MR. SPEAKER (Hodder): Order, please!

The hon. the Government House Leader.

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

I move that the House resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole to consider certain bills that are now at the Committee stage.

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that I do now leave the Chair for the House to resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole on certain bills that are now at the Committee stage.

Is it the pleasure of the House that I do now leave the Chair for the House to resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole on some bills?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

Carried.

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

CHAIR (Fitzgerald): Order, please!

The hon. the Government House Leader.

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

I move that we begin debate again in Committee of the Whole on Bill 43, An Act To Provide For The Registration Of Lobbyists.

I believe the Minister of Justice has some points to make relevant to some commentary when we left the debate the last time.

CHAIR: Bill 43, An Act To Provide For The Registration Of Lobbyists.

The hon. the Minister of Justice and Attorney General.

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

I would like to thank the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi, the Opposition House Leader and the Leader of the Opposition for their helpful comments in discussing the matter as to whether or not trade unions should be registered under this legislation or, in fact, whether or not they were excluded.

I have had a chance to get on the Web, take a look at some different jurisdictions, and discuss this with my officials. I am advised that the federal government, the Nova Scotia government, Ontario, B.C., and Quebec, all include trade unions in the legislation, but I think it is very helpful to take a look at section 4.(2), as the Opposition House Leader pointed out.

Section 4.(2)(e) of the act, as the Opposition House Leader mentioned, indicated that the act does not apply to any communication made to a public office holder by a trade union with respect to the administration or negotiation of a collective agreement. It further goes on to say that the act would not apply to any communication made to a public-office holder by a trade union with respect to matters related to the representation of a member or former member of a bargaining unit who is or was employed in the public service as defined in the Public Service Commission Act.

Section 4.(2)(e) exempts core union activities, negotiating collective agreements and representing members or former members on grievances, for example, and it also refers to employees under the Public Service Commission Act because they would work for government.

In addition to that, I refer hon. members to section 4.(2)(b) on page 10 of the act. Under 4.(2)(b) there are two subsections, (i) and (ii), which indicate that this act does not apply to - and I should say initially that in the definition section 2.(1)(e)(ii), organization also means a trade union or labour organization.

If you look at section 4.(2)(b), the act would not apply to any oral or written submission made to a public-office holder by a person on behalf of a union with respect to two things: The enforcement, interpretation or application of any act or regulation made under the act by that public-office holder with respect to that union.

With respect to (b), the act would not apply to any oral or written submission made to a public-office holder by a person on behalf of a union with respect to - if you look at item (ii) - the implementation or administration of any policy, program, directive or guideline by that public-office holder with respect to that union.

So we got on the Web, Mr. Chairman, and we looked at some of the registries under the other jurisdictions, and we could see that not a lot of unions were, in fact, registered; because it would appear that under these two sections, 4.(2)(b) and 4.(2)(e), it would seem to exclude from the act many of the day-to-day activities of labour unions which affect the unions.

The unions themselves have not been left out of the legislation because the unions would be required to register as lobbyists if, in fact, they lobbied the government for things that were not applicable to that union; if, for example, unions lobbied the government for things like VLTs or snowmobile stickers, things that do not directly relate to the union.

In light of that, in view of the fact that it would appear that labour unions are exempt from the operations of the act for most of the activities that deal with the unions, it would appear it would not be necessary to pass the amendment suggested by the hon. Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi and I would therefore recommend that the amendment be rejected.

Thank you.

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I certainly respect the opinion of the minister, and, I am sure it is very validly held. I would, however, caution members to not rely too much on the internet to determine the results of that kind of legal analysis. It may be that there are no unions, or very few unions, registered across the country under legislation, but every province has different legislation, every act is different from every other act, and I would hesitate to rely on what appears to be a fairly quick search of the internet to see whether unions are registered under other legislation. We have our act that defines lobbying in certain ways, and to suggest that because the act is written in such a way that what he is now calling the core activities of the unions - the unions don't necessarily see themselves that way, Mr. Chairman.

If you look at the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour, for example, they involve themselves in issues that they regard as of public interest and of social interest. It has nothing to do with collective agreements, because it has to do with workers whether they are unionized or not. They involve themselves in labour standards, they involve themselves in government policy, they involve themselves in social welfare legislation, trade legislation, industrial legislation, industrial training and all sorts of things that have nothing to do with the administration, negotiation collective agreement.

I can understand the minister looking fairly expansively at 4(e), but it seems to me that almost all of that relates to the Public Service Commission Act, not to the Labour Relations Act. I don't think that these are totally disjunctive at all, that one has to do with all unions and the other has to do with - why would you say that, "any communication to a public-office holder by a trade union with respect to the administration or negotiation of a collective agreement," and then go on to say, "...or matters related to the representation of a member or former member of a bargaining unit who is or was employed in the public service as defined in the Public Service Commission Act." All of that is about public sector unions, in my view, in my interpretation.

I don't think that this act is replete with exceptions that deal with what he calls the core activities of unions or labour organizations. If what the minister is saying is correct, then what I would suggest is that the best thing to do is to exclude trade unions altogether. If what he is saying is that it does not apply to them, and very few across the country are registered, no matter what the legislation is across the country, then let's just say trade unions are not lobbyists. Now, if they go hire somebody, not an in-house, an out-house lobbyist, you know, a consultant lobbyist, if they hire an outside lobbyist as opposed to an in-house lobbyist -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. HARRIS: There was a time - I do not know, some hon. members were not here - when I sat here, when I was not leader of the party, and the leader of the party was Cle Newhook. I was called the in-house leader and he was called the out-house leader, so I am familiar with the concept.

If a union decides to engage a consultant or an outside lobbyist to conduct a lobby campaign, well, sure, they would be covered, like anybody else, but if they are using their own employees, or if they are involved in their activities and their activities are not so-called core activities, the activities are related to what they do in terms of advocating on behalf of their members, then surely they should not be covered by this legislation because they do not engage - they do not engage in a massive lobbying campaign on VLTs. They might have an opinion on it. They might even issue a press release on it, but, in terms of engaging in a campaign, throwing their resources - the 20 per cent, 30 per cent, or whatever the legislation, the minimum 20 per cent of resources - behind a campaign on a particular issue related to something like VLTs, that just doesn't happen, so we do not need to be concerning ourselves with that. In fact, even if they did, so what? Should we call them, then, lobbyists? Believe you me, if the unions were involved in a campaign about VLTs, you would know about it. They would not be going behind, having secret meetings with government officials, trying to convince them to get rid of VLTs. They would be engaged in a public relations program with their members and with the public and with the media and saying this is doing terrible things to our members.

MR. BARRETT: They always announce when they are coming to meet you.

MR. HARRIS: As the Member for Bellevue says, if they are going to come and meet the minister, they usually issue a press release before they come. So, you know, we do not need to keep an eye on them. We do not need to watch their every move, because they are open and clear and up front about whatever it is they are doing.

The best way to avoid any confusion here, the best way to avoid any issue with respect to whether they do or whether they do not, whether they come under section 4.(2)(e), whether they are doing what they are called to in 4.(b), whether they have to get a legal opinion every time they make a move, less they be fined several thousand dollars for misbehaving under the act, or having someone looking for some reason to go after them, the best thing to do is to exclude their activities from the act, the same as we are excluding town councils, the same as we are excluding Aboriginal groups.

Mr. Chairman, I respect the opinion of the Minister of Justice but I think the best thing for us to do is to exempt them totally from the legislation so it is pretty clear that their activities are not considered lobbying and that they do not have to register or worry about counting the minutes or hours or days that any individual in their organization who happens to be on a salary, because that is the way that organization operates, is engaged in what would come under lobbying under that act.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for Twillingate & Fogo.

MR. REID: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I, too, would like to speak to Bill 43, more from a clarification from the minister, I guess, than anything; because, like my colleague, the Leader of the NDP, to me, under this piece of legislation, certain trade unions in the Province would be considered to be lobbyists. I know what the minister just read but, to me, what he just read appears to cover unions that represent public employees, government employees, rather than employees of other trade unions in the Province.

The point of clarification - maybe if I gave you an example, Minister, you would be able to, later in the evening, address it. A couple of years ago, when I was Minister of Fisheries, we had a closure of the shrimp fishery that put probably 7,000 or 8,000 people in the Province out of work. It was being dragged out for a couple of weeks. Because that industry was so important to the people of the Province, and because the fishing industry is somehow connected to both levels of government because both levels of government, both the federal and the provincial levels of government, regulate the fishery - the Province, from a processing point of view, and the federal government, from a harvesting point of view - of course, governments are always drawn into disputes in this Province when a dispute arises in the fishery. One is because the industry is so important to the people of the Province that government almost feels obligated to get involved, and the other is from a regulatory point of view.

Back some three years ago when the shrimp fishery closed, I can honestly say that the leader of the FFAW at the time, Mr. McCurdy, and the leader of the group called FANL, the Fisheries Association of Newfoundland and Labrador, which represented the processors in the Province, both those individuals, I would say to the minister, spent far more than 20 per cent of their time in my office, lobbying my office, lobbying me, as the minister, to make a decision as to whether or not I, as the minister, should implement production quotas. I would hazard to guess that at that time, Minister, it was not 20 per cent of their time, it was more like 80 per cent of their time, between the two of them, because there were many nights over here on Strawberry March Road that I was in my office until 1:00 and 1:30 in the morning and it was either Mr. McCurdy or Mr. O'Reilly who was in my office lobbying either for or against, at that time, the implementation of production quotas.

My fear, under this act, is that if this act were implemented, when I was Minister of Fisheries and these two individuals were there representing their groups, the fishermen or the plant workers in the Province or the plant owners of the Province, that both of them would have been considered lobbyists and would have been registered as lobbyists, or I would have had to kick them out of my office, something that I had no wish to do at that time because we were looking for some resolution to an impasse in an industry that kept 8,000 or something people out of work. That is the concern that I have and I think that was expressed as well by my colleague, the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi and the Leader of the NDP. If that is not the case, if the minister would certainly point it out to us, where in this piece of legislation it would exempt a trade union, like the FFAW, then you would have answered my question.

I will sit down now and maybe you can respond to that.

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

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

I thank the hon. Member for Twillingate & Fogo for his question. I think he said he had representatives from FANL and representatives from the Fisheries Union in his office. They were spending lots of time lobbying him with respect to the industry that was shutting down. He felt that because they were lobbyists he would have to kick them out of his office.

Of course, that is not what this legislation is trying to do. We welcome that lobbying. They are allowed to lobby. This legislation is not to prevent anyone from lobbying. All we are saying is that if someone is lobbying a public office holder, if they are lobbying you, then they have to file in a public registry the fact that they have done that. They have to file in a public registry who they are, who they lobbied, the fact they lobbied your department, the reasons they did the lobbying, who is providing them with the money, and what they got out of it. We feel the people of this Province should know what they are doing.

Also, with respect to this particular clause, insofar as it would affect the union that was dealing with the then minister, the act does not apply to any oral submission that was made to the minister by a person on behalf of that union with respect to the implementation or the administration of any policy, program, directive or guideline by you, as the then minister, with respect to that union. Insofar as they may have been dealing with you on union matters, they would not have to register, but if they are lobbying you for something other than dealing directly with that union, they can lobby you, you can welcome their lobbying, but they would have to register and let the people know they are doing it.

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for Labrador West.

MR. COLLINS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I will just read a section for the minister, and I wonder if he would answer a question that I have on this?

In Part I, section 6. (6), it says, "This section does not apply to anything that an employee undertakes to do on the sole behalf of the employee's employer or, where the employer is a corporation, with respect to anything that the employee, at the direction of the employer, undertakes to do on behalf of any subsidiary of any employer or any corporation of which the employer is a subsidiary." That is on page 17, section 6, third paragraph down from the top of the page. This section does not apply to anything that an employee undertakes to do on the sole behalf of the employee's employer.

Let me ask the minister this question: If we look at the forest industry and the mining companies in this Province and they have an employee who can act in any manner they want on behalf of the employer and not be considered as a lobbyist, if it is for the employer's purpose, on the sole behalf of employer, let me ask the minister why that exclusion is not there for trade unions. What you are saying is that an employee of the employer can, upon the sole behalf of the employer, act in whatever manner they want with government and not be classified as a lobbyist, but the employees, the men and women who work for that particular company, cannot have their representative do the same thing for them. Their union is not able to do what a corporation's employer can do for the corporation. The men and women who work for that corporation are not allowed to have their union do it for them. I want to ask the minister why that distinction is made.

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

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

The section in question, section 6, is dealing with the definition of in-house lobbyists. An in-house lobbyist is, of course, someone who is employed to work for the organization and who spends more than 20 per cent -

MR. COLLINS: For the employer, not the organization, the employer.

MR. T. MARSHALL: I think it starts with section 6. We are dealing with Part I that deals with lobbyists and there are two types of lobbyists. There is the consultant lobbyist and there is the opposite of the out-house lobbyist, the in-house lobbyist. We go back to section 6 which is the section dealing with the in-house lobbyist. An employee is defined as an officer who is compensated for the performance of his or her duties, and I do not see a definition for employer there. Section 6 says, "The section does not apply to anything that an employee undertakes to do on the sole behalf of the employee's employer or, where the employer is a corporation, with respect to anything that the employee, at the direction of the employer, undertakes to do on behalf of any subsidiary of the employer or any corporation of which the employer is a subsidiary." Now, does that make sense to you?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. T. MARSHALL: I will have to get advice on this one and get back to you on it.

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for Twillingate & Fogo.

MR. REID: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

To get back to the question that I asked and the minister tried to give me an answer to, I am somewhat confused about the answer. I said that, a couple of years ago I had the occasion of meeting with both the head of the FFAW and the head of FANL for extended periods of time, and under this legislation, because they spent so much time with me in my office or I in theirs, these people would be considered lobbyists. He got up and said: Yes, they would and we welcome them as lobbyists.

What I am arguing is, I do not think that a trade union like the FFAW or an organization like FANL should have to be registered as lobbyists. That is the point I think you missed, Minister. All I am asking you to do is make some reference, in your legislation, that they would not considered lobbyists. Is that clear? I do not know if it is clear to the minister. I do not even know if he is listening to me.

Mr. Chairman, the other thing about lobbyists, if you listened to people in this Province, especially the government when they were members opposite, the word lobbyist certainly had a negative connotation attached to it. I think, even today in certain areas of the Province, and in certain areas of the country, that word still carries some negative connotation. It is almost like you are doing something underhanded when you are lobbying the government to do something on behalf of a client for which you are being paid, as a lobbyist.

I do not think, for example, the President of the FFAW today wants to be called a lobbyist and that he is being paid for getting something passed in government. I honestly believe that the role of the head of the FFAW is to somehow protect and better the lives of the members that he represents, rather than be paid because he was successful in getting the government to change its mind or do something that that particular organization, for the benefit of its people, would want.

I think the minister is missing the point on this. All I am asking is that you take some of these groups, like the FFAW and FANL, because the regulations that we, or you as legislators, make so directly impact, not only the lives of those that they represent, the FFAW or FANL, but the lives of so many people in this Province, that to be called a lobbyist, or have to register as a lobbyist, because you meet with the minister dealing with the fishery, because you are the head of the FFAW and you want to meet with the minister to discuss issues that are not only important to his members, the membership of the FFAW, but also important to the rest of the people in this Province - I do not know why he should have to be considered a lobbyist. Under the definition, I think, even your definition, a lobbyist is someone who gets paid for convincing somebody else to do something.

I do not think that Mr. McCurdy of the union would want to be considered a lobbyist simply because he was successful in convincing the Minister of Fisheries not to implement production quotas. I do not think he would want to be considered a lobbyist because, as the member said, that is his only raison d'etre, that is his only reason for living or for working, is to get paid simply to get the government, or convince the government, to do something on behalf of his membership. That is the reason I would like to see some exemption in the Act for the FFAW and ASP, as it is now called, the Association of Seafood Producers here in the Province.

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

MR. HARRIS: I think, Mr. Chairman, this debate is starting to unearth a problem with the legislation. The net is cast so wide here that we are losing the focus on what it is we are trying to regulate. We are trying to regulate people using the power of money to influence government officials or government decision making. What we have done is thrown everyone into the mess, and we are focusing because we are being asked to by the organizations that are affected: Hey, this act is not supposed to be about us, why aren't we being exempted? The trade unions are saying that, the voluntary organizations are saying that, but we don't have any lobbyists coming to us saying: Hey, look, you better fix this particular section of the act. What we have are people who aren't lobbyists, who don't consider themselves as lobbyists, people who are advocates, who advocate in public for the most part, issue a press release, or come and talk to the minister, as indicated earlier.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: The amendment covers what I am talking about in terms of trade unions. I am suggesting that because of the way the act is written, we are getting the debate around all of the specifics of various parts of the act, instead of saying: Look, there is a significant group of people who I have identified here in this amendment who should be excluded. Let's exclude them and be done with it. It is kind of causing people to look a little more closely at the act and saying: Hey, if trade unions are not excluded, but if Abitibi Price of Kruger Incorporated hires somebody to be their governmental affairs person, they can do what they like. They can come into the government and try to get them to change whatever laws they want. They can try to get favorable interpretations of anything. They can lobby the government until the cows come home and spend a fortune doing it, but they are not lobbyists.

A trade union out there with a president who happens to be doing what the Labour Relations Act contemplates in representing their members, duty of fair representation, a social role that they have had for decades in this Province, or the Federation of Labour, they could be caught by the lobbying act. Something that ordinary people seem to think is lobbying: Oh, that is not covered by the act, because that is somebody hired directly by a corporation to try and influence government policy. Now, ordinary people think that is lobbying. I would have thought that was lobbying, but that is not caught by the act. Yet, something that trade unions do as a matter of course, and have been doing for decades: Oh, that could be lobbying if they spend more than 20 per cent of their time doing it.

Don't worry about it, says the minister, because under other legislation in other provinces they don't even bother to register. Well, that seems to me to be in a bit of a mess. We haven't had time, obviously, to look at every piece of legislation across the country. We haven't had this before us for very many days. I am not going to dwell on that. The point is that we can't just rely on a quickie internet search by somebody who is saying: Well, there aren't very many trade unions registered across the country, therefore there is no problem. If the minister is saying there is no problem with trade unions being lobbyists, well then lets exclude them for the act and be done with it. We can fix the problem. We do not have to worry about what section 6.(6) means or 4.(2)(e) or how much time they spent or whether they have to have logs, like you are supposed to do when you are driving a car and some of your car is for business and some is for pleasure. You have to be able to tell Revenue Canada, if they ask you, how many kilometers you drove for business in order to comply with the Income Tax laws. You do not want people to have to do that and I do not want people to have to do that. If what the minister is saying, look for all practical purposes it does not affect unions anyway, well then lets just exclude them, instead of saying: You can find your way around the act and you may be able to find loop holes in there that will get you excluded, and you do not really have to worry about it.

I think that is the wrong approach. I think if the minister is convinced, and members are convinced, that unions are not going to be affected by this legislation, well lets just exclude them, the same way that town councils are excluded, the same ways that aboriginal groups are excluded, the same way that hospital boards are excluded. These are recognized institutions of civil society that conduct a public role in trying to maintain and advocate on behalf, not only of their members, but advocate on behalf of social policy issues, public policy issues of all sorts.

The minister says there is nothing wrong with that, that is what they are supposed to be doing. Well if that is what they are supposed to be doing, do not call it lobbying, recognize it for what it is, it is advocacy work and it is work that should not be considered to be lobbying efforts because it is not being done for pay on behalf of some third party, and they are not hiring people trying to influence government policy. They have officers who happen to work full-time because the size of some of the particular unions is such that the workload requires them to have full-time people. It seems to me the eminently sensible thing to do is just pass this particular amendment and we will be done with it and we can carry on and try and register the real lobbyists under the legislation.

CHAIR: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Justice and Attorney General.

MR. T. MARSHALL: Mr. Chairman, as I said previously, insofar as the union is making representations to a public officer holder about the union itself, they are excluded from this act, in dealing with any act, any regulation made under an act, or any policy or any program or directive or guideline by that public officer holder with respect to that union. If the union is dealing with the union they are excluded from the act, but if the union is going to lobby in some other area outside of what directly affects the union, if they are going take part in debate, if they are going to lobby on some other matter of public policy, then I do not think the union should hide. I think the unions in this Province want to be treated just like everyone else and I do not know why anyone would try to hide from this legislation.

We are asking that anybody who lobbies simply register, simply disclose information in a public registry. We are not preventing anyone from lobbying. The union, FANL, can go and see the Minister of Fisheries at anytime. All we are saying is, whatever they are doing the people of the Province are entitled to know. They should know if it is a corporation, they should know if it is a union, and they should know that anybody not excluded in this act - the people of this Province are entitled to know what is going on. We want to bring it out of the shadows and it is time we did that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Chairman, I do not know if the minister has actually been listening. The unions do not want to be registered under this act. They do not want to be considered as lobbyists. What the minister is saying is, if they want to raise the minimum wage in the Province, which has nothing to do with the collective agreement, and, in fact, most of their members might receive higher than the minimum wage, then they would want to be registered under the act. Well, they would not want to be registered under the act. They have said so. In fact, they have written briefs on it and presented them to the minister and to the minister's officials saying: We do not consider ourselves lobbyists. We are doing this as we have done for decades as part of our obligation to represent the interests of working people in this Province. That is what they have said. They said: This is not lobbying activity.

If you want to go after lobbyists and prevent corruption and prevent people from buying their way into government offices - this is the evil, I understand, that this government is trying to control or register people so that it is out in the open. Well, let me tell you, I haven't heard a union yet sneak into the government office and say: We want you to raise the minimum wage. We have a special deal here. We want you to raise the minimum wage. I think they issue press releases, they talk to Members of the House of Assembly, they will have meetings, they will ask to meet with ministers, they will have public meetings, they will do all of those things, and they will do it in a public manner. Now, the minister wants to call that lobbying and he wants them to register and he wants them to disclose how much time they are spending at it and go through whatever -

MR. T. MARSHALL: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: What is wrong with that, the minister says. The minister does want them to do it and it wants them to do it because he wants them to jump through all of these bureaucratic hoops for no reason.

MR. T. MARSHALL: Telling the people what is going on.

MR. HARRIS: Telling the people what is going on, he says. Tell the people what is going on with the people who are collecting the money to come and buy influence into government offices and trying to get legislation change. Tell the people what is going on with the big corporations who have that kind of money to throw around. Do not put obligations on trade unions, most of whom are people who happen to be employed full time, come out of the rank and file, they happened to be elected to an office, and the union happens to be big enough that they happen to be able to have their wages paid full time to serve the union and serve the members, and now we want to call them lobbyists.

It is a smoke screen, Mr. Chairman, and it is a diversion from what the legislation is supposed to be all about. The legislation is supposed to be to control lobbying activity, and now we have a situation where we have women's groups around the Province, we have advocacy groups, and charitable organizations, concerned that they are going to have to file or watch what they are doing or count the hours that they are spending on various things, just in order to comply with legislation that they think should not affect them. They do not want to be involved with this legislation. They have made complaints about it. They have told the minister and the minister has not listened in that regard and he still wants to include trade unions.

For some reason, trade unions are in. Why doesn't he include town councils? Why doesn't he include Aboriginal groups? Why doesn't he include school boards? Why doesn't he include all the other people who are exempted?

MR. BARRETT: (Inaudible) Kruger.

MR. HARRIS: As the Member for Bellevue says, if Kruger or Abititi or somebody wants to hire somebody as a government relations officer, their activities, anything they do, they can come in and lobby all they like. That is not called lobbying because it is defined out of the act. If a trade union, that represents the employees of Kruger or Abititi or any organization, if they have somebody coming in and meeting with government more than a certain amount of time, they have to be registered under the act because they are a trade union. There is something wrong with that, Mr. Chairman. There is something wrong with that.

I do not hear any trade unions in this Province say: We want to be covered by the act and we do not want the employers' representatives to be covered by the act, we are very happy. They are not saying they are happy to see that the government is excluding the employer representatives when they are lobbying on behalf of the employer, but we should be somehow covered when we are doing the things that we have been doing for the last ten, fifteen, twenty or fifty years, on behalf of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, as we see it as trade unionists.

That is what is wrong with it, and that is why this amendment, in fact, should make the minister happy; he has less to worry about. He does not have to worry about if all those people are scurrying around keeping notes on how much time they are spending talking to the Minister of Fisheries or the former Minister of Fisheries or members of the House of Assembly or anything like it, because that is what they do. Now you want them to register as lobbyists and pay a fee.

MR. TAYLOR: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: Well, they do have to do because they are interested -

MR. TAYLOR: They don't (inaudible).

MR. COLLINS: Now you are trying to decide what the mandate for the union is going to be.

MR. HARRIS: I guess I can read the section out for the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture.

MR. TAYLOR: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: Yes, you read it out, and there are many ways you can read legislation, I say to the member, and that is why they have all sorts of people. When the minister read it, he made the same thing clear too, that "any written or oral submission made to a public-office holder by a person on behalf of a person, partnership or organization with respect to (i) the enforcement, interpretation or application of any Act or regulation made under any Act by that public-officer holder with respect to that person, partnership or organization...", so any legislation like the Labour Relations Act that affects the FFAW, for example, that is exempt.

Fisheries legislation doesn't affect the FFAW. It might affect the members, it might affect the fishermen, it might affect some of the people they represent, but that is not the organization. You can read this many ways, I say to the minister, and that is the way that would be interpreted, frankly. Because, really, when you are advocating on your own behalf, it is the same as the exemption for the in-house council over here, if an in-house consultant is acting on behalf of their employer that is exempt, it is not considered lobbying.

AN HON. MEMBER: What?

MR. HARRIS: Not considered lobbying.

AN HON. MEMBER: What?

MR. HARRIS: Section 6(6) -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) in-house lobbyists.

MR. HARRIS: Yes, an in-house lobbyist, and then excluded from that on page 17, "This section does not apply to anything that an employee undertakes to do on the sole behalf of the employee's employer." If you are acting for your employer -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: That is section 6(6) on page 17. Basically, it excludes from the in-house lobbyists those activities that are conducted on behalf of the organization or the company or the employer.

You know, that is what we are dealing with here, we are dealing with an understanding that if you are working on behalf of the organization or rules that apply to the organization, that is one thing, but if you are applying to something else that is a different matter.

This is a serious matter. I know that the minister is receiving some advise that it is not a problem and we want to include everybody and they really want to be transparent. It is not a question of being transparent. There are probably fewer organizations in the Province that are as transparent as the unions are when they are dealing with government. They do their lobbying efforts in the open, in public, and the issue is, should they be considered lobbyists under lobbyist registration, or should they be considered to be ordinary advocacy groups in civil society carrying out their function that they have been doing for years in terms of presenting the views on behalf - maybe it is the views they do not like. I do not know. What is it that means that Aboriginal groups do not need to be registered but trade unionists and labour organizations do? Why is that? I mean, there is no rational reason for that. I think we recognize that both groups are important elements of our society, that they need representation, working people need representation in society, and that the trade unions are the chosen vehicle to do that.

Labour organizations, labour centrals, like the Federation of Labour or the various trades councils like the Trades and Labour Congress or the Building Trades Council and various other councils that exist, a number of trade unions joining together, they act in various ways in relation to their sphere of influence, their interest in projects, their interest in seeing legislation written in a certain way to the advantage of their members down the long road.

All of this stuff goes on, Mr. Chairman. It happens when there is legislation going through the House. You see people coming up, meeting with members, urging various amendments to take place. The Government House Leader and I participated in that many years ago when the legislation for the offshore (inaudible) was taking place. There were people in the House consulting with both sides of the House, urging certain amendments to take place. These things are part of what these organizations do, and I think everybody expects that to happen. There is no big secret about it.

What we are trying to avoid here, what we are trying to regulate here, is people who are going out and offering themselves as government consultants, charging fees for doing it, and coming in to meet with government officials or ministers, or members of the Legislature on either side, and charging money, providing a service which is doing that. That is mainly what we are trying to catch here. It seems that the in-house consultant's basis is so circumscribed that they are not going to catch very much anyway, except, perhaps, the trade unions which you are saying you do not want to include.

I think the simplest thing to do, in my view, Mr. Chairman, is to accept that what you are saying on a practical basis should be true on a legal basis, and that trade unions ought to be considered exempt from this legislation because what they do, in fact, is not lobbying as we understand it and that is not the mischief that we are trying to regulate in this legislation.

CHAIR: Order, please!

The hon. the Government House Leader.

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

I want to move to Bill 64, the Occupational Health and Safety Act, in Committee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: Bill 64, An Act To Amend The Occupational Health And Safety Act.

A bill, "An Act To Amend The Occupational Health And Safety Act." (Bill 64)

CLERK: Clause 1.

CHAIR: Clause 1.

Shall clause 1 carry?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

The hon. the Member for Grand Falls-Buchans.

MS THISTLE: Mr. Chairman, I spoke earlier this afternoon but I would like to stand tonight and say that I am in support of this bill.

As I said this afternoon, this bill will not compromise safety in the workplace. In fact, it allows owner-managers the opportunity to be trained in public safety, and also their employees. They also have the opportunity now to have flexible training hours. At one point it was pretty rigid; anyone who wanted to acquire training in occupational health and safety were subjected to getting that training during the daytime hours and that was not at all conducive to the workplace, particularly for a small business; because, as we all know, in a small business, most people are working from daylight to dark and their first obligation is to the safety of their employees. In the past, this was not always convenient for owner-operators to get this training or even, indeed, have their staff trained. With this new bill today, I think we will see more flexibility in the workplace by owners, managers and so on, and their employees.

I am entirely in agreement with this bill and would like to go on record as supporting it.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: Shall clauses 1 to 12 carry?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

Clauses 1 to 12 are carried.

On motion, clauses 1 through 12 carried.

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

CHAIR: Shall the enacting clause carry?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

The enacting clause is carried.

On motion, enacting clause carried.

CLERK: An Act To Amend The Occupational Health And Safety Act.

CHAIR: Shall the title carry?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

The title is carried.

On motion, title carried.

CHAIR: Shall I report Bill 64, An Act To Amend The Occupational Health And Safety Act, carried without amendment?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

Bill 64 is carried.

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

CHAIR: The hon. the Government House Leader.

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

I want to move to Bill 39, the Committee stage of the Transparency and Accountability Act, please.

CHAIR: Bill 39, An Act To Enhance The Transparency And Accountability Of The Government And Government Entities To The People Of The Province.

A bill, "An Act To Enhance The Transparency And Accountability Of The Government And Government Entities To The People Of The Province." (Bill 39)

CLERK: Clause 1.

CHAIR: Clause 1.

Shall clause 1 carry?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

Carried.

On motion, clause 1 carried.

CLERK: Clause 2.

CHAIR: Clause 2.

Shall clause 2 carry?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

Clause 2 is carried.

On motion, clause 2 carried.

CLERK: Clause 3.

CHAIR: Clause 3.

Shall clause 3 carry?

All those in favour, ‘aye.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

Clause 3 is carried.

On motion, clause 3 carried.

CLERK: Clause 4.

CHAIR: Clause 4.

Shall clause 4 carry?

The hon. the Minister of Education.

MR. HEDDERSON: Mr. Chair, I would like to put forth an amendment to clause 4. The amendment, I believe, has been distributed, if the Chair would look at the amendment and see if it is in order.

CHAIR: The Chair has had an opportunity to review the amendment as put forward by the Minister of Education on Bill 39, clause 4, and rules that the amendment is in order.

The hon. the Minister of Education

MR. HEDDERSON: Mr. Chair, I put forth the amendment to clause 4 of Bill 39. It is amended by adding immediately subclause 3 the following: "The following provisions do not apply to the Memorial University of Newfoundland: (a) subparagraph 5(2)(a)(i); (b) subsections 5(3), (9), (10) and (11) but the strategic plan of the university may be amended by the Board of Regents and in that case a copy of the amendments shall be provided to the minister responsible for the university; (c) subparagraph (6)(2)(a)(i); (d) subsections 6(3), (9), (10) and (11) but the business plan of the university may be amended by the Board of Regents and in that case a copy of the amendments shall be provided to the minister responsible for the university; (e) paragraph 7(2)(a); (f) subsections 7(3), (9) (10) and (11) but the activity plan of the university may be amended by the Board of Regents and in that case a copy of the amendments shall be provided to the minister responsible for the university; and (g) subsections 20(2) and (3)."

Further to that, "Subclause 21(2) of the bill is deleted and the following substituted: (2) The Lieutenant-Governor in Council shall determine the matters to be included in a contract between a deputy minister of a department and the minister responsible for the department."

Mr. Chair, I move this amendment for a number of reasons. In particular, I raise a concern with the minister, my colleague, with regard to the University and I am asking for the University to be exempted from certain sections of this particular Bill. I have done this in consultation with the University and there were some concerns raised concerning the restriction, perhaps, to academic freedom.

I make the case, Mr. Chair, that the University certainly has a very special status and role in society, that when it comes to the principle of academic freedom it is universally accepted as appropriate and necessary to a civilized society both nationally and internationally. The principle of academic freedom is closely guarded in academic circles. Universities are very, very different from other publicly funded entities, including school boards, colleges, health care boards in that governments do, in the case of those other bodies, establish the nature and the content of the services and programs that these bodies do offer.

Certainly, I am satisfied that the Memorial University Act currently contains a number of accountability measures. The University currently can be audited by the Auditor General and it is currently co-operating with the Auditor General on an audit which is just commencing. The University prepares, publishes and provides to the minister a strategic plan which is approved by the Board of Regents. The Board is largely comprised of, I guess, appointments by the Lieutenant-Governor in Council.

I refer specifically to the sections, Mr. Chair, that I would like to have the University exempt from, the reason being, as I said, that there are some concerns about academic freedom especially as it applies to the strategic plans. With regard to the Memorial University Act, and again it is my understanding, Mr. Chair, that the University Act certainly gives the authority to the Board of Regents when it comes to strategic planning with regard to the University. With the implementation of this particular bill, again there is some confusion, I suppose, as to which act would, indeed, be the one that would be referred to.

Again, as minister, I am satisfied that the Board of Regents, under the Memorial University Act, have been commissioned to strategically plan for the University, that, again, they are an accountable group. When it comes to the Senate, the Senate is given the task of the academic strategic planning for the University. With regard to the academic freedom, I would ask that these sections would exempt the University to ensure that, indeed, would happen.

Mr. Chair, the act covers all other aspects of the University, but on this matter of academic freedom, I wanted to have greater certainty that, that academic freedom would be protected and, hence, I have put forth this amendment for the consideration of this body.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

CHAIR: Order, please!

Is it the pleasure of the Committee to adopt the amendment to clause 4 of Bill 39, as put forward by the Minister of Education?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have great mixed feelings about this particular amendment, because in one sense, Mr. Chairman, I could applaud at least one minister for, long after the fact, at least consulting with somebody. Now, let's keep in context what we are talking about. We are talking about the centerpiece of legislation, the Act To Enhance The Transparency And Accountability Of The Government. This is what this session is all about. We raised our concerns at second reading, when we were talking about agreement in principle, about the fact that it was all fluff and no stuff and, basically, there was going to be a template, I think the description was, their would be a template put forward by the government about strategic plans, business plans, and activity plans. The minister would have the final say. Everybody was going to be put through all of this unnecessary work in my view. There are members of the government who think it is very necessary, and going to be a wonderful addition to life in Newfoundland and Labrador. I hold the contrary view.

What we have now, we are in the final stages of a debate on this bill, which has been championed and held up by the government as a thing they thought about long and hard. It was in the Blue Book, it was part of the platform. They have been a year planning it, it is a year later, and it is all ready. All of this great thought went into putting it together. It is in the name of the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board and everybody knows his reputation for attention to minute detail. In the final days, where we talked about more consultations and what not, we have a Minister of Education, to his credit, who is saying: I finally went over and talked to somebody at the University. How come he did not talk to him before we printed the bill? How come nobody talked to him some time in the last year to find out whether or not they agreed with the whole concept? Talk about the mixed feelings; better late than never to talk to somebody.

Maybe the Minister of Finance might talk to somebody other than his buddies at the Liquor Corporation about opening up the liquor stores on Sunday, because he has admitted that he has only talked to one group and one person, and he is going to demand that everyone on that side of the House support him blindly so it can be passed in the matter of hours. He has already announced that the stores are opening in January and he does not care what anybody says, does not care what anybody thinks, does not care what the back lash is. Got to give the Opposition something, he said, to talk about. They want to complain about something, you might as well let them complain about having liquor stores open on Sunday.

Here is a little bit of a breath of fresh air, a consultation, but in the meantime what other organizations or entities - because we asked the questions about category one, category two, category three. We still have not gotten the list by the way. The Government House Leader waved around a list the other day, and said: I have the list. I have the list. He waved it at myself and the Opposition House Leader. Here is the list; we know who they are. We said: Well, openness and accountability, Minister, how about showing it to us? Oh, no, you are not going to see that, boy. It says in the act that we will determine that later on.

They are trying to convince us we already have it, but we are not allowed to see it. Note the buzz phrases: Openness, transparency, accountability. Wave a piece of paper at you twenty feet away and say: I have the list, boy, you can trust me.

How about, in the spirit of the name of the bill, openness and transparency, let us have a look at it? Oh, no, you cannot see it. You are the Opposition. You are only elected members. You cannot expect to let elected members of a democratic Legislature see a piece of information related to an openness and transparency bill. Don't expect us to show you anything. We can't let you see it.

The university - back to this particular amendment, what does this do? It says that even though with every other organization and entity - I believe I heard somebody say, in one of the speeches from the government side, it was probably the Government House Leader because he has been saying everything for everybody, I believe I heard a number of 460 entities, in that range. Four hundred and something entities. I might be a little bit off on the 460, but it is over 400 that are going to be covered by this bill. Some of them have to do strategic plans, some of them have to do business plans, some of them have to do activity plans. They all have to submit annual reports.

I will not get into my tirade about the annual report again, Mr. Chairman, only to say this: A group near and dear to my heart in Central Newfoundland, struggling to meet their budget, struggling to provide community health services in a large region that is going to get even bigger, the health and community services board for Central Newfoundland - it covers the same boundaries as two institutional boards, Central East and Central West - always struggling to try to provide services in homes to families in the communities in Central Newfoundland, strapped with a budget, what were they proud to do today, in the spirit of openness and accountability? Know that they had somebody on their staff spend their time writing this report so it could be tabled here with a nice coloured glossy thing on it. With the staff time, the printing cost, and the distribution of this, they could have hired a couple of more social workers. They could have reduced the caseloads in Central Newfoundland. That is what they want. They do not want any nonsense about saying you have to produce a report. They know what they are doing. They put in it what is our mandate. Our mandate is to provide the best possible service we can to our client base in Central Newfoundland, on the Island.

What do they have? You have to get somebody to take the time to write that down, as if it was not self-evident, in the spirit of openness and transparency and accountability, when the person who did it and the money it cost to put it together and circulate it probably could have reduced the caseload for a family social worker dealing with abused children in Central Newfoundland, instead of being on a wait list and being told: I cannot see you until the middle of next month.

That is the priority for this government, and they are bragging about that now in the meantime. On this amendment, it was always to be that these templates, these plans - never mind the organization, whoever it is, the 400-and-something he had to put it together - but the minister was going to tell him what to put in it. They could change a few words. It was almost like, fill in the blanks. Here is your little form. Fill in your form now. Put this under this section. Put this under that section. Put that someplace else. That is really going to help. That is going to make Newfoundland and Labrador a much better place, if you fill out your little form.

Now what do we have? We have a Minister of Education saying - the university, by the way, has to fill out that form and give it to the minister, but now the great, brilliant, amendment - and this is the other side - why bother? Now they are saying: Why put them through all the hassle?

Do you know what this amendment is about, Mr. Chairman? It says they have to fill out the form, they have to fill out the template, the minister is going to have a look at it, but guess what after all of that? Now they are admitting, for the university, that the Board of Regents can turn around and change it again if they want. Isn't that the effect of the amendment? The Board of Regents, that is what I read.

Now, again, they are expecting us, of course, to read this and understand it fully. I am sure there has been no debate in that caucus, because I have even seen some reaction on the other side of the House already about people in that caucus who were made aware of this amendment minutes ago for the very first time - the very first time - and had no input into it and are now questioning: Well, what does it mean, if it says that the strategic plan of the university may be amended by the Board of Regents?

The whole thing, the whole thrust of the act, was that the minister decides if the plan is okay or not, but now, for the university, because there has been a consultation - and in the guise of academic freedom, which has nothing to do with any of this - you can put down whatever plan you want on a piece of paper. It does not hinder academic freedom at the university, because there is not going to be anything there to tell anybody what subjects they have to teach, or what point of view they are allowed to put across as professors, or what things they are allowed to discuss in this classrooms. That is academic freedom. Just like I argue with the student representatives who say you should not let Inco build a building because there is something, some link, between that and the loss of academic freedom. I have said to them: There is no loss and damage to academic freedom unless the stipulation is, by Inco spending $15 million at the university and endowing 100 seats a year, that the professors and the students are not allowed to criticize Inco if they pollute an environment with their mining operations.

That is not the deal. Nobody has to support Inco or Voisey's Bay Nickel because they are building something at the university. They are freeing up $15 million that the university can use to reduce tuition or keep them lower, or offer more programs. There is no link to contributions like that, and any danger to academic freedom. This has nothing to do with academic freedom, the fact that there is a bill, an ill-conceived bill, that says they have to put together - I bet you they have to do the full-meal deal, the strategic plan, the business plan and the activity plan, because they are a big operation, Mr. Chairman. They are several hundred million dollars a year. If an operation that big doesn't have to do the full-meal deal, I guess nobody has. What does this say? This says, I had a chat with them. Good for you, Mr. Minister. You should have had a chat with them a long time ago, a long, long time ago.

Now it says: Okay, never mind the rules. Let's forget the rules for the university. There are rules now for everybody else, but the buck does not stop with the government any more. This amendment, unless the minister might stand up and show me and demonstrate, logically, that I am wrong, says that, no matter what process they go through, the Board of Regents reserves the right to amend these plans in the final analysis.

Now, what about Hydro? I wonder where the Natural Resources Minister is, in his consultation with Hydro. Do they feel they should have the right, with their Board of Directors, to amend the final plan, too? You cannot pretend it is for academic freedom, but they are a huge, multi-hundred million dollar operation a year, billions of dollars of assets. You mean to say they should not reserve the right to have some final say in what their plan is, or do they just have to kowtow to this cookie-cutter template that the minister puts forward?

You can see the reason for the mixed emotions and the mixed feelings, Mr. Chairman. Consultation? Absolutely. Absolutely. When did it occur? Suppertime tonight? It must have occurred a little bit earlier, because they actually got something down on paper. So, it might have occurred yesterday, but this is a bill that has been in this Legislature for a couple of weeks. Unlike some of the ones we got last night, this one has been here at least a couple of weeks. Again, they have been talking about it for over a year. Why is it that, on a night, by the way, when I think the government expectation is that we are going to approve this bill - I think that is their expectation, that this debate will finish tonight. So, right out of the blue, right out of the dark, at the very last minute, after a year of intensive work and preparation on the signature, absolute - this is the thing they want to hang their hat on. This is what the Government House Leader was making public representation about: We are so proud of this great detailed piece of work we have done on transparency and openness in the government. Then, at the very last minute, their own minister, who happened to be open and transparent enough to actually go and talk to somebody who might be impacted, comes in and says: Oh, I talked to the crowd that works with me over at the university, and we should change it. So, you know that year of work that you did? I guess you did not do it very good. I guess it wasn't very thorough. I guess it wasn't very complete. I guess you did not realize the consequences, did not understand what the impact was going to be on our university that we are all so proud of, Memorial University of Newfoundland, because I do not believe the name has officially been changed to Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. That was left to them. That was left to them, and they came back and said the government can change it if they want, because it was left to the Board of Regents.

Now, as I understand the amendment, and I am willing to be corrected and shown to be wrong, it says that all this planning and all this other stuff that is going to happen for the Public Utilities Board, for the Hydro board, all these major entities out there, the minister approves the plan for them but the Board of Regents is going to have the last say on the plan for the university, and the excuse has something to do with - because they always have to have some kind of excuse - academic freedom. It has nothing whatsoever to do with academic freedom, any more than the liquor changes have to do with an argument about equal treatment.

Mr. Chairman, I will stop there because we are at the Committee stage where we have an unlimited number of opportunities to make our points, ask our questions, raise the issues. I thought I listened carefully to the minister when he was explaining why the amendment is here. Maybe I got it all wrong, so I am glad to listen some more and maybe get a better understanding, because right now it makes no sense to me why the amendment would be coming. The rationale makes no sense to me. It means that the government is not really committed to the plan that they took a year to put together because now, all of a sudden, they talked to somebody. They are not committed to it.

The Member for Topsail was up, at second reading, saying, I am delighted to see this piece here because it reflects the kind of thing I was asking for, for ten years, while I was the Auditor General. I would like to hear her speak as to whether she thinks that this amendment is something that she would support, based on the position she put forward for ten years as the Auditor General, and whether this reflects the spirit and intent of what she stood up and said she supported at second reading. It would be interesting to hear that kind of debate. She was at least brave enough and willing enough to give her views at second reading, and I respect those. I disagree - she knows I disagree - with her views. That is what a Parliament is all about. We do not all have the same mind, we do not all think alike, but we are free to express our views.

I am sure that she supported this because this amendment was not there, and she is probably taken aback and surprised by the fact that the amendment is here, and does not understand why we are going to give some kind of special treatment to the university, so I would be interested, Mr. Chairman, in seeing the debate continue for the next little while.

Thank you.

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for Grand Falls-Buchans.

MS THISTLE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I, too, would like to speak at the Committee stage on Bill 39.

As many of my colleagues have said, this bill was supposed to be the cornerstone of this new government, but what we are finding out is that it is not the cornerstone that it was intended to be.

I wonder, what would the Member for Topsail say about the performance contracts that are now in this bill, to be signed between the minister and the deputy minister of each department reporting? I wonder what she would say, because the deputy minister in her department never had a contract signed by the minister or the Premier or anyone else. That deputy minister had her career destroyed for being the fall woman, we can call it, for something that should never have happened. When you talk about accountability and transparency, the top civil servant in this Province lost her job, had her career destroyed, all for a cover-up for the Premier.

When you think about the fact that the taxpayers of this Province now are going to be on the hook for a forced severance termination package for the deputy minister, which should never have happened, is this the cornerstone of accountability and transparency of this new government? That is what we are really seeing.

As my colleague, the Leader of the Opposition, just talked about here in this House of Assembly, at least one minister had the foresight to discuss with one of the entities, Memorial University of Newfoundland, about the exclusion of that entity from this accountability act.

I wonder, why didn't the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation go out and do consultation with the people and the general public on the snowmobiling issue? All of us around the Province agree with the concept of groomed trails. What we do not know about is, who will administer all the money that is going to be collected from that program. How do we know if the trails are going to be uniform and standard in being groomed, and who will look after the ATVs that are going to travel over these groomed trails all summer? Will they have to pay? What is going to happen to the traditional users of the trailway system? Is there any exclusion for that group? All these are accountability and transparency factors that should be factored in here.

We had the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board stand on his feet yesterday and dump on the table a bill concerning selling liquor on Sundays. Today he is expecting us to pass that bill which is a change in a social issue in this Province. He did not go out and consult with anybody. He held on to that piece of legislation for a year. He said it had been talked about and he agreed to it and he did not see fit to bring it to this House or even enter into any kind of discussion with the general public on it.

What about the new Department of Business? We had an estimates committee and nobody showed up to talk about the Department of Business. The Premier was not there to talk about the Department of Business. He gave no explanation. That particular department reports to whom? The Premier.

There you go, stated government achievement, establish the new Department of Business with the Premier as Minister Responsible, reporting to whom? The Premier. That is really open and accountable, isn't it? That is very open and accountable. The chief information officer for the department was to be announced November 2.

Here is the truth of the matter. The truth of the matter is, the department has no real mandate, no direction, and the only direction is has is whatever comes from the Premier. The $1 million budget was actually money pulled out of the budget for Industry, Trade and Rural Development.

Also, we have a Premier in this Province who has been elected as the Premier for over a year and he has not filed his conflict of interest statement with the Chief Electoral Office. Now, he might be in the category with Donald Trump, but he has to comply like everyone of us in this House of Assembly. Oh, yes, maybe he is going to be on the program.

AN HON. MEMBER: Can we say, you are fired?

MS THISTLE: Can we say, you are fired?

Seriously, we have someone who is supposed to set the example in this House as to how we, his colleagues - we all file our conflict of interest on time because we know the consequences. It is ridiculous that he has been given this extended period with no questions asked at all. If there is accountability, he should be the first one to abide by his own act.

Another thing that is going to come out in accountability, there is going to be a review of all government assets, and if the private sector can provide it for a lower cost, that is what is going to happen and all government assets will be sold. Look out, this is only the beginning of what is going to happen.

I would say to members who are here tonight, in making a conscience decision on this act, does this contain what you really expected it to be? I would say to the Member for Topsail, who is a lady of integrity, a member of high principles, she rallied around this act, and I know it is in her best intentions that this act be brought forward and government live by that act. I am sure if she were to read that act, and look at how government is running, they are not living by that act. It is all fluff and no stuff. I am looking across the House now at members who coined that phrase, all fluff and no stuff. They were sitting in the House with Lynn Verge at the time that phrase was coined, and we all know what happened to Lynn Verge in this House of Assembly.

Mr. Chairman, what we are seeing here tonight is an act supposedly for accountability and transparency. What we also learned is that not one entity has to comply until 2008. What does this do for the government? They are hopeful to get through this term and be well into the next term if they are successful in getting re-elected before they have to be accountable. Also, it gives the minister the power to change that time when they must comply. You are giving the minister latitude to adjust in midstream and give an entity lots of time to comply so that the minister is totally responsible.

I am glad that the Minister of Education recognized MUN as being different. I am glad that he took the time and consulted with MUN, because, by doing this, he is allowing them, a university that we all hold in high esteem in this Province, to have academic freedom in conducting their business. What happened to the Minister of Finance? I want to know what changed his principles in accountability and openness with the people of this Province. He fell short. He fell short because he only had one thing in mind, bring a bill to the House and ram it through. That is what happens when a government is riding high in the polls. They think they are above people issues. They think they have a mandate to do as they wish. They are riding high in the polls and they can bring in whatever legislation they want. They do not care, they do not respect the House of Assembly, they do not respect people's opinions in this House, and it is quite apparent that they do not respect the general public. They have one agenda and they are going to get it through at any cost.

It was always said, with accountability and transparency every decision that was made would have been based on evidence. What evidence came forward in the snowmobiling act? That is unfortunate, because I really am sorry that the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation did not do his homework. Basically, what he has brought forward is a good thing for the Province, but he has not done his homework, and this being his first piece of legislation I am hoping he will learn from this episode that the people of the Province really want groomed trails.

CHAIR: Order, please!

I remind the hon. Member for Grand Falls-Buchans that her time for speaking is lapsed.

MS THISTLE: Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am sure I will have another opportunity.

CHAIR: The hon. the Minister of Education.

MR. HEDDERSON: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Again, I just go back to the original logic behind the amendment. What I am saying, and I am certainly welcoming the debate, because again, hopefully, it will bring about an understanding of the institution itself. When we look at the institution of the university, I would have to say that when it comes to academic freedom, that is the basis on which a university sees its reputation.

In this particular case, as I said and as the members are aware, the University is, I guess, legislated through the Memorial University Act and that Act covers a fair amount of the accountability that is expected of the University. One aspect of that, and this is the aspect that I am bringing out, certainly gives the minister the authority to regulate to the Board of Regents, to the University, their planning. We also know that the Senate, basically, looks at the academic standards. There is some question, because, as I pointed out, the University is certainly a special status, it certainly has a role in society and it is different.

What I am arguing with regards to this amendment is that the University is certainly different from other publicly funded entities, including - and they were already referenced - school boards, including colleges, including health care boards. When we look at these particular entities they are publicly funded entities like the University but they differ, because with these bodies, you can certainly establish the nature and content of the services and programs that these bodies offer. That is the difference, I say to the member, and it is a key difference. That is my argument, that there is a difference in the University and other publicly funded bodies. Because of the difference in nature, I certainly would see that we have - I wanted greater certainty, and that is what I am asking for here, greater certainty that the academic freedom of the University can be captured in this particular Bill.

Again, I am asking exemption for certain sections of the Bill, not the entire Bill. These are certain sections that point back to the authority of the minister. These are the sections that are outlined right there, and you can follow each individual section. MUN would be exempt from these sections, not from the other aspects of the Bill.

On that note, again I am asking members to certainly feel free to debate, but look at the logic of my argument of putting forth the amendments and saying that the authority is there, that there is duplication, that the Memorial University Act does certainly give direction to the minister with regard to the planning that goes on at the university. I would also add that, yes, we certainly do fund the university, something to the tune, I believe, of $141 million. With regard to the financial side of it, even as we speak, the Auditor General certainly has access to that university. They are guided by the principles of accountability as outlined in the act. I, as minister, would expect that they would share their reports, that they would share their planning, that they would share their outcomes, and that, once again, because we as government are certainly responsible for that funding of that university, that we would assure the public that everything would be done to make sure that every dollar that was publicly put into that institution can indeed be accounted for.

Again I encourage members to certainly debate and I am available for questions, if they come available.

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for Twillingate & Fogo.

MR. REID: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like speak to Bill 39, An Act To Enhance The Transparency and Accountability Of The Government Of Newfoundland And Labrador.

Mr. Chair, the reason I want to speak to it is because of what a farce is it to have here in the House of Assembly, a bill entitled, An Act To Enhance Transparency and Accountability. They talk every day about being open and transparent and accountable. They use the words day in and day out. In fact, I think now they have them printed on all of their statements that they put out here today, and all the reports that they put out, talking about transparency, openness and accountability.

Mr. Chairman, I will take the accountability portion of that act first and talk about accountability, because while the government talks about being accountable I do not know who they are accountable to. Obviously, they have no regard whatsoever to the people who they represent in the Province and the people who they try to govern in this Province. They certainly have not been accountable to those very people.

Let me give you a few examples of what I am talking about. This government, when they sat in Opposition, talked about the need to be accountable, the need to be open, and they campaigned all through the election last October on the need to be accountable to the people of the Province. We heard it and we heard it every day. Mr. Chairman, lets talk about accountability. The Premier of the Province, when he campaigned in my district - and I am going to talk about my district. I am going to talk about accountability first, and then I am going to talk about openness.

When the Premier went to my district prior to and during the election last year he met with a number of councils in my region, and in particular those on Fogo Island. In every one of those instances, in every one of those meetings, the word hospital came up; because, as most people here know, and most people in this Province know, there was some dispute about the location of the hospital on Fogo Island, but by the time the election came up last year the people on Fogo Island were more concerned about whether or not the hospital would open than they were about the location of the hospital.

In discussions with the Premier - the now Premier of our Province - he was asked: Will our hospital open? In every instance he said: Yes, your hospital will open.

AN HON. MEMBER: What?

MR. REID: In every instance, on the brief visits that he made to my district, he said: Yes, the hospital will open.

Mr. Chairman, that was in October. The House opened here late in the spring of this year, and on a number of occasions, sitting right across the floor from the then Minister of Fisheries, the Member for Mount Pearl, I made comments across the floor, not in the public way with the microphone, but because we just sit some-fifteen or twenty feet apart, I asked her on a number of occasions: When is my hospital opening? Meaning, when is the new health care facility on Fogo Island opening? She would nod to me and say: I will let you know.

On one or two occasions, I said: What are they putting in the hospital? What portions are they going to open? Because I never dreamed - what I wanted to know, Mr. Chairman, was this: When we commissioned that hospital, when we agreed to build it, we said there would be twenty beds, ten acute care beds and ten chronic care beds. Anyone who does not know what a chronic care bed is, that is for an elderly person who, ladies and gentlemen, once they go into that bed, it is unlikely that they are going to leave to go home. They do not come there to be cured. They come there in a chronic care bed so that they can rest in peace for the remainder of their lives. The reason we put ten chronic care beds on Fogo Island was simple: It was an island.

AN HON. MEMBER: Closer to their families.

MR. REID: Exactly.

Rather than to have to take an elderly sick person and move them to Gander, Lewisporte, Grand Falls or Carbonear, where the individuals who came to visit them would have to take a ferry and probably would have to spend the night elsewhere if they went to visit a parent, we said we would put ten beds on the island, because the health care professionals in the Province told me, at the time, that was what was required to address the needs of the population on Fogo Island.

Mr. Chairman, when the Premier was asked if the beds were opening, the hospital was opening, he said yes. When I asked the Minister of Health, on numerous occasions prior to the Budget coming down, she told me the hospital would be opening and she would announce a date. Well, Mr. Chairman, she did not announce the date of the hospital opening. In fact, I do not know if there was ever a date announced that the hospital was opening. It is open, albeit only half, but when the Premier went to Gander shortly after the Budget came down in April of last year, in addressing the Chamber of Commerce, I believe it was, one of the media had the occasion to ask him - but more importantly, I think, not him but his PR director - when is the hospital on Fogo Island opening, and how many beds are going to open? The PR director gave the answer, not the Minister of Health who is responsible for that facility, not even the Premier, because I do not think even he had the audacity, I do not think even he was boldfaced enough to stand in front of a camera so that the people on Fogo Island could see him and say that: No, we are not opening the twenty-bed facility that I promised during the election. We are opening ten beds. I say, shame on the Premier - and talk to me about who is holding that man accountable for a commitment that he broke to the people of Fogo Island.

Mr. Chairman, he made another commitment not only to the people of Fogo Island but to all islands in Newfoundland and Labrador. I say Newfoundland and Labrador because there are island portions in Labrador as well, like Black Tickle, and you have island portions in other members' districts, like the member who represents Baie Verte. He has islands in his district, and I say the Member for Terra Nova has islands in this district that are accessible only by ferry. When visiting Fogo Island and Change Islands during the election - no, I am sorry, he did not go to Change Islands; I guess it wasn't important enough for him - but when in Fogo Island he made the commitment, like he made in the Blue Book, that ferry rates were going to be reduced, reduced to bring them in line with the cost of road transportation from these islands.

Well, let me tell you, for anyone who has not been to Fogo Island - and most of you haven't - if there were a road connecting Fogo Island to Farewell, on the mainland of this Province, it would cost you all of ten cents or fifteen cents to drive that distance. In saying that he was going to reduce ferry travel to bring it in line with road transportation, the people on Fogo Island, and I, myself, assumed that he was talking about reducing the rates to about fifteen cents or twenty cents, or even $1, from the current rate of anywhere from $16 to $26, and the Premier said: Don't worry about it. We are going to reduce those rates. He told everywhere in the Province, in his Blue Book: We are going to reduce the rates. But, guess what he did when the Budget came down? Did he reduce the rates? Did he reduce the ferry rates? No. He not only did not reduce the ferry rates, he announced that there would be a 25 per cent increase in ferry rates over the next three years. So, tell me about accountability and tell me why people on this side of the floor and people around the Island laugh when they hear about a government being accountable and open. Who is he accountable to? He made a promise; he broke the promise. What is the good to say you are accountable if nothing happens when you are not accountable? All it is, is talk, I say, Mr. Chairman.

The other thing he talked about, or he did not talk about, were the social services offices closing around the Province, because all during his tenure in the Opposition, when he sat over here, and all during the election debates, he talked about enhancing the services provided to the people of this Province. What did he do in the Budget? He eliminated the social services office on Fogo Island.

What else did he do? Did he mention the driver examiner who we used to send from Lewisporte down to Twillingate, down to New World Island, down to Change Islands, down to Fogo Island, once a week, so that he could examine or give a driver's test to an individual rather than have him get on a ferry for an hour, pay through the nose for that ferry ride because he already raised the rates, drive to Lewisporte and take a test? What did he do? He did not mention that during his great debates, when he stood on this side of the floor talking about enhancing services to people in this Province. What did he do? He eliminated the driver examiner. Now, most of us would say: Big deal - those of us who live right here in the city, most the time, because all you have to do is take your little trip out to Mount Pearl and in ten minutes from this building you can see a driver examiner on any given day. We do not have to get in line for a ferry. We do not have to take a one-hour ferry ride. We do not have to drive from Twillingate to Lewisporte, an hour-and-a-half.

Where is the accountability when an individual makes promises or leads people to believe that he is going to do something and does the exact opposite? Where is the accountability in that, I say to those opposite?

Mr. Chairman, before I sit down tonight in this family-friendly House, because that is another promise that glorious Premier, when he was Leader of the Opposition, said: When he became Premier, he is going to make the House of Assembly family-friendly.

To me, family-friendly means that occasionally, or most days of the week, you can go home with your family at 5:30 p.m. or 6:00 p.m., and he was going to make it family-friendly. Mr. Chairman, last Tuesday night we sat in this House until 1:00 a.m. When I say we, I say us in the Opposition and most of those in government, but not the Premier of this Province. He was not here. It is family-friendly for him.

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. REID: Mr. Chairman, just a minute to clue up, if you don't mind.

CHAIR: I remind the member that his time has expired.

MR. REID: By leave?

CHAIR: By leave?

Does the hon. member have leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. REID: I expected as much, Mr. Chairman. When you tell the truth, they do not want to hear it.

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. E. BYRNE: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: Order, please!

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

MR. E. BYRNE: I said to the Member for Twillingate & Fogo, yes, he could have leave to clue up. If he expected as much, it is because we normally do.

I will say, Mr. Chair, that it is unparliamentary to refer to a member not being in the House, whether that was last week, two years ago, or this morning. There were lots of members who were not here last night. We did not refer to that, nor would I do it today. The fact of the matter is that it is unparliamentary to refer to that. I ask the Chair to remind all hon. members of that.

CHAIR: Order, please!

The hon. the Government House Leader is quite correct. It is certainly unparliamentary to refer to members who are absent. Members, from time to time, have many reasons to be absent from this Chamber. The Premier, being a busy person, like every other member here, has reasons to be absent. I ask if members would refrain from referring to members being absent from the Chamber.

The hon. the Member for Twillingate & Fogo, a minute to clue up.

MR. REID: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am sorry, but the Government House Leader confused me; because, when I asked for leave, he said yes while shaking his head no. I apologize. I thank the Government House Leader for giving me leave.

We will go back to the commitment that the Premier gave for a family-friendly House. Last Tuesday night we sat here until 1:00 a.m. Last Thursday night we were here until 12:00 a.m. Last night, this House of Assembly was open until 10:00 p.m. Tonight, who knows? There is no reason. It is not that I am complaining about doing the work that I was elected to do, or doing the work that I am getting paid to do. The problem that I have is, when you talk about a family-friendly House, there is no reason in this world that this House could not have opened in September. If there is so much legislation that we have to sit here until 1:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m., I say to the Government House Leader and I say to the Premier, why didn't we open the House? If you are talking about accountability and openness, I suggest to those opposite that you should start listening to your own words and open the House of Assembly before November 16 so that we have ample opportunity to discuss bills that are of utmost importance to the people of my district and I am sure to the people of your own.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I will sit down, because I have not stopped, I have not finished, talking about the Premier yet, and his accountability. I have many, many more examples of that before I finish here tonight, and I do not care if it is 4 o'clock in the morning.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I thought for a minute I was so far away from the Chair that you could not see me. Thank you for recognizing me.

Mr. Chairman, I do want to say something about this amendment. Now, I know we are at Committee stage and we can talk at clause 1 about anything in the bill, but we do have an amendment before the House and I do want to pay some attention to the amendment because I think the amendment is a very positive one. I say that because I believe in the notion of academic freedom. Furthermore, I believe that this bill, contrary to what the Leader of the Opposition said, does have a lot to do with the notion of academic freedom.

What it is really about is recognizing that the university is a quasi-autonomous body, that they operate under a piece of legislation, are governed by a Board of Regents from a legislative point of view, or from an academic point of view by the Senate, and they make their own academic plans. They decide what programs to offer. They decide what emphasis to put on things. They decide how much money to put into research, and how much money to put into various other programs. That is something that they decide, that we asked them to do, as a people, and we support their efforts in doing so. I, for one, along with, I am sure, all other hon. members, am very proud of Memorial University and what they have been able to achieve for this Province since they became a university in 1949.

One of the greatest measures introduced by former Premier Smallwood was the creation of Memorial University. Some say it was his downfall by creating a great university that educated the people of Newfoundland and Labrador like never before, to the point where they recognized that his style of government and leadership was no longer -

MR. BARRETT: His management style.

MR. HARRIS: If the Member for Bellevue wants to participate in debate and talk about his great hero, Joey Smallwood, he can do so.

AN HON. MEMBER: On his own time.

MR. HARRIS: And he can do it on his own time.

I say that Memorial University was one of the greatest achievements of the Smallwood government and the Smallwood era. I am a graduate of that university, and I am very proud to be so, but I also recognize that if we are going to have a university there has to be a separation. The university is not an arm of government, I say to all members. The university is not an arm of government. The university has to have an independent intellectual life, an independent way of doing things. Obviously, they receive a great deal of public support and we expect great things from them. We expect great things from them, Mr. Chairman, but we cannot have the university being dictated to by the Cabinet, and that is essentially what this amendment says you cannot do. You cannot have the Lieutenant-Governor in Council telling the university: We don't like your plans, we want them changed, and here is how we want you to change them. Because that is what the act, before the amendment, said.

I want to say two things. I am glad the amendment came in, but I am also a little surprised, Mr. Chairman. Why is it that this great bill about transparency and accountability, the flagship of the new government, the new approach, why is it that such a fundamental amendment like this has to come in at the eleventh hour? Maybe the minister who sponsored the bill can answer this.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. HARRIS: You can answer it on your own time, I say to the Minister of Finance.

Obviously, the minister or his officials never thought it through. They got this great, humongous, universal, transparency and accountability bill, but they never considered that we have a university that is supposed to be quasi-autonomous; not totally autonomous, but they run their own show. They have the right to run their own show, and we want them to run their own show. We want them to be independent. We want them to be able to do what they have been able to do with the money that we have been able to supply them.

They have created an institution that is recognized throughout the country for being a positive opportunity for students in this Province and across the country to come and learn in an institution of higher learning, to become doctors and scientists and engineers and biologists and social workers. We have Ph.D programs in many disciplines. It is a great institution. In fact, it has been rated number five in Canada for comprehensive universities, and of that I am very proud. We much maintain that institution as an institution that is not the arm of some government policy of the day.

By exempting the university from these specific portions of this act which would have held to the Lieutenant-Governor in Council a lot of rights which no doubt they should have over the Liquor Control Board or over Newfoundland and Labrador Housing or over any of the myriad government bodies and agencies - no doubt the Cabinet should have control over certain types of agencies, but the university is in a category of its own with respect to that and I, for one, do not want to see that change because I believe we have to protect the autonomy of the university as a great institution.

That goes back many centuries, Mr. Chairman. Someone asked me, back here, in a bit of banter: What is the big deal about the university? Well, the notion of the university as an independent - I think they used to call it community of scholars. It goes back to Henry VIII, around that time, when the university was one of the only bodies in the United Kingdom that achieved some independent intellectual thought separate from what the King wanted to do and could do at his own behest, whether it be beheading one of his wives, or closing down monasteries, or whatever else he wanted to do. The universities of England were one of the few places that he could not control, in that they had some intellectual autonomy. They could develop intellectual ideas. They could develop a critique of government, and what is going on, and we preserve that today in recognizing the autonomy of the university, and I am glad the minister has brought this legislation in. I do not know if it was through the minister deciding to consult. I suspect that the president of the university, or somebody down there, got wind of this and they trotted in to see the minister of -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: I am sure you will.

AN HON. MEMBER: He was up here yesterday.

MR. HARRIS: I saw him up here yesterday.

I am sure they got wind of this legislation. How is it going to affect us? Surely, Mr. Minister, surely, Mr. Premier, you cannot be undoing 300 or 400 years of tradition and saying that the Cabinet is now going to tell the university what to do on an annual basis in terms of their plans and what is going on. Surely, you did not mean that. And the minister said: Oh, no, no, we did not mean that. We will change the bill.

I am glad they are changing the bill, don't get me wrong, but the question that I have is - we only came in here late in November. We have had about thirty pieces of legislation so far to deal with. This is one of the flagship ones, and this is a very significant fundamental change to that.

I know we also had to make provision for the Internal Economy Commission so that the House of Assembly was not subject to the iron fist of the Cabinet in telling the House of Assembly what to do. So we have a separate bill in relation to that, and now we are exempting the university from it.

You know, this is one of the dangers, I suppose, in not having lengthier sessions of the House where legislation comes forward, people have a chance to look at it, a chance to deal with it in smaller committees. This is not something that should be brought in at the eleventh hour on the floor of the House of Assembly.

If the minister and his government were so confident of their legislation or their legislative approach, they could circulate a draft of the legislation. They could ask for comments.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. HARRIS: They could have a legislative committee look at the legislation and come up with the philosophy and the problems and view these issues so the government would not be embarrassing itself by coming in at the eleventh hour, saying: Uh-oh, it looks like we are going to do something bad to the university; we had better fix it.

Having said that, there is one other point I want to make. Perhaps the minister, who seems very anxious to speak now, when he does get up, will explain this one as well.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. HARRIS: Oh, no, we can go back and forth. I am only being a little bit facetious. I know that you do seem anxious to speak. You do seem anxious to speak. I see you jumping up in your seat, so you will have a chance now in a second.

While you are on your feet, I say to the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board, perhaps you can explain clause 2 of the bill, because what that does - and I can understand why it does what it does for the university, because what it says is that if there is a performance contract between the chair of a governing body and the chief executive office - and in respect of the university I would understand that to be the Chairman of the Board of Regents and the president - that contract will not be dictated by the Lieutenant-Governor in Council -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. HARRIS: - but the Lieutenant-Governor in Council shall determine the matters to be included in a contract between a deputy minister of a department and the minister responsible for the department, so the Lieutenant-Governor in Council is going to determine the contents of those agreements but not the ones for the university.

Now, it does not mention the university in the amendment. What it says is, it leaves open that contracts between a chair of a governing body and a chief executive officer - presumably the content will be decided by the governing body. My question is: What other bodies, aside from the university, will that now apply to? Because this amendment is not aimed at the university. It covers the university, but I am wondering what other bodies would be covered by the new clause 21.

While we are at it, Mr. Chairman, perhaps the minister can explain to me, and I may be reading this wrong, but I have talked to a couple of other members of the House, and reading 21.(1) which is now being referenced here, it says, "The responsible minister of a department shall enter into a performance contract with the deputy minister of that department...".

I would have thought it would have been the other way around, because surely the minister does not have to enter into a performance contract with the deputy. I would expect it would be the other way around because the minister is responsible to the House, not to the deputy. That may just be a flip of the wording there, but maybe he can comment on that while he is at it.

I do want to say that I am pleased that the Minister of Education was moved to bring this amendment to the House. I believe it is important that we pass it, because I believe it is important that we respect the academic autonomy of the university in making its own plans, not that government cannot influence them and have a chat and suggest things and make recommendations and provide the money or not, depending on the circumstances, but within its own budgetary allocations the university should have as much autonomy as we can allow them to have and I think that this legislation helps to do that.

CHAIR: Order, please!

I remind the hon. Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi that his time has expired.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I will do the latter point first. I guess the CEOs or the presidents or whatever the case may be with government entities report to their board, therefore they enter into a contract with that respective board in terms of the contract. Of course, just to expand there, because government departments have a deputy minister and a minister, the Lieutenant-Governor in Council then will set out the matters to be included in a contract between, let's say the Minister of Education and the deputy or the Minister of Finance and the deputy or whatever.

With reference to your other question on consultation: Discussions have been held with officials of government and Memorial University. When the bill was drafted initially there was a clause put in there that we felt satisfied that. At the eleventh hour, on yesterday I received a call that they had some concerns and asked to have a meeting. Myself and the Minister of Education met with them, immediately upon their request, and they raised these issues then, maybe in closer scrutiny or sought opinions or whatever. We came back ASAP, and they thanked us for the expeditious setting up of the meeting, immediately, and listening to their concerns. That is the reason why, at the eleventh hour, they came to us with it. We wanted to try and accommodate that in the best interests of academic freedom. That is why that happened.

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to rise and have a few words with regards to Bill 39, which is the bill that looks at transparency and accountability.

Mr. Chairman, I believe that every government should be transparent, they should be accountable, and they should have openness when it comes to dealing with the issues of the public. Mr. Chairman, I think that transparency starts right in this House and right in the Caucus and the government and the Opposition parties and so on.

What we saw this evening, in my opinion, was an amendment that was brought forward at the eleventh hour to Bill 39. Mr. Chairman, I am wondering if there was even consultation within the Caucus before this was done. I would like to know how transparent this amendment was within their own Caucus, knowing full well that the Member for Topsail, who was the former Auditor General, would have recommended against what has been asked as an amendment to this legislation this evening. I would like to know what kind of consultation was done with regard to transparency on this bill, the amendment that was brought forward with the Caucus, and I would be more than anxious to know what the view of the Member for Topsail is with regard to that amendment, in light of the fact that she performed as Auditor General for ten years in the Province and made recommendations around accountability and transparency and openness. I would like to know what her view would be with regard to that amendment this evening.

Mr. Chairman, I think that you should practice what you preach. What I have seen in this government, over the last number of months, was a leadership style out there in the Province that I can honestly say, when I turn on the news every evening now, I see every business, every corporation, following that same leadership style. You know what it is? It is all about profitability, it is all about affordability, and it is never about serving people for the benefit of serving them.

Mr. Chairman, I know all too well, because what we have seen with the Premier, when he rejected projects in this Province, when he went out and amalgamated health boards in this Province, saying government could not afford to have this type of infrastructure, to have all of these boards throughout the Province - we have to downsize, we have to be more economical, we have to look at how we can provide a more effective service. Well, do you know something? That is what every business in this Province is doing right now. That is why we are seeing decisions like are coming from FPI, to close down plants in this Province, plants like Harbour Breton and Fortune who are employing 700 people. All of a sudden, they find a way that they can be more profitable, and it is acceptable because it is the leadership style that is being shown by the government of the day.

Mr. Chairman, I live in a district where there was a road proposed to be built to the community of Williams Harbour, less than twenty kilometres, less than $6 million to connect another community to a highway in this Province. When the government rejected it, do you know what their response was? We did an assessment. We did an economic assessment and it does not look like it is economically viable to build a road into this community. Now, that was the attitude, the economically viable attitude, to providing infrastructure to a community. Then you have to sit down and wonder why businesses in this Province are towing that line! Mr. Chairman, the example has been set, the precedence has been set, and they understand that it is perfectly acceptable to do that; perfectly acceptable. When the government says it is not economical viable to build five kilometres of road to a community that has no access to the outside world, then it is alright for the businesses to say, I am not providing a service in this community any longer, I am not providing fuel in this community any longer, because it is not profitable, it is not economically viable.

Mr. Chairman, Air Labrador announced this week they were going to pull their services out of Stephenville. Now, I understand they made the Member for Stephenville, the Member for the St. Anthony area, and myself, aware of it on Thursday afternoon. I was in the House of Assembly when the letters were hand delivered to each of us. I understood that Air Labrador was supposed to be in Stephenville the next day for a meeting with the Airport Corporation and the MHA, and they were called and told not to show up for the meeting on Friday, after just announcing they were going to shut down their air service going into the member's district. Well, Mr. Chairman, I was absolutely floored when I heard it, but then I heard on Monday that herself and the Member for Port au Port were scrambling to try and get a meeting to talk about this and see what was going to happen.

Let me get back to my point and my point is this: Air Labrador made the announcement to pull out of Stephenville, St. Anthony and communities in my district, and when I went to meet with them over the weekend - because, unlike the Member for Stephenville, I did not cancel the meeting on Friday and try and get another one on Monday. I met with them, Mr. Chairman, on several occasions.

MS BURKE: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: Order, please!

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

MS BURKE: I would just like to clarify a point. On Friday, I had a meeting scheduled with some people in Stephenville, the Chamber of Commerce and some others, and I had another meeting here in St. John's. I had to cancel my attendance, but the Member for Port au Port was there. Mr. Chairman, that meeting on Friday was not with Air Labrador.

CHAIR: There is no point of order.

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

MS JONES: Mr. Chairman, Air Labrador was invited on Wednesday for a meeting in Stephenville with the airport committee, with the leaders in the community, along with the Member for Port au Port and the Member for Stephenville. On Thursday, they were contacted -

MR. J. HODDER: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for Port au Port.

MR. J. HODDER: Mr. Chairman, I just cannot sit here and listen to the member utter falsehoods. That is all I can say. First of all, Mr. Chairman, I was in Stephenville for a meeting on Friday. I flew over on Thursday night. I was told from my office, after I got over there, that Air Labrador was pulling out. I was invited to a meeting, but it was on Monday the 13th, I believe. That was the date that the meeting was set. Anything that the member is saying over there is completely false.

CHAIR (Harding): There is no point of order.

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

MS JONES: Mr. Chairman, the company was contacted on Wednesday by officials in Stephenville with the Airport Corporation. They were invited for a meeting on Friday, a meeting, Mr. Chairman, that both the members for the area confirmed that they would be in attendance.

MR. J. HODDER: A point of order, Mr. Chairman.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Port au Port.

MR. J. HODDER: Mr. Chairman, I have to correct the hon. member again. I was in Stephenville on Friday. I was meeting with the Airport Corporation. To my knowledge, Air Labrador was not invited to that meeting. The meeting took place and it lasted over five hours.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

CHAIR: Order, please!

There is no point of order.

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

MS JONES: No, Mr. Chairman, there is no point of order, but for the record I will clarify. I was told by Air Labrador they were invited to a meeting on Friday in Stephenville. I was told also, Mr. Chairman, that they received a call on Thursday from Stephenville saying: Our agenda is booked, we have no room to get you on the agenda now for Friday, so we will have to reschedule the meeting at another time.

Mr. Chairman, the information was passed on to me by the Vice-President of the company. What I said, and I will say it again, Mr. Chairman, is that on Thursday evening in this Legislature a letter was delivered to myself and other members here in this House from Air Labrador notifying us that they were pulling out services in Stephenville, St. Anthony and in my district. It was shortly after that, the next day, when I contacted to meet with the company immediately, Mr. Chairman, that I learned that they had been called and told that there was no room on the agenda for them on Friday in Stephenville. Then later, Mr. Chairman, I learned that both members had called looking for meetings themselves to discuss this issue with the company on Monday afternoon.

MS BURKE: A point of order, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: Order, please!

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Chairman, if the Stephenville Airport Corporation had any intention to meet with Air Labrador on Friday or any other day, they do not have to filter their meetings or get permission to meet with any company through me.

Mr. Chairman, I received correspondence from Air Labrador, and they requested a meeting, the same as the Member for Port au Port. Upon receiving the letter, we contacted Air Labrador and scheduled a meeting which happened to be December 13.

CHAIR: There is no point of order again.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MS JONES: I get ten minutes. Every time there is an intervening speaker, I get ten more minutes

Mr. Chairman, maybe the Member for Stephenville did not organize the meeting, maybe it was organized by someone else. Maybe she was not aware that Air Labrador had been called, and then called -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

MS JONES: - and said they were not invited. I am glad she cleared that up, because the sequence that I explained was correct, Mr. Chairman, and the information was passed on to me by the company.

CHAIR: Order, please!

I remind the hon. Member for Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair that her time has expired.

MS JONES: Mr. Chairman, may I, by leave? I was interrupted on four different occasions while I was trying to get my point of view across.

CHAIR: By leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: No leave.

CHAIR: No leave.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The hon. member asked a question and I want to answer it. She talked about the consultation process. There was fairly extensive consultation on this bill. For example, I will just tell you some of the people who were consulted and where. I have a complete list but I will tell you some of those and where.

There was a meeting in Corner Brook with representatives from -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SULLIVAN: Mr. Chairman, she talked about consultation and who was there, and several members of the Opposition, so whether she wants it or not, I am going to indicate who was in attendance.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. SULLIVAN: Representatives from the Western School Board were present in Corner Brook. We had the Western Health Care Corporation in Corner Brook. We had the Sir Wilfred Grenfell College available at the briefing in Corner Brook. We had College of the North Atlantic, Health and Community Services Western, and we had Marble Mountain Development Corporation. The names of who attended are certainly on file. I don't have them with me personally.

There was a meeting held in Happy Valley-Goose Bay. They had the Labrador Educational Board, and Labrador and Aboriginal Affairs were in attendance. There was a separate meeting where they went to the Health Labrador Corporation office and had a formal briefing.

There was a consultation in Gander. At the meeting in Gander were representatives from the Central East Health Care Institutions Boards, Health and Community Services Eastern Region, Peninsulas Health Care Corporation, Newfoundland and Labrador Real Estate Foundation, and the Central West Health Care Corporation. There is a list of attendees on file.

There was a meeting in St. John's, and shown on my list there were fifty-seven. I am not sure if there were fifty-seven attended the St. John's one, or groups represented overall. There were consultations in all of these. In addition, there were consultations when it was raised with Memorial, and we figured, when the bill was drafted, that it satisfied the concerns.

In answer to the hon. Member for Signal Hill-Quidi, when it came to our attention yesterday that there was an eleventh hour thing, that they anticipated change, we quickly met with the minister and officials from the university and we resolved that.

I think there was fairly extensive consultation there. We had officials who went out, and we heard those. They documented the comments, their concerns and so on, what they were. A very extensive consultation occurred with these. In fact, one person devoted almost their sole time to dealing with all of these things for the past period of time.

I think, Mr. Chair, I just wanted to indicate that it was fairly extensive. In fact, I had meetings with a director who dealt with that, and I had numerous discussions on what was going on and what was occurring in this process.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

CHAIR: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am glad to hear the minister participate in the debate here at the Committee stage. Again, it is nice to see the trained group opposite applauding what he just said about the consultation, but herein is the problem again. They obviously did not listen to what he said. He went out and he had this consultation before the bill was drafted. A good idea, I say. So, he was talking about general concepts, talking about the idea of accountability, talking about the idea of transparency. Sure, why wouldn't agencies say yes? What are they going to do? What do you expect them to do, say that we disagree with being transparent and open and accountable?

That is what the consultation was about. Then he admitted, had they listened - because they were not, you see; they did not listen to what their own minister even said, the man in whose name the bill is sponsored in the House of Assembly - he said: Before we drafted the bill, before it even went into a draft form, we talked to them. Here is the most telling part, because this is how this government operates regularly, Mr. Chairman. He said: Then, after we had a general consultation about the concept of openness and accountability and transparency, then we drafted the bill and we assumed - listen to the words, Mr. Chairman - that what we wrote in the bill took into account what they told us. But, did they ever go back to the same ones that he listed, the Grenfell group in Corner Brook, and show them this piece of legislation that we have before us? The answer is, absolutely not.

Now, one group took a special interest in it and asked to see it, which is the university. They have had one meeting, one meeting only, with one group since these words that they put together, and it is very telling, the words that they assumed, because it is their opinion only that this satisfied what all those other diverse groups had said in a general consultation about whether or not you agree with transparency and openness.

Of course they all expressed the willingness to be more transparent and open, because they are all funded by the government, they are all accessing and spending taxpayers' dollars, and they would never say anything but that we agree to be transparent and open. None of them, other than the university, have seen the rules that are put in here, the actual words that were then drafted, dreamed up and concocted by the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board and maybe one or two others. I doubt it. I doubt it, because I am telling you what: there were two of them who worked on this amendment that we are talking about right now, and nobody else saw it. Nobody else saw it. They walked it into this Legislature. Those who saw it before it hit the Table, the same time we saw it, can stand on their feet right now and tell the world, Mr. Chairman, that I am wrong, because they did not see it. This time I do not know but the Government House Leader did not even see it, because he did not notify our House Leader that there was an amendment coming. They usually work very closely together in co-operation, in trying to get these things facilitated.

I asked our House Leader: Did we have any notice today that there was going to be an amendment introduced by the government itself, to its own bill? He said: No, we heard about it around suppertime or so.

AN HON. MEMBER: Before supper.

MR. GRIMES: Before supper.

It took them that long, then, to go out. Then, in scurries the Minister of Education with the actual piece of paper and passes it to us. He showed it to the Member for Topsail a few minutes ago. It was the first time she saw it. No big discussion in the caucus, no big consultation with their own group. He gets up and talks about - and they all applaud and say: Oh, isn't that wonderful? Our minister just demonstrated that we did consult.

There has been no consultation on the bill. That is the fact. If this is to be the centrepiece for this government, if this is to be what they are going to make the speeches about and brag about for the next six months, the next year, the next year-and-a-half, the next two years, then why didn't they go out and show it to a few people, like the university, after they had the words put together? Not in a general discussion about consultation or about openness and transparency, but the actual words.

Now what you have is this: You have this centrepiece of legislation. You have a minister who stakes his reputation on attention to minute and meticulous detail, and what is he doing in here? He admits, at the eleventh hour - admittedly at the eleventh hour - what is he doing? He is amending his own piece of work based on the one group that has seen it since it was written.

I wonder what amendments the College of the North Atlantic would like to see now if they were given the bill, instead of involved in a general discussion about the concept of openness and transparency?

Let me ask about a few others. I wonder about the health boards. I agree with the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi, because my point at second reading is, I do not think any of this is necessary anyway and I am glad to see an amendment that says, don't force it on the university. I have said in second reading, you should not be forcing this make-work project on anybody. You do not need to be forcing this make-work project on anybody.

Will I support the amendment that at least the university is going to be treated with some dignity and some respect? Absolutely, I will, but what about the College of the North Atlantic? What about our health boards out there? The health boards are not going to be shown any respect. The Minister of Health and Community Services is going to reserve the right, absolutely reserve the right, to tell them what to put in a plan. Their board is not going to be able to amend it afterwards, like the Board of Regents.

Back to the Minister of Education, who is sponsoring this amendment. He is saying that the Board of Regents of the university should reserve the right to make final amendments to the plans, instead of himself, as the minister, out of respect for academic freedom and out of respect for the traditions at the university.

The Member for Topsail disagrees with that, I think. Others over there do not know if they agree or disagree, because I do not believe it is a big issue with most of them. I do not think they are paying much attention to it. They are going along with it because the government said they are going to do it. It is supposed to be some kind of big deal. They are going to vote whatever way they are told to vote, and it will be as simple as that, no big deal.

So, what have we now? An admission that this centrepiece, the very cornerstone of this session, this act which is supposed to epitomize everything new and fresh and different and open that this governments says they represent, it is shown to be, instead of a great piece of work done with meticulous and minute detail, with great consultation over the last year, it is sloppy, it is haphazard. At the last minute, because one group actually got to see the words, they agree to amend it.

Well, why don't you send it out and let the College of the North Atlantic have a look at it? Why don't you let the health boards now look at what you actually wrote? Why don't you let our education boards - we have respect for them. I am sure the Minister of Education has respect for the education boards who used to be elected and are going to be elected again. Are they going to have any last say in the plan? No, they are not. The minister is going to do that himself.

What about Hydro? What about the Public Utilities Board? What about the Public Service Commission? What about the Government Purchasing Agency that they just changed into an outside arm's-length removed? What about the so called Independent Licencing Board for the fishery? Who is going to have the last say in that? The minister, which is what the Member for Topsail believed in and supported at second reading when she said she supported the bill. We have one exemption because one group saw it. Glad to see it happen, but it shows, Mr. Chairman, it is more telling than anything, about the fact that this is very poorly thought out. It was not done in any real consultative fashion, was not done in an open transparent fashion at all. It was open and transparent to one group who sought it out and wanted to see the bill. They have seen it, and as a result of that one group seeing it, the government is in here changing their own law; changing their own law at the last minute.

I wonder if other ministers might support amendments for other groups, if they would ever let them see the new bill first. Would they ever let them see the new bill first? Of course not, but then we are supposed to believe that this is openness, this is transparency, this is accountability. You are not allowed to see the bill. The very bill that establishes a new law requiring openness and accountability, you are not allowed to see it. If you are the Board of Directors of the College of the North Atlantic you are not allowed to see it. They have not been told yet whether they are category one, category two or category three.

Guess what they found out just by talking to the university? There is another part to this amendment that I did not address the last time I rose, and I might have to stand up eight or ten more times yet, Mr. Chairman, to get my point across. The fact of the matter is this, there is the other part about the amendment to section 21.(2) of the bill, very telling, and let me go through the points again. The very meticulous Minister of Finance who pays minute attention to detail, so he wants everybody in the Province to believe - I have known the difference ever since I have known the man, but he wants to make people believe that he is a man of detail. I believe members in this House, the members on that side, have been sort of sucked into that persona. They think that he is the most meticulous detailed person in the world as far as they know, and nothing would get by this minister because he spends all of his time pouring over things, reading them over and over again, checking the fine print, looking at the small numbers, turning behind the page to make sure that there is nothing missing, noting hidden. Well, guess what he missed in his own bill? Section 20 which is now being amended, not only for the university. The rest, when the Minister of Education spoke, says: It is for the university because of academic freedom. He did not talk about the fact that there is another huge change - a huge change! - being proposed right here for all of the entities outside of government departments.

CHAIR: Order, please!

I remind the hon. the Leader of the Opposition that his time is expired.

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

That is a point I wanted to make in some detail, so I will do it in my next representation in a few minutes from now.

CHAIR: The hon. the Minister of Education.

MR. HEDDERSON: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just in response to some of the comments. First of all, Mr. Chair, I guess, to bring an understanding that we are talking about an amendment here, and the amendment is what, basically, I am putting forth and that is what I am speaking to. I feel very, very strongly that the university is, indeed, an exception, and that is what I have put forth, an exception because of the nature of the university, of what a university is. It is important that we understand that I, as the Minister of Education, certainly wanted greater certainty to ensure that the academic freedom of the university is, indeed, covered by this particular bill. The way to do it was to put forth an amendment. Be it in the eleventh hour, I believe it to be a necessary amendment and I stand behind that.

With regard to other entities, as the Leader of the Opposition was just referring to, I certainly see the university as different from other entities, simply because of the nature of their role and that the aspect of academic freedom applies here. When we talk about school boards and we talk about colleges and health care boards, certainly, I say to the Leader of the Opposition, I do have great respect for those boards, those entities, but, as a government, with those particular bodies, the government does establish the nature and the content of the services and the programs that these bodies offer and deliver. Therefore, I see these bodies as being covered by this legislation and this bill, but I do not see the University covered in that manner. It is because of that, that I put forth this amendment, to exempt the university not from the whole bill but from sections of the bill which, certainly, may call into question the integrity of our university. It is the last thing in the world that I would want, that this government would want, to in any way damage the reputation or the integrity of our University. It has already been mentioned by members on the other side that this University deserves, in this case, exemption, if you want to call it special attention, or whatever. Again, I say to the members, it is because of the nature of the University that distinguishes them from the other bodies that have been referenced.

With regard to accountability, transparency, with regard to other bodies, this bill certainly adequately covers that and has my full support, except in this case. Again, whether it is the eleventh hour or whatever, I feel it was necessary to bring forth the amendment. The amendment is on the table and it is generating good debate. Again I would ask members to concentrate on the amendment and then we can move on and perhaps look at other aspects of the bill.

Again, I am asking the support of the members to make sure that this amendment does, indeed, go through.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for Topsail.

MS E. MARSHALL: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I rose in this House last week and spoke in support of Bill 39, but I would like to go on the record, Mr. Chair, tonight to indicate that I do not support the amendments to the bill. I do not feel that there should be one agency of the Crown singled out for exemption under the legislation. I feel that all agencies of the Crown should be held accountable and that the legislation should apply to all agencies.

Memorial University is an agency of the Crown. It was created by government. The majority of its board is appointed by government and it receives a significant amount of money from government. Therefore, it should be held accountable the same as all other agencies of the Crown. I do not accept the argument with regard to academic freedom.

The last thing I would like to say, Mr. Chair, is that while I support the bill, as it was tabled in the House last week, I do not support the amendments.

Thank you.

CHAIR: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As I was indicating in some references earlier, I did not think so because of the commentary that the Member for Topsail had made in supporting the bill in the first instance. As I indicated, I do not agree with her, because, as I said before, I support the amendments because I think the whole concept and the whole thing is a make-work project. I am glad to see - that participation in the debate is real openness, that is somebody standing on their feet and telling the world, without reservation and not being dictated to by anybody else, what they feel and what they believe.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. GRIMES: There should be more of that, I would suggest. There should be a lot more of that, but we are sure not going to see much more of it here this evening.

Let me make this other point, that I started to, with respect to the amendment. Again, we have done this before in the Legislature. We have an amendment before us. My understanding of it is this, and I say this: I could stand up, the Member for Topsail can stand up another twenty, thirty, forty times, because we are not operating under closure, so you can speak as many times as you like. I jokingly said earlier, by the way, that we have unlimited time in committee. So we do. It is just that at least two people have to be speaking. It is not one person going on constantly. Two people can speak, until the cows come home, in committee, to use a phrase.

AN HON. MEMBER: That sounds familiar.

MR. GRIMES: I heard that somewhere before in the last year, right until the cows come home. I do not intend to do that.

We have an amendment before us. I indicate, that certainly with the part of the University, I would like to see a much bigger amendment. I would like to see the whole bill scrapped. I have made that point several times before. We are not going to accomplish that, so I would, at least, like to see the shackles taken off the University. I will support that. When we get a chance to vote for that, I am going to support that. We might even have a standing vote, so I can stand for it and the Member for Topsail can stand against it, to show the kind of debate that is in the Legislature this evening. There might even be members on this side of the House, because there are free voters over here. There might be three or four here in the Liberal caucus who do not support this amendment either. They might agree with the Member for Topsail. I am not one of them, but it is interesting to see the debate.

Let me get to the second point. The second point, Mr. Chairman, I was about to make the last time is much bigger and much more extensive and much broader and much more far-reaching than just the University. As I understand it, there are two clauses to the amendment and when the vote is done we will vote to approve clause 1 in the amendment, normally, and vote to move clause 2 in the amendment. I guess the House Leaders can look at that, because there are two separate issues.

AN HON. MEMBER: That is how it goes.

MR. GRIMES: That how it goes, okay. I am glad to have that confirmed.

Mr. Chairman, on the second one - let me make these few points about the second change, because the first change is this. The first change is an acknowledgment that they did not describe, what they were going to introduce in terms of openness, accountability and requirements for plans, very well at all to the University in the minister's much ballyhooed consultation that he bragged about. They could not have described it very well because he said, we thought - we assumed was the word - we assumed that we incorporated their thoughts into the bill.

There is one other point before I leave that one. If you listen closely to what he said, which I try to do, he said: The University called us after they saw the bill. Very telling! The Minister of Education did not say: I, then, took the bill and sent it over to the University in the spirit of openness and transparency and accountability and said, have a look at this now, people, and see if this reflects our earlier general conversation. That did not happen. The Minister of Finance admits that did not happen.

This new found version and vision of openness and accountability - a meeting only occurred, not because the government offered information, it is because they had enough foresight, themselves, and enough interest, to go seek out the information and request a meeting. Otherwise, I think, what we have heard admitted here tonight, is that meeting with the University would never have occurred, because it did not happen at the undertaking of the government, at the request of the government. It happened because the University requested a meeting.

MR. SULLIVAN: The University, they saw it before (inaudible) and we made a change.

MR. GRIMES: Thank you.

MR. SULLIVAN: We thought they were happy with it.

MR. GRIMES: Thank you.

We thought they were happy with it! Then they saw the real version - he is confirming it again - and they asked for another meeting. They asked for another meeting. Now it is admitted by both ministers that we are here at, I guess now it is the eleventh-and-a-half hour trying to accommodate the change that they are seeking.

Let me look at the more general one and get back to the Minister of Finance who is sponsoring the bill. The current bill talks about these performance contracts, "The responsible minister of a department shall enter into a performance contract with the deputy minister..." By the way, just as an aside, I believe if you look at any of this kind of legislation anywhere else in the country, it is written the other way around. It is a small point but, usually, the political ministers are the people with the responsibility and empowered by the government and there should be somebody entering into contracts with them. This is written, by the way, if you study and read English, as if the minister has to sign a contract with the deputy. The deputy decides what all the terms and conditions are and the deputy decides whether or not the minister is doing a good job. Now, there is a good twist on openness and accountability. We are passing over the final say, if you read it in English. I am telling you, read it in English, and, I believe, if that was sent to a court of law to be upheld, it means that the minister is subservient to the deputy. Is that the intent I wonder? Maybe the minister will answer that the next time he speaks.

In other words, the Minister of Innovation, Trade and Rural Destruction has to go into Dr. Doug House, who is the real minister, and sign a performance contract with Dr. House and he decides whether or not she is doing her job. That is how you read it. That is how it reads in English. I do not know how it reads in some other language, but that is how it reads in English. That is an aside, Mr. Chairman.

The other point is this, in the same clause which we are now being asked to amend it says: the chairperson of the governing body - take the health board, the health board is an example - shall enter into a performance contract with the Chief Executive Officer. Take a school board, better still, going to be elected again sometime soon. The school board chair gets elected. The school board chair has to trod in on their hands and knees to the CEO that they pick and say: Oh, please, can I sign a contract with you? You just got elected, man! You just got elected and now you have to go in and beg for the permission to sign a performance contract. That may be the way that was envisaged by the Member for Topsail and others who believe that politicians - second-class citizens, I guess; pass it over to the bureaucracy, let the auditors run it like the Auditor General, let chartered accountants run it. Do not let politicians have a say, do not let politicians influence policy, let the bureaucrats run it all. I do not know why we bother to go out and knock on doors. Why don't we send the deputy ministers and the CEO's out and let them get elected because that is the way this is written.

Here is the point, and it is a serious one, Mr. Chairman, a very serious point. Both of these contracts, whether it is a minister and a deputy, or a CEO and a chair, the part was there which said that the Cabinet was going to determine the matters to be included in the contract. The Cabinet - that is the way the bill was written, a minute detail looked at for a full year by the Minister of Finance and after a full year of study, thought, consideration and deliberation, he said: That is the way it should be written.

The Health Corporation for St. John's, with the Chair of the Board, and with Mr. Tilley, who has been down there for a number of years, were going to enter into a performance contract. I would expect that Mr. Tilley was really going to enter into a performance contract with the board. It reads the other way around. Then the Cabinet, by the way, was going to say what happened to that, but the amendment came here tonight, because it was picked up by the University, and the amendment says: Oh, we are not doing that anymore. That is not what we meant to do. We certainly did not mean to do it, or the University did not want it done. When there is a performance contract, they are willing to have a performance contract, apparently, between the Chair of the Board of Regents, Mr. Lorne Wheeler, who was just appointed by the current government - a great educator, a great man, have known him all my life and have a lot of respect for him, Chair of the Board of Regents, he is the Chair. The CEO in that circumstance, by the way, is Dr. Axel Meisen, the president.

One of them - I do not know which one; it depends on how you read it - is going to enter into a performance contract with the other one. What the law said, by the way, is that it did not matter that is was over there at that arm's-length removed university, that academic freedom and that autonomy, the Cabinet was still going to determine what went in the contract.

Guess what they have said now with this amendment? We are not going to have the Cabinet look at the contract over at the university, but not only at the university; they have now changed their minds. The Minister of Finance is admitting he must have missed something for the first time in his life, as incredulous as that could be.

Guess what he missed? He is not going to have the Cabinet look at the contracts for any of the outside agencies any more. Not for the Hydro board, not for the PUB, not for the Public Service Commission, not for the Liquor Corporation. He is going to tell them what to do -

CHAIR: Order, please!

I remind the hon. the Leader of the Opposition that his time has lapsed.

MR. GRIMES: By leave, Mr. Chairman, if I could finish this point, because I may not speak to this again. Just to finish the point.

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

CHAIR: By leave.

MR. GRIMES: Generally speaking, they have said: We have realized that we have made a mistake, that the Cabinet has no business deciding what the performance contracts are for the outside agencies. The Cabinet is now only going to decide what the performance contracts are in the government departments, between the minister and the deputy. A huge, huge, huge change that they also only just discovered within the last little while and mainly because one agency brought it to their attention, being the university, and now they have rethought, all of a sudden, the whole thing.

Let me make the point again: sloppy, haphazard, poorly thought out, ill-conceived, in my view, in the very essence of it. I guess I might even support the second part of the amendment, too, because I do not believe that the Cabinet has any business having the performance contracts over Hydro in the first place, so why should they decide what is in it? We will let the great Dean MacDonald figure that out, with Bill Wells over there. I am sure, between the two of them, they will be able to figure out what should go in a contract - between the two of them - and they will figure out who is making a contact with whom before it is all over.

The Cabinet has come to their great senses today and decided to stay out of that. They are going to stay out of that. That is how well-thought-out this is; tongue-in-cheek, by the way, Mr. Minister, I say, in case he didn't get it. What a great job he did on this piece of legislation. What a fantastic job. No loopholes in this. No holes in this. It took them a full year to put this together, and now they are discovering they have made grievous mistakes and are going to change fundamental pieces that the Member for Topsail cannot even agree with, in their own caucus. It is hard to believe.

In the meantime, I am going to support both the amendments because I would like to support the trashing of the whole, complete, entire bill.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am just going to get back to my comments on Bill 39 that I started earlier. Mr. Chairman, when I spoke earlier, I talked about the amendment that the member had brought forward. I did question the Member for Topsail, and I am pleased to see that the member did stand on her feet this evening in the House of Assembly and back up what she has been saying for the past ten years in recommendations in Auditor General reports to the government. She didn't get up and scurry out of the House of Assembly and hide out in the caucus room. Indeed, she did not. She stood with courage and integrity and stated her position for the record, no matter how different it was from other members of this Legislature. Mr. Chairman, that is what it is supposed to be. When you talk about accountability, that is what accountability is, Mr. Chairman.

When I was talking earlier, I talked about leading by example, and I was using an example of businesses in this Province taking the lead of the government of the day. The lead of the government of the day is one that says, if it is not profitable, if it is not affordable, if it does not earn dividends to the revenues of this Province, then we will have nothing to do with it. That is the same line that businesses in this Province are taking today.

Mr. Chairman, I was talking about the situation with Air Labrador before I was interrupted by people making speeches on points of order, but what I was saying about Air Labrador was this: It is a company that, all of a sudden, finds itself in a position where they are delivering services to parts of our Province, some of the rural parts of our Province, and it is not profitable for them to do it any more. So, they have made a decision. They have made a decision that falls in line with the government policy of the day, the government policy of the day that speaks to accountability as one that says, if it is not affordable and if it is not profitable then it will not be done.

That is the line that businesses are taking, and that is why they have made the decision now to pull their services out of these areas of the Province, because if government does not do something because it is not profitable and it is not economically viable, why should I do it as a business in this Province? Why should I continue to build and deliver services to the people of this Province? Mr. Chairman, when you start having those things happen, then you have some real, major, challenges to deal with in areas of our Province.

Look at FPI. FPI is the perfect example of a business taking the line of a government. Mr. Chairman, they went out and closed down plants in this Province. They are going to put over 700 people out of work. Mr. Chairman, do you know something? They think that is perfectly alright, because they have just seen a government put thousands of people out of work. Why? Because we could not afford to have them any more. Why? Because we have too many boards, we have too many of this, we have too many of that. We are downscaling. We are tightening our operation.

That is the line, Mr. Chairman, so why won't companies do it? It is not because they are not making a profit, because FPI is making a profit. They just want to make more of a profit, I say to hon. members. What are they doing? They are taking their lead from the Premier of the Province. They are following the precedent that has been set by the government opposite. Mr. Chairman, they are taking the example that the government is using, and they are applying it to their own operations in different parts of this Province.

I listened, Mr. Chairman, to the new association of fish processors in the Province today. Do you know what they are saying? Do you know what they are saying, Mr. Chairman? That there are going to be a lot more plants in this Province close. Do you know something? It does not come as any big surprise to me, because no one on that side of the House has stood up to FPI, Mr. Chairman. Accountable, transparent, open, whatever you want to call it, they did not use the act of the Legislature to try and stop what was happening because they could not, because the companies were practicing the philosophy and the principles of the government opposite.

Mr. Chairman, I say that with great certainty because this is a government who refused to build a road to one of the most rural communities in this Province and connect them to a highway at a cost of $5 million to $6 million. Do you know why they did not do it, Mr. Chairman? Because they did an assessment and it was not economically viable. It was not economically viable to provide a transportation network to people in this Province. Then you scratch your head and wonder why there are fish companies closing down their plants. Well, Mr. Chairman, they have set the example. They have set the precedent, and they are letting these companies off the hook when they have the means to stop them. Therefore, other private sector businesses are sitting back, reviewing their operations, and saying: If the government can do it, I can do it. That is why you are seeing the downscaling and the withdrawal of services in this Province that we have.

Mr. Chairman, I have talked to a lot of these companies, I have talked to a number of them, because a lot of them provide services in a rural district like mine. I know that when they start pulling out because of profitability, it is the rural areas that are going to suffer the most and the hardest.

Mr. Chairman, when you start talking about accountability and transparency, you better start looking at how you are leading your government as well. Do you know something else? The only message that has gotten out in Newfoundland and Labrador is one that says we are in hard times, we have no money, we have to conserve. Do you know what it has done? It is like a stopgap measure put on spending in Newfoundland and Labrador. People are afraid to spend. People are afraid to invest. That is why you are seeing businesses not earning the profits they used to. That is why you are seeing all this. Because all the fearmongering that has been done by the government opposite, all the belt tightening, is forcing almost a moratorium on spending in Newfoundland and Labrador. As a result of it, what you are seeing is fewer businesses earning a profit and you are seeing more services being withdrawn in these areas.

Do you know something? If they really want to talk about transparency and accountability - and this is going to be really ironic because here we are bringing Bill 39 to the Legislature to have a more accountable, more transparent and open government, and it is being done on the heels of Bill 45, which was An Act To Amend The Motorized Snow Vehicles and All-Terrain Vehicles Act, which was the one to put fees, trail passes on snowmobilers in this Province in areas of this Province that did even have road connections. Mr. Chairman, that was a bill that had no consultation. There were no public hearings on that. There was no questionnaire sent out for feedback from the public in Newfoundland and Labrador. The Member for Labrador West has been asking for two weeks, along with others in this House, that there be some consultation around Bill 45, but there has been none and it does not look like there will be any. Yet, Mr. Chairman, Bill 39, accountability and openness, comes on the heels of that. Now, where is the openness and accountability and the transparency there?

Look at this one, Mr. Chairman, this is another ironic one, Bill 61, An Act To Amend The Liquor Corporation Act, brought in and introduced into this House yesterday right before we broke for dinner, the first I heard or saw the light of day of this bill. There were no consultations done with people in the Province, no one out there asking them: Is this something you want or do not want? Mr. Chairman, it came as a complete shock to me, an utter shock to me, because the members opposite were a group that I saw stay up night after night in this Legislature, only a few years ago, to try and stop Sunday shopping, the Shops' Closing Act, from going through in the Legislature. That is quite a change in attitude, quite a change in opinion. It is so ironic that you could have a bill on the Table of the Legislature that says we are going to be such an open and transparent government, and we are going to be accountable to everyone, and here we are debating two bills in this House now that have never seen the light of day in Newfoundland and Labrador, that people have never ever had a chance to have input into. The public did not even know it was going to be introduced here until it was.

Mr. Chairman, I say to the government opposite, you can have all of the bills that you want, you can introduce all of the legislation that you like that talks about accountability, openness and transparency, but if you do not practice it, it is not worth the paper that it is written on. It is like the Minister of Fisheries and the FPI Act, Mr. Chairman, if you do not use the legislation that you bring in here, to be able to foster more wealth for people in this Province, what is the point of it. Mr. Chairman, I think that what we have seen from this government certainly does not speak to accountability.

I am going to give you a couple of more examples now. First of all, I talked about leading by example, and we have seen that in a number of cases now. I just explained to you where government has said, we have to save money, we have to cut back, and now the business community is out there doing the same, closing down plants, shutting down businesses, withdrawing services from the public. Let's talk about the unions, Mr. Chairman, leading by example. How accountable were they to the unions in this Province, their own employees, the public sector workers of Newfoundland and Labrador? There was no accountability there, when they were treated with disrespect and disloyalty in the midst of a strike in this Province.

Do you know something, Mr. Chairman? That sent a strong a message. It sent a strong message that triggered several private sector strikes in this Province immediately after. That was the example that they set. Immediately after, we saw the employees of Aliant put out into the streets, the employees of Wabush Mines out into the streets, the employees of the Iron Ore Company of Canada out into the streets. Mr. Chairman, do you know why? Because the message was sent to companies in this Province, that you can treat employees of unions with disrespect and disloyalty. That is the example by which they lead, that is the precedent which they set, and therefore all others follow, Mr. Chairman.

Let's talk about accountability with regard to other services, Mr. Chairman. Let's talk about accountability when it comes to providing information to the people in the Province. I stood here several days asking questions on a program for Labrador medical travel, and back a few months ago the Premier got off his plane in St. John's, coming back from the summit in Ottawa on health, and said: Look at all the money we are going to put into health and medical travel in Labrador. Well, Mr. Chairman, I have yet to get an answer. I have yet to get an answer on when the money is going to be here, what it is going to be used for, how much is going to be invested, and what the program is going to look like.

Mr. Chairman, accountability starts right here and you do not need legislation to be accountable to people. You do not need legislation to be transparent, but if you are going to introduce it you have to be prepared to practice it. The next time I ask a question in this House, I expect an answer and I expect a detailed one.

CHAIR: Order, please!

The hon. the Government House Leader.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

First of all, let me say to the Opposition, you have a job to do, I appreciate you having a job to do, and go ahead to do it and take whatever time you need, but I do want -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: Yes, you probably learned a good deal from myself and others when we were in the Opposition, I can say that, and there may be a good deal more to learn; who knows.

Mr. Chairman, I do want to take the opportunity to speak to this particular piece of legislation, but before I do, I want to speak directly to what the Member for Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair just talked about. Just get a load of this! There were private sector strikes and her allegation is that we are responsible, as a government, for those private-sector strikes.

MR. GRIMES: Absolutely.

MR. E. BYRNE: The Leader of the Opposition says: Absolutely. Can you image? Rio-Tinto took their lead from us. Right! Aliant took their lead from us.

The Member for Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair did not talk about the fifty-five collective agreements that were signed this year that the government was involved with.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Chairman, it is absolute hogwash to say to a Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, any government, that every other strike that occurred in the Province was out fault too. I just want to put that out there, I think it is self-evident, and if you want to continue to purport that, then my advice to you is go and continue to purport it because I believe it is self-evident.

MR. REID: Then you tie this into accountability?

MR. E. BYRNE: Pardon me, I say to the Member for Twillingate & Fogo?

MR. REID: You tie this into openness and accountability?

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. E. BYRNE: I sat and listened quietly to you and every other member. I did not interrupt anybody. I have listened, and I suppose I will be listening to more of you as time goes on, as much as you want, but the fact of the matter is this - you know, you are hardly in a position to talk about how you want to tie your comments into openness and accountability.

What I want to talk about tonight, on top on that, is, let's look at this piece of legislation for what it is worth. You have particular points of view, you have raised them, but nobody talks about the value of strategic planning in government. No one even believes, on the opposite side of the House, that strategic planning is an important piece of how we get from point A to point B. The Leader of the Opposition says this bill, which includes and asks and demands for strategic planning in every entity of government, is hogwash, is a big make-work project. Really. I mean, really. What is the problem with strategic planning? What is the problem with saying to ourselves, as legislators and as people in the Province, that there are legitimate and tangible goals that we want to be able to reach, and, in the pursuit of reaching those goals, that we are going to demand that there is a strategic plan put in place for Crown entities and departments of government in trying to reach those goals? If we do not have a plan on how to get there, how are we going to get there? How are we going to move to where we need to be if we are not even going to take the time, Mr. Chair -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Chair, I listened to every member opposite in absolute silence, from the Leader of the Opposition to the Member for Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair and to everyone else, including the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi, who spoke. I just ask for the same courtesy this evening. That is all I say.

If we are not going to take the time, within the Crown entities and agencies of government, to map out a strategic plan, and if we do not believe in that process, then what are we doing here? What do people elect us to do? They elect us to represent them well. They elect us to move forward with the provincial economy, with the provision of services to people in the Province. They elect us to try to make the lot of every Newfoundlander and Labradorian a little bit better than we found it the day before. That is what I think they have elected us for.

We believe strongly in the piece of legislation that we are debating right now because it requires a strategic planning process. Will it be perfect? Absolutely not. I have never known, in any Legislature, where everything that was done was absolutely 100 per cent perfect, but is it moving in the right direction? Absolutely. Is it moving in a direction, from a planning process, in trying to measure where we are, how we get to where we want to be, that leaves us all of us in the Province a little better off than where we are today? Is it moving in that direction? Absolutely!

The Leader of the Opposition says this is a big make-work project. Why are we wasting people's time with strategic planning? Why are we wasting people's time with business plans? We do not believe it is a waste of time. We believe that there is merit in moving down that direction. We believe the plans themselves and the legislation itself, the spirit and intent of it, has merit. Fundamentally, it has merit. We believe that the process that we are engaging in right now will leave us in a little better shape as this moves forward. That is the point with the legislation. The Leader of the Opposition talks about, we have described it as the flagship or cornerstone of this session. It is one of them. It is one of many. The last I looked - I will read off some more for him. There has been a great deal of co-operation in moving some of this stuff forward. I acknowledge that, and have acknowledged it every step of the way.

The House of Assembly Act, which was passed last night, that talked about fixed four-year terms, moved forward. We talked about the Labour Standards Act, the Labrador Inuit Claims Agreement, Fish Processing Licensing Board, the Fish Inspection Act, the House of Assembly Elections Act - we have talked about - amendments to the Financial Administration Act, amendments to the Pensions Funding Act and others, Mr. Chairman, amendments to the Law Society Act. Right now we have about twenty-five bills from first to third reading.

The fact of the matter is this: There are many, many pieces of legislation in this Legislature this fall that deal with accountability. Members opposite have participated in all of the debate, but frankly, Mr. Chairman, and I will conclude my comments by saying this: I appreciate what everyone has to say. Have we done everything right, as a government, in the first year of office? No, we have not. Will any government do everything right? No, they will not, but I will say that the pursuit of what we are up to now is a legitimate exercise.

If the Opposition, in their role as Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, is performing their constitutional obligations of holding government accountable, I support that and I defend their right to do it, but, as a government, we have a role too. The role is to put legislation forward which expresses itself on what the will of the government is and what we believe is in the best interest of the people of the Province. We will put that forward, which we are tonight. We will defend it, and we will defend it aggressively and strongly when it is required.

This legislation, unto itself, is a good piece of legislation. It will introduce more accountability into the systems of government, into the departments of government. I think, honestly, members who have ever sat in government would have to acknowledge to some degree, that is correct. It will begin a process by where, within every department and agency and entity of government, a strategic planning process will be put in place by where people will understand where we are and where we want to be, and we will be in a position to be able to measure that. In a position to be able to measure it means we will be in a position to judge for ourselves, not only as a government, but the people of the Province will be in a much better position to judge for themselves, if we have been successful or not in pursuing their interests to make their lot in life a little bit better than when we found it.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for Twillingate & Fogo.

MR. REID: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I must say, I always enjoy when the House Leader gets up for a few words, because it usually happens when we beat up on him for five or ten or fifteen minutes. No one else on that side will get up to defend the government, but the House Leader has done an admirable job in this session. In fact, I have said to him on many occasions, that the Premier has a good man there and he should be very thankful. He should also hope that he never gets the flu and has to stay home because if he does the whole government will collapse. Anyone who is watching out there tonight on television will know that the only person who speaks on the other side, for the most part, is the House Leader. No one else gets to speak. No one else knows what is going on. When the House Leader is talking about openness, I think he should start with his own caucus and he should be open with his own caucus.

Earlier tonight, I went through about how this government and this Premier, in particular, should be accountable, or held accountable, for his actions and his promises over the past year. I went through a whole host of things, like opening half a hospital, increasing ferry rates, closing social services offices, all the things that he said he was not going to do that he went and did. As far as I am concerned, in an accountable government, someone should be held accountable for those actions. Obviously, that is not going to happen.

AN HON. MEMBER: The Member for Gander said that was deplorable.

MR. REID: The Member for Gander said that was deplorable. Well, I do not blame him.

I will tell you another thing about accountability - and the Member for Gander should very well know this because he may have been in the meeting the week before the Budget came down when the then Minister of Education went for a meeting with the school board located in Gander and told the elected school board, the duly-elected school board in a democracy -

MR. GRIMES: (Inaudible).

MR. REID: There you go, Mr. Chairman. Here is a quote, when you are talking about accountability: There is no greater fraud than a promise not kept. Guess who sent that out? The Conservative Party of Canada, of which all the members opposite are members. There is no greater fraud than a promise not kept. I thank the hon. gentleman for a copy of that because I agree with that 100 per cent. I never thought I would say I would agree with Stephen Harper, but I certainly agree with Stephen Harper on that one.

Let's get back to the Member for Gander talking about accountability, when the week before the Budget came down, the then Minister of Education attended a board meeting in Gander and told the board members, the duly elected board members, not to worry about being thrown out of work - not work because they are volunteers - not to worry about having the board dissolved this year. Do not worry about it. We are looking at it but it is not going to happen this year. He was probably in the meeting, the Member for Gander, when that was said by the minister: Trust me, it is not going to happen. Seven days later, when the Minister of Finance stood in the House, what did he do? Dissolved the education boards in the Province. Now, if that is accountable, it is not the word that I know to mean accountable in a dictionary.

He went on with a whole host of promises that he did not keep and, therefore, he should be held accountable, but I do not hear the members opposite saying that they are going to hold him accountable or make him accountable for the promises that he made and broke. I am sure that some of the members opposite are just as disappointed in the broken promises that the Premier made as I am, because they have ferries, they had social services offices that were closed, and they had government employees who were laid off. The biggest one I see, outside my district, that affected the Province the most, was the Premier's promise not to lay off civil servants.

We all know that because we brought it up during the election, that we had heard that they were going to gut the civil service. When we started talking about it during the campaign, the Premier started to get worried, because, knowing that there were 30,000 civil servants in the Province, he thought it might affect him politically on polling day. What did he do? He put out ads where he signed his own name to it, Danny, signed his own name to it, the leader of the party did: We will not lay off civil servants. I heard the Government House Leader say that we would never lay off civil servants unless we discussed it with the unions. What did the Premier do three or four months after being elected, without any discussion with anybody? I am sure the caucus did not know about it? He appeared on province-wide television and announced that there would be no raises, and shortly after that, announced there were going to be 4,000 civil servants laid off in the Province.

Who is holding him accountable? What does he mean by the word accountable? Again, I do not think anybody believes that the Premier is accountable, or I do not believe that the Premier thinks he should be accountable to anybody in this Province. I do not think that he thinks he should be accountable to anybody in this Province. He certainly does not think that he should be accountable to anyone in this House of Assembly, when he sat in the board room with Macleans in Toronto one day there last spring, put his feet upon the desk with his corporate buddies, and laughed - laughed! - when asked the question about the House of Assembly, and he said it was a waste of time, a total waste of time.

Look around you tonight, ladies and gentleman, look around you tonight. If I say it I will be asked to withdraw it so I cannot.. Look around you tonight. You are talking about being accountable. I talked about being accountable. Let's talk about being open, because you pride yourselves on that as well, about being open. Let me tell you about being open. What happened here yesterday? What happened here yesterday when they were talking about accountability? The Minister of Finance dropped a bill on the table last Thursday afternoon at around 4:00 p.m. or 5:00 p.m. saying, on tomorrow I will present a bill entitled, An Act To Amend The Liquor Corporation Act.

MR. SULLIVAN: I was not here last week.

MR. REID: So, you did not do it on Thursday?

MR. SULLIVAN: I was not here last week.

MR. REID: Then, somebody, on your behalf, dropped it on the table.

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. REID: You said today, I must say to the Minister of Finance, that you presented this bill to the House last week.

MR. SULLIVAN: No, I did not.

MR. REID: Yes, you did. Yes, you did.

CHAIR: Order, please!

I say to the Member for Twillingate & Fogo to continue with his debate.

MR. REID: The point I am trying to make - maybe you are going to clarify the point that I am going to make - the first that I saw of this bill, or any member on this side of the floor, or any member in the general public, was yesterday afternoon at 5:00 p.m. when we picked a copy of it off the Table right here in front of us. Less than twenty-four hours after he dropped that bill on the table about selling liquor and wine on Sundays, he went out at eight o'clock this morning with a press release saying that, come January, liquor agencies will be permitted to open on Sundays, without even having the bill discussed in the House of Assembly.

I know the Premier has nothing but disdain and disrespect for this House, because he said it in a national magazine, it is a total waste of time, but if you are talking about openness, if you are talking about letting democracy work, having debates on a bill, you do not go out with a press release the same day that you put it on the Table in the House of Assembly and say this bill is passed, this is law. He already told the people of the Province and the Liquor Commission that they could start selling liquor on Sundays effective January. Here we are, we come into the House today and we are supposed to debate that after we hear about it in the news this morning.

Mr. Chairman, we are supposed to live in a democracy where nothing becomes law until it is passed in this Legislature.

MR. GRIMES: After a full debate in the House.

MR. REID: After a full debate, where everyone gets an opportunity to discuss it.

In a true democracy, before the bill is discussed in the House of Assembly, it would be sent out to committee somewhere and you would hold public hearings on it; but, no, in this democracy, under this Premier and under this government, someone drops a bill on the table and says: Here is what we are going to discuss tomorrow.

Before we get here, on tomorrow, the minister already has the press release out saying this is passed, this is the law. It is effective come January; you can sell all the liquor you want on Sundays.

I say to the minister and I say to the Premier, that is not democracy. That is more of a dictatorship than it is a democracy, because that is the will of one or a small group of people being dictated to, or the majority being dictated to. I find it insulting and revolting, to be truthful with you, being an elected member, being an elected representative of some 15,000 people on the Northeast Coast of this Province who are paying my salary.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. GRIMES: (Inaudible) door and threaten people. Go bully your own crowd! (Inaudible), you fool, getting on with that nonsense!

CHAIR: Order, please!

I ask the Leader of the Opposition to withdrawal his unparliamentary remarks, please.

MR. GRIMES: Which ones, Mr. Chairman?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

I ask the Leader of the Opposition to withdrawal his unparliamentary remark.

MR. GRIMES: Mr. Chairman, I would like, for the record, to know what they were, because I heard a threatening comment from the Premier that I reacted to from my seat. I was not the recognized speaker. If you could identify for me what I said that is unparliamentary, just like I have done for fifteen years, I will acknowledge whether I have said it or not, and if I did say it and it is unparliamentary I will withdraw it, but I cannot give a general withdrawal because I have said a lot.

CHAIR: Order, please!

I say to the Leader of the Opposition, and ask him to withdraw the unparliamentary remark where he referred to a member in the House as a fool.

MR. GRIMES: Mr. Chairman, if I referred to a member opposite as a fool, I absolutely withdraw.

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for Twillingate & Fogo.

MR. REID: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I say to the Government House Leader, just about five minutes ago he stood in this House and said: I had the decency to sit and listen to you people tonight. Allow me that decency.

CHAIR: Order, please!

I remind the hon. Member for Twillingate & Fogo that his time has lapsed.

MR. REID: By leave, Mr. Chairman?

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

CHAIR: The hon. member, by leave.

MR. REID: Mr. Chairman, we allowed that member, the Government House Leader, that privilege, and the Premier sits in his seat and, less than thirty seconds after he sits there, what does he do when I start to speak? Yap and scream and shout across the floor insulting remarks. Why don't you live by the advice of the Government House Leader and listen, because you may learn something.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. REID: Mr. Chairman, he took my time. I will sit down now, but he will listen again tonight.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: Order, please!

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I just want to say a few additional words on the notion of accountability and transparency. It is a bit of a follow-up to what the Member for Twillingate & Fogo has said. I just want to refer hon. members to the Hansard of December 15, 1997. The then Leader of the Opposition was giving a speech on a bill to bring about some changes to the Shops' Closing Act at the time. One of the first things that he said in his speech was, why would the government - this is on page 1864 -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

The Chair is having great difficulty in hearing the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi, who has been given the right to speak here in the House. I ask all members if they would be kind enough to hear the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I thought hon. members would want to hear what the current Minister of Finance had to say in the House of Assembly about the bill regarding the Shops' Closing Act, because it is quite similar to what is being said now by the Official Opposition.

He said, "Why are they trying to sneak it through? Did you ever find out when they circulated the bill, I ask the Government House Leader?" The answer was: "December 3.... The House was open sixteen days before they put the bill in." That was on December 15, 1997.

It is kind of interesting, Mr. Chairman. We are now at December 14, 2004, and the bill that the minister wants to pass through the House, and told the newspaper last night - they had to say it last night, because the paper was printed this morning - that he is going to pass before Christmas, was brought in yesterday, December 13. Now, on December 14, he is telling people it is going to pass through.

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible) contacted The Telegram (inaudible), and they called me for a response.

MR. HARRIS: The minister did not issue a press release. He responded to The Telegram and told The Telegram the bill was going through before Christmas.

The second interesting thing that the minister had to say, when he was Leader of the Opposition, about the Shops' Closing Act - this is a good suggestion that the minister had at the time.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. HARRIS: The Leader of the Opposition said, "I think this is a piece of legislation that I feel members should be able to stand in this House and vote on, a free standing vote without having to cross any party lines." I hope, for his sake, for the sake of consistency, that he is encouraging members on his side of the House to have a free vote as well, a free-standing vote, so that is the second thing he said.

The third thing that he said, which I found quite helpful and instructive in terms of this particular legislation before the House right now, the Transparency and Accountability Act, he says: What is wrong with a piece of legislation like this? I think it is an important piece of legislation. I think it deserves an opportunity to be discussed. I think the people of the Province deserve an opportunity to have their say, even if it is in a committee here, even if you just make representation to a committee.

I agree with all of those things, Mr. Chairman, because all of those things are really concerns and issues about us here, as Members of the House of Assembly, in particular on the government side, being accountable to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. We get elected. We run on a platform. We behave in a certain way when we are in Opposition, and the voters, I am sure, expect us to behave the same way when we are in government.

Mr. Chairman, what would the voters expect, for example, of the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board? Would they expect him to bring a bill into the House on a Monday, and on Tuesday be saying we expect to have it passed right away, with no committee, no discussion, no opportunity for public input? Would they expect that? The answer is very clear. No, they would not.

I would love to be able to stand here in this House and say I support this legislation because it involves openness and transparency, and the government is being consistent in how they are behaving since they have been elected. Unfortunately, that is not the case. An example is the very bill that was introduced yesterday for the changes to the Liquor Control Act, to allow the liquor stores to be open on Sunday.

We have many examples. We heard the Member for Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair doing a very good job of speaking this evening, going through chapter and verse of the many areas of concern that she had about this government not behaving in an accountable and transparent way. That is the concern that the public has too, Mr. Chairman, that a lot of things are being rushed through this House, that we do not have the kind of consultation and discussion that is necessary.

I am sure the Minister of Finance went around the Province talking to people about accountability and transparency in a general way. I do not think he was going around with a draft legislation. I did not see any draft legislation. We did not see any open consultation of the draft of the legislation. We had it presented to this House - one of the earlier bills, I might add - it must have been at least two weeks ago. The legislation has been around for a couple of weeks. That is no doubt why the university was able to get their hands on it and bring forth their concerns to the minister and to the Minister of Education, which they quite rightly responded to. If it was a draft piece of legislation that was being discussed by a committee of this House, not the open floor of the House, but by a committee who had a chance to study it and have a look at it, then we would not see these eleventh hour changes.

That goes for the general operation of the House, Mr. Chairman. I do not see any reason why we cannot open the House in September or October, have committees, have access to the legislation, deliberate over them, have the family-friendly hours that the Premier talked about in the Blue Book. I agreed with him on that, I thought that was a good idea. In fact, I even like the phrase because I have a young family. I know some members who are my age have their families all grown up, but I have young family and I like to spend time with them. I like the phrase and I like the concept but, unfortunately, we haven't had that.

I know the Member for Baie Verte, the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Recreation and various other affairs, has a young family too, and he is glad that they are living here with him in the Capital City, and that makes a big difference to his lifestyle I am sure. If we had family-friendly hours that we were expecting, not only would we have more opportunity to debate legislation over a longer period of time, but we would probably have better legislation and a more accountable legislature and a more accountable government.

Those are my comments, Mr. Chairman, with respect to that. I hope that the minister responsible for this legislation would take under consideration his own remarks in 1997 and be a little bit more consistent, because it is not good enough to say in the (inaudible) of a bill: Yes, we opposed it. We opposed Sunday shopping. We were dead against it. Do you know what the real problem is? The government did not go far enough, and now we are going to fix it. That is the logic of what the Minister of Finance had to say in this House today. He said: We were against it but they did not go far enough, so we are going to finish the job. That is the logic of the Minister of Finance. I hope that he reconsiders that. I hope that he rereads - I will get him a copy of the proceedings of the House of Assembly of December 15, 1997. He can reread them and learn from his own remarks about the necessity of consultation, the idea of having a free vote and ensuring that legislation that may be controversial, such as selling liquor on Sundays, is something that gives people an opportunity to pass comment on, to be consulted on it and to tell their members what they want.

Maybe that is something we should drop, and I would urge the Government House Leader to set aside this business of selling liquor on Sundays. We do not need to debate that now. If they really, really, really want to do it, if they really think this is a burning issue today, I am sure we can debate that in the middle of the winter when we come back in March. In the meantime, the public can keep doing what they did for the last fifty years, they can buy their liquor on Saturday to drink on Sunday. I mean, there may be a few people who cannot keep liquor in the House, Mr. Chairman, and have to drink it all while it is there, and they cannot buy a bottle on Saturday and drink it on Sunday. There maybe a few around like that, but they have managed to get by for the last fifty years, they can probably get by until after Christmas. If they cannot, they better go to the store now and maybe they can let their friends hold onto it for them and then have it doled out to them.

I am sure, Mr. Chairman, that they do not need to have this legislation passed before Christmas, that people can have an opportunity to think about it. There are people who have strong religious views on these things. There are also people who are very concerned about their workspace and they do not want to - people who work for the Liquor Corporation, and I know some of them, are already working part time. They are working on Saturdays and sometimes they are busy on Saturdays because of the very reason we are talking about, so they cannot have family events on Saturdays. Now they may not be able to have family events on a Sunday either. There is no need for it.

The kind of consultation that is implied in an accountable government - they are expecting departments to be accountable. They are expecting departments to make three-year plans, Mr. Chairman, and, yet, they come into this House and they want, in forty-eight hours, legislation that changes the whole way that the liquor legislation has been operating for the last fifty years. They want that done in forty-eight hours and they are expecting somebody else to make two-year plans, three-year plans, and have them submit it to the government. What kind of planning is that, Mr. Chairman? If they had this plan, that the minister tells us today they have had for some six to eight months, why didn't they tell anybody about it? Why didn't they prepare people for it? Why not let people think about it and make representations before members are going to be asked to vote on it?

Mr. Chairman, I am all in favour of accountability. In fact, I am also in favour of planning. I think planning is a good thing, but I do not think we need to be as rigid about it as this bill is and have the power of the Cabinet to order departments whose plans they do not like, to change them to their liking. That is some of the problems that I have with it.

CHAIR: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Twillingate & Fogo.

MR. REID: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to continue with what I was saying about democracy and dictatorships before I was so rudely interrupted by the Premier.

Mr. Chairman, I was talking about how the Premier and his government should be held accountable for the promises that they have made, and continue to make, to the people of this Province, promises that he knew he was not going to keep when he made them, promises that -

AN HON. MEMBER: Deplorable.

MR. REID: Deplorable promises like the promise that is on tape down in Grand Bank about the hospital in Grand Bank. I see that he cannot take it again. He has to leave.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. REID: Alright, I apologize, Mr. Chairman. I should not have made reference to that. I will not again tonight. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am sorry and I apologize.

Mr. Chairman, we talked about openness. We were talking about a government that is standing tonight talking about being open and being accountable when the Minister of Finance dropped a bill on the Table twenty-four hours ago and, before we had a chance to discuss it, he was out on the public airwaves saying that the bill had passed, this is law and that liquor stores could sell liquor on Sundays effective January 2, I guess, because January 1 is a statutory holiday.

Mr. Chairman, in a democracy, bills do not become law until they are passed in the Legislature. If those opposite do not know that, then they should not be here. What the minister has done, basically, is dropped that on the Table knowing full well, according to the calendar for this House, we are supposed to close on Thursday. Wednesday is Private Members' Day, which does not allow for debate. He is going to drop that on us after he has told the public that it is already law, that it has already been discussed and passed in the House of Assembly, when, in actual fact, we never saw it.

That is what this crowd calls openness. If that is openness I would not want to see closed. I suppose it is open in a dictatorship where a dictator comes out and makes the proclamation, this is the law according to me, today. In a dictatorship that is openness. That is openness in a dictatorship. In fact, he does not need to come out and proclaim it. In a democracy, a bill does not become law and be proclaimed on the public airwaves until it is passed in this Legislature.

As I was about to say earlier, there are 15,000 people on the Northeast Coast of the Province who also feel that, that is what happens in this place, or they would not have elected me to come and be their voice so that I could monitor what was happening in government and be able to report to them.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. REID: Mr. Chairman, I do not know why he is in such a rush to pass this bill.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. REID: We will talk about that when the bill is raised again later tonight.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

The Chair is having great difficulty hearing the Member for Twillingate & Fogo. He has been recognized by the Chair and I ask that he be heard in silence.

MR. REID: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and I appreciate your protection from the crowd opposite.

Anyway, Mr. Chairman, they talk about openness as well. When the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation came in here last week with a bill pertaining to snowmobiles and passing over tracks of land in this Province to associations - the first time that I heard about it was when he dropped it on the Table in the House a week ago. If you are talking about openness and accountability, I say to the Minister of Tourism, if he is open and accountable and wants to be accountable, why doesn't he send that out to a committee so that we can hear the views of the people in the Province before he enacts this into law? At least I can say for this minister, unlike his colleague the Minister of Finance, he did not have the audacity to go on the airwaves last week, when he put the bill on the Table, and say that this bill has been passed and this is the law. At least he has given us a few days where we can have some public input into the House of Assembly where public input is supposed to take place. We will get back to that piece of legislation again, because that has not been passed in this House and we have until Thursday night to pass that in our family friendly House, and it is now 10:33 in the evening.

The other thing, Mr. Chairman: We talk about openness and transparency and accountability, when the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture in this Province went around on all the public airwaves and in every media in the Province and proclaimed that he was accepting the Dunne Report. He was going to bring in what Mr. Dunne recommended with regard to an arm's-length board. We had a lengthy discussion on that one, one night late last week, about how the Minister of Fisheries was trying to give the impression to the people of this Province, especially in the fishing industry, that he was actually proclaiming an arm's-length board. When we had the opportunity, unlike what the Minister of Fisheries gave us here yesterday, to read the bill, we quickly discovered that he was not implementing the Dunne Report and he was not implementing an arm's-length board. What he was doing was an advisory board which, as far as I am concerned, and many people who I have spoken to in the industry, both from the harvesting and the processing side in the last seven or eight days, is a complete joke. Everyone out there involved in the fishing industry knows it to be exactly that, a complete joke, because he has not established an arm's-length board. He has established a board that he is going to appoint, they will make a recommendation to him, and he will say: Thank you very much for your effort, now I will make the decision.

Everyone in the fishing industry knows that the piece of legislation that we passed last week does not do anything, does not create any change from what we have been used to from the Minister of Fisheries. In fact, right now the Minister of Fisheries, for all those who are listening, and if he says to you, one of these days, the board made the recommendation and I have to live by the recommendation, I say to the people who are listening, that is a complete falsehood, as I heard the Member for Port au Port say tonight. That is a complete falsehood because the minister does not have to accept the recommendation of any board as established in this House of Assembly.

The other thing they are standing and talking about tonight is that they want to make government more accountable. They are asking all boards and institutions to submit a plan every year, a game plan, a business plan as such. The Minister of Fisheries did the same thing last week. The Minister of Fisheries, in another act that he passed last week, the Fish Inspection Act, said that now, according to the rules in the Department of Fisheries, every processor in the Province has to submit a business plan every year or else he will not be getting a licence; has to submit a business plan every year. I say to the minister, like some of my colleagues have said to other ministers tonight: What a complete and utter waste of time. What a complete and utter waste of time to have processors in the Province file, every January 1, a business plan for the upcoming season. The reason I say that, in a perfect world where you can control nature and control the elements, you might have a chance of accomplishing something like that, but I say to the minister, if, for example, a fish processor in the Province submits a business plan to the minister in January of this year saying that I am going to process shrimp, I am going to process crab and put down how much he is going to process, and I am going to process X number of tons of capelin, and X number of tons of squid, what happens, I say to the minister, if the squid do not come in this year as they are apt to do in my district, Mr. Chairman? What happens if they do not come in this year, and then when the minister reviews his plan at the end of the year and goes back to him and says, oh, oh, I am sorry. but you said on your business plan in January that I am going to produce five tons of squid or fifty-five tons of squid but you did not produce them simple because there were no squid to produce, what does the minister do then?

The thing that I find the strangest and the silliest about it, is that the minister is asking fish processors in the Province to submit a plan right now, at the beginning of the new year, in less than a month from now, to tell the Province what they plan to do this year. They have to put down how much crab they are going to process this year and how much shrimp they are going to process this year, when the federal Minister of Fisheries, who is responsible for assigning quotas, will not tell us until April month what the quota is going to be. How can a processor in this Province tell the minister how much crab he is going to do this year when the Federal Minister of Fisheries has not even told us if there will be a crab fishery this year? I think it is absolutely ridiculous, it is laughable, to be even considering what he is considering.

Not only that, but as the minister should know, having been a fisherman himself, as he says, there is no one who can force a fisherman to sell crab or any fish product to any particular plant. A fish processor might write down at this time of the year that he would like to do fifty tons of crab or twenty tons of crab or thirty tons of crab this year, he might put down I would like to do it, but there is no guarantee that he will get a pound of crab once the season opens and there is competition on the head of a wharf for a pound of crab. What I say to the minister is, when you are talking about submitting plans and submitting reports like they want to do in government here, that they want to have everything so they can hold you accountable halfway through the year because you have not lived up to your promise, that is completely ludicrous in the fishing industry.

I know the Member for Bonavista North must be laughing over there, a man who has been involved in fish processing all of his life, that he is going back to the company, as the member for that area, over the Christmas season, I suppose, and he will be sitting down and talking to the owners of the company that he worked for, for twenty or thirty years, and he is going to say: Yes, the Minister of Fisheries wants on a plan how much fish we are going to do this year in this particular company. I do not know what the penalties are going to be if you do not live up to this commitment, but you have to file the business plan anyway. Take one of the employees for a week or ten days, sit down and draft up a report for the minister, as to what you intend to do this year. We better be careful, because if we do not do it, you never know what he might do because he has not outlined yet what the penalties are for not filing a report or living up to it.

That is just as ludicrous as saying to every government institution and every government board and agency that they have to do the same thing, because it does not allow for any extenuating circumstances that may arise during the year.

CHAIR: Order, please!

I remind the hon. member that his time has lapsed.

MR. REID: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I will be back later on tonight, I am sure.

Thank you.

CHAIR: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I was not planning on speaking again with respect to this amendment, because we had covered it in some detail, but we have been graced with the great presence of the Premier for a few minutes who came in and provoked me, Mr. Chairman, with respect to this particular bill. The Member for Twillingate & Fogo was speaking and talking about the fact that there was not enough time for the debate, he may have to speak again. The phrase - the Premier can stand and correct me if I misheard it; we are not that far apart - I took it as a threat and a very big notion of how the Premier probably operates, Mr. Chairman, in his own caucus. He said: If you are going to keep talking, you will be here tomorrow morning when your beard grows. That is what he said. Maybe he can get up and suggest now that he did not say that. You will be here tomorrow morning; your beard will be grown out.

We understand that is an expression of willingness to say -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. GRIMES: Mr. Chairman, they laugh at that. They find that kind of funny, because they are used to - the Premier, if he did not say it, will stand up and tell the world he did not say it, I say to the Government House Leader. He can stand up and say that he said something very similar to it, I can tell you, because that is exactly the way that he operates in his own caucus. When people do not say what he wants them to say, when they do not agree exactly with what he is saying, when he thinks he has heard enough, he says: That is enough of that. No more talk on that. We are not going to put up with that.

His view here is, because we are standing up exercising our democratic right to speak in the family-friendly House, what does he say? The attitude in it, Mr. Chairman, is this: Punish them. They have a right to speak, alright, so guess what we will do? We will make them stay here all night long if they want to speak in this family-friendly House. They can be here tomorrow morning, until their beards grow out. That is what he talked about.

The members opposite laugh at that. The Premier is laughing at it now, Mr. Chairman. He finds that very funny. I will tell you one thing. I, for one, do not find it very amusing. I say this: I have had a beard several times before in my life, and if it means standing up for what you believe, debating the issues in a democratic forum, I will gladly grow a beard again if that is what family-friendly means. If that is what it means, it is not a problem with me. We will shave some time in the middle of January or the middle of February, when we finally get out of here. I hope I do not get a full beard like the Member for Labrador West, in the period of time that we are going to be here.

I can say to you, Mr. Chairman, that is the kind of notion and the kind of attitude that we see, because here is what really happened, though. Here is what really happened in the last couple of hours, Mr. Chairman. The Premier has found out somehow that this thing here tonight is not going that well for the government. It is sort of unraveling. It is sort of unraveling in terms of it is not proceeding smoothly, the way he would have liked for it to happen. People are not being agreeable. They are not kowtowing, like he is used to in his own caucus. They are not just sitting quietly by and saying: Oh, that is wonderful. We sort of disagree but let's have a vote now, carry on, and pretend it did not happen. Let's just forget about it. That is his style and approach.

I will tell you one thing with respect to this bill. I pointed out in the Legislature that the Minister of Finance, who is usually very good with detail, so we were led to believe, did not do a very good job with this. What we found out for sure is that the Premier - it surprises me - he must not have paid too much attention to this himself, even though it is the centrepiece. It is openness. It is accountability. It was in the Blue Book, saying we are going to bring in an act about openness and transparency, so he must have done some thinking about it because he wrote the Blue Book all by himself. Single-handedly, he wrote the Blue Book. It said so right in the beginning: I have these thoughts and ideas signed at the bottom - D a n n y - because we not allowed to mention anybody's name in the House. It is almost like speaking in front of youngsters. You are not allowed to say the word; you have to spell it and hope they do not know what it is. Signed personally, I have all these plans, an act about openness and transparency.

Well, he must have been busy at something else because he didn't spend much time at this, to be here with the mess that it is in tonight: his own government, his own ministers, bringing in amendments at the last minute. We were talking about the last hour, two or three hours ago. At the last minute, they are bringing in amendments themselves. Surely goodness, the Premier is not going to admit that he thought this out very carefully, to use his expression, that I am all over it. You do not have to worry about this. I am on top of this.

I am all over it, just like he is all over Harbour Breton, and everybody out of a job. Proud of that, he is. I am all for rural Newfoundland and Labrador. I have a plan. Harbour Breton is shut down, and he is a spokesperson, along with the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture, for FPI, saying the business case makes sense. He has his poor old Fisheries Minister out there saying more fish plants have to close - and talk about, I say to the Government House Leader, other agencies taking their lead from the government with respect to the strike. You now have the representative for the association of fish processors on the evening news, saying: FPI closed some plants.

The real answer is that the minister said the right thing. There are more plants that have to close. We have to rationalize. The government understands it. We would like to talk to them about it. We would like to shut down a bunch of plants in Newfoundland and Labrador. The Minister of Fisheries knows it, and the Minister of Fisheries knows it because he heard it from the Premier. He heard it from the Premier, Mr. Chairman.

I guess this is one of the ones that maybe he wasn't all over. He was not on top of it, because he could not be, for an amendment to be coming here at this late hour with the significant changes that are in there. It must have been an oversight. It must have been an oversight for a person, along with the Minister of Finance, who is so meticulous with detail and believes that the people of the Province have such confidence that if he says I am involved with this, then all of their fears will be dissipate. They will take great comfort that, oh, the Premier is involved in this so there cannot be a problem. This must be fixed. This must be perfect - and we are seeing the difference.

Coming apart as well, I say - and he is here to try to rally the troops, to try to reorganize and rally the troops, because I guess he found out that one of his own caucus members even spoke tonight against the amendment brought by his own minister.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. GRIMES: So what? he says from the seat. Stand up and say it, I say to the Premier. Stand up and tell the world they can vote as they want, he says, Mr. Chairman. They can vote as they want. We will see how the vote goes, because we will get to one, and we will see that every one of them will want the same thing, except one. Strange, hey? Strange, how everybody on that side of the House all of a sudden has the same mind when they are supposed to be given a free vote. We have free votes as a matter of principle, and we believe in it because we believe in democracy. We do not believe in this one person rule, Mr. Chairman.

You will see now that you have another issue. He has found out as well that the Minister of Justice is here putting through another centrepiece piece of legislation; the openness and transparency act being amended by themselves because I guess the Premier did not pay as much attention to it as he should have, because surely goodness his own caucus would not believe that if the Premier was all over this, to use his phrase, that he actually would admit that he made a mistake, that he would have made a mistake and that he is going to change it at the eleventh hour.

He has found out that the Minister of Justice is here with the lobbyist registration. A good idea, by the way, a good principle. We agree with it in principle, absolutely a good idea. He has his Minister of Justice here tonight out on Google, out on the search engine, trying to find out what his legislation means, standing up in the House and saying: I had to leave the House and do an Internet search to see what my own legislation means. I have to go and get some advice on this. He did not even go and check with the Premier. He went out and came back and said: I was on the Internet. He went on the Internet, he said, to try to find out what my own legislation means.

Maybe the Premier wasn't all over that one either, and what he is finding out is that he has a minister over there, doubtful if we are convinced that he knows for sure what he is doing. He has not convinced us yet.

There is a concept and an idea that, in principle, we agree with. Is it well-thought-out? Is it well organized? Is it well-prepared? Is it ready to be passed? Is it getting support from members opposite? Not even debated in their own caucus, they are going to support it anyway because they are told to do so, but when you are allowed to ask a few questions, when you are allowed to examine it in detail - and, as I have said before, the people in the House hear issues raised for the first time right here, because I do not know if they get raised in the Cabinet or not. I am sure they have not gotten raised in the caucus. Otherwise, why would these issues be coming forward? Why, with the Public Tender Act today, would the government take out the very guts of its own change? They brought in a bill and here was the change, one little tiny clause, and a great big one which was supposed to be the big change. A few questions asked in the House, and what did they do? Change their minds. I guess it wasn't very well-thought-out. I guess, Mr. Chairman, the Premier wasn't all over it. I guess he wasn't on top of it, or else the minister he put in charge of it wasn't all over it or wasn't on top of it.

I will tell you this, Mr. Chairman -

CHAIR: Order, please!

I remind the hon. Leader of the Opposition that his time has expired.

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We will speak, and we may very well be here until our beards grow out, and I thank the Premier for giving us the invitation to be here until our beards grow out.

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for Bay of Islands.

MR. JOYCE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I just want to have a few words on the openness and transparency act that we are discussing here tonight. I just want to go back to some things that were said by some members opposite, Mr. Chairman, and the Member for Gander, on an Open Line show. I just want to see if this member really believed in what he said on Open Line. Here is what he said: The word deplorable was put in there because I feel and I felt, you know, because of an issue two or three weeks ago, that not only in Newfoundland and Labrador but also in the rest of Canada it is still deplorable if a person goes back on his word.

The member is shaking his head in agreement. He went on to say: Because they wanted the word deplorable - because it is deplorable for a person to go back on their word, that is the bottom line.

I ask the Member for Gander, when I am finished here, if you really believe in the words you were saying, stand up. Like I said, be a man and stand up.

Before the election and during the election, the Premier of this Province went out to Corner Brook and talked about a long-term care facility. We were trying to get a P3 program on the go to get the facility up and running, and by now we would have had it well underway. The Premier, the Minister of Justice, the Member for Humber East, were out there, and in their campaign literature said it would be built in this year's mandate. That was his commitment.

Here is what was said in an editorial in The Western Star. Here is an editorial in The Western Star: The provincial Tories, under Premier Williams, must really think four years in office is long enough. Danny Williams went on the record and made it crystal clear, for anyone to hear and read, his government would bring this facility during his government first term in office if elected. What happened to the Premier's promise when he said it would be built - not may or might - in his first term?

If you want to talk about openness and transparency, here is an issue in Corner Brook that, in my opinion - and I am willing to go on the record - that facility will not be built in the four years that the Premier and the Minister of Justice promised the people in Corner Brook. I will guarantee it; it will not be built. We are going to the second year and we still do not even have a site picked out. There is not even any engineering work done.

I can say to the Member for Gander, if you want to be a real man, stand up and go on what you said on Open Line about someone breaking promises, here is your opportunity to be open and accountable. Stand up and say that your Premier is deplorable for making a promise in Corner Brook which he knew he could not keep, which he knew he had no commitment to make in Corner Brook. Here is your chance. Stop laughing, get up and be a man and say it: Premier, you are deplorable - like you did to the Prime Minister of Canada. I doubt very much if you are going to stand up. I doubt very much that you will stand up.

There is another issue, and I will just talk about accountability. On the north shore of the Bay of Islands was the raising of the roof in the school, the raising of the roof. We signed off on the deal under two conditions, I say to the minister. The Department of Health, the Department of Education, the minister's own officials and the school board officials said it was regulation size. When it was brought to our attention, I flew in and met with the Minister of Education. The former Minister of Education, the Member for Twillingate & Fogo, was at the meeting. He was at the meeting. The Minister of Health and Community Services, who was the Minister of Education, was at the meeting. He promised me at that meeting that he would meet the residents and the school councils out on the north shore. He promised. He said: I may not change my mind, but I will meet with them.

I went back and informed the residents. They said: Okay, we will have a meeting - talking about openness and transparency - so I went out and told them so. They called him and asked him for the meeting. No meeting. Absolutely no meeting, not going to have a meeting. No meeting.

The Premier was in Corner Brook. It was announced at the triathlon - he went up and made a $150,000 adjustment, or made some contribution to a class 4 road, I think, in Deer Lake, to upgrade it to a class 3. That was the one that the Minister of Transportation and Works would not plow anymore, but there was $150,000 - but anyway, he was out in Corner Brook so the school councils went and phoned his office and said: Well, he has two press conferences, we are going to track him down.

Lo and behold, the school board through Nada Borden, the Premier's CFO who he appointed as Chairman of District 3, called the school council. They said: No, we have a meeting with the Minister of Education Monday morning. The minister called, we have a meeting now Monday morning. So all the parents got together, got all their notes together, right happy, going to have a meeting with the minister. All of a sudden Friday afternoon 5:00 o'clock when the Premier was on the plane, there was a call made, the meeting is off. The meeting was called off. I ask the Minister of Health and Community Services to stand up and deny it. He cannot deny it, because if you stands up and denies it that means Nada Borden and the Executive Director of School District 3 were not telling the people out on the North Shore that there was a meeting. So you can stand up and deny if you like, but I know he cannot do it.

Let's talk about openness and transparency. Let's talk about the VON in Corner Brook. Let's talk about the golf tournament that the Premier had and for two months the former Minister of Health and Community Services could not get involved. I think on five occasions the minister said she could not get involved. To the minister's credit, the reason why she could not get involved, there are already two forms of palliative care in Corner Brook as we speak. It is true. It is already operating in Corner Brook. So, for sixty days the strike went on, which the minister said that she could not get involved in and then all of a sudden we had a golf tournament, the Premier's golf tournament. The Premier came out and wanted to get the golf tournament. So they would not protest it, he came out with a wink and a nod. I say to the Premier, if you want to say something you can stand in your own seat. So, the Premier with a wink and nod - and I ask the former Auditor General: How many times were you Auditor General when you wrote in your report where there was money given to a specific project and there was money taken for something else? How many times would you say that is a wrongdoing, that is against the Financial Administration Act? Here is the Premier giving money saying, okay, do a study on palliative care, but, with a wink and a nod, take $50,000 and use it for administration to solve the strike. That is what the Premier did.

Here is what David Cochrane said, not my words, David Cochrane's, after he got the full information - David Cochrane is a CBC reporter, after digging into it: The VON decision skipped the regular process for government policy making, the process that normally takes weeks. There is an initial proposal which was never put in by the VON. There was never a proposal submitted by the VON; the cost analysis by Treasury Board, which was never done because there was never a proposal put in; a detailed Cabinet paper outlining the potential fallout, such as the impact on other home care agencies, of which there was none done, because Treasury Board couldn't do one because there was never a proposal put in; and then Cabinet meets to make a final decision. None of this happened.

If you want to talk about openness and transparency, why doesn't somebody on the government side stand up and say: We used $50,000 for the wages, to settle the VON strike? The Minister of Justice knows that is what happened. You know very well that is what happened. Minister, I know they met with you, I know they told you how much they were going to use to solve the strike, I know you said, yes, we will see what we can do, and they informed you that, yes, some of this money will be used to solve the strike. You knew it because they told you at a meeting, and they told me they told you at the meeting. You can stand up and say, no, none of the money was used for the wages. Here is your opportunity. Stand up and say it.

If you want to get back to the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board: Eddie Joyce may have exaggerated some comments of the closure of the finance officer, says the minister. Guess what? The office is closed. I exaggerated, but the office is closed. Here is the minister, in the Western Star -

CHAIR: Order, please!

I remind the hon. Member for Bay of Islands that his time has expired.

MR. JOYCE: By leave, just to clue up?

CHAIR: By leave.

MR. JOYCE: I will be back on the openness and transparency. I will just thank you for the opportunity to pass the comments. I still say the school council on the North Shore is still waiting for the minister to show up.

Thank you.

CHAIR: The hon. the Minister of Education.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HEDDERSON: Mr. Chair, I just want to check in because a number of hours ago I put forth an amendment. I am not sure if we voted on it or not because we have gone on to growing beards, challenging and asking people to be a man and stand up, but I just want to try to get the body back to the purpose at hand and that is to look at an amendment that I put forth and to ask that we stick to the topic. My understanding, from what I have heard, is that we have pretty well consensus around. I would like to once again reiterate the importance of this amendment, the importance that we do exempt Memorial University under the sections that I have asked in the amendment because the university certainly is an institution that has special status and a role in our society, a role that we want to make sure continues. The principle of the academic freedom is the principle upon which I base my amendment.

Just indicating that the debate has originally centered around this particular amendment and I have attempted, as Minister of Education, to answer the requests that have come from the various members with regard to clarification as for the purpose of this particular amendment. I have been encouraged by the response, with regard to the amendment, that I have gotten back and would look forward to the vote to see if, indeed, we are going to be able to accept that particular amendment.

Amendments are important components because it allows us, whether it is in the eleventh hour or whatever hour, to address a real concern. This concern, of course, was the concern that if we did not make this amendment, there was a possibility that the university and their academic freedom could, indeed, suffer.

With regard to accountability, it is important to note that when it comes to accountability at the university, let me add that the president, that the Chair of the Board of Regents, indeed, have indicated that they have no difficulty with being held accountable for their actions with regard to the operations of that particular institution. As a matter of fact, and again as I have already referenced, the University is guided by the University Act. It is an important Act because it does set out a lot of accountability practices that the University certainly has, I guess, been part of since the enactment of that piece of legislation. I also indicate that the Act does allow for the Auditor General to have access to the University. As a matter of fact, even as we speak the Auditor General is working with the University with regard to the accountability.

Again, it is important that we realize that this particular institution, as an institution, needs to have the academic freedom that is so important for institutions of this nature. As well, that University - and many of you have seen the results of a well-run university in the initiatives, that the President, that the Board of Regents, that indeed the staff and faculty of that institution, have certainly excelled in different areas. The students of that University, the graduates of that University, have gone forth, not only in this Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, but certainly throughout the world and distinguished themselves.

As well, we know that there are goals that the University has set and right now one of the key goals is to keep their numbers, their enrollment, at a level whereby we can allow the programming that is necessary to cater to the needs of those students. The President has indeed indicated that he would like to see, within a number of years, at least 20,000 students in that particular University.

The University has been no stranger to setting out strategic planning, to putting outcomes there and making sure that they are fulfilling those particular outcomes. That strategic planning, I might add, is shared on a regular basis with the department and with this government. We do have representation of the government on the Senate. There is an annual report and I was very pleased to go to the University and have the executive of the University present that report. I tell you, there are very good things happening a the University, things that certainly are moving that institution forward.

I might also add, that it is not only the Memorial campus that we talk about, the Marine Institute which is a part of the University is certainly excelling, and the Grenfell College on the West Coast again indicating that not only are they moving along, in a sense, but have plans for the future, and, of course, those plans will unfold, all of the institutions - and, of course, I can't forget Harlow in England.

***************

The University has been renowned for its ability to strategically plan, and it is no different now. As my colleague has already indicated, this is what this bill is all about, to make sure that we do, as a government, encourage and, indeed, demand - the word shouldn't be encourage, it is to demand - strategic planning, timelines, outcomes and accountability, to ensure that we are meeting the outcomes. When it comes to education, strategic planning, outcomes and performance evaluations, this is an intricate part of education, at whatever level, be it the University, the public colleges or our K to 12 schools. It is this strategic planning, outcomes and performance accountability that allows us to move forward.

I say to the members, that I, as minister, certainly am very, very satisfied that the University is not only moving forward but they are moving forward in a way that they are open and they are transparent and they are accountable, indicative of our government. I would say to the members, that it is certainly a testament to the University that they are entertaining this amendment which I am putting forth here tonight on behalf of the government, to ensure that we continue to allow the University to grow and to grow in ways that will meet the needs of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, the post-secondary students of Newfoundland and Labrador, our university students.

Again I tell you, that Memorial University favours full accountability, they favour full transparency, that the Memorial University Act certainly sets up for that accountability and transparency. With regard to this particular bill, I am asking for the amendments not to exclude Memorial University from the overall intent of the bill, but to specifically have them exempt from certain sections of the bill to allow for their strategic planning to be arm's-length from the government, because that is where the University should be, that is the nature of what they are all about. They are different, as I have already pointed out, from other government bodies. When we talk about school boards, when we talk about hospital boards, when we talk about the Liquor Commission, when we talk about Hydro, these are specifically publicly-funded bodies that are given clear mandates as to the programs and services that they must provide to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. We cannot and we should not put those same restrictions on a university. A university must, in itself, be an autonomous institution. It must be free-standing, free-thinking. They must have the academic freedom. I wanted, certainly, to have a greater level of comfort with regard to the university on this particular bill, and that is why I had no difficultly in putting forth the amendment that we see before us right now.

I would say to the members, it is very, very important that we protect that integrity of the university. It is most important that we must appreciate how important Memorial University is not only, I guess, to the higher education that they provide but the part that they will play in the economic and social development of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Memorial University certainly has, over the years, clearly indicated that they are interested not only in the higher learning aspect of it, but they are also very much involved in making their presence known in helping governments, in helping health boards, in helping any particular individual or group in Newfoundland and Labrador, to ensure that this Province continues to grow and to prosper.

CHAIR: Order, please!

I remind the hon. Minister of Education now that his time has expired.

MR. HEDDERSON: Certainly, Mr. Chair.

I will probably be back at some time very shortly.

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for Twillingate & Fogo.

MR. REID: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I listened intently to the Minister of Education for the third time tonight, getting up speaking to an amendment. For those of you who are watching us on television, an amendment means a change to a bill. This government brought in this particular piece of legislation and it is itemized like that, for those of you who are watching on television, and there are clauses that are written all through this bill, and it is usually the Opposition who asked for an amendment, or to change something because we did not like the way it was written, or we did not particularly agree with what was in that piece of legislation or that particular clause.

It is only proof that they put this bill together hastily, because they could not have read it themselves, especially the Minister of Education, or he would not be up trying to amend a bill that was put forward by the Minister of Finance. The Minister of Finance brings in a bill and it is the Minister of Education who is up, not the Opposition, asking for an amendment.

Now, he stood three times tonight. I do not know if he is trying to impress the Premier, but I think it might have something to do with it, because he is not trying to convince anybody on this side. I have not heard anybody on this side who said that they disagreed with the amendment that the minister is trying to put forward. The only person in this House of Assembly tonight who stood and opposed the amendment that the minister is trying to put forth is the Member for Topsail, who happens to be the ex-minister of health, the individual who resigned from the ministry of health just a short month ago.

He has been standing for three times tonight, trying to convince us to vote for an amendment, when not one of us has disagreed with him on that amendment. The only one individual in this House who disagrees with the amendment is the Member for Topsail, who sits two rows behind him. Maybe he should turn around and face her the next time he is trying to convince people to vote for his amendment. I think what I said earlier, that he is trying to impress the Premier, he is trying to impress the Premier in trying to convince people that the Member for Topsail got it all wrong and that she should indeed be voting for that amendment.

I say to the minister, we have heard it all over here many times, that you want to bring in a change to a bill that was presented to the House of Assembly by the Minister of Finance, that you did not agree with so you want to change it. Unfortunately, when the former Minister of Health, the Member for Topsail, disagreed with somebody in this Legislature or in that government, she was asked to resign, or felt that she was forced to resign, or felt that she could not put up with it any more so she resigned, herself.

I say to the Minister of Education, we are here at 11:15 on a Tuesday night, and the next time you feel that you need to get up and explain that amendment any further, at least have the decency to address the person to whom you are talking.

Now, Mr. Chairman, to get back to what my colleague, the Member for the Bay of Islands, was talking about earlier tonight about the VON, we have been trying for quite some time now to get the details of the contract that the Premier and group - the contract by which, I should add, the former Minister of Health resigned because she would not implement it, and the Premier had it implemented against her wishes - we have been asking the current Minister of Health in this House of Assembly for some time now to give us the details of that contract. They haven't been forthcoming, even though the Minister of Health rises in this House of Assembly from time to time and says that he has answered all the questions relating to this contract. I, along with the Member for Bay of Islands and the Member for Cartwright, sits on what is called in this House the Public Accounts Committee. The Public Accounts Committee is made up of seven people, four from the government side, four from the PC side, and three from the Opposition, the Liberal side.

What the Public Accounts Committee does is, they have the right and the privilege of examining expenditures that were made in previous years or in previous months. Just a short period of time ago, when we wanted to examine the contract that was signed between the government and the VON in Corner Brook - I, as a member of the Public Accounts, can ask to have that done, and if all members on that committee, or the majority of people on that committee said, yes, that is a good idea, we will have that investigated, then we could ask the Auditor General, the bookkeeper for the Province, to go in and go an investigation and present the facts to us, because he is a servant of that committee. He would come back and say: Here is the contract, here is what was said in it, here is where the money is going.

We have asked the Public Accounts Committee if we could have a look at the contract that the government signed with the VON. Guess what happened? The three Liberal members on the committee asked to have the examination done and the four Tories, the four government members, said, no, we are not doing it. Guess what? We won't get to see the contract in the Public Accounts Committee because we were voted down four to three.

Then they have the audacity to stand here tonight and bring a bill in, at this hour of the night, talking about how open and how accountable they are. How ridiculous, when you stop to think about it, I say to the members opposite. How ridiculous to be standing here talking about openness and accountability when, as a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I have the right to ask for and, for the most part, receive information on contracts that government has signed, and to be told by four members of the government party, the PC party: No, we are not showing them to you. They are here tonight trying to convince the general public that they are the most accountable and most open government that we have had since Confederation. What a farce! What an absolute farce! That was one thing we asked the Public Accounts Committee for.

The other thing we asked the Public Accounts Committee for - and I asked for it personally because I have some interest in it. I sat in a government where we saw a telephone contract - at one time, just a few short years ago, Newfoundland Telephone, before it became Aliant, I think, had the contract for the government telephones in this building.

At the time there was a lobby placed on government, or so I assume there was a lobby placed on government, because what I have asked the Public Accounts for is an investigation into the telephone contract when it was taken from NewTel and given to another telephone company or another company in this Province. I think the name of the company was, if I am not mistaken, Cable Atlantic or a subsidiary or another company. A company that was owned by the Premier and his group of companies some years ago. What happened was the contract was awarded to Cable Atlantic and it was sold in a very brief period of time. As a result of that sale, when you pick up a telephone in Confederation Building, as we do daily - that is how I spend most of my days, on the telephone - picked up the telephone and dialed information to find somebodies number, the telephone was answered by somebody in the United States. I thought that to be very strange, that the telephones owned in this building by the Newfoundland and Labrador Government where if you called information, the person answering that telephone answered with a Southern drawl and said: Can I help you, sir? That is the way they said it. And when asked for a name in a community in my district the response was: What state is that in, sir?

That was a company that the Premier owned who got the telephone contract and the phones were being answered in the United States if you called information. Now prior to that, the phones were being answered by Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. As a result of the sale, these individuals lost their jobs and the jobs went somewhere in the United States or somewhere other than Newfoundland and Labrador. So being a thinking individual I suppose, I wanted to find out how that contract went from NewTel to Cable Atlantic or some subsidiary and then how it could be sold from Cable Atlantic or some subsidiary to another company on the mainland. I wanted to know the details of the contract because even though I was part of a government when that deal was done I certainly had no information, did not know it happened until I picked up the telephone. It was not discussed with our caucus, as the current day Premier does not discuss things with his. I am not saying that was right. In fact, I totally disagreed with it then and, as a result, that is the reason I asked the Public Accounts Committee if they could review that contract.

MS JONES: That is right.

MR. REID: My colleague, the Member for Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair, and my colleague from the Bay of Islands, all agree that this would be worth looking at to see who the owners of the company were who received the contract, what they paid for the contract, what they sold it for, why we lost jobs in Newfoundland and Labrador, why that company now which runs a government telephone system in this Province resides outside the Province. When I asked the Public Accounts Committee if we could look at that, the three Liberal Opposition members voted: Yes, we would like to have the Auditor General examine that -

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. REID: Just one second, Mr. Chairman, and I will finish up.

At that time, the four Tory members, the government members on the Public Accounts Committee said: No, I am sorry, we cannot give you that information and we will not give you that information.

What I am saying, an open and accountable government - and maybe the Premier might want to get up and talk about it - what are they hiding in this open and accountable government?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: The hon. the Government House Leader.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. E. BYRNE: It is really interesting. I have noticed my colleague, the Minister of Education, just got chastised by the Member for Twillingate & Fogo saying: What is he doing up again explaining the amendment, everyone on this side agrees with it?

Well, there is one fundamental question that deserves to be asked: If everyone on this side agrees with the amendment that the minister has put forward, why are we still debating it three hours-and-twenty-four minutes later if they agree with it?

MR. SULLIVAN: I am glad they don't disagree with it.

MR. E. BYRNE: The point is, I am glad they don't agree with it, I guess, but that is democracy. That is the way the system works.

I am also interested in a couple of points that the member made. He talks about: what are we trying to hide? The spirit and intent and the details of the legislation that is before us will require, for the record, every department and every agency to develop strategic plans, departmental plans, and to table them in the House. Whatever information they table, warts and all -

MR. REID: A point of order, please, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for Twillingate & Fogo.

MR. REID: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In talking with the Premier across the floor, he just said it was your government that did the contract. I ask the Premier: If it was my government, or a government that I was part of the contract with, why don't you open it up and show it to the people of the Province, the contract that you signed? Why are you hiding it?

CHAIR: There is no point of order.

The hon. the Government House Leader.

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

Warts and all, whatever information that must be tabled by every Crown agency and department will be tabled here. Then the member asked: What are we trying to hide? Well, the point of the legislation is that we are not trying to hide anything, and that when the legislation passes, every department in government, every agency of government, every board of government, will be required to table, by law, materials in the House, strategic planning sessions, their business plans or activity reports, so that anybody and everybody who wants access to the information can have it. The Leader of the Opposition says: That is a make-work project, we don't believe that.

Here is where I am really perplexed. The Member for Twillingate & Fogo sat in a government that went through a public tender process - he just talked about a telephone contract. The members opposite are united in their single hatred of the Premier. He is the only thing that unites them. He talks about a contract that was given by a former Premier, a government that he was a member of, that the Leader of the Opposition was a Cabinet Minister in, that the Member for Grand Falls-Buchans was a Cabinet Minister in, that the Member for Fortune Bay-Cape la Hune was a Cabinet Minister in, and here is what he said. No one talked about it in our caucus, and then he stands up and says that we are a one-man show. The other side of the equation: When members opposite speak their minds, what is he saying about that? That is no good for them either. You can't have it one way today and another way the next day.

The fact of the matter is this, there was a public tender process that was gone through. I believe the former Member for Humber Valley was the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation at the time when it happened. There was a public tender process, it went through the public tender process, and now, by some weird quantum leap of logic, the former government gave a contract, which happened to be to the current Premier of the Province who was a private individual in the private sector competing for a contract through the public tender process, they gave him the contract and somehow it is now our fault that they gave it to him. Now, that is the logic. What he is really asking the Public Accounts to do is launch an investigation into the decision making of his own government.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR (Fitzgerald): Order, please!

MR. E. BYRNE: The question is - my colleague for Cape St. Francis, Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs, begs the question: What is he really asking? To investigate themselves, for what purpose? For only one purpose, Mr. Chairman. It is all politics. It has nothing to do with the issue. As I said earlier, it seems to me that the Opposition are united in one single thing, and that is their hatred of the Premier of the Province today.

We have listened to the Member for the Bay of Islands talk about the VON, and we have listened to others talk about the VON. Now, just listen. I have to urge my colleagues -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Chair, it is really important, for the sake of brevity and for the sake of clarity in debate, the Member for the Bay of Islands got up and talked about the VON, and what really happened.

I did not think, listening to it, that he really understood what he was really doing. Just listen to this. On September 24, 2004, the same member who just talked about the VON strike, here is what he said in a press release, "‘I've been asking the government to get involved and end this strike for the past two months', said Mr. Joyce. ‘I am glad they finally came to their senses. In my press release last Friday, I asked the Premier to use some of the new health care funding guaranteed by the federal government to resolve this strike. It is good that the Premier has finally decided to take my advice...'" - the Member for the Bay of Islands, on September 24 - "‘...take my advice, listen to the people, and end this strike for the good of everyone involved.'"

That is exactly what the Premier of the Province did, and now the member is condemning him for it. He says he asked for it. Then the Premier and the government did it, they took his advice, and tonight the Member for the Bay of Islands stood. I did not hear him say that, or refer to his own press release, and they want to talk about accountability.

Here is what else he said. This was on September 17, "‘The new money earmarked by the federal government is a positive step in improving and securing our health care services in the Province,' said Mr. Joyce." This is what he -

CHAIR: Order, please!

I remind the Government House Leader that it is certainly unparliamentary to refer to a member here by their name. He should refer to the member by the district that they represent.

MR. E. BYRNE: Of course, Mr. Chairman, just a slip on my part, certainly, and I will not continue to do it.

The Member for the Bay of Islands, here is what he said.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. E. BYRNE: No, I will continue to try to be parliamentary.

Here is what he said, "Now that there are millions of extra dollars to be invested in our Province's health care system, I would encourage Premier Williams to invest some of this money into home care in this Province. Grants should be increased to agencies such as the VON so that home care services can be improved and the current strike taking place in Western Newfoundland can come to an end."

What is really revealing is that on the seventeenth, 2004, he asked for it. The government delivered, through the leadership of the Premier, and when he got it he did not want it.

AN HON. MEMBER: Read it again, will you?

MR. E. BYRNE: Well, I think it is pretty clear. That is what he said in his press release.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. E. BYRNE: That is what he said.

I say to the Leader of the Opposition: Words are very important. When we get to the snow vehicle debate you are going to find out how words are very important, in how you are trying to support on one side and condemn on the other, but that is a debate for another day, I say to the Leader of the Opposition.

The fact of the matter is this: This act improves, within the system of government and within the departments and agencies of government, the accountability and transparency of what government entities are up to. They will know - they, meaning the people of the Province - a number of things. First of all, they will know that within government, Crown agencies and entities, there will be strategic plans in place, business plans in place, and for those boards who are at Level 3, activity reports, that there must be a planning process. They will know that their government is demanding - not asking, not requesting, but demanding - accountability, so that when we set our own targets, whether it be in education, health, municipal and provincial affairs, or whether it be on resource development, and we move forward and we say we want to get there, that there must be a plan in order to get us there, so that at the end of that process people will be able to judge us, not just on what we said, Mr. Chair, but by what we did. They will be able to judge us by where we started and where we ended up.

I am telling you this: We are not afraid to be judged by that measure. None of us on this side will ever be afraid to be judged by that measure.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. E. BYRNE: Nor, with all the opposition up front, with all the opposition to it - you want to talk about transparency and accountability - we have introduced legislation here tonight, talking about the Lobbyists Act, for the first time, for an open and accountable process by where people who have lobbied in the past, who have used their influence to peddle projects for their own benefit and others, that we made a commitment to stop that, and we are doing it. We are doing it right here in the Legislature tonight. I can tell you from my point of view, Mr. Chairman, and from the point of view of members on this side -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. E. BYRNE: - that we are not going to sit down quietly and listen to members opposite who didn't have the courage or the backbone to bring in that legislation, whose friends of theirs lobbied them and many others around them at the time. To lecture us on what we are supposed to be or not being doing - it is this government that brings transparency and accountability, it is this government that talked about introducing lobbyist legislation and did it, and it is this government that will live by it. I might say, Mr. Chairman, it might be to the chagrin of members opposite, but we will do it in spite of that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for Twillingate & Fogo.

MR. REID: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I wasn't going to stand again, in fact I was going to leave for a couple of minutes, until I heard my name being mentioned by the Government House Leader, so I had to stay and listen to what he said.

I have known the member opposite for ten or twelve years and I listen most of the time when he stands in the House of Assembly to speak. What he talked about when he was on this side of the House, when he was in Opposition, he waxed eloquently about openness and accountability and the need to be open and accountable for what a government does and the money that it spends, and the dealings that it has with companies and corporations and everything else. I, too, believe the same thing, I say to the Government House Leader, and I don't like for him to impugn motives as to why I say things tonight, like my hatred for the Premier.

MR. E. BYRNE: I didn't say yours.

MR. REID: Well, that is certainly the impression that you gave me and anyone else listening. I don't like for you to stand and impugn motives for me for saying something. I happen to believe in openness and accountability as well.

Let me get back to the point I was making earlier and that I had my word on and was about to leave the House for a few minutes. You brought it up and said I was part of a government that made the decision to take the telephone contract away from NewTel and give it to Cable Atlantic or a company owned by the current Premier. You are right, I was part of a government that did that, but was I part of that in any way? I didn't even know, I say to the member opposite, that contract was taken from the telephone company and given to a company owned by the Premier until long after it happened.

I will tell you right now, I say to the Government House Leader, when I found out about it I thought the process stank at the time, the process stank, because not only did I not know about it, it was never discussed in the caucus that I was part of and it is my understanding -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. REID: I see that the Minister of Finance finds this rather uncomfortable and he is trying to make light of it.

Can I have some order, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. REID: Mr. Chairman, I say to the Government House Leader, it was never discussed in caucus and as far as I know - and I will let those members who sat in the Cabinet of the day speak for themselves, but it is my understanding that it was never discussed in Cabinet.

You are over there today talking about openness and accountability and you are saying, why didn't I say something then? The answer is simple, I did not know then. But I do know now that there was a contract signed, and you are saying: Why didn't you ask the questions then? I am asking them now, and in the spirit of true openness and true accountability, you tell me, I say to the government members, why were the Public Accounts Committee members who sit on that side of the floor, the four of them who happen to make up the majority on the Public Accounts - why do they tell me to this day: No, sir, Gerry Reid, you are not getting that information. We are not giving it to you. If you want me to sit down and shut up, I say to the minister, allow the Public Accounts to look into the contract, then we will all know because I do not know what it contained. I would like to know and I am sure there are members opposite who would also like to know. I say to the member and the minister, the minister responsible for this bill, the Minister of Finance, if he wants to be truly open and truly accountable, do something to right the wrong because what stank then still stinks unless you are going to change it.

With that, I will sit down.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In the few minutes this time, I will probably make a few suggestions so that we might be able to make a bit of progress here because we have had a pretty good opportunity to say what we feel about this. As my colleague said, the points that we have been making, and justifiably so, are not about the content of the amendment but the fact that it is even necessary at this late hour and that it is an admission on behalf of the government that they have not done this extremely well, that it has not been that well thought out, the detail has not obviously been attended to like maybe it should have been and it might be a little bit haphazard and sloppy.

With respect to the exchange just a minute ago, Mr. Chairman, I can say this. I will mention the telephone contract as well for a minute, in the spirit of openness and accountability. I do agree with my Colleague from Twillingate & Fogo. I do not know if it stink or it stank or it stunk, but it smelled bad and it wasn't done right. I don't know why I agree with him. I do not know why the current government, in the spirit of openness and accountability, would not want us to look into the details of it. Here we are standing as members of a Cabinet at the time, saying that there wasn't an open and full process followed in that instance.

Let me make these few comments about it, Mr. Chairman, before I move on to my suggestion to make some progress. I will say this as well, debates are fluid things, I say to the Government House Leader, and we were probably ready to vote on the amendment, because I want an opportunity tonight to vote for the amendment and vote against the bill. I am looking forward to doing that. I have had lots of opportunities to say my piece, and I have said publicly I plan to vote for the amendment and against the bill. I would expect the amendment will probably pass and the bill will probably pass. I have had my say and have been glad to do so and we will see where it goes from there.

With respect to why the debate has gone on a little while longer, maybe, than necessary or longer than it might have, is because we have been graced by the presence of the Premier, who came in here thinking that with us, as elected members, he can use the same kind of heavy-handed intimidation tactics that seem to have worked for him in other arenas and maybe even with his own caucus. Well, it doesn't work here. Any time that tactic is tried in a Legislature that I am standing in, on principle alone I will fight against that. I don't care what the issue is. I am not going to be told to shut up, I am not going to be faced with threats or intimidation, to say: If you keep talking you are going to stay here until daylight or you grow a beard. I don't respond to that in any way other than to say, I am not standing for it. I will not stand for that in Newfoundland and Labrador.

MR. SULLIVAN: Sit down (inaudible).

MR. GRIMES: The Minister of Finance says: Sit down out of it, then. That is how seriously he takes it.

MR. SULLIVAN: No, I said sit down if you don't want to stand.

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. GRIMES: Trying to make a joke of it, Mr. Chairman. Now he corrects himself because he wants to be perfect all the time. I didn't say that, he said. He said: If you don't want to stand up, sit down. Big whoop-de-do! What a hero, to say the like of that! I tell you, that is not the way we respond over here. They might be willing to kowtow to that in their caucus, they might be willing to stand in here and have an amendment brought in that they didn't even see, and didn't even read but are going to support it. We are going to support it because we read it and debated it and we are going to agree with it, not because someone came in and said: Stop talking about it now, you are talking about it too long, and if you keep talking on this, we will keep you here until daylight.

The bully tactics did not work too well, Mr. Chairman, with respect to the Premier's involvement in that phone contract either, and here is the thing about openness and accountability that his own members should know, because they do not know it now, and the Public Accounts Committee might actually get into some detail, if they were ever permitted by the government to have a look at it, because here is what I know about it: The Premier himself tried to bully one of the people involved in the deal. He tried to bully a Mr. Henley - the story was in the paper the other day - a typical tactic from the Premier. Here was a person - and I will make the very serious point - here was a person who was working with and on behalf of the Premier to sell this Newfoundland and Labrador-based company to an outside group, which led to the result that the Member for Twillingate & Fogo was talking about: that instead of operators who knew the communities of Newfoundland and Labrador, knew the people, the phones were all of a sudden answered - the people here lost their jobs - they were being answered in Mississippi and Alabama and Tennessee and Georgia, because that is who the company was sold to; but, more telling was this: The person who sued, the person who successfully sued, the Premier - it was in the paper; I am sure they all read it - Mr. Henley, a good Conservative, a good bagman, a good fundraiser for the Conservative Party, working with his friends, the Premier and Mr. MacDonald, and he thought he had a contract, because he was trying to sell this company in Newfoundland and Labrador to a mainland firm. He thought that he had agreed on a certain amount and the Premier, in a snit, like he often does, like he tried to do here tonight, wrote him a nasty letter and said: Here is your money. Here is your thirty-odd thousand dollars. Take that, goodbye, or I will see you in court.

Normally, you know what people used to do? Run away, take the bit of money, back off, just like he wanted us to back off and shut up tonight. Well, it didn't work for him then, and he lost some money in the courts, and it is not going to work for him in this Legislature ever, I can tell you. I do not think it is only me. I think as long as there are democratically elected representatives here, we will not be bullied or intimidated by that kind of tactic.

In fact, here is where the openness and accountability ties into it. If you check the dates in that court case, which I have, the very times that Mr. Henley was suing for the contract when he was getting ready to help them sell the company to a mainland firm were the exact same dates when the current Premier was coming to the then Premier of the Province, saying: I am a Newfoundland and Labrador-based company. It was not a tender, I say to the Government House Leader; it was an Expression of Interest, a Request for Proposals. The now Premier's company came forward and said: Look, we are a Newfoundland and Labrador-based company. It shouldn't be a monopoly with Aliant - which was then going Atlantic-wide with a Toronto-based company. Why should one company have all the phone services? Why don't you split the contract and let us do part of it?

While he was convincing the government of the day - some of them, because only a few of them knew about it, which was wrong - it did not go to a full Cabinet, did not go to the caucus, was not opened, was not accountable, but the current Premier was there. The current Premier was there lobbying certain members of the then government, saying: Sell me or let me purchase part of this service, let me provide it, so that we can keep the jobs in Newfoundland and Labrador and it will be done by a Newfoundland and Labrador-based company.

Guess what the court documents showed? At the exact same dates that he was making that pitch to the government for part of it, and the rationale being to keep the work in Newfoundland and Labrador, he had Mr. Henley already shopping around to sell the company and flip it to a mainland firm, and the jobs ended up in Tennessee and Alabama and Mississippi.

Now, there is integrity and trust and openness for you. There is a person doing a business deal - nothing wrong with it, by the way - but the reason he was giving to the government of the day was: These are Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who work for me. This work will stay in Newfoundland and Labrador.

One of the issues that came up was that the purchasers in Toronto said to Mr. Henley: You had better get a final signed contract with the government back in Newfoundland because I am willing to buy it, but it is not signed with the government yet.

Now, that is what was going on. That is pretty up straight, open and transparent, isn't it? To our shame, I say, some of our Cabinet ministers participated in that, but they were participating because they believed they were leaving the jobs in Newfoundland and Labrador and that Aliant, which was becoming more broadly based than here, would do some of the work in the Province, and that the cable company would do the rest in the Province. They did not know that, while they were being lobbied for that work, the same proponent was getting ready to sell the company to turn a profit, to make some money, and put residents of Newfoundland and Labrador out of a job. Now, there is the story.

Do you think the Premier wants to talk about that? We are willing to talk about it in the Public Accounts Committee. Do you think our current Premier wants to talk about that? Maybe that is why the four members, the majority of the Public Accounts Committee, will not allow it to be investigated fully and totally.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. GRIMES: It was never investigated, I say to the Government House Leader, and they do not want it investigated because the Premier does not want to talk about that publicly.

Mr. Chairman, we may need one more intervening speaker, because I may need to speak - unless I am given a little bit of leave - one more time about the VON in the spirit of openness, accountability and transparency.

Let me remind everybody of this, in the spirit of openness, accountability and transparency we have had the now Minister of Health and Community Services, the yes man minister - because there was a minister before who would not say yes to this arrangement - who has acknowledged in the House by his convenient silence that there was never a proposal from the VON to do a palliative care pilot project because if there was, it would have been produced here some time ago. It never existed, by the way, never did exist; does not exist to this day.

Secondly, he tries to say in a cute, coy fashion: We have produced the Terms of Reference. They have not. They produced a press release when its says: some of the Terms of Reference include these three or four points. In the spirit of openness and accountability, our critic, the Member for Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair, has asked on three or four different occasions: Would you, in the spirit of openness and accountability, put those Terms of Reference on the table? Never been produced.

CHAIR: Order, please!

I remind the hon. the Leader of the Opposition that his time has expired.

MR. GRIMES: Yes, Mr. Chairman, if I could just finish to make a suggestion for progress. The last point is this. We have asked, as well: Could he tell us of the $150,000 or $160,000 or $170,000 how much was actually used to pay wages to settle the strike? We never, ever received an answer. This is an open, accountable group by the way, saying they want to be (inaudible).

Now, in the spirit of moving forward I would suggest this, that we have had a good say on this side with respect to the issue. I would suggest that we go ahead and vote how we choose as members on the amendment. I would suggest that we move forward and try to conclude any debate that is left on the bill overall. If we are any kind of a user friendly House, I suggest that whatever other bit of housekeeping work we need to tidy up today we might do and go home at midnight or shortly thereafter and come back and do some government business again tomorrow, if that is the will of the House, and Thursday and see what else we can accomplish. But I will tell you, if we are going to grow beards - maybe we will I guess, if we are going to be asked at midnight to start a brand new debate on the Liquor Corporation changes at second reading. Then I guess if that is the plan of the House Leader and the government, I guess we are going to be here for quite a while. It is okay with us. It is up to the Government House Leader what he wants to do; how family friendly you want to be. How we want to treat each other with respect or how we want to try to drive the Opposition into the ground and force some things through late at night under the cover of darkness, but either way, I just offer that as a suggestion.

I do not think in our caucus, at least, there will be any other speakers to the amendment, and that we might go ahead, I say to the House Leader, and arrange for some voting to be done. There might be some other housekeeping work on other bills that he has made some progress on today but I would hope that we are not going to be challenged at this late hour to start a brand new debate because I am willing to participate and I will participate fully, as I did earlier today with respect to the Liquor Corporation changes, which only ever saw this Legislature twenty-four hours or so ago. If we are going to start at midnight now and try to ram that through the Legislature, then I guess we will have to make a decision here as to how long we stay and how protracted the debate gets.

So, I offer that in the spirit of co-operation, Mr. Chairman, and suggest that the House Leader might take it from there.

CHAIR: Order, please!

Is it the pleasure of the Committee to adopt the said amendment to clause 4, Bill 39, as put forward by the Minister of Education?

All those in favour of the amendment.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

CHAIR: The amendment is carried.

AN HON. MEMBER: Division.

CHAIR: Division.

Call in the members.

CHAIR: Is the House ready for the count?

All those in favour of the amendment, please stand.

CLERK: Mr. Edward Byrne, Mr. Ottenheimer, Ms Dunderdale, Mr. Rideout, Mr. Tom Marshall, Mr. Hedderson, Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Shelley, Mr. French, Ms Burke, Mr. Tom Osborne, Ms Whalen, Mr. Manning, Mr. Denine, Mr. O'Brien, Mr. Harding, Mr. Jim Hodder, Ms Goudie, Mr. Oram, Mr. Ridgley, Mr. Grimes, Mr. Parsons, Mr. Butler, Mr. Barrett, Mr. Langdon, Ms Jones, Ms Thistle, Mr. Reid, Mr. Andersen, Mr. Sweeney, Ms Foote, Mr. Harris, Mr. Collins.

CHAIR: Those against the amendment, please stand.

CLERK: Mr. Skinner, Ms Elizabeth Marshall.

Mr. Chair, thirty-three ayes and two nays.

CHAIR: The Chair rules the amendment is carried.

On motion, amendment carried.

CHAIR: Shall I report clause 4, as amended, carried?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

Clause 4, as amended, is carried.

On motion, clause 4, as amended, carried.

CLERK: Clauses 5 to 20.

CHAIR: Clauses 5 to 20.

Shall I report clauses 5 to 20 carried?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

Clauses 5 to 20 are carried.

On motion, clauses 5 through 20 carried.

CLERK: Clause 21.

CHAIR: Clause 21.

The Chair has an amendment that was put forward by the Minister of Education when he introduced the first amendment, and I will read the amendment since it has been awhile.

The amendment reads: Subclause 21.(2) of the bill is deleted and the following substituted: The Lieutenant-Governor in Council shall determine the matters to be included in a contract between a deputy minister of a department and the minister responsible for the department.

Is it the pleasure of the Committee to adopt the said amendment, as put forward by the Minister of Education, to subclause 21.(2)?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

Motion carried.

On motion, amendment carried.

CHAIR: Shall I report clause 21 carried, with amendment?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

Clause 21, as amended, is carried.

On motion, clause 21, as amended, carried.

CLERK: Clauses 22 to 24.

CHAIR: Shall clauses 22 to 24 carry?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

Clauses 22 to 24 are carried.

On motion, clauses 22 through 24 carried.

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

CHAIR: Shall the enacting clause carry?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

The enacting clause is carried.

On motion, enacting clause carried.

CLERK: An Act To Enhance The Transparency And Accountability Of The Government And Government Entities To The People Of The Province.

CHAIR: Shall I report the title carried?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

The title is carried.

On motion, title carried.

CHAIR: Shall I report Bill 39, An Act To Enhance The Transparency And Accountability Of The Government And Government Entities To The People Of The Province, carried with amendment?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

Bill 39 is carried.

Motion, that the Committee report having passed the bill with amendment, carried.

CHAIR: The hon. the Government House Leader.

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

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

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

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

Carried.

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

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Bonavista South and Deputy Speaker.

MR. FITZGERALD: Mr. Speaker, the Committee of the Whole have considered the matters to them referred, and have directed me to report Bill 64 passed without amendment, and Bill 39 passed with amendments, and ask leave to sit again.

MR. SPEAKER: The Chairperson of Committee of the Whole reports that the Committee have considered the matters to them referred, and have directed him to report Bill 64, An Act To Amend The Occupational Health And Safety Act, passed without amendment.

When shall this report be received.

MR. E. BYRNE: Now, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. E. BYRNE: Now.

On motion, report received and adopted, bill ordered read a third time presently, by leave.

MR. SPEAKER: The Chairperson of Committee of the Whole reports that the Committee have considered the matters to them referred, and have directed him to report that Bill 39, An Act To Enhance The Transparency And Accountability Of The Government And Government Entities To The People Of The Province, pass with some amendments.

When shall the report be received?

MR. E. BYRNE: Now, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Now.

On motion, report received and adopted.

MR. SPEAKER: It has been moved and seconded that the said amendments be now read a first time.

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

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

AN HON. MEMBER: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: Carried.

CLERK (Noel): The first reading of amendments to Bill 39.

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that the said amendments be now read a second time. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

Carried.

CLERK: The second reading of amendments to Bill 39.

MR. SPEAKER: When shall Bill 39 be read a third time?

MR. E. BYRNE: Now, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Now.

On motion, amendments read a first and second time, bill ordered read a third time presently, by leave.

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

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

I move third reading of Bill 39, the Transparency and Accountability Act.

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that Bill 39, An Act To Enhance The Transparency And Accountability Of The Government And Government Entities To The People of the Province, be now read a third time.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion that Bill 39 be now read a third time.

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: Carried.

AN HON. MEMBER: Division, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Division has been called.

MR. SPEAKER: Are the whips ready for the question?

MR. E. BYRNE: We are ready, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Those in favour of the motion, please rise.

CLERK: Mr. Edward Byrne, Mr. Ottenheimer, Ms Dunderdale, Mr. Rideout, Mr. Tom Marshall, Mr. Hedderson, Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Jack Byrne, Mr. Shelley, Mr. French, Ms Burke, Mr. Tom Osborne, Ms Whalen, Mr. Manning, Mr. Denine, Mr. O'Brien, Mr. Harding, Mr. Young, Mr. Jim Hodder, Ms Goudie, Mr. Skinner, Mr. Oram, Ms Elizabeth Marshall, Mr. Ridgley.

MR. SPEAKER: Those against the motion, please rise.

CLERK: Mr. Grimes, Mr. Parsons, Mr. Butler, Mr. Barrett, Mr. Langdon, Ms Jones, Ms Thistle, Mr. Reid, Mr. Andersen, Mr. Sweeney, Ms Foote, Mr. Harris, Mr. Collins.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

CLERK: Mr. Speaker, twenty-four ayes and thirteen nays.

MR. SPEAKER: I declare the motion carried.

The hon. the Government House Leader.

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

I move third reading of Bill 64, the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that Bill 64, An Act To Amend The Occupational Health And Safety Act, be now read a third time.

AN HON. MEMBER: You have to report to the Committee, haven't you?

MR. SPEAKER: Following the division a few moments ago, the Chair should have called the Clerk to read the title of the previous bill, and he should have stood and read that. On that bill we had a few moments ago, Bill 39, after the Chair had ruled that the motion was carried, the Clerk was required to stand and read the title to fulfill the Standing Order regulations.

CLERK: A bill, "An Act To Enhance The Transparency And Accountability Of The Government And Government Entities To The People Of The Province, Bill 39.

MR. SPEAKER: This bill is now read a third time, and it is ordered the said bill do pass and its title be as on the Order Paper.

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Enhance The Transparency And Accountability Of The Government And Government Entities To The People Of The Province, read a third time, ordered passed and its title be as on the Order Paper. (Bill 39)

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

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

I move third reading of Bill 64, dealing with the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that Bill 64, An Act To Amend The Occupational Health And Safety Act, be now read a third time.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion that Bill 64, An Act To Amend The Occupational Health And Safety Act, be now read a third time?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

Carried.

CLERK: A bill, "An Act To Amend The Occupational Health And Safety Act, Bill 64.

MR. SPEAKER: This bill is now read a third time, and it is ordered that the bill do pass and its title be as on the Order Paper.

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The Occupational Health And Safety Act, read a third time, ordered passed and its title be as on the Order Paper. (Bill 64)

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

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

I do now move the House adjourn and we will be back tomorrow at two o'clock in the afternoon.

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved that this House do now adjourn and that we reconvene tomorrow, Wednesday, at two o'clock in the afternoon.

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

Carried.

This House is now adjourned until tomorrow at two o'clock in the afternoon.

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