surpluses and balanced budgets. In the last four years we have had two balanced budgets. We have never had balanced budgets prior to that time in the Province.

In the years preceding 1995 the average provincial deficit was in the range of $230 million. In the last four years it has been in the vicinity of $3 million, as a result of two surpluses. In each of those years as well we have bettered our economic targets by a substantial margin, as is set out in the Budget Speech itself.

We had budgeted for deficits in the range of $75 million; instead, we achieved surpluses of $21 million in the last three years alone. If you go back and add the surplus achievement in the previous year, our actual deficit over the last four years was in the range of $11.3 million, which is less than $3 million per year. Considering the fact the GDP declined, that is a substantial and, frankly, unrivalled economic performance of any state or any province on this continent, let alone just in this country, or ultimately, by comparison, with any previous governments that have held power in this Province.

Last year we were also favoured at year end with a substantial increase in the amount of equalization received from Ottawa. Although our own economic performance had improved, another consequence of the equalization formula was that the economies of Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia were strong and that resulted in a substantial increase in equalization payments to the Province. We received in fact, something in the order of $180 million, more than what we had planned. That was money that we used to do many substantial things, particularly in the area of health care and education. It enabled us to increase the base amounts in hospital budgets, to plan for re-institution of a more intensive capital building program in the health care and educational sectors, and as well to provide for salary increases for our employees.

One of the great ironies of having been in government for over ten years is that having gone through a period of economic decline, lack of government revenues, fiscal restraint, one of the unfortunate aspects of that was that the Province had to look to its employees to either sustain salary rollbacks or to have no increases from year to year. What is ironic about that is that employees for some reason were prepared to accept that. When jobs are in jeopardy people are prepared to accept what would otherwise be an unacceptable situation, such as having rollbacks of wages because their future is insecure. Having worked very hard to achieve economic stability, to have resolved the serious deficit problem - which really in the end, if it is not dealt with, leads to either tax increases or cuts in services - we were able to obtain and find a position where we could award salary increases to our employees.

The irony is that having suffered through all that, and not wishing to return to a period when we had to be cutting services and laying people off, we were able to offer an increase - to my mind it is reasonably substantial, and it is equal to virtually every other settlement across the country - and people were dissatisfied. They were prepared to accept zero per cent but 2 per cent was not enough. Unfortunately in some cases, it is very difficult to see what, if anything, would be appropriate. Indeed, what if anything, would be acceptable. We are often left with the dilemma that people are dissatisfied but they have not articulated or formulated in their own mind or in their own emotions what it is exactly that they want or believe to be suitable to their particular circumstance or contribution to the economy and the social life of the Province. Frankly, there are members of our public service who will say that they are the most valuable employees in the Province, that they perform a more valuable service and they deserve more. Frankly, I disagree with that.

We have a classification system that looks at various classifications across government and achieves a balance. The other major thing we have done over the last decade is we have achieved gender equality. Where female dominated occupations have not received fair compensation, that has been increased. In fact, it has been increased beyond the classification levels that are predominately occupied by men. Nevertheless, over the longer term we are achieving a great deal of equity between the different categories of work. I believe we are at the point where we can say with some reasonable degree of certainty that our classifications and the pay we offer to our nurses, our teachers, our police officers - God forbid, our politicians - secretaries and others, is fair and comparable to the services performed.

Having said that, there are those who would maintain that we should pay what you get in Ontario, in Toronto, or Vancouver. What that neglects and what people fail to take into account first of all is the Province's ability to pay, but more importantly the cost of living. Part of the reason that salaries are higher - that is the same whether people are in government or outside government - people in the cooperate sector earn vastly larger amounts working in larger centres in the major cities, and the reason for that is that the cost of living in those areas is much greater. The cost of maintaining a vehicle, the cost of driving to work, the cost of maintaining a house, the cost of services, the cost of eating out, the cost of housekeeping, the cost of babysitting services and so on, is far beyond what we pay here in Newfoundland and Labrador.

That is reflected in the fact - one among many others - that we in this Province have the highest percentage of home ownership of any other province in Canada. That is a reason that our salaries are commensurate with our cost of living. We probably have, for the money we pay, the best housing stock in the country.

We need to maintain a fair and long-term view about what we are doing in this Province. It would be very easy for us, as a government, to say: Fine, what do the nurses want? What do the Constabulary want? What do we have to do to increase everybody's expectations so that everybody is happy with us? Instead of giving 7 per cent over three years, let's give 10 per cent, let's give 15 per cent, let's give 20 per cent.

We have to look down the road, because this has been tried before. When the Opposition formed the government, it had two years in the early 1980s when it had to freeze wages. Because, when you contract to pay beyond the ability to raise revenue then the inevitable result is that you have to roll back wages, or else freeze them.

We have taken the opposite point of view. We have to plan prudently. We have to reach a point of economic equilibrium. We have to honour our contracts to the point where, if we agree to pay something, we will in fact pay it.

The other thing we have to be conscious of in moving forward is that there are other demands on the public purse. Every other province in this country is looking to reduce taxes. We have taken that initiative with the payroll tax. We have repeatedly said we wish to do it with the personal income tax. We have been precluded from doing so because of measures taken by the federal government - which we support - which, because of the nature of the calculation of the provincial tax, results in a reduction anyway of our revenues.

We would like to move to a point to reduce our personal income taxes, but if we continue to pay excessive wages to the public sector, if we continue to borrow, that would be precluded.

Our option is to go forward, to look in the future for reasonable wage settlements with our public sector, and coupled with that we should look to reduce taxes because then every person benefits.

What matters most to people is not necessarily the proposed increase they get in their salaries, but also the taxes they have to pay. In most cases a 10 per cent reduction in personal income tax, for example, would benefit far more people and would benefit even our direct public employees far more than a 2 per cent increase per year.

The situation in health is something that we have largely stabilized over the last several years. We have substantially increased the amount of money we have spent in the health care sector. We have increased the number of positions; we have increased the number of hospitals. We have replaced several hospitals in the Province, for example, which have been around since the 1940s and 1930s, Bonne Bay being an outstanding example of that. Another on Fogo Island, if we should ever be able to agree on its location, is one place where we will be replacing the hospital as well.

What I want to say is that government is not able to commit all of its resources to one particular area, be it health, be it education. What we are responsible to do, and what we must do, is to move forward on the basis of satisfying all the varying needs.

We do have priorities, and I think for most people in this Province health care is the first priority. Education is the second. There are other things the government must do. We must always remember that the people who pay for the services are not the people in this House, they are not the people who work for the government, they are the people of the Province who receive the services.

I can tell you frankly that, in my discussions with members of the public, they are prepared to be fair but they do not want to pay more taxes. They want their taxes reduced. If there is a choice between paying public servants more money or tax reductions, they would prefer tax reductions. That is the direction in which we have to move.

What we also have to be aware of is that there are many people in this Province who live at a very modest level. We have to look to encourage them and ensure that they have the means at their disposal to support their children, educate them, feed them, and properly clothe them.

What we have done in this Budget, without recounting all the details, is to provide a greater level of assistance to those who most need it, particularly people with children in single parent families.

What we see is a new initiative, one that my colleague will be announcing, the Child Tax Credit, the federal program which we support. The money that is being freed up there will be used to continue to support children in circumstances who need that area of support.

I just want to point out to members opposite and to the general public that the other aspect that we need to consider is that the greatest dignity an adult can have is to be gainfully employed.

As I said earlier, on a provincial basis, we wish to become financially independent. That is the wish of most of the people I know in this Province, including people who are dependent upon government services, what we call social services.

What I like about our Budget, and what I think is important, is that we have taken initiatives which are working and which have been instituted over the last several years to encourage people to get back in the workforce. This has taken the place of a more liberalized view as to how much we would pay for the support of single parents for babysitting costs and training programs. We have also allowed people to keep a much larger portion of the money they earn.

One of the criticisms of most welfare systems, social assistance programs, is comparable to what we suffer with equalization. If you earn more, it is clawed back.

What we have done this year is, we have increased the amounts that individuals can keep to $500. That is up from $150 per family. That is a substantial increase, for example, in the income tax. What we are allowing people to do is to keep a larger portion of what they earn. This, we believe, will encourage people to become independent, to obtain work, and to achieve a degree of independence and financial stability so they can look after their own needs. The other aspect of that is that we have also continued the drug card for a longer period of time.

One disincentive for individuals is that when they leave social assistance, the drug program is discontinued. We all know the cost of drugs in the modern age, and the pervasiveness of drug therapy in treating illness, and the ability to extend the drug program for individuals over a longer period of time when they commence work is something that is important to encourage them to become independent, to achieve the experience, to get advancement, and to have greater income to provide for these things for themselves.

Education is a means of making the reform work, which we believe is essential. For many years we had an archaic - and some would say medieval - educational system. Notwithstanding its excellence in many respects, it was not a modern system and one that I believe a modern democracy should encourage or accept.

We made that reform. There is a group of people in the Province who initially resisted it, who voted against it, and many of those people, frankly, are now enthusiastic about it. People see that the consequences of bringing people together are fair and beneficial, not negative as was suggested at the time.

In order to make that work, as I have mentioned, we have had the most extensive investment in new educational schools and institutions that has ever happened in this Province. In addition to that, we have stabilized the number of teachers. We have, in fact, increased the number of teachers available in the system.

My friend here, the former Minister of Education, now the Minister of Mines and Energy, made an interesting point. Most people mention this -

AN HON. MEMBER: And next Premier.

MR. DICKS: Absolutely, with some competition from the current Minister of Fisheries. There is a bit of a toss-up at the present time.

We have to bear in mind what has happened in the Province. We heard about declining enrolments and we hear about many things. One factor that is not generally known is that when the school population in this Province was 170,000 students - when it peaked at that - there were 6,500 teachers approximately in the system.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: I know the Opposition House Leader would love to hear the statistics.

Just think about this. When the school population peaked -

MR. TULK: It is some interesting to hear that we are going to win the next election.

MR. DICKS: Absolutely.

When the school population of this Province was in the vicinity of 170,000 students, and that peak occurred in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, there were 6,500 teachers in the system.

Today, when that population had declined to under 100,000, declined to approximately 98,000, decreasing by about 4 per cent per year, the number of teachers is now 6,800, an increase of 300 when the population has declined by 72,000. Not only that, but we now have student assistants, other people to help with the education.

Mr. Speaker, while some people like to portray the problems, we cannot lose sight of the progress we have made. There has been tremendous advancement. We now have again, we have for quite some time, the lowest student-teacher ratio in the country. Once again, this year and last, we have improved it. We have the greatest number of teachers for the smallest number of students anywhere in this country, and we have done this at a time when the Province of Alberta, a very rich province, has increased the number of students for each teacher.

Mr. Speaker, we are very proud of the progress made in education. We believe that at a certain level we have provided a greater educational opportunity for our students. Part of that was due to the reform of bringing students together in larger schools so that rather than having three schools in a community, of 200 students, you could have one school with 600. That would offer a greater variety of programming.

In addition to that, within that, we have also made more teachers available. I believe this is laudable progress and one that we expect will continue.

MR. SPEAKER (Oldford): Order, please!

I will announce the questions for the Late Show.

The first question is: I am dissatisfied with the answer provided by the Minister of Health and Community Services re nurses in health care. That is from the Member for Ferryland.

The second question is: I am dissatisfied with the answer provided by the Minister of Mines and Energy re my question on negotiations with Inco. That is from the Member for Waterford Valley.

The third question is: I am dissatisfied with the answer provided by the Minister of Education re my question on cutbacks of teaching positions. That is from the Member for Harbour Main-Whitbourne.

The hon. the Minister of Finance.

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would just like to wind up with a few thoughts on the issue of helping those most in need. One of the great social responsibilities of modern government is to extend assistance to those people who need it most.

As I mentioned earlier, people on low incomes, and particularly those with children, are the most vulnerable. Those are the people I think we most need to help, particularly in the areas of health care and education.

However we slice it, there is very little can be done in our society without a fair modicum of money. Among the many programs that we have offered, and the encouragements to return to work, I believe one of the highlights of that is the National Child Benefit which has been implemented over the last several years and which we believe makes great sense and also makes a larger amount of money available, not only to people receiving social assistance but to low income families. Because the threshold, the dividing point, between those who receive virtually everything from the state and those who are earn it for themselves is very small, in fact, and unfortunately sometimes inverted so that those people on state assistance receive more money and more benefits than those who work. That is something that we are trying to eliminate and that I think is being effectively dealt with. I do not say all the problems have been addressed, but certainly it is a move in the direction that I am sure even members opposite support.

I want to say again, having dealt with some of the general socialists, I do want to deal with the other areas of demand on government.

Members opposite, my colleague, my critic, having been a mayor of a municipality, knows full well the various issues there, the conflict at times, and also the necessary (inaudible) degree of cooperation between the three levels of government.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: True.

We have had in the recent past, although not in the last two years, an infrastructure program where the federal government shared the costs of needed municipal infrastructure. We have not had that advantage over the last several years, but one thing that we have done to address that is to implement a program of $100 million or so to work with the municipalities - and I am glad my critic agrees - to fund major projects that would be shortened in time.

As most people familiar with construction will know and agree, as you extend out a period of time for a construction project it costs more; because to take a whole project and tender it, you get a more advantageous price than if you divide it up into four or five discrete segments over that many years, or more, as often is the case.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: Well, you can.

There is also the aspect of mobilization of labour. There is a phenomenon that as you get a construction crew on site, get them up to speed, it has lower productivity until you achieve full production and then, as you wind down, the productivity goes down as well. So there is a lot to be said for shortening the time period not only in achieving economies of scale and shortening the time period but also in getting greater productivity out of your workers.

We believe that this program will assist the local government, those who are able to pay their share of it, to go out and complete major capital projects that have been in need of doing and perhaps do it more reasonably than they might have under the current system.

We have also been, over the last several years, pursuing a program of encouraging municipalities to become financially independent. NMFC was a vehicle in the Province where we supplied monies at interest rates that we would solicit from the market and charging a (inaudible) for that to our municipalities. Because those were negotiated over longer periods of time in an era when we had higher interest rates, many municipalities were now able to go out and borrow at lower rates.

We have been working with them to find ways to mitigate the penalties the Province has to pay and we, in fact, have been absorbing much of the cost in order to encourage them to establish independent financial arrangements with banks and to displace government borrowings.

One of the unfortunate effects of that is that the pool of debt at NMFC is being less serviced by the municipalities, or certainly to a lesser extent than they have in the past.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to say that the Department of Environment has, in this Budget as well, two areas of cleanup that they are addressing, that they have not been able to do in the past. The Trans-Labrador Highway; it is a great initiative. In fact, we have the largest amount of spending on highways in the Province's history but more importantly and perhaps more necessarily, we have the largest expenditure ever taking place in Labrador. The Trans-Labrador Highway is vital. The link now to Goose Bay has been completed and achieved over the last several years, I am pleased to say, since 1995, and right now we are extending it up along the South Coast of Labrador.

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible) ferry service (inaudible).

MR. DICKS: Well, no, the amount that we negotiated, my learned colleague -

MR. SULLIVAN: Three hundred and forty-six (inaudible).

MR. DICKS: Three hundred and forty-seven million. Yes, my colleague, the former Minister of -

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible).

MR. TULK: What is the name of that (inaudible) always singing out, the sky is falling?

MR. DICKS: Oh, Chicken Little.

MR. TULK: Chicken Little.

MR. DICKS: Chicken Little is not present today, Mr. Speaker. My colleagues are being very positive. My colleague, the former Minister of Municipal - anyway, we were in Ottawa on Good Friday some years ago and she, being the tough negotiator she is, beat another $50 million or $100 million out of them and we came back with $347 million, which is in a separate account for the benefit solely of the transportation system in Labrador.

MR. SULLIVAN: You need $1.35 billion to complete it, and you came back with $340-some million. We are a billion short.

MR. DICKS: No, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SULLIVAN: I asked a question at the time and you said it was enough to do it -

MR. DICKS: There is.

MR. SULLIVAN: - and now we are a billion short.

MR. DICKS: Mr. Speaker, there is no problem with the Leader of the Opposition's statement except he does not define what "it" is.

MR. TULK: The Opposition House Leader.

MR. DICKS: Right.

Now, if you know what "it" is, you answer your own question because there are two aspects to it. One is the extent of the road program and the degree to which you will complete it. So the cost of completing the road from Red Bay up to Cartwright is more than sufficiently provided for. The other aspect of it is to provide a ferry service from Goose Bay North.

Now frankly the cost - and I don't know if the hon. member is including this - of extending the road from Goose Bay even out to Cartwright, let alone up to Nain, would probably be in the billions of dollars or so - I suspect a billion dollars - but that is not part of the plan. We don't foresee a time -

MR. SULLIVAN: That's not what you said in the beginning (inaudible).

MR. DICKS: Oh, yes, it is.

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible) sat down with her, and we were given the impression (inaudible).

MR. DICKS: But she was sitting over there then; she is sitting over here now. She understands it much better now, I am sure.

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: Oh, I am sure it has, Mr. Speaker. I am sure it has. In fact, I think - I don't know if her tune has changed but she is certainly singing a very positive one these days when she was in Mary's Harbour to announce the extension of the highway. In fact, Mr. Speaker -

MR. TULK: She is singing from the right hymn book.

MR. DICKS: Well, I think she was always of the persuasion but not the right pew, one might say.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am pleased to say - and I was surprised the other day when it was announced, because my colleague and I negotiated the money and brought it back - was that the highway is going to be completed within the next four years, I think 2003/2004. It is going to add immensely to the ability of the Province to attract tourists.

We tend to forget, although we say it often enough, that we are the only Province in this country, and perhaps I think we are the only state in the world, which has three UNESCO sites, Red Bay being prominent among them.

The further ambition we would all want to have - and which is not provided for in this - is to complete the link, whether it is through the Quebec North Shore or, from our point of view, preferably through Labrador so that you can allow alternate tourist routes; so that tourists could come through Labrador, down through Cartwright, down into L'Anse au Clair and that area, and come across on the ferry through the West Coast, where my hon. colleague and I would be most pleased to see them, and back across the Gulf. God forbid, they might even come here and have to go out through Argentia, which the members opposite represent and which I am sure will have better methods of selection in the future to return someone to the fold, to put them back in the right pew as we say.

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: I am sure there are many reasons, but things vary from time to time.

I do want to say to the hon. member that the amount provided is more than sufficient to do what was contracted to be done, to put the highway through to Cartwright but not necessarily - and the money was never contemplated as completing the road from Cartwright to Goose Bay; nor was there any plan to put the road up to Nain.

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: No, it was not said. It was never part of it and we valued this very closely. We have looked at the cost of pricing.

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: Well, I would be surprised. I would like to see the reference because that was not what we agreed on. That was not part of the plan. It was not part of the evaluation of the system.

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: No, it was not intended to cover Goose Bay to Cartwright. That would add another $400 million or $500 million, if my recollection serves me.

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: Well, Mr. Speaker, the Opposition always gets the truth. It does not always get every question answered, of course. There is a difference.

I am glad that the Leader of the Opposition or - I am sorry, Mr. Speaker. It should be the Leader of the Opposition, obviously, but we will have settle for Opposition House Leader for the moment. I am sure the knives will be out shortly to remedy that defect.

We have never maintained that the road would be extended all through Labrador. Frankly, to extend it up the North Coast is purely uneconomical at the present time. Things may change but we do not foresee it.

The other thing that needs to be mentioned is that while we talked quite a bit about government supporting programs, government supporting individuals, government building highways, government supplying ferry services and so on, what we have to remember is that government should not be doing everything in the Province. We probably account for 40 per cent of GDP, both levels of government, and that is probably more than we would like to have it, but what we do have to do is encourage economic growth. I am pleased to say that initiatives taken by this government and our predecessors over the last ten years have been effective. We have seen economic growth for the first time. Part of it is our taxation policy.

We were pleased again to announce an increase in the exemption to the payroll tax. It would be nice to eliminate it, it would be nice to announce more, but we are making progress and I am pleased to see that the business community is supportive of that.

I think in point of principle most members on that side of the House and on this side will agree that a payroll tax in point of principle is wrong. When you tax a business for its payroll you are in effect penalizing someone for creating jobs.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: Exactly. Think about it. What is the name of the tax?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: Oh, I say it all the time. It is the Health and Post-Secondary Tax, because the demands for health care and post-secondary and secondary education and the education system are so great. If you do not moderate the demands, if people are not reasonable, if you spend beyond your means, what is the only choice? You bring in a tax.

We cannot forget that if you satisfy every demand, be it justifiable or not, for services, there has to be a corresponding cost. The cost can only be met by increased taxes or by deficit spending. Deficit spending, frankly, is only delayed taxation because you have to service the debt, you have to repay the principal -

MR. TULK: That is a point most people do not know.

MR. DICKS: Oh, I think they do.

MR. TULK: It is only delayed taxation.

MR. DICKS: It is.

MR. SULLIVAN: You have to manage the system better.

MR. DICKS: But when you say manage it better, the problem that a lot of people come to is that you are going to cut; and, as soon as you -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: No, I agree entirely. The hon. members - I would like to get up and -

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: Oh, absolutely. I am glad the hon. Opposition House Leader mentions that because we agree with him completely; and in order to achieve better management, as the hon. member knows, we are implementing a new accountability structure. One of the problems - and this was part of your election campaign. I am glad you took the idea I mentioned last year and carried it forward. It was not as successful as I thought it might have been for you, but there you go.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: Absolutely not.

I just want to say hon. members that for instance this year we are spending almost $1.2 billion in health care. It is being pushed out to boards who spend that money - and it is often spent wisely, and I am not saying it is not - but the difficulty is that they are not directly accountable back to government. We do not have the degree of control that is necessary for us as elected members to say with certainly to our constituents who are concerned that the money has been spent wisely and we have control of it.

One of the things we will do and that has been put forward in this Budget is to control and to demand and to achieve accountability directly back to government in two key areas at least: health care and education. It goes beyond that, but those are two areas where we have the greatest concern.

We have to remember as well that what drives our economy are our resource sectors: tourism, fishery, mining, rural renewal - critical, IT - and there are measures in this Budget that address that. It is in some ways the least expenditures we have and yet it is the most productive.

Our ministers work very hard on very low budgets, work very closely with their constituencies, and have achieved a great degree of strength and growth. The hon. the Speaker's own district has Piccadilly Plastics. I know people involved in that. The issues of trying to revitalize industries, of privatizing them, ensuring that you will have growth in the private sector is fundamental to the manner in which we proceed.

One thing we have done over this past five or six years is privatization: Newfoundland Hardwoods; Government Computer Services. Newtel took that over. It is now called New Wave, made tremendous progress, the largest in the Maritime Provinces and, in fact, recently went with Maritime Tel & Tel, 80 per cent owned by Xwave, to provide IT services, the fourth or fifth largest here in the Province. Beyond that - Chicken Little suggests himself again, Mr. Speaker.

What we have to bear in mind is that as a government we are not only responsible for providing services, we are very responsible for providing the right economic climate to encourage growth, to encourage investment, and that is something we have been very keen on doing.

I think in closing I will make a general point about our taxes. If you look in the Budget Speech, marvellously written - I can say that because I did not do it, I had a few little touches on it - but very direct, succinct, to the point, one thing that we did not say and that can be said and maybe needs to be said is this. If we look at what we raise in our own revenues, and if we look at what we spend, there are some very startling facts. If we leave out the impacts of the equalization and what we would lose if we eliminated taxes -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: Do you think so? I didn't think they could get a better one. A bit of a challenge for the photographer.

If you look at Statement III, Summary of Current and Capital Account Expenditures, you will see that in health care we spend $1,177,217,900. In education we would spend $703,221,400. That makes a total, Mr. Speaker, of almost $1.9 billion.

Look at what we raised in taxation. I would never propose this, but let's suppose, for example, we said to individuals: We have a state-funded health care system. What we are going to do, instead of government paying for it for you, why don't you take out your own health care insurance and deduct it? Suppose we could, for some reason, eliminate that. What taxes could we eliminate? Personal income tax raises $568,900,000, the sales tax raises $461,590,000, and the gasoline tax raises $122,500,000. If individuals provided their own health care you could eliminate the three largest taxes in this Province.

All our taxes together - if you include beyond that the payroll tax, tobacco tax, corporate income tax and natural resources revenues - is only $1.4 million. If people paid for their own health care and their own education you could eliminate every tax in this Province.

Not only that, if you look at the next category, the Newfoundland Liquor Corporation raises $95,700,000 this year as a result of some one-time measures. Normally it is under $90 million. Lottery revenues, $87,900,000; vehicle licences, $49,500,000; Registry of Deeds, $12,100,000; fines, $6,260,000; and other, $25,146,000. That is a total of $276,606,000.

Again, if individuals in this Province paid for their own health care and education you would not have to have taxes on liquor, you would not have to have taxes on gasoline, you would not need to raise money by means of lotteries, you would not have to pay to register deeds, you would not need to have any other licensing fees in this Province. You would still be short of the money. In fact, those two together, the $1.4 billion and the $2.5 (inaudible), is still less than we spend on health care and education.

It points to two things. One is that our system of social supports is strong, it creates a great demand for taxation, and in fact all our revenues, all our licensing fees, every tax we raise, even the luxury taxes included, are still less than the actual amounts we spend on health care and education.

While members opposite and members of the public may demand more and give into every demand, we have to remember that the level of taxation in this Province is among the highest in Canada. In some categories we are the highest. I say to hon. members that we all have to bear in mind the cost of services, where the money comes from, and to remember that the amounts that we spend in just those two areas alone is more than we actually raise through our own taxation efforts.

That is a very startling realization, because our ability to become independent is very tendinous. We rely to an inordinate amount on transfers from Ottawa.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: Yes.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: There are possibilities, Mr. Speaker. You could look at the example of Bermuda where they do the opposite, where there is no personal income tax and what money they raise they raise in the nature of luxury levies on things like liquor, vehicles and so on like this. You could create a tax haven if you were small enough and a discrete entity with a fairly small population and where you could attract enough foreign investment. Cayman Islands is another example.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: Pardon me?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: It would. The difficulty you have, Mr. Speaker, is that we do not control our taxation system. Many people refer to Ireland as an example, and the interesting thing about Ireland is they control their taxation system. Notwithstanding the many other benefits and many other initiatives Ireland has taken in attracting industry, partly by a very focused effort, and also partly as a result of an educational effort that is aimed to produce individuals that are in demand in industry, and also offering incentives to industry in the nature of plants and so on like that, the key to the Irish miracle, as it is called, is the taxation rate. Ireland's taxation is 10 per cent. The rest of the European Community is at least 25 per cent to 35 per cent.

The other aspect of it is that here what happens with equalization is that it is monitored year to year. It's up and it's down, it's unpredictable. In Ireland in the European Community they get a fixed amount for five years. So while their GDP is growing at 6 per cent or 7 per cent they still get billions of dollars. I was there recently and I think the figure was of this magnitude. Their total budget for Ireland was about $40 billion. They received $8 billion of that from the European authority. That continued for five years, notwithstanding the fact that their own revenues and their own growth had increased substantially.

We do not have that benefit, nor do we have the benefit of creating an independent tax regime. I say to the member opposite that unfortunately, even if we were to eliminate the other taxes, I am not sure that the personal income tax is the one to maintain at its current level. I believe that is the next tax we should seek to reduce. Our tax rates expressed as a per cent of the federal one is much higher. In order to achieve some of the things that he might be looking for what we should probably do is look to sever our taxation system from its dependency on the federal one. So instead of expressing our taxes as a per cent - 69 per cent - we should base our taxes on taxable income. So that, for example -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) federal (inaudible).

MR. DICKS: The federal per cent is about 26 per cent, 27 per cent.

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: Yes. They have about three different categories.

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: Interestingly enough, we do it in corporate income tax. For example, in personal income tax, it is calculated as a per cent of the federal tax you pay. In corporate tax, our taxes here in the Province are calculated on your tax base, your taxable income.

Mr. Speaker, this is something colleagues on this side of the House and opposite should consider. Alberta is making a move in that direction and I think it has some merit. I would not prejudge it.

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: Pardon me?

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: The only thing you have to be careful about in comparing our taxation with other jurisdictions is that they do not include all the surtaxes. Taxes in Ontario are much higher than they are expressing. In a lot of other provinces they have flat taxes, they have surcharges and so on like that.

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible) dropped it dramatically.

MR. DICKS: They dropped the express rate dramatically, but if you add back the surtaxes and so on you will find their comparable rate is much higher than they are saying it is.

Mr. Speaker, if you include all the taxes we were about at the 101.9 mark. What they do in Canada is where we have a great advantage in Newfoundland and Labrador is that our municipal tax burden is so low. Some of our other taxes are higher. Our sales tax as a result of the HST is now at the national level. We were at close to 20 per cent - 19.84 -, we are now down to 15 per cent, but our municipal taxes are about 40 per cent of the national average.

What you find in Newfoundland and Labrador is if you take all the taxes - federal, provincial and municipal -, add them all together, that in fact we are at about slightly above the national average. Quebec at one point I think was about 120 per cent of the national average. The reason there is that municipal taxes for comparable residences on the mainland, in the cities in particular, are much higher. So that our integrated tax burden is not that high, but unfortunately it looks like an impediment when the Province's express rates are so low. That is something I think we need to address in terms of attracting industry and the perception that the rest of the country would have of us.

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the indulgence of my colleagues. I am sure they will have things to say in response.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: I am too anxious to hear from my critic.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. H. HODDER: I was listening attentively to the minister and I find out that there is six minutes left before we have the adjournment debate on Thursday afternoon. I just wanted to have a few preliminary comments today, because I am sure this debate will take place on another day and there will be lots of more time.

Mr. Speaker, the minister was talking about the Budget in glowing terms. Of course, if you look at the first page of the budget, it talks about fulfilling the promise of Confederation. We on this side want to join with the minister and say that Newfoundland has benefited by being a partner in the Canadian Confederation.

When the minister in his Budget Speech talks about the tremendous progress that we have made as a society in the last fifty years we tend to say: Yes, we have made tremendous progress. On this side of the House, I am one of the few people who was born after Confederation.

MR. SULLIVAN: After? You were?

MR. H. HODDER: No, I am sorry, before Confederation, I say to the Member for Ferryland. I was thinking about the Member for Ferryland who was born a few days after Confederation started.

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible).

MR. H. HODDER: Mr. Speaker, I say to the Member for Ferryland that given the fact that he just celebrated his fiftieth birthday and that he is now in that age group of the 50-plus crowd, and of course he was born after Confederation -

AN HON. MEMBER: Two days.

MR. H. HODDER: Two days. He was not born a Newfoundland person -

MR. TULK: Harvey, he is a year older than I am.

MR. H. HODDER: He is a year older than you are, oh yes. In fact, Mr. Speaker, we on this side of the House know that he was a baby born two days after we became part of Canada.

On a serious note, we say to the minister that it is a year of celebration. We say to the minister that there are significant events. Speaking for myself, I want to say that I am proud to be a Canadian, and I am proud to be part of this country. I think it is appropriate that we remember in this year what has happened since 1949.

When you start your Budget Speech and you start off fulfilling the promise of Confederation, I suppose in my case I would have to go back and rely on the information from my parents to tell me what things were like, as most of us in this House would have to do.

I remember as a six-year-old the talks on the radio, but as a child certainly I would not remember anything about the debates or anything like that. I do come from a family that were very pro-Confederate. In fact, my family goes back to 1869, when we were pro-Confederate then. Coming from the South Coast of the Province we had lots of interaction with Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.

I say to the minister that it is appropriate that he start off the comments in his Budget Speech by talking about the past fifty years and what has happened. So we join him on that, but then we also have to say something about fulfilling the promise of Confederation. When we look at the things that are happening today with the out-migration we have to ask: Where is it promised in Confederation that we would have what is happening to rural Newfoundland today? We certainly have great concerns. We are not saying that the first fifty years have not been successful for Newfoundland and Labrador, not at all, but we are saying that if you look at what is happening to rural Newfoundland today you have to have concerns. You have to say to oneself: What is it that we have lost? What is it that we can do? How can we make Confederation continue to work for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who live outside of the urban cores?

Rural Newfoundland and Labrador today is under a tremendous lot of stress, stress from out-migration, job losses, the fishery, the decline of employment opportunities in many of the resource sectors. So when we talk of the first fifty years of Confederation we have to put it in some context. We on this side would say yes, we have had tremendous pluses, it has been a great thing for Newfoundland and Labrador to be part of this great nation, and to those people who say that Confederation has not measured up I have to say that we believe in renewing the contract that we have.

Confederation is always an evolving thing, I say to the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture. Certainly we are not saying that everything is perfect, but if we were to look back at what conditions were like in Newfoundland in 1949 and then compare them to 1999... We are not saying that everything that has occurred in Newfoundland is because of Confederation, not at all. I am saying as the Member for Waterford Valley that I believe that if you look at the positives and the negatives, the positives far outweigh the negatives.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. H. HODDER: That does not mean it is perfect. It does not mean that it should not be renewed.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. H. HODDER: Mr. Speaker, I will gladly sit and begin the debate on another day.

MR. SPEAKER: It is now 4:30 p.m. and we move to the Late Show.

Debate on the Adjournment

[Late Show]

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

In Question Period today I asked questions to the Premier of the Province. I asked the Premier: Will he stop his vindictiveness against nurses. Will he stop viewing the situation from Confederation Building? Will he, for once, put himself in the position of a person who is sick in a hospital bed? I asked him: Will he act immediately to resolve this? Or does he intend to wait until the sick people are there in the public, people who cannot get the service, and he is trying to use them then as pawns to be able to shift opinion away from the nurses.

I asked that to the Premier, and the Minister of Health stood up, did not answer the question I asked, avoided answering that question, and talked about other matters, and did not satisfactorily answer the question.

In fact, I also asked the Premier about this. During the election campaign he said he was surprised to learn of the condition that nurses work under. He did not find out the conditions nurses work under until early February 1999. In fact, he thanked the nurses for their protests - they opened his eyes -, for informing him and the public about the concerns. That is what he said. I said in the House earlier this afternoon that I am not sure why the Minister of Health did not do her job in telling the Premier about the situation that nurses are facing in the Province.

I then asked the Premier, in my second question: What have you done personally to inform or enlighten yourself about nurses' concerns out in Corner Brook that is leading them to take on this drastic action? The Minister of Health stood up and did not tell me what the Premier has done to inform himself. That is the question I asked. His eyes opened up in February and got shut again after February 9. I am wondering if they have been opened since. If they haven't and he is not aware of it, either the Premier has not done his job or the Minister of Health has not done her job in raising this issue.

I am not naive enough to think the Premier and the minister are unaware of the concerns. They have to sit down with the Newfoundland and Labrador Nurses' Union to be able to get a solution to caring for people in the Province. They did not need to sit down with them. They did not even ask them. They came in here outright in the middle of a dispute and stood in the House, she did, and said: We are going to put another 125 new positions in the system. They went out arbitrarily on their own and announced that.

I will have no complaints, I say to the minister, none whatsoever, if you stand in this House tomorrow or today and say: We are going to put so many more hundred nurses into that system, and you do not consult the nurses' union on doing it. I will not complain, and I am sure they will not complain, and I am sure the people in this Province who are sick out there will not complain. Because it is a responsibility of government, the Minster of Health, to ensure that there are enough people working in our hospitals, in community health in our communities, and all over this Province, to care for the needs of the people.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: Yes, you make a note of what I just said. I said it before, and I will say it again: You do not have to consult the Newfoundland and Labrador Nurses' Union to find out we have a problem in the system and we want to put more nurses in the system. I do not think anybody in the Newfoundland and Labrador Nurses' Union, or people working out there, feel they have to sit down and tell government that. They have told you so often that it has become deafening.

I asked him: Won't he admit the issues that are concerning issues in this Province today are the very issues that concerned them when they sat around the bargaining table, and this government legislated them back to work? They are the very same issues. They are the very same ones his eyes were opened to in early February during election campaign. He said then he is aware of it. Now he realizes he did not know really. His exact words weren't that he did not know really how bad things were, but he said he was surprised, and he thanked them.

I asked the Premier: Won't he admit that if it was sent to binding arbitration or some other resolution settling mechanism there, we would not be having this particular problem in the Province today? This crisis would not be here. We would not have it and we would be working out now -

MR. SPEAKER (Snow): Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. SULLIVAN: - rebuilding our system, I say to the minister, rather than trying to deal with crisis management in the system from day to day.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS J.M. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The reason that we were addressing the number of casuals to be converted and also the creation of new positions was because at the bargaining table it was one of the three main requests put forward by the nurses' union. There was never any indication that we were not responsible for identifying those. It was a request that they had made at that time to be a part of those negotiations. That is why at that time we discussed it, and that is why we were continuing to discuss it until such a time that we were not able to reach a negotiated agreement.

We have always been very clear that we are fully intentioned to address the issue around recruitment and retention. We know that there are difficulties in the system and we know that there are shortages in the system.

We were consistent all the way through that the 7 per cent wage package was one piece of the compensation package. We also know that there were other ways that we could have addressed some of those issues above and beyond the 7 per cent. That was -

[There was a commotion in the gallery.]

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Again, I remind the visitors in the gallery that they are not to take part in either the discussion or the debate that is happening in the House. Any further outburst and they will have to be removed.

The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

MS J.M. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

During negotiations the 7 per cent issue was never a debatable issue. The 7 per cent was made very clear all through the election and all through the negotiations. What we were negotiating at the time was trying to put forward a compensation package that would address issues around recruitment and retention and work-life issues. When we left the table -

[There was a commotion in the gallery.]

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Chair is going to have to ask the gallery to be cleared. The House will recess until that is done and the doors closed.

Recess

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Chair will call once more for order. If it is not restored the Chair will recess the House again.

We now move to the second question in the Late Show which is from the hon. the Member for Waterford Valley.

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

I rise to ask the Minister of Mines and Energy if he would want to elaborate a little further on some of the comments he made earlier today.

In Question Period we were asking for some more information. The National Post is indicating that they are having some unofficial discussions. They are trying to restart the negotiations with the Province. We wanted to ask the question: To what extent the government is still committed to a full smelter and refinery process in this Province?

The President of Inco has said that he is prepared to move from their current position. He is asking the Province if they are prepared to move as well. We asked the question today whether or not the minister was thinking about building a prototype smelter to test the new smelting technology and which will use, of course, small quantities of concentrated substitute for a full smelter.

We know the government is concerned. We know there is a commitment on the government to a smelter in Newfoundland and Labrador. On this side of the House there aren't any differences between the members in this House on that issue.

We also asked the minister to what extent he would be able to share some of the information. Because if Inco is saying that it is not viable and the government has information that a smelter is viable, then the people of Newfoundland and Labrador do not want to get into the personal or corporate documents. We are not talking about that, but the people in Newfoundland and Labrador are going to have to be convinced that the government stand is the right stand.

Also in the statements that were made in the national press there was some talk about the environmental assessment report. They were talking about, in that report, a twenty to twenty-five year lifespan. Inco is now quoted as saying: Such a long-term plan will depend upon the extent of underground reserves.

As the minister knows, these underground reserves have not been tested, or have not been documented to the satisfaction of Inco at this point. We know that there are 32 million tons of ovoid. Inco is saying that they would like to have commitments of up to 125 million to 150 million tons of ore before they can make a commitment to a twenty or twenty-five year project. With the 32 million tons of ovoid, Inco is saying that the life of the mine will be about ten years. I wanted to ask the minister if he could advise the House as to what further details he is able to give on this particular matter.

We want to point out to the minister that we are not -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. minister's time is up.

MR. H. HODDER: - varying from the commitments we have made, but we want him to get a chance to tell the people of this Province what the status of the project is now.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I recognize that the hon. member is serious in his question but not seriously expecting any further answer than he got during the regular Question Period today, because he has had some experience and does know that when a matter as very important to the future of Newfoundland and Labrador as to what might happen with a $4.3 billion nickel-copper-cobalt deposit in Labrador, and how it is developed for the best interest of Newfoundland and Labrador, is too serious to play games with, unlike some of the things that we have seen here three weeks ago or so and we saw here again today.

It seems a little strange and odd to me that we have had issues currently, for example, an issue of current importance in the Province, the issue with the nurses, that when the nurses come to the gallery and when we have issues that are raised in the House and something happens here, somebody runs out - some of it prompted, I do believe, by members of the Opposition - to suggest that you phone Open Lines and talk about members not paying attention, reading magazines and all those kinds of things, and not interested in the debate. People do that and suggest that we do not care, that we are not professional and so on, but I have not heard the reports from this Legislature that tell how unprofessional the nurses have been; and I don't mind saying that quite bluntly.

Today, just two or three examples, Mr. Speaker. We just closed this gallery a few minutes ago for the second time today because three things happened. We had nurses stand up on a very important issue, just like Voisey's Bay is a very important issue, and call a member of the House "scum".

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

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

MR. SULLIVAN: This Late Show is in reference to questions in Question Period, on the portfolio of Mines and Energy, and the minister is talking about something completely unrelated. He is not being relevant to the topic.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

There is no point of order.

I ask the hon. minister to get to his answer.

MR. GRIMES: Mr. Speaker, I did not suggest that the hon. member was scum because he asked a question about Voisey's Bay even though he did not expect an answer, but the nurses are allowed to call us scum because we are standing up giving an answer. Nobody reports that in the media, and nobody on the other side is suggesting they take any offence with it.

They are expecting and think they are going to be the government some day. So they think it is okay if they are the government and they are making a tough decision, and explaining why, that it is okay for someone from the gallery to break every rule in the Province and call somebody scum. They are applauding them today.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. GRIMES: They are pounding the desks, pounding the tables, saying: Do more of it! Cause more disorder in the House!.

That is what they are trying to promote.

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

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

On a point of order, the hon. the Member for Cape St. Francis.

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

I have been sitting in this House of Assembly today, listening quite attentively to what has been said in this House of Assembly. I have been listening to the Minister of Mines and Energy as he stood in his place on a number of occasions in the last sitting and again today. He stood in his place here this evening and quite clearly was imputing motives of members on this side of the House with respect to Open Lines, on phoning and what have you.

I think that he should be required to withdraw that remark, imputing motives of the members on this side of the House. It is quite contrary to the rules and regulations that we are guided by in this House of Assembly.

That member has the gall to stand in his place and say that we are putting this place up. That man is the one who has been doing it, and abusing the time of the House.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. J. BYRNE: It is time for him to be told and corrected.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Chair has heard enough on the point of order. The Chair will take the point of order under advisement, review Hansard, and report back to the House.

MR. FITZGERALD: A further point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: On a point of order, the hon. the Member for Bonavista South.

MR. FITZGERALD: Another point of order, Mr. Speaker, in relationship to what the Minister of Mines and Energy put forward. I would like to remind the minister that it was his side of the House that engaged in debate with the galleries. It was only yesterday that the President of Treasury Board stood in her place and talked about people in the galleries nodding their heads.

I say to the minister and I say to the people that the people in the gallery are allowed to nod their heads. They are allowed to move.

Mr. Speaker, the government side of the House have provoked what has happened in the galleries in the last couple of days. Do not go trying to lay the blame on this side of the House by saying we are encouraging somebody to get thrown out of the galleries.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

No point of order.

The hon. the Minister of Mines and Energy.

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

In continuing with respect to the question of Voisey's Bay -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

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

MR. SULLIVAN: The Minister of Mines and Energy made a statement in this House and I asked the Speaker to ask him to withdraw it. He indicated that when someone was called scum of this House we applauded here on this side of the House. He knows that not to be true, Mr. Speaker. It is not correct. We did no such thing, I might add, and I will ask him to withdraw that and do the honourable thing.

MR. SPEAKER: It is a similar point of order that was raised by the hon. Member for Cape St. Francis. The Chair will take it under advisement, review Hansard and report back to the House.

The hon. the Member for Harbour Main-Whitbourne.

MR. HEDDERSON: Mr. Speaker, I would like to direct this to the Minister of Education. Again, just to go back over the Question Period of yesterday, I had an opportunity to question the minister, but was not satisfied that I got across the point I wanted to get across that yes, there is a programming crisis looming in our school today.

There are schools in this Province that are not only down to bare bones programming but are well below it and cannot afford any additional cuts. As I referenced yesterday, at Lester Pearson Memorial High School course offerings have dropped over the last five years from seventy-four to fifty. A loss of a teacher this year means a drop of six to eight courses. This is not acceptable. The courses to be dropped again, and the courses that have been dropped, are not what I call frill courses. These are core courses in subject areas like social studies, French, science, and technology.

Again, I reference a letter I received from students. I reference it from students because, from where I stand, students are the most important part of the education system. They have written me indicating that this cut this year at Lester Pearson Memorial High is simply not acceptable.

Prior to Easter I visited Glovertown and witnessed a fantastic showcase in that school. It was a showcase by students for different groups in that particular area, parents in particular. The message that this meeting was to send back to this Assembly was that they have been restructured. They have gone through the restructuring. They have restructured to a point that they have sacrificed a lot of their community schools to put together a regional school at Glovertown. Now these same people that are trucking their students to this particular regional facility are asked to take more cuts. Again, they find this totally unacceptable, that they cannot and will not accept any more cuts.

I attended the Federation of School Councils this past weekend and the message that they send to the Minister of Education is that she has -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. HEDDERSON: Mr. Speaker, again, I attended the Federation of School Councils. I listened to the resolutions that were put to the floor of that assembly. The message that this brings to the minister again is that the minister and the Department of Education have to maintain current staffing levels in order to ensure that the current programming throughout this Province of Newfoundland and Labrador is maintained for our children. In my particular district, and I had a fax come in from -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member if he would take his seat. His time is up. The Chair is dividing the time that was left. It was something like seven minutes between two members.

The hon. the Minister of Education.

MS FOOTE: Mr. Speaker, I guess I can only add to what I said yesterday when we talk about what this government has done in terms of its commitment to the quality of education in this Province. If you look at our budget for education alone, 20 per cent of the entire provincial budget is spent on education. In fact, if you look at the amount of money that is spent in the K to XII system in this year alone it is higher than it was in 1991-1992, and we have 30,000 fewer students in the system. Clearly, the commitment is there by this government to ensure that we have a quality education in this Province.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS FOOTE: Seven hundred million dollars is spent on education in this Province. About one-half of that goes to teachers' salaries.

When you have declining enrolments of the significance that we have in this Province, clearly there is going to be an impact on the number of teachers who are hired throughout the system. We peaked at 170,000 students in this Province. Today we are at 97,000. I am sure the members' opposite do not expect us to maintain the same level of teachers in the system with that kind of declining student enrolment. Maybe they do, but it is always easy to promise when you do not have to deliver.

MR. TULK: Right on, and they will never have to deliver.

MS FOOTE: They will never have to deliver. At the end of the day, Mr. Speaker, we have looked at the number of students in the system, we have looked at the programming requirements, and based on the student population throughout Newfoundland and Labrador we have determined the number of teachers. However, if we had to follow the formula that exists for allocating teachers we would have to taken 400 teachers out of the system, and we chose not to do that. In fact, we reinvested $11.5 million into the system by keeping 236 teachers that would have otherwise come out. We have more teachers in the system today than we need to have if we did it according to student enrolment.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MS FOOTE: No, I never.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

It is now 5:00 p.m.

On motion, the House at its rising adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, at 9:00 a.m.