June 24, 2005 HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS Vol. XLV No. 32


The House met at 1:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (Hodder): Order, please!

Admit Strangers.

This afternoon before we begin the formal proceedings, the Speaker would like to welcome former Speaker, James Russell. The Speaker from 1972-1975 and 1982-1985 to the Speaker's gallery.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: We would like to welcome the Member Elect for the District of Exploits, Clayton Forsey, to the Speaker's gallery.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair is of the understanding that the format for this afternoon will continue as per the arrangement when we first began this debate with a Question Period and that the rules be somewhat relaxed. I will, however, ask members if they could formulate their questions within the minute time frame and also responses likewise.

Oral Questions.

Oral Questions

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

MR. REID: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My questions are for the Premier. Mr. Speaker, since this whole FPI Income Trust proposal was put forward in the House of Assembly over two weeks ago, there have been changes in commitments and statements by the Premier that this proposal may not be the final document. All members on this side of the House have already spoken, so our time is up, we cannot speak again on it, even though this proposal seems to be changing and a moving target. Just a half hour ago, I got the latest edition.

I ask the Premier: Is this the final document that we are voting on here today or is there still a possibility that there may be changes made today, tomorrow or down the road?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. Leader of the Opposition for that very fair question. We received that final term sheet position from FPI just before lunch. That is it. That is the final position. They basically have signed off and that is as far as they are prepared to go on any of the issues. So, what we have before us here today, for purposes of the vote, is the final position.

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

MR. REID: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the Premier has stated throughout this entire process that he was not defending the actions of the company, FPI, and the government was not promoting this Income Trust proposal. However, in recent days the Premier seems to be out defending FPI's position to the point where he says that the expectations of the people of Harbour Breton are too high.

I ask the Premier: Why has your approach changed and why do you now be, or appear to be, supporting the messages put forward by the Board of Directors of FPI?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

That is absolutely incorrect. That is not what I have been doing. As Premier of the Province I feel I have a duty to kind of lay out before the members of the House and also the residents of Newfoundland and Labrador and the people who have a vested interest in this and the communities that are affected, to try and lay out all the options. That is exactly what I have been doing. I have been laying out all the information. Now, if various reporters, or the media, or the Leader fo the Opposition, or anyone else, interprets that as being me moving one way or the other, I can tell you right now, that is absolutely wrong. Up to, I would say, 11:00 o'clock this morning, I had not decided on which way I was going to vote and I will be indicating to the House this afternoon which way I am going to vote, but that is accurate, very, very accurate.

So, there is no attempt - what I am basically saying to the people of Harbour Breton is that we have done quite a bit for the people of Harbour Breton. We got a lot and I will go through it when I get an opportunity to speak this afternoon, and if the Leader of the Opposition wants me to listen. But, as recently in the last round, we have added an environmental indemnity for the plant which could have a significant consequence, significant liability for the company. It is unquantifiable. We have added $1 million to refurbish the plant. The committee asked me if they could keep the red fish line which is in operation, which I saw in the plant. We have achieved that and we also have some red fish quota for them as well.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. REID: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Premier might say that the media are misquoting him but I heard him myself with my own ears when he said their expectations are high. He went on to say that they are stretching the elastic band too much.

Mr. Speaker, if government passes this proposal today there is nothing to prevent FPI from selling all of their Value-Added and Marketing Division, a part of the company that generates 60 per cent of the profits. By so doing, this could be considered a resource giveaway of massive proportions.

I ask the Premier: Isn't it true that the passage of this proposal will, in effect, eliminate any power the people of this Province have over the company and might be the first step in what could become the total liquidization of FPI as we know it?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

First of all, it would not be the government passing it. If it passes here today it will be the votes of all members. So we will see where members are going. I am sure there are members on both sides of the House who are going to be voting pro and con on this particular resolution and that is what a free vote is all about and that is why we have done it. This has been a good process. Like it or not, it has been a very, very good process because of good open debate, and people have had an opportunity to express their views and people in the public have had an opportunity to express their views, and people with strong opinions have expressed their views.

With regard to the consequences and the loopholes, we will still have the Act. What has been done here is there is a provision which will allow the Income Trust. So, the Act is still there. The Act is not being removed off the table. The Act does not disappear. However, as I said here weeks ago and within answers to some of your questions, there are no safeguards in all respects. There are loopholes here. There are off ramps, for want of a better term. It is not as tight as a drum. I will make no bones about it, and I said it when I was on my feet before in answers to questions, that it is not perfect and that is the truth of the matter. So, in fact, yes, FPI could acquire more. There could be further dilution down the road. But with regard to the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador losing control of the company through legislation, no, that is not correct, because the legislation still stands.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. REID: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Premier might say it has been a good process, I beg to differ. It is a moving target and we still do not know if we have the final documents in front of us. We also see communities in this Province pitted against other communities. If that is a good process, Mr. Premier, I will tell you, I think you are the only one who believes that.

Mr. Speaker, if this proposal is passed, there is nothing to prevent John Risley of Nova Scotia, Mr. Sanford of New Zealand, and the Icelanders, from taking control of all of the U.S. value-added marketing division on top of their current 45 per cent ownership share in FPI. This, in essence, would be allowing these companies to achieve through the back door what they could not achieve through the front door four short years ago. This could give upwards of 78 per cent control of FPI to these three companies, direct competitors with FPI.

I ask the Premier: Does it concern you that these three companies could gain direct control of FPI's decision-making process? Companies that do not have, I might add, the interest of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians at heart.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: I am not here to slander and impugn the motives of people involved in this. That is not what this is all about. The other thing is, as the hon. the Leader of the Opposition knows, when he was Minister of Fisheries in this Province and the whole FPI issue came up before, the Premier at the time and the Cabinet at the time did not ask any questions. Well, let me tell you, we have asked, Minister, probably thousands of questions on this particular file over the course of the last fourteen months? We have turned it absolutely upside down. We have put every possible position, every suggestion that has been made by the Opposition, every suggestion that has been made by committees, every suggestion that has been made by our own members and our own Cabinet, we have put to FPI and we have asked for a position. As a result, we have gotten considerable concessions from FPI, but it is not perfect.

I do not know where your math of 78 per cent is coming from. I have no idea how you possibly could calculate that, but I can tell you the Icelanders could get 100 per cent of it because the Icelanders are not covered off, so you do not even need to do the math on the other ones. There is a possibility here, because there is only a best effort from the Icelanders, that they can acquire 100 per cent of the Income Trust because that has not been covered. So if that answers your question, that is a simple answer.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. REID: Mr. Speaker, if we give up control of 78 per cent of FPI, this ultimately allows outside investors to do whatever they want with a company that was established by and for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

I ask the Premier: Is this a resource giveaway, something that you said you would never allow to happen in this Province?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: At the end of the day, Mr. Speaker, we are going to have to see how the vote goes. We are going to have to see how people vote and how it gets decided and what happens when this particular matter passes the House. That is really what it is all about.

From my own particular perspective, I am not in favour of giveaways. I am very clearly on the record of that. I have stated it time and time again. That was based on the experience that I had when I sat in your seat and I watched your government pretty well give away everything that came across the table.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. REID: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I say to the Premier, if you allow this to be passed this afternoon you will be giving away FPI. You will be giving away the livelihoods of thousands of Newfoundlanders in this Province. That is what I say to you, Mr. Premier.

Mr. Speaker, the Premier has said that the provincial government is not responsible for the allocation of fish quotas; that is the exclusive domain of the federal government, and thus he cannot force FPI to leave Harbour Breton's traditional quota in that community.

I ask the Premier: If he cannot get FPI to leave part of the quota in Harbour Breton because it is federal jurisdiction, how can you claim that you will be able to take these same quotas back from the company if they break their commitments to towns like Bonavista and Fortune?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. TAYLOR: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition is correct. We do not have the authority, constitutionally, to be able to determine what happens with FPI's quotas as they currently exist; however, Mr. Speaker, over the course of the past fourteen months what we have been able to achieve, should this resolution and the amendments to the FPI Act pass here this afternoon, we will have secured a contractual arrangement with the company whereby if they default on the commitments that they have made to Bonavista, Fortune, or any of the other communities and any of the other commitments that they have made under the agreement, or the proposal that we have in front of us right now, Mr. Speaker, there is a default, there is a penalty, and it is the groundfish allocations associated with FPI's operations in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, that is where it is. Mr. Speaker, that is the contractual agreement. Mr. Speaker, it is a far cry from the letter of commitment that his government received from FPI back in 2001.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My question is for the Premier.

Premier, you adjourned the House in the middle of this debate because you said communications were needed with the federal government and with FPI. We raised the issue of the lack of security in this agreement earlier. We know you have had discussions about the situation in Harbour Breton during the break. Have you had discussions with FPI or the federal government since the House adjourned to improve the security elements of this proposal?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, with respect to FPI alone, I did not have any direct contact with the federal government; nor did I have direct contact with FPI - it was actually done through officials - but there have been several attempts made to improve the security provisions. Several alternatives have been put to FPI, and they have rejected them. The alternatives that have been raised are specifically ones that have been raised with regard to security on Fortune and Bonavista. That, in particular, was actually raised.

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Premier, the only security that FPI is offering is the groundfish quotas in the term sheet we have here. Your Ministers of Justice and Fisheries have both acknowledged, in early questioning, that consent from the federal government is necessary to give teeth to even this limited commitment.

Have you talked to the federal government about solidifying the groundfish quota as security for this deal?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. TAYLOR: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, we have had discussions with the federal government on that matter. I personally spoke with Minister Regan on a couple of occasions, and we have exchanged some correspondence. We have received a letter from the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, Minister Regan. Obviously, given the discretion that ministers have, just as we do here, it is difficult for absolute commitments to be made on whether or not transfers would be entertained. However, Mr. Speaker, they did acknowledge that if this should go through there is a contractual agreement between FPI and the provincial government, and that they would entertain a request on the transfer in the same light as they entertain requests of transfers from other companies on probably a daily basis in the Atlantic fishery.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Premier, when I described this commitment of FPI on the groundfish quotas two weeks ago, I compared it to receiving money from the bank to build a new home, but you only had to put your shed up on that property as security for the loan.

Why are you content to let FPI do this Income Trust deal and only give shed-like security, and not demand the proper security over all their assets, including the shell fish quotas and the dragger fleet?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I have never said that I am content with this. That is not what I have said, under any circumstances. As a matter of fact, the sad situation that we have here according to our information, is that we could have a company that loses its home and its shed and its garden and everything else that it has. That is the problem that we have and that is the dilemma that we face here. We have a company that is under stress, under financial difficulty, unable to raise capital. The reason for this exercise, the reason they have put an Income Trust forward, is that seems to be their only way to raise money at that particular point in time. That is why it is being put before this hon. House for everybody's equal and fair consideration.

To say that I am content with it or to say that I am advocating it, is absolutely wrong. I have never advocated the company's position. I just have a duty, as the hon. member knows from his own background and from mine, to lay out the case, to lay it our for everybody, to try and give all the options and let people know what the pitfalls are and what the strengths are. That is exactly what we are doing here.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Premier.

You are well aware too, that when anybody is in such a financial bind and they do need the money they usually do provide the necessary securities, and the securities that are requested. They are in no position, I would put to the Premier, to refuse to give the securities if you ask for them.

My question, Premier, is - you seem to be prepared to authorize and approve this deal; we will find out later in the day, obviously - what legitimate reason exists for not insisting that they provide this security? Whatever happened to your strategy of not leaving one penny on the table, insisting upon a fair and proper deal, and not giving away resources? Whereas here we seem content to potentially leave everything on the table.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. T. MARSHALL: Mr. Speaker, the proposal that is before the House is a proposal of the company; it is not a proposal of the government.

Mr. Speaker, FPI indicated to government that they intended to do the Income Trust proposal. They indicated they had a right to do it and were only, as a courtesy, advising the government of it. The government had discussions because of some uncertainty in the legal position. The government extracted further concessions and safeguards from the company, and the government continued to do that over a period of time.

These are the fruits of that negotiation, and the matter is now before this House for all members to decide whether it is in the best interests of the people of this Province and whether it is in the best interests of the company.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Fortune Bay-Cape la Hune.

MR. LANGDON: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, in The Telegram yesterday, the Premier said in relation to Harbour Breton's position on the need for a quota, "....these demands are now becoming unreasonable and unrealistic."

What is unreasonable about asking to be given a quota that has traditionally been processed in the town? Exactly, Mr. Premier, what is unreasonable and unrealistic in the town's position?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the hon. member for that question.

It is unreasonable in a sense, as he well knows, that the provincial government cannot deliver that. We are not in charge of the quotas. Everybody in this House knows that the federal government allocates quotas, so to ask us to provide something that we cannot provide is unreasonable and unrealistic.

As the hon. member knows, we have taken this as far as we can get it, to a point where we did manage to get some quota out of FPI and, in addition to that, have said to the community that we will provide a reasonable amount of money for a reasonable quota at a reasonable price.

What is more reasonable than that? We have done everything we can, within our power. I just wanted to let the people of Harbour Breton know exactly what is on the table, exactly what we got for them, but you have to turn your guns on someone else. You have to turn your guns on the federal government.

I have said before, the Member of Parliament, Bill Matthews, has advocated very strongly, as you have, sir, for your community, but you have to turn your guns on the people who can deliver on this. There are certain people who are very silent on this. The federal ministers should be involved, and they are the ones who should be answering your question.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Fortune Bay-Cape la Hune.

MR. LANGDON: Mr. Speaker, right from the very beginning, representatives of the town made it clear to government that they wanted FPI to leave a portion of their quota for the town. They made it very clear that the town needed a quota in order to survive.

I ask the Premier: Have you given FPI the ultimatum that if they do not make a reasonable portion of their quota available to Harbour Breton you will not support the legislation?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member will find out the answer to that question within an hour, when I get a chance to get up and speak on this matter.

What I can tell the House, and I think the hon. member knows this all too well, Harbour Breton has, right now on the table, $3 million for Income Support. It has $1 million which we have acquired for refurbishing of the plant. The provincial government has committed $1.25 million in cash. The federal government has committed a minimum of $2 million in the first year. That is $7.25 million. The equipment that is coming with the plant was purchased three years ago; it is worth $4 million. That $11.25 million. Added to that is the plant itself, which will be provided environmentally free. That has value. Added to that is the cost that the Province would have to incur in order to buy a provincial quota. That could be $2 million to $3 million. So, now we are up to $14.5 million plus the value of the redfish quota.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: I cannot do any more than that.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Fortune Bay-Cape la Hune.

MR. LANGDON: Mr. Speaker, FPI has been arrogant, callous and disrespectful, not only in the way they have dealt with the Town of Harbour Breton, but they have also been the same way when they have dealt with the provincial government. This is a company that had to start with taxpayers' dollars and was built by hard-working Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

I ask the Premier: When are you going to stand up to the company and demand that they be good corporate citizens?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: I am just as shocked at that question as I am by the reaction of the community to what we have achieved here.

I do not know where the information is coming from, or who is trying to lead this community in whatever direction, but we have done whatever we can for Harbour Breton. As well, the minister and I were down in that community. We saw it, we heard it, we felt it, believe me. Believe me, we did, and we are doing absolutely everything we can for that community.

We have also made a commitment that we will not let Harbour Breton go. Now, as Premier of your Province, I cannot do any more than that. If that is not sufficient, well, that is all I can do, I am sorry.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Fortune Bay-Cape la Hune.

MR. LANGDON: Mr. Speaker, it appears that FPI is offering a lease arrangement for 3O redfish -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. LANGDON: - fish that has particularly no value, and the Premier has been told that by the IAS and committee, and Eric Day in particular. This 1,400 tons of redfish, if processed in the plant at Harbour Breton, would be about three weeks work for plant workers. Does the Premier consider this to be a realistic quota from FPI to the Town of Harbour Breton?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Absolutely not! There is no doubt about it, and I have stated that publicly. On the Open Lines I have indicated that when I spoke about that particular quota that I felt it certainly was not sufficient. The Minister of Fisheries knows that and everybody else knows it, but it is what we could achieve at that particular point in time. It was what we could get from the company, but there are other avenues.

The member knows quite well that over the course of the last couple of months we have explored options with the federal Minister of Fisheries. We have explored private options. We are looking at possibly purchasing a quota. Even the shrimp quota that you were looking for, we also advocated for that on your behalf. I have spoken to you about that, and I have spoken to the federal Member of Parliament about that. So, we have explored every single, possible option and as a fail safe to your community, sir, we have agreed to participate in purchasing a quota if one can be acquired. We cannot do anymore than that.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Fortune Bay-Cape la Hune.

MR. LANGDON: Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the Premier has hinted at the possibility of a shrimp quota for Harbour Breton. Last week he indicated that the Province was waiting on a letter of commitment from the federal government on the matter.

I ask the Premier: Has he been given any indication that the federal government is prepared to offer the Town of Harbour Breton a shrimp allocation?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, there had been indications that they had been prepared to favourably consider it, but they were certainly not prepared to put it in writing. They were asked to put it in writing last week. It is a question, I think, that should be quite rightly put to the federal minister, the regional minister in this particular Province. That answer has to come from the federal government. We can provide the loaves but we can't provide the fishes and that is all we can do.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My question is for the Premier and it has to do with Harbour Breton. We all have to face the dilemma today of deciding on FPI, but the future of Harbour Breton is in the hands of this deal and perhaps what can be achieved from the federal government, but also the Province.

The Premier just mentioned efforts that are being undertaken to obtain a shrimp quota for Harbour Breton and the Premier has talked about assisting in other quotas that may or may not be available. Will the Premier say, on behalf of this government, that his government, in his jurisdiction, will make available processing licences to ensure that whatever quota that can be obtained, whether it be shrimp, or herring, or anything else, that licences will be available to ensure that this fish can be processed in Harbour Breton?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, I say to the hon. member, we will do whatever we can to accommodate whatever quotas are made available. We cannot sort of open up the book and start saying now that we can carte blanche issue licences or agree to issue a processing licence for something that we do not even know exists. That would be irresponsible as a government.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This sounds a little bit like the commitment for an Icelandic company not to purchase the best efforts kind of clause, which means no.

Are you now saying that if there is a shrimp allocation made available to Harbour Breton you are not prepared to commit to allow it to be processed in Harbour Breton, to allow some work to take place there, to allow jobs to exist in Harbour Breton, if they are successful in achieving a shrimp quota?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: What I am saying is we will cross that bridge when we come to it. If they get a quota and they get the allocation, then we will certainly have a look at it; as we would have a look at any other application that came before government, but at this particular stage of the game there is no allocation. So, we cannot do it. We cannot promise it if it is not already there. So, at a time, if it is acquired and if it is achieved, then we will certainly look at it. But, perhaps the community may want to just take the royalties from that particular quota; they may not want to process it. So there are options that the community might want to look at, but we have considered all options.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, the Premier's statements today do not hold out a lot of promise for the people of Harbour Breton. Yes, they may want to sell the quota but they may want to process and have jobs there. Is the Premier not being able to say today that he will facilitate the processing of shrimp, or any other allocation that they get, in that plant in Harbour Breton so they can have jobs and a future in that community?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, I can only repeat the answer to a previous question. You know, when we have commitments and/or commitments from government in the future to purchase quotas that total $14 million for the community of Harbour Breton, that is a significant commitment. That is a significant achievement for one community. If we had to get that for 700 communities in this Province, there would not be enough money around to be able to do it. So, we have achieved quite a bit for this community.

What we are trying to do for the community is take care of their short-term money problems, and they have lots of them down there. There are people under a lot of stress. We are also with the federal government trying to work towards medium-term solutions. We are also going to try and refurbish that plant and get it ready to go when there is product to go into it. Besides that, there is cash available on the way through. I mean that positions them very, very well for the future. That is what we are trying to do and I think we have done very well in achieving that. I just hope the community appreciates it.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you.

My question is for the Premier again. The Premier used the word off-ramp, but I submit, this term sheet appears to be one big off-ramp from a security point of view.

Premier, the communities of Fortune and Bonavista are looking at the commitments in this deal as a means of protecting their communities in the future. As a means of security, will your government insist and demand that a portion of the funds raised through the Income Trust - if it is approved today - would be placed in trust to ensure that the company fulfills its commitments that they made with respect to these towns?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: I can give the hon. member the assurance that up until very, very late last night I made that specific request to FPI. I insisted and demanded that be a part of the agreement, and they said no.

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you.

I guess it is pretty evident, Mr. Speaker, that it is FPI who carries the big stick on this file.

Premier, some people familiar with the fishery and Income Trust are questioning whether or not the Income Trust proposal, even if approved, will go anywhere near raising the $100 million that is being tossed about. Let us assume, for a moment, that it does. They have said they would use $30 million towards debt relief and they would use $10 million or so to improve the infrastructure in this Province.

What assurances, Premier, does this government have that the other $60 million, if raised, would be used for the benefit of the people of this Province and not the shareholders of FPI?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, according to my calculations we have commitments now on the term sheets, actual cash commitments, of approximately $53 million. If you are working on $100 million that is approximately 53 per cent. As well, there are other hard assets that have been passed over, which would be the machinery and equipment and, of course, the plant in Harbour Breton. Let us say it is worth $4 million to $5 million. Those are significant commitments. As well, we have gone to the shareholders and we have put restrictions on the shareholders' dividends which have been put in place in order to prevent stripping out. We have also put restrictions on possible amalgamations for non arm's-length transactions. The hon. member understands that. We have tied up as much of that $100 million as we can.

The ultimate hammer, at the end of the day, is that if they are in default they lose their quotas. That is the ultimate breach. That is a significant, significant remedy. That is what we have done.

Now, if there is $40 million left out of $100 million, well then that is the reason the company is doing this in the first place. The company is doing it to get some liquid cash so they can go out and make some new investments so they can grow their company and grow their business. That is really what this whole exercise is all about.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Premier, again they have made a commitment on quotas that you know and we know there is absolutely no security over in terms of enforcement here, and you are prepared to accept that. I think that is unbelievable here.

Premier, let's assume that they don't raise the $100 million. We have talked about the process here, we have talked about all the good things that FPI might do if they went with the Income Trust and they got the $100 million.

What discussions have taken place? What if they don't raise the $100 million? What is the backup plan? What security does your government have in place to protect this sector of the industry for the benefit of this Province, if the so-called plan of FPI on the Income Trust does not work?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, we have no way of knowing what they are going to raise, whether they will raise $100 million or whether, in fact, down the road, through further issuances, they could raise even more than $100 million, so there could be even more than that available. I think the hon. member needs to know that and understand it.

The one thing that I can assure him, though, is basically, as I said, it is nearly a 50-50 proposition. Fifty is going to be in the company's control, and about 50 per cent of it, the $50-odd million, of course, will be specifically allocated.

The comfort that we have as well is that $30 million of that $50 million is going directly towards debt, so our $20 million to $25 million should have first priority on any proceeds and therefore we would be in a very strong position to get those monies first.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The time allocated for Oral Questions has expired.

Orders of the Day

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

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

I guess we are moving towards Orders of the Day, I think you called, and resumption of debate on this particular bill, Bill 41, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act.

It is my understanding, according to our agreement, so that we clearly understand that we are about to conclude second reading, all members of the Opposition have had the opportunity to speak. I believe we have two members on this side who wish to speak, who will be left to speak, that being the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board, followed by the Premier. Then it would be my understanding that we would move towards - so we are clear with you, Mr. Speaker - a vote on second reading. If that passes, then we would move into Committee to deal with the amendments that are before the House.

With that I move now, Mr. Speaker, Order 6, second reading of a bill, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act.

MR. SPEAKER: Before we proceed, just for clarification, the Speaker's understanding is that there can be more speakers, of course, on second reading; however, there are certain motions that will be called in the second reading and there is one amendment that will be called in Committee of the Whole.

We will call the amendments in the order in which they were presented, and the debate on the amendments will proceed then as per the arrangements that have been made, with each party representative having twenty minutes to speak to each amendment.

So, continuing debate, the Chair recognizes the hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I think it is safe to say that this issue is one that has galvanized people all over the Province, I guess, on one side of the issue or the other side. The fishery has been our reason why we existed. Like most people here in this Legislature, we grew up around fishing communities. I grew up in a fishing community. I spent all of my life, pretty well, around the sea. My father left school at thirteen to go fishing, and raised twelve children from the fishery. We had to practically drag him from a fishing boat at the age of seventy-two.

I have spent a lot of my early life around the fishery. I fished in the summer. I spent a year and a half over five different summers and springs working in fish plants. I have also had an opportunity to look at it from the other side of the industry, too. I spent twenty years in the business, and there are other perspectives that I can bring to it.

I was Mayor of Fermeuse, and I chaired a local action committee for the entire region back twenty-five years ago when the Lake Group announced they were closing the plant in Fermeuse. That was a year-round operation. Trawlers were landing there. There was significant activity. It employed people in the whole region. At that time we were dealing with probably the only main employer and big employer in the whole region. Quotas were landed there, trawlers landed there, and, despite the fight, nothing was left.

Mr. Speaker, lives were disrupted, as is happening in Harbour Breton, and families suffered. They found a new owner. Then they found another owner. They found FPI, and then they found somebody else. The company then went into bankruptcy. Since that time, back in the early 1990s, there has hardly been any fish processed at the plant there. It did not employ anybody this year, within the plant, ten or a dozen last year, more the year before, and it has dwindled down where there is nothing left.

Mr. Speaker, Trepassey is an area that has probably faced as much devastation as anybody in the industry. I will read from something that was written by somebody in that area at the time. Trepassey is now in my district. It was not at that particular time. In fact, it was before I got into politics, just shortly before that.

Here is a statement written by someone in the community. It said, "On January 5, 1990, Mr. Vic Young, the President of Fishery Products International, announced the permanent closure of the plants in Trepassey, Gaultois and Grand Bank. The announcement came via the radio airwaves." That is how the people found out.

It said, "Note that this was a full thirty months prior to the announcement of the cod moratorium by the federal government in July, 1992, and we certainly were not ready for it. As one of Canada's oldest European settlements, and having been a fishing port for nearly five hundred years, the shock waves were gut wrenching and immobilizing. All residents from the area were shocked and people stood in a trance of disbelief. There were no thank you letters, no golden watches, there were few severance packages, and the blow was direct and painful."

The provincial government came to the scene and agreed to put in funding to employ people for twenty weeks in 1990 and twenty weeks in 1991 to help subsidize, to keep it open. It went on to say, "Sadly, the devastation became a reality on September 21, 1991, when the FPI plant in Trepassey closed permanently."

Mr. Speaker, there were 924 people employed in the operation or on trawlers in that plant. Seven hundred and twenty-six full-time people; 657 production workers; thirty-six trawler men; thirty-three in management. It was a devastating blow to the town.

In 1992, Fishery Products sold that facility to the Town of Trepassey for the grand sum of $1. That is what the town got from Fishery Products International back in 1992.

It went on to say: The Trepassey Management Corporation provided funds to maintain security until July, 1994, and the unavailability of sufficient funding saw that come to an end.

Just a couple of other notes from that community. There were 75 per cent of the businesses closed in that community. That town had 1,600 people. Today, approximately 800 people. As one person wrote: "The only thing FPI did for us was to sell that plant for $1." It made international news. There were numerous newspapers all over the world that carried stories.

I am just going to read a couple of sentences from The Wall Street Journal. It said, "Trepassey was so bursting with promise that the government in the 1960s paid for families to move here from remote hamlets in this Canadian province. But by 1991, overharvesting had decimated fish stocks around the Grand Banks, one of the world's richest fishing grounds for 500 years and Trepassey's plant shut. Stripped of its machinery by an overseas buyer, the decaying, vandalized factory now sits as a grim omen for a centuries old community facing a precarious future." Mr. Speaker, that is a sad footnote on the epitaph of a once prosperous community.

FPI was created out of an act of this Legislature. It is a publicly traded company with share restrictions. Fourteen months ago, when FPI talked about an Income Trust, there was absolutely no commitment from that company to any of the communities in which it served. This Premier took that file, became passionate about it. He has fought for numerous aspects and kept saying no, no, no. In fourteen months he has advanced that file as far as it possibly can get. You can wait a month, you can wait two, you can wait five, the time has come - fourteen months of trying to advance that file.

The company has given a commitment, a contribution to their debt of an Income Trust. They raised the funding of $30 million. In Fortune, a commitment of about $8 million in secondary processing to procure raw material, even elsewhere in the world to continue, as it has done with Burin. Also, a commitment of a plant in Bonavista, that should be in the $5 million range; a commitment of IT over three years of $4 million; a one million dollar R & D over two years.

If you looked on the Harbour Breton issue, it has come into focus on this. An Income Trust was intended to be on a purpose to move a company forward, but Harbour Breton has become very much a part of that. The Premier has taken that issue very personally himself and has worked to squeeze and twist whatever he can out of the company there that operated in that community and made money in that community and felt there is a responsibility they have to the community. That responsibility was never passed on when the former FPI companies existed. He is successful in getting - initially, it was $1.4 million requested by the, I think, the committee and the community. Then he got up to $3 million; a commitment of $1 million on the refurbishing of that. Some commitment on 3O red fish. While it may not be significant, it is something. The red fish line and, of course, other equipment. It may have price tags, I think, to put it there. One number I heard was in the $4 million range.

There are other commitments the Premier has been successful in, on behalf of the government and people of this Province; commitments on board commitment and appointments; limits on trust ownership. He has looked at getting a marketing agreement, the distribution of trust proceeds and extraordinary dividends. Also, a commitment to harvest quotas here in our Province. If they breach those quotas, there are certain repercussions that could occur, Mr. Speaker, where they would revert to the Province under a ten-year lease back.

There are no hard and fast commitments in many aspects, and I do have concerns on many of the things that are raised. There is the potential of dilution of that particular ownership by acquisition, because acquisition could dilute the actual ownership. We acknowledge that. I understand that. But we do need a strong rural Newfoundland and Labrador, and how do we ensure that? What impact is a yes vote going to mean on the future of rural Newfoundland and Labrador? What impact is a no vote going to mean on rural Newfoundland and Labrador? I am not convinced, really, that defeating it is going to accomplish a stronger rural Newfoundland and Labrador. I have a concern, Mr. Speaker, that defeating it may not only take Harbour Breton down, but it might take others with it. I want to see Harbour Breton survive. It is more unique than other areas of the Province. It is a hub of the Connaigre Peninsula. It is very significant to the economy and to the growth and to the future, a little like Trepassey.

Trepassey is over a two-hour drive here from St. John's. It was out in isolation on the southern tip of the Avalon, too long to commute to work anywhere else. It faced a devastating future and you can see it there in houses that have gone for as low as $100, $200, $300. People gone to Alberta. They could not afford to pay their rent up there and pay for their taxes back home, and the houses have either been sold or confiscated and sold by the town. We have seen hardship. We want to see it survive. I do not think there is anybody in this Province whose heart does not bleed for the people in that area.

Mr. Speaker, I believe we have to find a solution collectively for Harbour Breton, and I hope we can find it through this process, but we cannot go out and start pitting communities against communities because it will only bring us failure.

There are certain things that are certain, Mr. Speaker. There are certain things that are very certain. One is that FPI cannot survive without cash. When you have over $800 million in sales, and you get a return on your profit line of one-fifth of 1 per cent, who is going to invest? Would you or anybody invest their money in a company that is giving you one-fifth of 1 per cent return? Absolutely not. It is worth nothing to an investor in its present form.

If FPI cannot acquire cash to pay down their heavy debt, to modernize, to keep pace with a very rapidly changing and very competitive marketplace, Mr. Speaker, FPI will die on the vine, and with it will die the lives and the hopes and the aspirations of thousands of other men, women and children, their families who depend on FPI for a future. We are seeing a decline in resource availability. Resource is going down; quotas are going down.

Our Province has come to the plate. We have indicated, and the Premier has stated, $1 million in Income Support, what is a short-term measure. He has looked at $250,000 for a business plan to look at the area, to look at Harbour Breton, to look at the region. That is important. An agreement to purchase quotas so those quotas will stay in our Province - we purchased, we made an arrangement, a shared arrangement, out in Arnold's Cove, to be able to keep $3.5 million on the line so those shares will stay in our Province. The year before we took government, that very former government allowed shares from National Sea to go to John Risley and be bought, and not a squeak out of it, not a word. We have been committed to keeping quotas here in our Province to employ Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, and that is what we did in Arnold's Cove. That is what this government and the Premier have indicated we will do here in our Province.

The federal government has indicated they will contribute a minimum of $2 million. I am appalled, Mr. Speaker, that our federal minister, who has been a champion of people in rural Newfoundland and Labrador, has been silent on an issue so vital and so important not only to the people of Harbour Breton and the Connaigre Peninsula but an issue so dear to people all over this Province; because history has shown that communities have suffered immense pain over the last decade and fifteen years and twenty years because of fish plant closures in their communities. Some have struggled, some have found new owners, and some have prospered, but there is a future around the fishery and there is a future for rural Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, the federal government controls quotas and they, too, have a very important responsibility, because the people of Harbour Breton and the Connaigre Peninsula, the people of this Province, are citizens of Canada. We brought a resource to this country, and that resource of this country was used as a bargaining chip to gain greater favour in the international arenas by trades of other commodities in this country. It was used, and it is a responsibility for which they have to step up to the plate and do something significant, and they have been very, very silent on this issue.

This is a difficult choice and, I can tell you, it is one that I do not think anybody here takes great pleasure in having to deal with. I am certainly very sympathetic. I feel a solution has to be found, but I do not feel that we have to compromise the future of other communities to do it.

We do not want to put Fortune, Bonavista, or any other community in the position that Harbour Breton is in today. They are in a very difficult situation. To be honest with you, if we look at voting yes for this, I have a reasonable degree of discomfort with voting yes, and I do have a lot of misgivings on many aspects of it. Mr. Speaker, to be honest with you, I am more uncomfortable in voting no, because I think a no vote will begin the disintegration of FPI and with it the demise of communities across Newfoundland and Labrador. Mr. Speaker, I do not want that to be my legacy.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, what I would like to do is thank all members of this hon. House. This has been tough for all of us. It has been excruciating, quite frankly. We had an interesting caucus meeting this morning, everybody expressed their views, and it is really interesting the distribution of opinions and views and slants around the table as to what we should be doing here.

The process has been a good one. There has been a lot of antagonism in this House, in this Chamber, over the course of the last couple of years. That has been absent in these proceedings. I am just proud to be part of the process, because I think it has been a very good process. The reason it has been a very good process is that this is a monumental issue for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, extremely, extremely important, not black or white, lots of grey areas, as important an issue as abortion and capital punishment, because at the end of the day this decision can affect the lives of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, and particularly rural Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

In my experience, in my life experience, and also in my experience in this Chamber, this has been the toughest decision that I have had to make, particularly in political life. I have agonized over it and looked at all sides of it. What I hope to bring, from my perspective, to the table in this is some business background, some legal background, to try and analyze what the strengths are, what the weaknesses are, what the loopholes are to try and see what we can do to plug those, and to keep an open mind throughout.

When I stood here during Question Period today and indicated that I hadn't made up my mind until eleven o'clock this morning, that is the truth, and that was a decision that was very difficultly arrived at. Even as late as last night I was oscillating back and forth, trying to determine what was best for the various communities, trying to be fair to the company, trying to make sure that we had the best result for communities like Harbour Breton and Fortune and Bonavista in the long term, trying to analyze where the weaknesses were, where the off-ramps are, something that I sat in that chair across the House and criticized the previous government for, not closing the loopholes and pointed them out to them to try and assist them. Well, they have done the same thing. What they have pointed out to us, of course, we were already aware of, because, through the Minister of Fisheries and through the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General, we have asked all these questions, we have posed all these questions.

We have gone back to the company time and time again. We have tried to hire the best legal advice that we could get to advise us on this, because there are some very technical issues. When this first came to us, the first question was: Can this company do it without us? Can they, within the confines of the legislation as it is presently constituted, can they just go ahead and do it? We had mixed opinions on that. In fairness to the company on that particular issue, they could have gone off themselves half-cocked, started this procedure and then forced us to go to court to try to stop that. Our legal opinions indicate that, that would have been a difficult process. That was the very first thing.

When this first came to the table and was looked at generally by Cabinet, and some of us ministers individually formed a committee, our first reaction was to say no to this, because we had the concerns that had been expressed by hon. members in this House over the course of this very worthwhile debate. We had some very serious concerns. The concerns were, were we going to open up the door and allow this company to get out of the grip of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador?

It is interesting, one of the editorials in the Telegram some time ago, probably about a month ago, the last few paragraphs said: It is difficult to both try to gain the best possible returns for its shareholders - this is in reference to the company - and serve the kind of public policy role that the provincial government would like it to serve, and indeed which all members would like it to serve. The problem as it stands, FPI has to do both. As with that other well-known hybrid, the mule, it is a situation that has rendered FPI fundamentally sterile. That is the problem that we had.

The company is basically saying: If you do not allow us to do this, then we cannot grow, we cannot expand and therefore the alternatives would not be pretty for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. On the other hand, our concern is that if we allow them to do this - in order for them to be successful in an Income Trust, you cannot close all the loopholes because otherwise the Income Trust would not be marketable. So we went through that process, and as a result of going through that process and considering it we wrote back to FPI and we said: I'm sorry, no. That was a letter, I think, that came from the Minister of Fisheries, if I remember correctly - and said no to FPI, and that was back in June of last year. That is some twelve months ago.

Then what happened is the communities came back to us and the FFAW came back to us and they said: We would like this to happen. So, as a government, then we were in a very difficult position because we had a situation where we felt that this was not the right thing to do, the best thing to do under the circumstances because FPI was putting nothing on the table. They just wanted to get the Income Trust, take the money and do with it as they see fit. Once the communities and the workers came back to us and said: Look, we want this to go ahead. We think this is good for our community. We think this is good for our union. Then we had an obligation to the people of this Province to reconsider it. That is exactly what we did, but we only reconsidered on the basis that we could get extra commitments.

From my personal perspective, at that time, I was opposed to it. So, I figured if the only way that we can possibly deal with this is let's assume that the worst could happen and that the company could possibly strip out this cash. Let's look at it from what we would be left with. In other words, let's protect the Newfoundland and Labrador assets for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. That is when we got into a detailed discussion with regard to the various concessions, for want of a better term, that the company gave. So that was a long process. Over the course of time, as we are aware now - and I am going to deal with the Harbour Breton issue first because that has come to the forefront, but it is a focus because it is a community that is under extreme stress, and I have seen it first-hand.

I want to just read some of the hundreds and hundreds of e-mails that we have received from people in Harbour Breton. I think it is fair to say that it was these e-mails and what we have seen and what we have heard is the reason why myself and the minister went down to see it first-hand, because you do not have a really true appreciation unless you talk to the people. This e-mail says, from a young woman in Harbour Breton - this is several weeks ago. This is not current, Mr. Speaker. "I know that you can probably sympathize with the community of Harbour Breton, but, do you Mr. Williams see the tears pouring over my mother's, and aunt's, and uncle's face when you go to bed at night? Well, believe me, sleep doesn't come easy after that. Please vote NO tomorrow..."- and this was the last time we were in this House - "...and wipe the tears off my family's and community's face."

Another young woman from the community, "I am..." such and such - and I will not name her. She might not want to have her name on television. "...I am 17 years old...all I think about is having to move away, move away from my hometown, making new friends - which is not going to be an easy task. I am so sick of it all... Everyday I come home crying, wondering what time we're leaving. I am so depressed to see what is happening to us... I now have a broken heart. I'm so afraid of leaving my family and friends and, most of all, having to move away and graduate with completely different people. It is not what I wished for. Please consider this and, from the bottom of my heart, Save our community, Save Rural Newfoundland."

"My name is...and I am 14 years old..." - another young woman from the community. "Half of Harbour Breton is gone away to Alberta, Halifax, New Brunswick and more. 10 years from now there might not be anything left of this town because everyone will be gone. Maybe not even 10, probably 5. If everyone were to leave this town and come back to see what is happening, all there will be left is hills and probably some dirt roads."

The final one, Mr. Speaker, comes from a young man: I am writing to you about the FPI. proposal. When you vote, please say no for your and our sake. Maybe because I'm 13 you may think you don't have to listen to me cause I'm just some little kid. If you really want everyone's respect, you will. This is a big issue and I hope you say no.

Now, I am sure, over the years, as the Minister of Finance has indicated, there have been lots of little kids who have felt that. They probably had not written it. They probably did not send it. They probably did not have e-mail. But I can tell you that those e-mails and what we saw in Harbour Breton had a huge impact on us, a huge impact on us. What was stated in those e-mails, we saw it firsthand. I can visually see most of the women in that room, in that hall, crying. I can visually see a half-dozen young females over on the side, probably from sixteen to nineteen years of age, openly weeping. I saw men come to the microphone with their children and express the fact that they have to leave their community. That is what we are dealing with. There were open tears. There was a lot of passion, an awful lot of emotion. As a Member of this House of Assembly, and as Premier of this Province, that has a huge impact.

When we were in Harbour Breton we said that we are going to do whatever we can, and we have made a commitment to Harbour Breton. We are not going to let Harbour Breton go, we cannot. We simply cannot. Not only is it a fine community but it is also the anchor of that whole peninsula. There are all kinds of communities that are dependent on Harbour Breton's success. So, we started from scratch and we did absolutely everything we could to try and get as many concessions as we can.

When we first met with the committee - and we met with the committee on every single occasion that they asked. Originally, there were three major items. They wanted Income Support, they wanted the plant and equipment, and they wanted quotas. The committee, in all fairness to them, they have been very consistent in that. They have asked for those throughout. In the beginning they were going to have a plant that was very tainted, that was environmentally damaged, for want of a better term, and structurally damaged. The equipment was questionable, what equipment was going to come and go. There was a question of how much Income Support they were going to get. They asked us to ask for $1.4 million. As well, they were looking for quotas, and they were looking for quotas from FPI right from the start.

So, we went and got the commitment on the plant and the machinery and equipment, but we do not take credit for that because, in all fairness, I think that was coming anyway. I think the plant, without the environmental clearance and some of the equipment, was coming anyway. The $1.4 million; we, as a Cabinet, felt was too low. We said: we are going to look for more, and we feel that it should be $3 million. Now, there has been some discussion as to whether that is really $3 million because in order to get that extra $1.6 million the community of Harbour Breton has to give up its right to sue or to start an action under the Labour Relations Board. Our preliminary opinions from within government - I understand that opinions the union have gotten as well indicate that it is quite possible that the residents of Harbour Breton who start that action will not be successful. So, based on that, we felt: Look, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. We will try and get that number up. So, take $1.6 million now instead of trying to fight for $2.5 million or $3 million down the road and being unsuccessful and get nothing. So, on that basis, we went from $1.4 million to $3 million.

The question of quotas. FPI has also been as consistent as the committee and has said no to quotas throughout. So, we then went back again for another round. One of the things, or several things that the committee mentioned to us, they wanted an environmental indemnity for the plant because they did not know what they were going to get into. If they got the plant for $1 they could end up with an environmental mess. We, in fact, have achieved an indemnity. That is an open chequebook because the company does not know what the environmental consequences are down there. So to get that concession from the company, even though they have an obligation to do it, was still a significant concession.

As well, the committee came back very late in the negotiation and said we would like to keep that redfish line that is actually on the plant floor. We went down, we went through that plant, and we had a look at it, and we could see why. There was a redfish line that was being stored in the back of the plant, and the committee said: They can have that one, but we want the one that is on the floor. We thought that would be very difficult at that stage to get that. We got that as well.

The other thing they were concerned about was that they would inherit a plant or get a plant for $1 that, even though it might be environmentally clear, still required a lot of work. We went through that plant and, I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. Obviously there is some deterioration in certain sections of it, but the gentleman, Eric Day, who took me through it, indicated that there were certain sections that could be salvaged, could be improved. Others were very good sections that needed minor adjustments and minor tweaking in order to be workable. On that basis, he convinced me that we should go back and try and get $1 million from FPI in order to achieve that, which is exactly what we did, and we got that.

As well, we kept pressing them for a quota, and the only quota that we did achieve was the 3O redfish quota which, in fairness to the committee and in fairness to the people of Harbour Breton, is not enough. That is not what they need.

While we were trying to get that quota, we were exploring the option of possibly purchasing another quota from another company that might be available. We were also trying to explore the possibility of a herring industry down the road for the South Coast of the Province, which would include Burgeo and Harbour Breton. As well, we were supporting the community on looking for a shrimp quota.

All of those activities were taking place, but us fully realizing, as I said during Question Period, that all we can do is try and get what we can from the company and at the same time agree to stand up for the community and provide cash in order to assist them in purchasing a quota down the road.

As a result of all of that, we did end up getting the Income Support from $1.4 million to $3 million. We ended up getting $1 million for the plant. That is $4 million. The provincial government, from day one, said: We are there for you. We will be there for you. We will provide assistance. We committed $1 million without hesitating, in order to make sure that community was comfortable that they were not going to be destitute, and that money has been available throughout. At the same time, we agreed to put up $250,000 so that they could develop a business plan to look at their future, whether that involved the fishery or something else, or a combination of both. That has been put aside, and I understand that plan will probably be available in August.

Since then, the federal government have stepped in and said that part of their money will go toward the business plan, so they will pay for the business plan. Well, if they pay for the business plan, then our $250,000 is in addition to the $1 million, so you will still get the benefit of that.

The missing link in all of this was the federal government. Despite the efforts of the Member of Parliament, Bill Matthews, they were not stepping up. As the Minister of Finance said, there was someone conspicuously absent from this process, and that was the regional minister. That was the Minister of Natural Resources. That is the person who voices our concerns, the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador's concerns, at the federal Cabinet table. So, in the absence of that input, we still proceeded forward. The Minister of Fisheries had several conversations with the federal Minister of Fisheries, and we kept pressing and pressing and pressing.

I spoke, as I indicated here in this House, to the Minister of Human Resources, Belinda Stronach, on three occasions. I spoke specifically to Minister Regan. I spoke to the Prime Minister on this. When he was in town on the foreign overfishing conference, I specifically mentioned Harbour Breton because I wanted it on his radar. I wanted to make sure that he knew about the community and he knew there was a problem. We had also been speaking with officials at the highest levels in the Government of Canada. So, we were pushing all the buttons, doing absolutely everything we can.

Late in the week before last, the federal government were not at the table. When we decided we were going to postpone debate, we still felt that we needed to get more from FPI; but, equally important, we did not have anything from the federal government. Even though we talked to federal ministers, there was no commitment from Minister Stronach, no commitment from Minister Regan, no commitment from Minister McGuire, who is the Minister of ACOA. I am sorry. In all fairness, no, ACOA had sent a letter.

We wanted to make sure that we got everybody together. By having the delay, we were able to get, on the following Monday, a meeting of federal officials here after I had agreed, together with the minister and the Minister of Fisheries, to lead a delegation to Ottawa to advocate on behalf of the people of Harbour Breton. When I sent a letter off on Thursday to those three ministers, on Friday we had a response that: We do not want - this is not what they said, but they were obviously thinking - we do not want Williams back in Ottawa again. It is not another Accord situation. We will come to you. We will come down and we will sit with your officials.

That is what they did. We had to twist their arms in order to get them there. That is why, from my perspective yesterday, I was so disappointed that Harbour Breton did not feel that me, personally, and we, as a Cabinet, and we, as a government, had not left a stone unturned in order to try and get whatever we could for Harbour Breton, and we are still trying.

When you add it up, you know, we have the $3 million. We got $1 million for the plant; the provincial government, $1.25 million; the federal government, at least $2 million. They have said a minimum of $2 million. That is $7.25 million. The redfish line which we have gotten back is worth at least another four hundred, which means that the other equipment that is left in that plant, when it was bought, was worth $3.6 million. That is now a value of cash and assets of $11.25 million for the people of Harbour Breton. In addition, we have gotten the redfish quota. If it is worthless, it is worthless. If it has some value, add that on. As well, they have the plant. Even though they will pay $1 for it, it will be environmentally clean so that has value. As well, we have said that we will do what we did for the people of Arnold's Cove. In order to save their community - which is what we did in Arnold's Cove, and we saved 350 jobs in Arnold's Cove - we ponied up and we bought a quota for Arnold's Cove to make sure that they survived. This government is prepared to do that, and it is prepared to do it with Harbour Breton. When you add that up, if that is a $3 million figure, that is $14.25 million.

My concern for the people of Harbour Breton was more of a concern of frustration, that they might turn their back on this and lose some of it. They would not lose the federal government commitment, they would not lose the provincial government commitment, but they could lose some or all of the FPI commitment. It is a significant amount of money, and it also positions them, I think, reasonably well. It positions them so that in the short term they have the money they need. In the medium term, we are working with ACOA to look at some jobs that could be created, and I am told from the last federal meeting that we could immediately create thirty jobs and then follow up within sixty days with another forty jobs. That is seventy. That is a start. It is not the answer, but it is a start. At the same time, we could be refurbishing the plant in Harbour Breton. We could be getting it environmentally cleaned up. That would create some more work down there, so that coming out of the winter, when we have the plant up and running and ready to go, we are in a good position then to go after some quota, whether we buy some quota, whether we get some quota from the federal government, no matter how we get it.

We are also able to say to the federal government: Our community is pumped up now. We are buoyed up, but we need something from the federal government - and let's not get it lost on people. There is going to be a federal election early next year. What a great time to be going to the federal government and looking for a quota.

That was the plan that we had in place. I do understand and I do appreciate that the people of Harbour Breton need a quota to survive, but there is only so far that the provincial government can go, and we have done everything we can, but we will not give up. We will not stop there. That is not going to be the end of it for the provincial government with regard to Harbour Breton. We will continue to fight for Harbour Breton.

I just wanted to lay it out for the people in Harbour Breton exactly what we are prepared to do for a community, what we are prepared to do for rural Newfoundland and Labrador. Nobody knows it better than the minister. She nods her head there because she has put her heart and soul into restoring rural Newfoundland and Labrador, as we all have as a Cabinet, as we all have as members. We are committed, and the test was last night.

We went into rural Newfoundland and Labrador. We went into a seat that was not our seat. It was a seat that we had not had for a long, long time. I went around door to door. I could quote the member for Grand Bank-Fortune in an interview with CBC: I hear now again this morning that Bonavista will get a new plant out of this proposal, so there are good things here for rural Newfoundland and Labrador.

 

She has acknowledged it, and when I went door to door the people in rural Newfoundland and Labrador were saying: We believe you. We really believe that you are doing something. Because what we have not been doing, Mr. Speaker, we have not been sort of heralding all of the great things we have been doing. We have had our heads down, we have had our sleeves rolled up, and we have not stopped working since we got elected; and, I have to tell you, I am getting pretty tired because we have not had a clear break. Hopefully during the month of July we are going to get a week or two and maybe get some time off.

We have not been out saying all of the good things that we are doing, but our major focus is rural Newfoundland and Labrador, and last night, with Clayton Forsey elected in Exploits, that was a huge endorsement and a huge affirmation by the people of this Province that we are doing something right.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: We are not doing everything right, and we do not pretend to. I had some great discussions. I had discussions at the door with one man who said he did not want to talk to me because I increased his moose licence. I said: No, let's have a chat. No, no, I just don't want to talk to you. I said: Okay, but you need to understand why that happened, why we did it, because we had some fiscal problems and we had to raise some money. At the end of the day he still did not want to hear it, but at least I got a chance to hear him and that registered with me.

I also talked to store owners in that particular district who are concerned about some of the licence fees. This is not something that will be lost on us as a government. We have to go back - we have a Red Tape Reduction Committee - and we are going to have to start and look at some of these, but hopefully we will be in a position to be able to do something when we can turn the fiscal situation around in this Province. That is why we fought so hard on the Atlantic Accord. We worked really hard. We took on Ottawa. There were times when people kind of thought, oh no, we will never be able to talk to Ottawa again - but we have a new respect from Ottawa. We now, as a Province, have respect. The people of Newfoundland and Labrador are proud people and we deserve respect from the federal government.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, to get back to the issue at hand, just to lay out for the people of Harbour Breton where they are. Of course, at the end of this I will give you an indication of where I am going.

Then we went back to FPI to try and cover up the loopholes. We, as a Cabinet and as a government, had concerns, the Department of Justice had concerns, to make sure that we could try and cover off some of the issues. Would the shareholders take the extra cash and bleed it out? So, we put in a dividend policy that covered that. Would we be breaching the 15 per cent control situation? We managed to get a concession from them on two out of three but, because of some interpersonal relationship between the shareholders, they are unable to bring the Icelanders to the table. That is a concern. That is a concern of members of this House. It is a specific concern of mine.

The restrictions on dividends I have already mentioned, but the other thing as well is, they are selling 40 per cent of the Income Trust and we will have control of the Board of Directors. Those were two other major issues. The point is, though, however, that those directors have a fiduciary relationship to the trust or to the company that they represent, so FPI is not in a position necessarily to control what they do on the board of an Income Trust. The reason is that they have a specific duty to that specific Income Trust, so that is a concern. That is something that cannot be prevented. As well, FPI have indicated that they are going to sell 40 per cent to an Income Trust. There is no way of keeping that horse in the barn once it gets out. So, in fact, that 40 per cent could be more than 40 per cent, and it could go much higher. That is a concern.

These are loopholes that we tried to cover. We went back to them. We had legal opinions involved in order for ways for us to do it. On analysis, if you are going to put the Income Trust before this House and ask for it to move forward, then it has to have a chance to succeed, because if it does not succeed then it has just been a complete waste of time. Some of those restrictions, if the fetters had been put on them too tightly, then that Income Trust would not have carried.

We then went back to the company and we started to look for concessions. As I said, given those concerns - and those are concerns that I have, personally, and still have - we said: Let's assume the worst possible scenario. What can we do to protect Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, rural Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, and the Newfoundland and Labrador assets?

One major concession that we got was on quotas. That was something, I think, that raised even the Minister of Fisheries' eyebrows. We pushed hard for that and we got it. As well, we got a commitment from the company that they will land and process their groundfish in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, something that they are not obligated to do. That was a major concession, and that concession has been made whether the Income Trust carries or not. That is a huge concession.

The default of their groundfish quotas, as well, is significant, because if they breach any of the conditions of this particular agreement then the remedy is for the default of the groundfish quotas. It is difficult to value groundfish quotas. We had to place a value on the ones in Arnold's Cove when we saved that community, but if that size of quota for that community has a value of $3.5 million, then you can do the math pretty easily and realize just how valuable the groundfish quotas are for FPI.

Those were some of the legal concerns. On the monetary side, the question which we all asked is: What are you going to do with the money? You are going to get $100 million here. We are going to try and keep you from stripping this out and passing it off to shareholders, collapsing the valuable asset, which is the marketing arm, and then leaving it and leaving us with nothing.

First of all, we had an agreement from them that they would place $30 million worth of these proceeds down on debt, so that is 30 per cent of 100 per cent going to go down on debt. We have also asked for a further commitment from them that, in addition to that, if there is any future monies raised, that they would maintain the same reasonable debt-equity ratios to make sure that they have a continued commitment to put more debt back into the pot. On the IT side there was a commitment of $4 million. On the R&D side there is a commitment of $1 million. We know the concessions and commitments that have been given to Fortune and, as well, to Bonavista; very, very important, obviously, for the members of this House representing those districts and for the people in those communities, very, very proud fishing communities. We have to remember that the situation in Fortune was not a good one. As well, we have a commitment in the term sheet that the people of Fortune will also be looked after, in the interim, until such time as that plant is completed. As well, as a result of discussions between the Member for Bonavista and the council and FPI, we had a concession for a new plant in Bonavista, which was a huge victory for the people of Bonavista. Then, of course, we have Harbour Breton as well.

When you start to add up those cash commitments, as I said before - and I may be out by $1 or $2 million here, because these are just the most current numbers that I have - there is about $53 million in cash alone. As well then, we have the assets. As well, we have community commitments of five years. People say: Well, you know, five years is nothing in the fishery. Is that all you can get? No company in this particular industry can commit beyond that. The commitment was made for five years. It is subject to economic viability, which everyone will say: Well, maybe that is a wishy-washy test. The definition that we have in the term sheet is as strong a definition of economic viability as we could put together, so that was significant. Then you are dealing with Marystown, Burin, Port au Choix, Port Union, and Triton. All these communities, as well, are affected by that commitment, and that is, again, a significant commitment.

As well, as the Minister of Finance indicated when he was on his feet, there is a seven-year marketing commitment which has been given from FPI, because they are very good marketers. That is what this Income Trust is all about, the asset they are selling. Let us not lose sight of this. The members of the House of Assembly should not. The marketing arm is the one that has value here. The domestic Newfoundland and Labrador arm of FPI does not have the value. They are trying to sell off the crown jewel which is the marketing arm. If they were going to do that and they were going to place it into an Income Trust, then we have asked the company to get a commitment, a seven-year commitment, so that Newfoundland and Labrador products can be marketed through that seven year period.

Those are the main concessions, and I can go down through them, and they have been repeated before, but I know time is getting on. I just wanted to sort of give people an overview of exactly what we have done. We have come from a request for an Income Trust with nothing on the table to all those concessions that I have just indicated to this hon. House. That is what makes our decision so difficult. If we could go back to the decision that we had last June when there was nothing on the table, it would be easy for all of us to vote no and walk away and say: Well, that is fine, they were not prepared to put up anything. They got $100 million, they were going to walk away with it, we are not going to agree to that.

However, the reality of what we have to face here is, we do have a business that is in trouble. Now, there has been all kinds of people who expressed opinions on the airwaves and everything, and that is good, quite frankly, because I have listened to them. I listen to as many as I can - especially travelling around during the by-election - just to hear what they are saying, what the different point of view is, and everybody brings a different perspective. We learn something every time one of them speaks. But that company, rightly or wrongly, is in trouble. So, the question then is: Do we agree with this plan? Do we allow them to do this or do we force them to stay and keep going and continue on as they are? That is the decision. An extremely, extremely tough decision. No tougher than any other decision in the fishery, because in our fishery the sad news is that we are facing declining stocks. We have to try and manage our way through it, that is what RMS was all about.

We all know the crab fishery is declining. We do not like it. We cannot do anything about it, but as John Crosbie said: we can't put the fish in the water. We can't put the crab back in the water. So, we, as a government, are trying to assist the communities to work through these difficulties. That is why we were so adamant on RMS. In this particular situation, it is the same situation. We have a very scarce groundfish in this Province. It has been that way for a long, long time. Again, we are trying to manage through difficult situations. As the Minister of Finance indicated the story in Trepassey, very analogist to what Harbour Breton is going through. But Harbour Breton has some major concessions on the table.

The bottom line on this, is that this has not been easy. This has been extremely difficult. It has been really hard on all our members. You had to be in that caucus room this morning at 11:00 o'clock and listen to conversations. You would have been really pleased. You would have been pleased with the membership, the representation that you have in your Province. To hear the expressions and the points of view that are being expressed. People who know the fishery right from their heart. Right from their guts they know it, and in there saying exactly what they thought. People bringing a business perspective. People trying to make the right decision. It is like being on a jury. Exactly the same as being on a jury. People torn, not knowing which way to go. That is why this is so important. That is why a free vote in this House of Assembly is so important, and this is a true free vote. There is not one caucus member here today who will not say that I said to them this morning: if I have to take a position and I stand alone, I stand alone. That is just the way it is, and that is the beauty of a free vote. That is why I am really pleased with the way this process has evolved. Again, I pay full marks to the way that we have conducted ourselves in here, both sides of the House. Sure, there has been a little bit of banter. That is all part of it, but the importance of it has not been lost on the members.

Now, to get down to the crux of it. From day one I have had some difficulty with this because I see us all in the situation where we are damned if we do and we are damned if we do not. If we decide to vote yes and let the company go ahead and the company does some of the things that it can legally do by manoeuvring around the various clauses and the various corporate structures - because they have a very complex corporate structure set up. If they decide that they are not going to act in good faith and they move around some of these structures, then it is quite possible that the horse will get well out of the barn and we will never, ever get that horse back.

The other decision, unfortunately, is that if we do not do something we are going to have a situation, probably as early as Monday morning, where this company can say: If we don't have this money, then we can't move forward. Therefore, Harbour Breton, we can give you some of the things that we promised you, we can let you keep some things, but we are going to have to take some of that money off the table because we just do not have the money to operate. The company is probably going to say to Fortune: I'm sorry, we can't do what we would like to do, which would make good business sense to do. They will say to Bonavista: I'm sorry, we heard your member, we heard your Committee, we heard your council. We know that is the right thing to do, but we do not have the money to do it. But, the question is: Do we have the security? Have we closed the loopholes? Have we prevented all the off-ramps?

When I sat over on that side of the House, I criticized the Voisey's Bay exercise, I criticized the Lower Churchill exercise, on the basis that I did not feel that the documentation was tight enough and was secure enough. I even made the statement, which I made in the House today, that there were more off-ramps than the 401. In this documentation here, we have done everything we can to squeeze out every little bit and to cover as many loopholes as we can.

From a personal perspective, I have to be consistent. I cannot stand in this House and be inconsistent from what I advocated on that side of the House. That was when the hon. members opposite were in government and I felt that it was not closed tight enough, the situation where we could prevent no more giveaways; a slogan that we personally campaigned on and assured people that we were not going to give away the resources of the Province. I wanted to make sure it was as tight as we could. We went as hard as we could on this. We have secured everything we can. We cannot take it any further. That is why we asked for the extra couple of weeks to see if we could squeeze out some more concessions. As a result of that, I am not satisfied. I cannot, in my gut, vote yes for this particular amendment. That means I will be voting no. Now, that has to be weighed against what a yes vote means for all the other communities.

What I tried to do here today was lay it all out, as best I could, to let you know what the options are, what the concessions are, what the advantages are. If this is defeated today, my job will get a lot tougher Monday morning, but I am not prepared to stand here, myself personally in this House today, and vote - and it might be a little bit of a legal background - for a document that I am not comfortable is tight enough to give us the assurance that this may not be a giveaway. Now if, in fact, everything pans out, everything is done in good faith, all the commitments are honoured - this is a huge win for Newfoundland and Labrador if there was a yes vote and if the Income Trust is successful. However, having seen the legal opinions, having worked through the legal opinions, I am not satisfied that this is tight enough. So I will be voting no.

After a long time of considering this, as I said oscillating back and forth, it is our job, as members of this House, to try and weigh the pros and the cons, the positives and the negatives. I do not envy my colleagues in a decision that they are going to have to reach. I know they will reach the right decision at the end of the day. I certainly will stand behind them, no matter what the decision is, but I want the people of Newfoundland and Labrador to know that we have agonized over this. We have done absolutely everything we can, and hopefully it works out best for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: I think, by agreement - are there further speakers at this stage in the debate?

I hear no further speakers. The Speaker then will call the amendment put forward by the hon. the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi, to move as follows: That all the words after the word "That" in the motion at second reading be deleted and substituted by the following: "Bill 41, An Act To Amend The Fisheries Products International Limited Act, be not now read a second time but that it be read a second time this day three months hence."

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The motion that I made before the House two weeks ago was made in the context of an agreement by all parties to bring the matter forward for debate over a two-day period. Ultimately, to come to a vote on the Friday of two weeks ago, on June 10.

I moved the motion early in the debate. I moved the motion saying that I was not satisfied that there were enough players at the table, that the federal government was missing, that no commitments had been obtained and not enough work had been done to ensure that they were a part of what I call the puzzle, with respect to the people of Harbour Breton.

I said that I could not support the legislation, although it had some merit, without some further concessions from FPI because I was not satisfied that they were bringing everything to the table that they were capable of making available to the people of Harbour Breton. I proposed what is known technically as a three month hoist, which would allow an opportunity for the federal government to be sought as participants in the future of Harbour Breton, to take their responsibilities for the future of this community seriously, and for FPI to be requested, lobbied, insisted upon, to come forward with something more for the future of Harbour Breton. It was not necessarily intended that a full three months need to be taken.

At the end of the day on Friday, two weeks ago, it was agreed that the House would adjourn, effectively achieving an opportunity for events to unfold with FPI and with the Government of Canada. What has happened since then? We have seen, certainly, some movement. We have seen a commitment of a specific amount of money from the Government of Canada as a minimum, and we have seen a commitment to make available monies from other programs based on whatever future opportunities or options are pursued in Harbour Breton from a business enterprise point of view.

We have also seen some further commitments from FPI, the commitment to ensure that any environmental deficiencies of the plant in operation in Harbour Breton will be their responsibility and not the responsibility of the people of Harbour Breton. It is an unknown quantity, Mr. Speaker, but it is a significant worry, concern and uncertainty that would obviously diminish the options for the people of Harbour Breton. There is a commitment of an additional $1 million to refurbish the plant in operations in Harbour Breton. There is a commitment of a redfish quota which may or may not have significant value, but it is not nothing. It is some access to the use of some quota.

I was disappointed to hear today the Premier say that he wasn't prepared to commit a licensing, processing, for shrimp and for other possibilities, whatever quota may be obtained for Harbour Breton. That is a serious deficiency, Mr. Speaker, a very serious deficiency.

The question then remains: Is there a point at this stage of the debate to put the matter off for a further two-and-a-half months or three months? Will the position of the Government of Canada with respect to quotas change? Can it change, if it is a discretionary matter that is not going to come to fruition until this time next year? Is it possible in the next two or three months that the quota that the Premier has talked about assisting in the purchase of will become available? Is that worth waiting another three months to see whether it will transpire? Is it possible that the options for Harbour Breton will crystalize in the next two or three months? I do not know. I do not know, but the other question, I guess, we have to ask ourselves at this stage is: Is it worth the additional three months of agony, of concern, of uncertainty, of angst, that the people not only of Harbour Breton will face but the people of Bonavista, Fortune, Marystown, Port au Choix, Triton, and the other places where FPI operates, to put them through that uncertainty that is now before their communities as well as that of Harbour Breton?

In a sense, Mr. Speaker, while it is possible that something could happen over the next two or three months, the purpose of my motion that I made two weeks ago appears to have been achieved, at least to the extent that we have seen improvements in the position of the commitments of FPI to Harbour Breton and improvements to the commitment of the Government of Canada to Harbour Breton. So, should we wait another three months and see what happens, and leave this company, the communities not only of Harbour Breton but everybody else, in uncertainty, or should we face up to our responsibilities today to either approve or not the bill before the House?

I think, Mr. Speaker, upon reflection, and having seen that the last two weeks have done something to at least find out what the bottom line is, that is may not make sense to continue to delay matters by waiting another three months to put this bill to the House of Assembly.

Mr. Speaker, having put the motion, the motion is there. It can either be voted on by members of this House, or if the House wishes to have it removed from a vote then I would be content to do that. I do not necessarily want to put people through a vote on that if it is not necessary, but under our agreement each caucus represented in the House has the right to speak for twenty minutes and I certainly would not want to deprive anyone of the right to speak to that particular motion, to talk about the difficulties that we are all facing here today in terms of the future of communities in this Province, of a company that, as I said in my speech two weeks ago, something that I had been very proud of, as a corporation that had a mandate and a vision and conducted itself over a long period of time in what I feel was the best interest ultimately of the Province. That did not mean they did not close plants, Mr. Speaker. I heard the Member for Ferryland, the Minister of Finance, talk about this. They did close plants, even though they carried on. We cannot have a company that cannot ever close any plant, but the question remains, Mr. Speaker, do we come to grips today with this decision or do we wait three months?

I think, on balance, Mr. Speaker, we should make the decision today. I understand the Leader of the Opposition is going to speak to this motion. We can bring it to a vote if members wish, but I would be content if leave were to be granted to remove the motion from the floor and allow us to continue to debate the other amendments that might bring some changes to the legislation or see what happens to it.

Having said that, Mr. Speaker, I will take my place and allow other members to speak to this issue. If they wish to grant leave to remove it, then we will do so.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, speaking to the amendment.

MR. REID: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Normally when I stand, I say that I rise with pleasure to speak today, but this is not certainly one of those occasions. I think what we are being asked to do today is probably vote on the most important piece of legislation that we have seen in this House of Assembly in quite some time, certainly in the years that I have been here, and that is just about ten years now, Mr. Speaker.

What we are being asked to do today is to vote to allow FPI to sell off its American assets, its value-added and its marketing division that exists in the United States, that makes up 60 per cent of the companies profits. Those profits are distributed, not just amongst the companies in the United States but it sort of keeps those fish plants that we have here in this Province alive, that managed to survive through the moratorium and so on.

In return for allowing FPI to sell off these assets, the most valued assets that the company has, FPI has made a number of commitments to the Province, what they are going to do. The most important of those, I guess, are: they are going to build a brand new fish plant in Bonavista in the fall of 2007; and they are going to redevelop a fish plant in Fortune where they are going to do some secondary processing. The question is: What are they going to do for the people of Harbour Breton and the plant in Harbour Breton? The people who are sitting in the gallery here today from Harbour Breton, the IAS committee, and the chair of the local union down there, have told me, without fish Harbour Breton will not survive.

Mr. Speaker, there is nothing in this piece of legislation today, or in this commitment that we have from FPI, that gives Harbour Breton fish. They talk about a few tons of redfish. Anyone involved in the industry, including the Minister of Fisheries and the people sitting in the gallery, know that 3O redfish is valueless. In fact, Mr. Speaker, FPI left redfish in the water last year because it was not profitable to catch, let alone process and try to market or export. So being offered that is very little.

We have heard about what else is on the table; the $3 million that the people of Harbour Breton think they are owed already. That is no gift. We talk about $2 million from the federal government; well, I hope that the federal government would come to anyone's aid, any town's aid, in this Province when their main employer goes under and give them $2 million. The Province talks about putting $1.5 million into a make-work program. I would expect them to do that anyway. What have we got for Harbour Breton? As far as I am concerned, without fish there will not be a Harbour Breton. We are being asked to decide that today. We are being asked to say, basically, for a new plant in Bonavista and one in Fortune and nothing for Harbour Breton, that we should allow FPI to sell the most valued asset.

Let's go through the three things that I just talked about, Mr. Speaker. Let's talk about the sale of the American assets. Anyone who knows FPI knows that is the most valued asset. That is the asset that the previous board of directors, and those before them, bought and established in the United States, because they realized in order to make the towns and the plants that they operated in this Province profitable they needed a marketing division, in order to sell their fish and compete globally which they do and did well. They also started a secondary processing facility in Danvers, Massachusetts and I think there was one in another state in the United States before that. Because they were very successful with that division, they were able to subsidize, in hard times, the operations back here in the Province. That was the intent of FPI when it was established by this government with the aid of the Federal Government of Canada. That is what happened back in the 1970s when they were collapsing the groundfish fishery and plants were going bankrupt, the government of the day had the wisdom to pull it all together and make one company out of it, with the intent of stabilizing the fishery and helping protect the communities and the residents of those communities in rural towns all around this Province.

We are being asked today to change the legislation that would allow these people to be able to buy up all of the secondary processing and the marketing division that exists in the United States. I have a big problem with that, Mr. Speaker. I say to you and I say to the people who might be listening here today, even if Harbour Breton had a fish quota today that might be acceptable to them I could not stand in this House and support what FPI is trying to do, to carve off the most valued part of their company and sell it. What does that leave us with?

We have heard the CEO of FPI stand on many occasions and talk about what value there is in groundfish and the competition from China and the dollar, the fluctuation in the currency, and that basically there is no money in groundfish. What is going to left in this Province if we allow FPI to sell off those assets? I say to you, Mr. Speaker, if we allow FPI to sell their most valued assets, then those who are least valued will not exist for much longer. I say to you, Mr. Speaker, I doubt they will exist four or five years down the road. The least valued assets are the ones that rest and reside in this Province. Mr. Speaker, that is the selling off of the FPI thing.

FPI also talks about building a fish plant in Bonavista and rebuilding and redeveloping the one in Fortune. They have a dollar value attached to it and they have a time frame in which they are going to do it, but there are two circumstances or two conditions, two caveats, under which this is going to be able to proceed. Here is what we are being asked to do. FPI is saying: We will build a new plant in Bonavista and we will redevelop a plant in Fortune under two conditions, and the two conditions are: If there is resource availability, and if the venture would be economically viable.

The Premier talked earlier about ramps in the Voisey's Bay agreement like those on the 401. I say, Mr. Speaker, if we allow this to happen today, it is not ramps on the 401, it is all a ramp. Just stop, anyone involved in the crab fishery in this Province today, stop and think. I say to the Member for Bonavista - I know his heart and his soul are with his people down there - but I say to him: Realistically, do you think the resource in two years time, if FPI wanted to dishonour their commitment, is strong enough? What you are signing on to here today, do you think their commitment is strong enough that you are convinced that you are going to see a plant in Bonavista? I am not.

Let me tell you why. They are saying they will build it if the resource is available. Bonavista, I think, rests right on the line of the fishing zone, 3K. All of my district is in 3K. What is happening to the crab resource in 3K? I tell you today, there are no supplementary or full-time fishermen fishing crab in that zone because DFO has closed it. If you listened to the FRCC last week, when they made their prognoses of what was going to happen with the crab stocks in that area in the next few years, Mr. Speaker, if they are right, we are in for one dismal set of circumstances.

I am saying to the people of Bonavista, while they might think that I am being cruel because I am not supporting them on this venture, don't be fooled by commitments made by FPI because FPI knows right now, as does the FRCC, what the state of the stock is going to be two years from now, and they know that they have a loophole that they can drive a Mack truck through. They do not have an off-ramp, I tell you, it is all off-ramps.

Mr. Speaker, let's talk about Fortune in their secondary processing. Great idea, and I hope it works. Again, if you listened to Derrick Rowe on the Fisheries Broadcast a couple of short months ago, when asked what the future of FPI was, his answer was: The future of FPI is in shellfish. I do not think he is talking about doing secondary shellfish in Fortune. What is he going to do with it? What is he going to do with Fortune? Again, I do not like to disappoint the people in Fortune, and I hope what the directors of FPI are saying, they do at the end of the day. I really and truly do. I would have no problem standing here four or five years from now, if that is the going concern, and saying I was wrong, but I fear that I am not going to be. That is why I have problem with this piece of legislation that we are being asked to look at today, Mr. Speaker.

What do we do? What do we do? They have made their commitments. They are going to build a plant in Bonavista, they are going to build one in Fortune, but they are not doing, as far as I am concerned, anything for the people of Harbour Breton, so we have to cast them aside and forget about them and look at the other options. Let's look at the people of Bonavista and Fortune. They say, in the paper: If we do not - if we do not! - honour our commitments, what is going to happen to us? What is going to happen to us? The Premier stood on a number of occasions in the last couple of months and he said: If they do not honour their commitments, we are going to take their groundfish quotas. I have two problems with that. I heard the Premier, as late as yesterday, say publicly that he cannot force FPI to put a groundfish quota into Harbour Breton because he does not control the quotas, the federal government does. He does not have the jurisdiction to tell FPI to land fish in Harbour Breton. Only the federal government can do that. He cannot force them to share their quota with Harbour Breton and with Fortune or Marystown. I do not have the authority, he said.

Just think about how foolish this sounds and how paradoxical it is. He is saying, I cannot force FPI to put fish into Harbour Breton but I can take their quotas if they do not honour their commitments. Think about that. I cannot force them to put fish into Harbour Breton but I am going to take all of their groundfish quotas if they do not honour their commitments to Bonavista and to Fortune. How ludicrous! All you have to do is stop and think about how ludicrous that actually is.

When asked today, has he contacted the federal government and got an ironclad commitment that they will, indeed, be allowed to take the quotas from FPI if they dishonour their commitments, the answer from the Premier is: No, we do not have that written commitment. They are considering it. They will let us know. That is what they are asking us to vote on here today: They will let us know.

Mr. Speaker, I am not going to belabour the point but I think I have just shown - the Premier talked about off-ramps and the Premier talked about loopholes. There are more loopholes in this document than I have ever seen in any piece of legislation or any proposal that was ever put forward to this House. The Premier talks about the loopholes of the Voisey's Bay agreement and he said if he ever became Premier, he would tear up the contract. Well, he hasn't done that yet. He has made trips to Voisey's Bay, talked about what a wonderful project it is, but he hasn't torn up the contract yet.

Mr. Speaker, I can honestly say I have had calls from very well-respected people who have been involved in the fishing industry all their lives, who have told me: Don't vote for the legislation because it is going to be the biggest or the largest resource giveaway in the history of this Province. Once we allow FPI to sell off the most valued assets that they have, my concern is that FPI won't exist in a few years and the commitments that they gave to the people of this Province, in Harbour Breton, Fortune, Marystown, Port au Choix, Catalina, and Bonavista - once the assets are gone and the company no longer exists, how are you going to make them honour commitments? I can see that is what is going to happen if we allow FPI to sell off its most prized assets.

These are not the assets, I say, of the Board of Directors of FPI or Mr. Risley or Mr. Sanford or the Icelanders, these are the assets of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. These are the assets that we got from the federal government and from the provincial government of Newfoundland and Labrador back some thirty years ago. Who did we do it for? We didn't do it for the benefit of a bunch of unknown faces, people we never see. I don't know if they ever even visit the Province. We did it for the people, we did it for the communities, we did it for the people who are sitting in the gallery today. To say, go home you are finished, or to say to someone else, the hope of a plant - it is not enough for me to vote for it, Mr. Speaker, and I said it from day one. I could not look at myself in the mirror having voted to give away what I consider to be one of our prized possessions, and that is the control we have over FPI and the fishing industry in this Province.

Mr. Speaker, if the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi wants to remove his amendment from the floor, he can put it for a vote, but I won't oppose him doing it.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

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

Essentially, this is an amendment put forward in second reading, commonly known in parliamentary terms as a hoist, put forward by the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi. I can read it. It says: Bill 41, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act be now read a second time, but that it be read a second time this day, three months from now.

Mr. Speaker, we talked about these amendments in caucus this morning. Certainly, on this amendment it is our view that we not delay this any further, that we not give it a hoist, particularly in view of the fact of what the member who moved the amendment has indicated, that he would certainly be prepared to withdraw the amendment based upon, when he originally presented it, it was with the view that certain things should happen. I believe he has indicated that, from that point of view, from the time he presented it until the time which is now, some of the things he envisaged should happen have happened.

With that, Mr. Speaker, all members on this side of the House will not be supporting the passage of this amendment to delay this vote for three months from now.

MR. SPEAKER: I am calling the question on the amendment, unless there is agreement that we have the amendment withdrawn from the House.

Question? The question has been called.

The amendment is as follows, put forward by the hon. Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi: That all words after the word "That" in the motion at second reading be deleted and substituted by the following: Bill 41, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act, be not now read a second time but that it be read a second time this day three months hence.

All those in favour of the amendment say ‘aye'.

Those against the amendment say ‘nay.'

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: The amendment is lost.

The second amendment put forward at second reading -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The second reasoned amendment put forward at second reading is by the Member for Bay of Islands. It reads as follows: That all the words after the word "That" be deleted and the following substituted therefor:

"This House declines to give second reading to Bill 41, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act, because the company's shellfish quotas and primary groups fleet of vessels are not included as security in the default provisions of the terms of the proposed agreement with FPI."

The hon. the Member for the Bay of Islands.

MR. JOYCE: Mr. Speaker, I will only spend a few minutes on the amendment and just explain why I put the amendment forward in the House.

I will go back three or four years when we went across this Province with the all-party committee. We had more promises, at that time, from the existing Board of FPI of what they were going to do, what plants they were going to keep, what new plants, what new technology, the increases of employment, and none of it happened, Mr. Speaker.

Here we have FPI now coming back asking us to approve the changes to the Act today with all of these commitments again. For the people in Fortune, and I know down in Bonavista, they are very pleased, but again, they are only commitments. There is nothing confirmed. There is nothing concrete. There is nothing there that is going to say: yes, ironclad that we are going to do it. I was glad to hear the Premier today also say that this is not ironclad, because we heard it before. The Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture was with me, he was on the committee, he heard it before.

Mr. Speaker, just go back, one of the recommendations that the all-party committee made at the time - and this was when we went all across the Province, and Harbour Breton was included. Here is one of the recommendations that we made - the people opposite. The Member for Bonavista South was on the committee. He was a part of this recommendation. The Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture, he was on the committee. Unanimously endorsed in this House, by all members of this House. Here is what we put in to strengthen the FPI Act in the preamble. I know the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi was adamant in this also.

The committee recommends that the Act should be amended to include a preamble. Here is the preamble that we put in - and why now are we going back on this preamble? It was agreed to some three years ago, but now here we are, cut and dry, going to cut Harbour Breton loose. Here is the preamble everybody agreed to, everybody. The Member for Bonavista South can remember this, and the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture was adamant that we put this in there. To recognize the need for a company which operates on the basis of sound business and commercial decisions without undo disruption to the historical pattern of harvesting and processing in the Province. That is what we agreed to put in to force FPI to do in this Province.

Now, here we are today bringing this forward in the House with no guarantees of what we, three years ago, went ahead and said we must force FPI to do. Here we are now going around and saying that we have to approve this for FPI, but yet look at what they are going to do around the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. What ironclad guarantees do we have? We have absolutely none. The only thing that we have, we have groundfish going to be - if the federal government approves it, which we have no guarantee - that then is going to revert back to the Province.

The next sentence in the agreement is that the Province has to lease it back to FPI. So I say to any member of this House, go to the bank and ask the bank: Can I get a mortgage on my house with a guarantee that if I default tomorrow that I can still live in the house? It just cannot happen. It is unreasonable. What we are doing here - and I can assure you because I heard it before. I know the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture was in Harbour Breton when we had the hearings. The Member for Bonavista South was there. I know, we were down there. I know when the union was there. We heard all the promises. We were told then: Don't trust these people. Make sure that we have ironclad guarantees. Guess what? Those people were right.

If we do not somehow ensure that we can force FPI to fulfill their commitments, they will walk away. With the two options that they have: if the resource is available and it is economically viable. Who decides if it is economically viable? First of all, they are going to want 8 per cent to 10 per cent for the shareholders. So right away, over and above any normal business where you can make a profit, they need extra for the shareholders who usually ask for 8 per cent to 10 per cent in returns on their investments. So, who is going to make the decision if it is economically viable? FPI. They have these two options: if the resource is available and it is economically viable.

Mr. Speaker, I made this amendment so that if you really want to be serious about this with FPI - and the old saying is: you get it where it hurts. Shellfish and their offshore fleet is where it will hurt FPI. We all heard Derrick Rowe say that they are planning on getting out of the groundfish anyway. So, here they are putting up for security something that they say they are not making money off anyway, they plan to get rid of. Why can't we, as the House of Assembly, demand that FPI put up their shellfish quota and their offshore fleet as a security to make sure that they fulfill the commitments to the people and the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador?

Once we go through this, and this option is approved or disapproved today in the House of Assembly, it is going to change the whole entire FPI. If it is approved here today, FPI as we know it now is gone. Complete control of it is gone. Absolutely gone! If we do that, we will be leaving the people and the communities that FPI now operate, in the hands of some shareholders up in Ontario or some group over in Iceland. They are the ones who are going to be controlling the fate of Newfoundland and Labrador. I am willing to bet - and please God I am wrong - that if this goes through today, Mr. Speaker, there will be more Harbour Bretons in this Province in the next three or four years. I will guarantee it, because I heard the promises before. I sat in the meetings. I heard them. They put it in writing, what they were going to do. The same bunch of people who are there now are the same ones who made the commitments. They are the exact same people who made those commitments before.

I understand the people in Fortune, the people in Bonavista, saying we need some type of hope. I can understand that, but it is incumbent upon us, as legislators in this House, to ensure that there are safeguards for the people of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, because the resource that we are talking about is not someone from Iceland's resource. It is not someone, a shareholder in Ontario. It is not the teachers' pension in Ontario, or whoever else. It is the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

I heard the commitment in Harbour Breton, what was going to happen in Harbour Breton. I heard the commitment. I was there. We all heard it, and everybody was so happy that we were going to do so much, FPI is going to do so much. What did they do? They backtracked on all their commitments, every one of their commitments.

I was listening to the Premier today talking about down in Harbour Breton, talking about the big deal he got, that now they are going to take over the environmental responsibility for Harbour Breton. Oh, what a great deal. What is such a great deal? If any company walks away from a business, they are still on the hook to clean up the place. Why is that a great thing that you put on the table? That is something that you expect. That is something that, as a government, you make sure is going to be done. If you stand up and say FPI are going to be corporate citizens now, and they agreed to do it, they had to do it anyway. They absolutely had to do it anyway. This is probably why they are coming to the table now with the things that they are saying they will do, because they have to do it, but let's ask them to put it in writing and put the shellfish up and put their offshore fleet up, that they are going to build those plants. Let's ask them. See how confident they are about, yes, here is what we are going to do. Yes, we commit to it. Yes, we will guarantee you we are going to do it. We will not let those communities down.

Do you know why they will not do it, Mr. Speaker? They have no intention of fulfilling all their commitments in this Province, I can assure you. I have seen it before. I heard it before. I have it in writing from the board. I even had it from John Risley. If people ever seen the circular that he sent out when the board, the dissident board, was going to take over, if you look at the dissident board and see what he sent out, the circular that he sent out himself, all the commitments that he made to the voters, the dissident group, not one of those commitments were fulfilled, not one. Now, here we are, we are going to allow them to sell off the most profitable part of FPI without absolutely any firm commitments.

If you want to talk about giveaways, if you want to talk about resource giveaways, forget the Churchill. Here is one today that is going to haunt us if we go ahead and approve this today without the guarantees. I can assure you that this is a plan to dismantle FPI. FPI will be no longer as we know it. The resources that belong to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians will be in the hands of some group from Iceland, some shareholders in Ontario, on Bay Street, and we will be left once again at the mercy of people outside our Province with our resource.

I can assure you, because I have heard it and I have it in writing, and I am sure all the members - any member who wants it, I can show you the circular that John Risley sent out. I can show you the presentation that John Crosbie made to the committee, what FPI was going to do for this Province. I can show it to anybody who wants to see it in writing; and, Mr. Speaker, there were no commitments fulfilled.

So, Mr. Speaker, I move that amendment, trying to strengthen this here, that if this is approved today, at least we will have more hope for the people in Fortune, we will have more hope for the people down in Bonavista, but yet we cannot forget Harbour Breton.

When I got up and spoke first, I read a letter from the presentation that this lady gave us down at the meeting in Harbour Breton. This lady was a wise women, and it was very obvious. She said then, if you allow this to happen, and this board takes over, it will be the death of a lot of communities and Harbour Breton will be the first one. This person said that four years ago, and how true it was.

I go back to the all-party committee. In this all-party committee that we were all a part of, we all agreed that we must force FPI to keep the plants open, to produce the fish where it was traditionally processed in this Province, and we are backtracking on this commitment that this House unanimously endorsed, because FPI are saying that we have to have this Income Trust put in place.

I always have to ask the question, and I ask people: What happens if FPI goes under? What happens? Where will the fish go? It is going to stay in Newfoundland and Labrador. Where is the fish going to go? What happens if the fish plant in the Bay of Islands goes under tomorrow? They say: Oh, we have to go under. What happens? The fish goes back into the pool and it gets distributed to somebody else, or someone else comes in and takes over the plant. If a plant goes under, where do the fish go?

If the FPI main breadwinner is the marketing arm, and we are selling off the marketing arm, and it was all set up to help subsidize or help rural Newfoundland and Labrador back when it was set up, as the Minister of Transportation and Works stated back then, why it was set up, my question is, if we are selling it all off, and if the funds are going to pay down debt, how can we, as a group, as a bunch of legislators, take this, that we agreed to back in 2001, and now say we are going to put all of this aside? We are going to put this aside and put Harbour Breton to drift. I disagree with that, Mr. Speaker, because I was on the committee and I heard all of the concerns that the people expressed at the time, and the concerns that they expressed are coming true today.

Mr. Speaker, I will now - if anybody else wants to speak on the amendment - put that in to try and put more security and more hope and more strength if this proposed amendment goes through today.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Further speakers to the amendment?

The hon. the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi, speaking to the amendment.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This is an amendment to the legislation seeking to strengthen the security provisions, but I am going to speak generally not only to the amendment but to the bill. We have to face a decision today as to whether we are going to support the proposal by FPI that is before this House with the improvements that have been made in the last two weeks, some of which are beneficial to the people of Harbour Breton but which do not give Harbour Breton everything they want.

That is one piece, and an extremely important piece, of the puzzle, an extremely important piece of the future of rural Newfoundland, a future that does not necessarily hang in the balance on the basis of this vote, frankly, because if this proposal is voted down does that help the people of Harbour Breton? Are the people of Harbour Breton better off, or will they be better off on Monday if this doesn't go through than they are today? I think, unfortunately, the answer is they would not be. What has been put in place for Harbour Breton is not what they want, is not ideal. It doesn't involve a quota which would allow them to continue the operation of that plant next week or next month, with a quota that would supply that plant with enough work to keep that community going full tilt. In fact, for the last several years that has not been any quota assigned to that plant that has been allowing them to go full tilt. It has been operating on purchased H&G cod.

We have to recognize that the future of Harbour Breton has to depend on three things. It has to depend on what is on the table now, it has to depend on what the Government of Canada is prepared to put in by way of quota, and it has to depend on what the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is prepared to do for the future of Harbour Breton and for the future of rural Newfoundland in general. That is what the future of Harbour Breton depends on.

We could no more say to FPI, you have to run the plant in Harbour Breton and you have to do it this way and you have to do that, because you can't tell them how to do business. If we owned the company we could, and that is an option that has come to the surface in the last couple of weeks or days, that we should buy the company. If that were part of a strategy to rebuild rural Newfoundland, to once again take over and nationalize that company, I would be all for it. We opposed the privatization of FPI back in 1987. We opposed it because the things that were done in 1987 were a part of the slippery slope that has led us to where we are today, that we have a company that we don't own the shares of, that we have a hold on them through legislation which seeks to make them a public purpose private corporation. That is what I call it.

We did everything in our power in 2001 - the Member for Bay of Islands was on the committee, he just talked about that - to ensure that FPI, even though the board of directors had changed, the shareholders had decided that the board of directors was going to change, they were going to fire their management and they were going to have new management, we tried to do something to ensure that they were going to operate in a manner that we wanted them to operate in, in this Province.

We cannot really do it unless we are prepared to take over the company, unless we are prepared to buy the company, purchase all of the shares, take over the company and do that. I have not seen a lot of support for that. I have not seen a consensus in this Province for that. I have not seen the kind of political will that would be required to do that and pay the consequences, because whether or not you can have a private company like FPI turned into a provincial Crown corporation and operate successfully in Newfoundland and Labrador is one thing - you may be able to do that - but can a Newfoundland and Labrador Crown corporation operate a marketing arm in the United States in the free market, free enterprise system? Can that work? I do not know the answer, Mr. Speaker. I do not know the answer, but I have serious doubts about the ability, without further analysis, to undertake that. We are faced with this dilemma.

I have a real problem with what I heard today, Mr. Speaker. I have a real problem with the Premier coming here today and saying: Look, I am not sure I like this legislation. I am not sure the guarantees are enough. I am not sure we have the right security.

His Minister of Justice has put forth this legislation, and I presume he is going to support it. If he is not, he should withdraw it. He is going to support the legislation. He is a lawyer too. He has looked at the security. He has looked at all of the issues. He, his government and his Premier, are bringing this bill to the House, and the Premier says he is not going to support it but he is going to allow the rest of the members over there to pass it. We will see. A free vote, he says, but we will see.

If he did not believe in it, Mr. Speaker, he should not have brought it here. This is not a matter of conscience, Mr. Speaker. This is a matter of political judgement. It is a tough decision we all have to make, and I fully recognize that. I am one of those people who is having a very tough time trying to make a decision here. I am a believer in FPI as an instrument of public policy for Newfoundland and Labrador. It is not the FPI that I would want it to be. The FPI that I would want it to be was two or three iterations ago, but I do not think there is a consensus in this House for the kind of FPI that I want to have. So we are faced with what we have before us today, and this government is not prepared to make a judgement on that. They are not prepared to say yes, we support this or we are willing to take the risk. They want to just let the responsibility drift out everywhere across the Province and across this House and let people do whatever their own individual political instincts or motivations let them do. I do not think that is right, but we are here and we have to do it. I am prepared to criticize the Premier and the government for doing what they are doing here today. If the Premier truly believes what he says, then he should withdraw this bill. That is what he should be doing.

I am faced with a choice, too, because my colleague and I are here to represent what we think is best, and best for the people of Newfoundland. We have a terrible burden as well. We have to decide whether to support legislation that is going to transform FPI, there is no question about that, but it is legislation - and FPI exists for who? It exists for the communities and for the workers who engage in FPI's economic activity in this Province. The people of Port au Choix, the people of Triton, the people of Fortune, of Marystown, Bonavista, Catalina, all of those places where FPI operates have an interest in the future of FPI and the people of Harbour Breton, even though FPI does not see a future in Harbour Breton for them.

So when I am casting a ballot on this I have to think: What do those people want? Not what does the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi want, but what do those people want? What do they want? Do they want this to happen? Are they prepared to let it happen in hope for the future? Do they want us to say: No, live under the existing rules, or die under the existing rules, we will take our chances. What does the union representing them want? I know there is division. Obviously the union is in Harbour Breton as well, and I am sure all of the union members in Harbour Breton are saying: No, we do not want this to happen; we want more.

If the people who are representing the workers, and the workers themselves, and the communities themselves, as a whole, are saying we are prepared to let this happen, then I, for one, will not stand in the way of that happening. I do not have to like it, Mr. Speaker. I do not have to trust the motives of the people who are running this company. I do not have to have complete faith that all of the security measures that have been negotiated are going to work. I do not have to have total precognition of what the future will bring, but I do have to make a decision as to what I am going to do with respect to this legislation.

I am very unhappy about it. I am very reluctant to do what I am going to do today, but I believe that, on balance, the people in these communities want to see this legislation pass because they believe that this at least will give them some hope for the future.

You know, we talked earlier about closing plants. The previous FPI that I praised two weeks ago, they closed plants. They closed Trepassey. They closed Gaultois. They closed Grand Bank. Other plants closed. These were extremely unfortunate circumstances. The closure of the plant in Harbour Breton by FPI, because they are saying they, from their business perspective, can no longer operate it, is a very unfortunate thing. I do not think that the people of Harbour Breton have been treated right, and I agree with the Member for Fortune Bay-Cape la Hune, representing the people of Harbour Breton, that this company has acted in a callous manner to the people of Harbour Breton, waiting until the last minute to tell them, two weeks before Christmas, or a month before Christmas, that their plant is never going to open again. That is terrible, that is wrong, but I do not know whether that justifies us in not punishing the company but in saying to this company, no, you cannot go on with your other business plans, and the people of the other communities that depend on FPI continuing to be a viable and prosperous and forward-looking company, that their hopes should be dashed as well.

It is a difficult decision, and it is even more difficult for me when, as I said earlier, I and our party opposed vehemently the privatization of FPI back in 1987, and the obligations that were written in the legislation at that time to keep certain plants open, because they were spelled out, named, by plant, by community, by location, which plants were required to be kept alive by FPI. That was done fifteen years ago. What happened to communities after that, and what is happening to Harbour Breton today, was done fifteen years ago when FPI was privatized and it was said: You operate this company on business principles. You make the decisions.

It is great for people to get up in this House and say no, you cannot do this, you cannot do that; we are not allowing you to do this. If you are going to do that, you have to be prepared to say: We are going to buy the company. We are going to take over the company. We are going to make it a Crown corporation. We are going to decide, on a going-forward basis, which communities you will operate in and how many people you will employ and that sort of thing. Now that may be the answer, but I do not hear it coming from the government and I do not hear it coming from the Official Opposition. I hear some people talk about it. The only people who probably really believe in it is the New Democracy Party. We can support that and we can propose it, but that is not going to happen here today. What is going to happen here today is we are forced to vote on legislation that is now before us and reluctantly, on balance, I have to support the legislation because it does have an opportunity for FPI to continue to exist in the capital markets that it exists.

There are a lot of measures, perhaps as many as you can put in place, to try and restrict what they will do with this money in terms of the shareholders, but as the Premier has said, quite rightly, there are no absolute guarantees about that. There are no guarantees. Maybe in five years time, if this legislation passes, we will regret what the future brings. It would not be the first time, Mr. Speaker. I certainly regretted what the future brought when FPI was privatized in 1987. But the Premier said today, we can't put fish in the water. Well, that is not true, Mr. Speaker. The Royal Commission two years ago said that we have an obligation, as a Province, as a country, to rebuild the fish stocks. You are not taking fish and putting them in the water, but you are going to rebuild the fish stocks because it is an opportunity to rebuild what was once a great resource for this Province and a food resource for the world. Scientific efforts and programs, and all of the aquaculture types seeding the ocean. It is done in Norway. It is done in other places. Aquaculture programs, fish hatcheries, do things that enhance the fish stocks. All of these things and other measures can be taken to rebuild the fish stock, whether they be international measures to stop over fishing, whether they be aquaculture projects in the bays, inlets and communities. There are a lot of things that can be done to rebuild the stock, that will put fish in the water. We have an obligation as a Province and a people, and a country, to do that. There are lots of things that can be done, and I have not heard the kind of commitment I want to hear from this government for the people of Harbour Breton.

The Premier today was being wishy-washy about whether or not - even if they got a shrimp quota. Well, we will have a look at it if it comes up. That is not good enough for the people of Harbour Breton, and I do not think they should be very happy with that answer today. The Minister of Fisheries has been sitting over there. It is in his power and in his hands to say here today that if there is a shrimp quota available for the people of Harbour Breton, we will ensure that they will have the option to either sell it if they wish, which is done by the shrimp company in Labrador most of the time, or process it because they want to have onshore jobs. But they are not saying that. They are not saying that, Mr. Speaker.

Yes, there have been improvements for the people of Harbour Breton over the last couple of weeks and yes, there have been some specific commitments, but we do not have what we want from Mr. Efford, the federal minister in Ottawa. We do not have any commitment from him on this file, as they like to call it in Ottawa these days. We do not have any passion from him about what is going to happen to the people of Harbour Breton and what he is going to do to ensure that his colleagues in Ottawa come to the plate and make sure that Harbour Breton has what it needs to survive. We do not hear that, but that is not everything about what is before us today. What is before us today is this legislation, which is not just about Harbour Breton. Although, obviously, it is extremely important. I hope what I say today is not - it is not designed to disappoint the people of Harbour Breton but is designed to look at the whole issue of: What are we doing to the FPI Act? Because if we say no to the FPI legislation today, I do not see how that improves the situation for Harbour Breton next week or the week after or the month after. That is the real politic of what we are doing here today.

So, we can all put our support behind the future and the people of Harbour Breton. The people over on that side have the power to do something more than that, and the people in Ottawa have the power to do something more. But, in terms of FPI, they could be asked to do more, no question about that. They were asked to do more and they have done some more. How much more can we ask them to do? I do not know, that is a question of judgement. It is not a matter of conscience. It is not like abortion. It is not a moral issue where you have a choice, you know where people have religious views or high moral principles. It is all about political judgement. It is about whether or not we are going to exercise our responsibilities as members of this House, as a government who has the power to present legislation or take it away.

I do not think this amendment is going to pass because what it says is either we will pass it if this happens - and there are a lot of people in this House who are not going to vote for it because they do not want it to pass anyway. So the amendment is kind of like, it is there, there are very valid points made about the security and what kind of commitments we are getting from FPI. I do not think that those commitments - they would give them. I do not think they feel they can give them because it will interfere with their economic activity, their ability to raise money and all of the other kinds of security that they might have to do in their raising money and mortgaging ships and all of that. It would interfere with their ability to raise cash. So, they do not want to give that kind of security. It would hamper their business. I can see them saying that. So, it is not much good to FPI. It is probably not much good to us if it is no good to FPI. We can ask for all the security we want but if they cannot operate the business with their hands tied behind their back, then it is not going to be good for the future of the communities that rely on FPI into the future.

So, having said that, Mr. Speaker, the amendment will go forward and we will vote on it but, at the end of the day, I think on the substantive motion, I will be voting in favour of the motion and reluctantly, but on balance, for the people and the communities that rely on FPI today.

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

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

I just want to put in context for those who are watching the debate, that we have five amendments before us. They are called reasoned amendments. What that means, in lay persons terms, is that if we vote in favour of any of these amendments, then none of us get to the actual bill and the agreement that - and potential agreement for the House to vote yes or no to. So, we, on this side, will not be supporting any of the amendments that are being put forward for that reason. Because the passage of any one of these amendments will mean that nobody will get a chance to vote either yes or no, aye or nay, in favour or not in favour of the arrangements that have been put before the House.

I have to say though, in all sincerity and honesty, Mr. Speaker, in listening to just some of the remarks put forward by the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi. He talked about political judgement - and this should not even be here in the first place. I do no know if any Premier - but, in particular, this Premier - based upon the accusations that have been consistently made by members opposite, can win, no matter what he does. Had he sponsored a bill here today and said to government members: this is a government, and Cabinet agreed and brought forward this and said we support this, this is a government motion to a person. Every member on the opposite site of the House would be standing and calling this Premier a dictator and calling for a free vote in the House of Assembly. That is what they would be doing. Now, today -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. E. BYRNE: That is a fact, and we have seen it. If we had done that, if the Cabinet, in conjunction with the Premier, had said this is what we are doing and, on balance, agree with what the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi just said, which is: I will be supporting this reluctantly - and looked at on balance because he is voting for, what he has indicated, in substance or in whole, the scales have tipped because he is voting for the people in the communities. Had we done that and made that decision, guess what? Every member opposite would be calling our Premier, and the Premier of the Province, a dictator and telling us to stand up for our constituents, just like they did on RMS. Absolutely not true. The fact of the matter is this, that legitimately and in a bonafide, real, sincere way, this government responded to a request that came from the Official Opposition, when in Question Period we were asked directly: If this comes to the House, Premier, will you allow a free vote? He stood on his feet and said: Yes, I would. Now, to some degree he is being condemned publicly for allowing members to do exactly that, have a free vote. You cannot have it both ways, I say to the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi. All of us will have to make the same decision, or come to a conclusion that you just did, that either we support what is being brought forward on the basis of, or we do not support on the basis of. I commend the Premier of the Province and my colleagues for the approach that we have taken on this.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The amendment before the House is as follows: "That all the words after the word "That" be deleted and the following substituted therefor: "This House declines to give second reading to Bill 41, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act, because the company's shellfish quotas and primary groups fleet of vessels are not included as security in the default provisions of the terms of the proposed agreement with FPI."

Are we ready for the question?

All those in agreement say ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, ‘nay'

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: The amendment is defeated.

Proceeding with the amendment put forward by the Member for Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair.

It reads as follows: "That all the words after the word "That" be deleted and the following substituted therefor: "This House declines to give second reading to Bill 41, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act, because adequate provisions have not been made to ensure that the funds raised through the sale will strengthen the company's operations in this Province."

Speakers to the amendment.

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I will just make a brief comment, that the Member for Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair, due to certain medical circumstances in the family, could not be here today. She is the mover of the motion. We would prefer to leave it as it is on the floor of the House, but we will not be speaking to it.

MR. SPEAKER: Are we ready for the question on the amendment put forward by the hon. the Member for Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair, and shall I dispense with repeating the amendment again?

MR. E. BYRNE: We shall, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: All those in favour of the amendment say, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: Those against the amendment.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: The amendment is defeated.

On motion, amendment defeated.

MR. SPEAKER: We shall now proceed with the amendment put forward by the Member for the District of Bellevue which reads as follows: "That all the words after the word "That" be deleted and the following substituted therefor: "This House declines to give second reading to Bill 41, An Act To Amend The Fisheries Products International Limited Act, until provisions are made so that the portion of the funds raised through an Income Trust necessary to fulfill commitments made by the Company to the communities of Fortune and Bonavista can be placed in trust with government to ensure that these commitments are kept."

Moved by the Member for the District of Bellevue. Speakers to the amendment.

The hon. the Member for the District of Bellevue.

MR. BARRETT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise today to have a few words about this particular amendment.

I just sat in my seat and the Government House Leader got up and said that nobody on the government side is going to vote for these amendments. I guess, I could stand up here and talk and talk and talk until the cows come home.

The Premier indicated earlier - as a matter of fact I was listening to him on the Open Line program a night or so ago, and I was pretty excited when he said that the government was sort of having a deal with FPI, that this particular amendment that I had proposed was going to be part of the deal, and that the money would be put in trust to ensure that the company would live up to its commitment and that the plants would be built in Bonavista and Fortune. I said: Great, the Premier took this particular amendment to the resolution and -

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

MR. SPEAKER: A point of order has been raised by the hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. E. BYRNE: Let me say up-front, that any time I take in making my point of order, I certainly do not want it to take away from the Member for Bellevue's point of view. I do have to ask him, when he says that he was pretty excited when he heard the Premier Monday night talking about this amendment, does that mean he will support it? This is the same member who two weeks ago, when he was interviewed outside this House, said: No matter what comes before this Legislature, I won't be supporting this legislation because I think it is a bigger giveaway than Churchill Falls. While he is on his feet, may he inform, or at least, I guess, take some time to educate me, that when he says he was excited when he thought that was going to be there, was he excited or moved enough that, had that been there, he would have supported what was being brought forward, or was his original point of view, which was articulated two weeks ago, that it was a bigger giveaway than Churchill Falls? I would just like for him to take some time to explain to the House and educate the House, Mr. Speaker, on what it was.

If this is not a point of order, Mr. Speaker, if you rule with respect that it is not, I completely understand.

MR. SPEAKER: Speaking to the point of order, the hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would submit that it is, indeed, not a point of order, and I would expect that the Chair would rule accordingly. I just say to the Government House Leader, be patient - the Member for Bellevue is about to educate him on the very issue that he rose - be patient and we wouldn't have this issue.

Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair rules that there is no point of order. There may be disagreement between hon. members but there is no point of order.

The Chair recognizes the hon. the Member for Bellevue.

MR. BARRETT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I don't know what the Government House Leader is so excited about. I said, I heard the Premier on the Open Line program the other night, and I was pretty excited when he said that it appeared he had a deal with FPI and that the content of this particular amendment would be part of the deal. That is what the Premier said on the Open Line program. I was very, very excited with the fact that this would be part of the deal with FPI and that Bonavista and Fortune would be guaranteed a fish plant; no loopholes, the money that was allocated for the plants in Fortune and in Bonavista would be put in trust with the government to ensure that these plants would be built. Why wouldn't I be excited, as a member of this House of Assembly, that these two communities were guaranteed to survive? Why wouldn't I be excited about the Premier saying that this was going to happen?

Today, I sat in my seat in the House of Assembly and I heard the Premier say that he didn't meet with FPI. He has never met with FPI during these whole negotiations, has never met with FPI, has never proposed this amendment to FPI. That is what he said here in the House today, that he has never had a face-to-face meeting with FPI. I was disheartened here today to hear that this was not a part of the agreement.

I realize, in terms of the procedure, that if this amendment is voted on that the main motion does not go through, but that is what we have been talking about here the two days we were here before, and today. Is this a good enough deal for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador? It is not a government motion. The Premier just said he is not supporting it. We heard all the arguments in terms of the loopholes, Mr. Government House Leader, and what is wrong with this piece of legislation. I have sat here and listened to speeches on top of speeches from both sides of the House, what is wrong with this piece of legislation, the loopholes. FPI can walk away tomorrow and not do anything, and not live up to its commitments. We saw the same company make commitments and walk away.

What I was trying to do in this amendment is to make sure there is a future for Fortune and a future for Bonavista, and I encourage every Member of the House of Assembly today to vote for this particular amendment. I am not going to vote for this piece of legislation, the main piece of legislation. I still say that, to me, it is the biggest giveaway since Churchill Falls. We are giving away the fishing resources of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador if we pass this today, and the Premier agrees with me. The Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador agrees with me - he is not voting hither - he agrees that there are so many loopholes in this particular legislation that we should not pass it today, and I would anticipate that all the members - I know it is a free vote - would vote against this piece of legislation.

Again, I am asking for the Members of this House of Assembly to delay the vote on this particular piece of legislation until a deal is worked out with FPI that the money will be put in trust for Bonavista and Fortune, and that we not pass this legislation until these communities are guaranteed that they are going to get a fish plant.

Mr. Speaker, I move this particular amendment and I hope that we will all vote for it.

MR. SPEAKER: Further speakers to the amendment?

The hon. the Member for Labrador West.

MR. COLLINS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would just like to rise and say a few words on the amendment as put forward by the Member for Bellevue. I think the amendment indeed makes a great deal of sense because, under the FPI proposal for Bonavista and for Fortune, there is nothing ironclad about that. In order for people to have any degree of comfort level with that proposal then it should be ironclad, Mr. Speaker. The only way of making it ironclad is to do the appropriate things so that the money is protected for the investment when it was promised to take place. Without that, Mr. Speaker, there is no guarantee that any of this - hopefully it will, but there is no guarantee - that these investments will take place in the way that they are proposed by Fishery Products International.

Mr. Speaker, indeed, as previous speakers have said, everybody in the House of Assembly here today certainly has a great burden in the decision that they are going to make before we adjourn the session here today. I want to say, Mr. Speaker, that my decision is made and I will not be supporting the legislation as presented to the House of Assembly. I find I cannot do that, Mr. Speaker, because the people of Harbour Breton have been left out in the cold.

I think the Premier is right, to a degree, that the federal government have not lived up to the responsibility that they have, and the Minister of Natural Resources in particular has not lived up to the responsibilities that they should be shouldering in this Province today to make sure that the centuries-old community of Harbour Breton has a life after 2005. Without commitments from the federal government, Mr. Speaker, I do not see how that can take place, and I think that is a shame on the federal government for not taking their responsibilities more seriously.

Mr. Speaker, I come from a community that is a one-industry town, and I know what can happen when that one industry either sinks down or disappears. There is a community not too far from Labrador West, the community of Gagnon, once a thriving iron ore industry town, and when you drive through today you have sidewalks and you have paved streets and that is it, nothing else, not a thing. No hospital any more, no airport any more, no schools, not anything, Mr. Speaker, all bulldozed in so that the only thing that is remaining is the sidewalks and paved streets with weeds growing up through. I certainly do not want to see that happen to Harbour Breton, and I do not think it is necessary for that to happen to Harbour Breton, Mr. Speaker. I think that things can be done that will allow Harbour Breton to share in the wealth that the fishery has generated for this Province. It will continue to be a thriving community, and the entire area surrounding Harbour Breton can continue to be a thriving area of this Province, if things were done right and if the proper attention was paid to making a commitment to the area, that they will be allowed to process a quota of fish in their community. That is what is required.

Mr. Speaker, if we look at the Community of Harbour Breton and surrounding areas, I would like for someone to tell me how many other things possibly can be done. The communities were built on the fishery, they were sustained on the fishery, and any future that community has, has to be connected to the fishery. It is as simple as that. By throwing money at it, we can get rid of our responsibilities, we can get off the hook, but the people of Harbour Breton, when the money runs out, are not going to be any better off than the day they were before the money came in. It is not the money that they are looking for, Mr. Speaker, it is jobs, a secure employment built on a fishery that was the reason for their existence.

Mr. Speaker, I also have to take some exception to the notion that FPI, by selling off a portion of their marketing arm in the U.S., will raise the monies necessary to do what is necessary for them to survive. Most times, if we look at the history of corporations that have found themselves in trouble, and they are able to raise a significant amount of capital or are able to come up with the money through other means, by government or whatever, it is generally only a matter of time before they find themselves in the same position again. Mr. Speaker, I do not think, for a minute, that Fishery Products International should be allowed to become a company that has no attachment, socially, consciously or otherwise, to the people of this Province when it was a company that was built from the ashes of a fishery that did not work in this Province. Their purpose was to be economically viable while, at the same time, having a social responsibility towards the Province that they were created by.

Mr. Speaker, I will not take much longer. I think I have said most of what I wanted to say. I will reiterate, that based on that, I cannot support Bill 41 that is presently before the House. I know other members will struggle with this as well. That is my position, Mr. Speaker, and it is one I will make proudly when the time comes.

Thank you.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

Again with this amendment, it is important, particularly for those who may be watching and for those people who are in the gallery today, to understand that there are some of us, I being one of them by the way, who does not disagree necessarily with the spirit and the intent of the amendment. The member who proposed the amendment, this is what he said, that I am going to be voting for this amendment and I am going to be voting against the main motion. Technically, from what happens in the House, and from a parliamentary point of view, two of those things cannot happen. You cannot support the amendment - and if the majority of members in this House support this amendment then this is over with, we all pack up what we have on our desks and we are gone home. There is no more debate. While there may be some people who would like to see that happen sooner rather than later, there are members on both sides who want the opportunity to say yes or no to what Fishery Products International has put before the Province, put before the government, and what the government has put before the House for all members to have their opportunity to vote on.

I just want to be clear with everybody, that while we are voting on this side against this amendment it is for this reason, because if we do so we will not have the opportunity to vote upon what everyone has been here to debate, which is the main sort of commitments that FPI have requested of government and voted upon.

The member who is proposing the motion cannot say that he is going to vote for the amendment and then, when he gets the chance, he is going to vote against the main motion, because that will not happen. It is either one or the other.

Mr. Speaker, just with that, and in conclusion, I want to be clear on the reasons why we are outlining why we are voting against this motion. It is not a vote against Fortune, it is not a vote against Bonavista, because all of us will have the opportunity to say yes or no to what is before this House and what we came here for.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The motion before the House by way of an amendment is as follows: "That all of the words after the word "That" be deleted and the following substituted therefor: "This House declines to give second reading to Bill 41..." Shall I dispense with the rest?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: By leave.

Are we ready for the vote on the amendment put forward by the Member for Bellevue?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: Shall I call the motion again? There has been an error made by some hon. members.

All those in favour of the motion on the amendment say ‘aye.'

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: Those against the motion.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: The motion fails.

Reasoned amendment 5, put forward by the Member for Bellevue on behalf of the Member for Fortune Bay-Cape la Hune, reads as follows: That all the words after the word "That" be deleted and the following substituted therefor: This House declines to give second reading to Bill 41, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act, because adequate agreements have not been reached with the company for the provision of a quota that would secure the future of Harbour Breton and the Connaigre Peninsula.

Speakers to the amendment.

The hon. the Member for Fortune Bay-Cape la Hune.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. LANGDON: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The reason why, of course, I did not put in amendments is that I made my speech and sat down and forgot to have done it, and that is why the Member for Bellevue did this.

Mr. Speaker, Bill 41 that we are talking about today is really in a sense taking on a new meaning, especially for the Town of Harbour Breton. I think when we started to do Bill 41, the Income Trust, nobody ever thought that Harbour Breton would play such a prominent part in this particular bill, but it has.

Mr. Speaker, I think I can say, without contradiction, that the people of Harbour Breton have galvanized support for their cause through the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It has become more than the Community of Harbour Breton's problem, it has become more than a Connaigre problem, it has become a province-wide problem for all of us here. Without a doubt, when people call in to the media and open lines and so on, they feel that Harbour Breton has been short changed by FPI.

Today, we saw some of the added features that were put into the terms that were presented to the House. There is no doubt about it, that there have been some improvements made to the short-term. I would be the first one to agree with that. When we went to government, way way back in February, right from the beginning the Premier indicated to us that $1.25 million provincial would be there in the short-term for the community. I dealt with the Minister of Municipal Affairs very early with some dollars for the people for Christmas. Everybody, I think, in Harbour Breton understands that. What we are talking about, of course - and then the federal government only came on side a few days ago. They came with all kinds of conditions that I am not sure if the IAS Committee can fully deal with, but I am sure that they will give their best to do it. Then, of course, there is FPI. They came through in the short term with some dollars, $1.4 million I think it was and now it is up to about $4 million to refurbish the plant and so on. There is not one person in the Community of Harbour Breton and on the Connaigre Peninsula who doesn't appreciate that. I am sure that those who are in the gallery here today, from Harbour Breton, would concur with what I am saying.

What they are really, really disappointed in, to a person, from the community and the region, is the fact that there was not an adequate quota left to the town for the long-term viability of the community. That is where the crux of this matter is and that is why the people from Harbour Breton are here again today. I have to give them credit for coming, knowing the economic circumstances that these people have facing them. Yet, they have come here two or three times to the Legislature to see the proceedings, to put a human face on it, to say that the community matters. Mayor Stewart is here and Eric Day from the FFAW, and all the executive and the people from the community are here to support. That is where it is.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to look at what is happening, and why we think it is very, very important to get a quota for Harbour Breton from FPI. It is like a stool, the first leg of it. We are looking for a quota from FPI, a valued part of it, because the Community of Harbour Breton has been processing fish in that community for years. FPI has been there for years and years and years. To leave the community without a quota for whoever else would come in, if the plant was refurbished, that is a building block that is not going to be there and it is going to make it more and more difficult for the Community of Harbour Breton and the Connaigre region to be able to survive in the long term, if that first building block is not there.

The thing about it is that by about twelve-thirty today we saw what FPI had offered the Community of Harbour Breton. It was 1,400 tons of 3O redfish. I talked to some of the people from Harbour Breton and I will tell you that the 3O redfish is really small. You could almost call it 1,400 tons of goldfish. Nobody profits from it. FPI have left it in the water over the last number of years. They haven't brought it to shore. It is not profitable, they cannot make any money on it. Yet, they are willing to give that to Harbour Breton as a building block, as the first building block, so that they can build a future for their community. It is an insult. This is what the people from Harbour Breton - when I saw the package I went to them, because I have been with them all along, and, as I said here, I am not playing politics with this, it is more important than me, it is the people of Harbour Breton and it is the region. This is what they said: This is an insult, to give us 1,400 tons of redfish, little bigger than goldfish, for our community to start to build a vibrant block on. It cannot happen. It has to be more than that. When I see that it really, in a sense, irks.

I am not surprised that the Premier is going to vote no. He went to Harbour Breton, along with Minister Dunderdale, the Member for Virginia Waters, and they saw the situation of the people in Harbour Breton. There were probably about 400 people in the hall. I think in one of the clippings I saw in the paper it said as many as 300 people were crying at one time, men, women and children. It is a situation that I have never, ever, experienced in public life, and I first got elected to a council in 1971 so I have been around a lot of the municipal and provincial governments. It was heart wrenching. In fact, I got up to speak myself and I just could not do it, toward the end, I felt so emotional for them.

The e-mails that the Premier read today from the young people who were in the community of Harbour Breton will become a reality if we do not get a good building block from FPI and start to build on after. Sure, we will go after the federal government, and that time will come, hopefully, over the next number of months, where we can go after them for other quotas, whether it be pelagic, whether it be shellfish, or whatever the case may be, because they will be additional building blocks in the community that will help the community to survive.

We talk about FPI. Suppose they do not get the vote today and we vote no. What we are really saying - and I have been thinking and talking about how they operate as a company. There are about 15 million shares in FPI at about $7 each share. That is about a $105 million book value. They are saying to us, as Newfoundlanders, that they are going to sell 30 per cent of the marketing arm of that particular company for $100 million. That leads us to believe that the company is worth $250 million. The book value of it is $105 million.

The thing about it is, I am confident that they will never be - I do not know if confident is the right word. I have my doubts if, on the open market, they can go out and raise $100 million for the 30 per cent of the company. I really do. What if they can only raise $30 million? What do you do then? If they do go out and are able to raise another $40 million on the next 60 per cent of the company, what happens then? Where do they go? Where is the long-term viability of the company?

I have said this in the House many, many times before, but it is worth repeating: I sat in a Cabinet room over on the West Block, and I am sure many of the Cabinet ministers sit in there now, and FPI was in around and said: You have no fear from us. You have no fear. We are going to grow this company. We are going to build a new plant in your community.

When one of the former Mayors of Harbour Breton, Churence Rogers, said to the guys: Where are you getting the quota from?, they said: Why are you asking that question? Why are you fearmongering?

What do we see today? It is the same group of people. When I think about the people behind the scenes in all of this, I do not think for one moment that Frank Coleman, Rex Anthony and the boys are calling the shots. I do not, for one moment, think that they are. I think the guy who is behind it all is John Risley. There is no doubt about it. He has had a person to work with him to try to make it happen. I guess all of us know who that guy is, the former Premier of the Province. For what? Suppose they do sell the marketing arm and they are able - to Risley and all his associates - to get that marketing arm of the company, what is left then?

Everybody here in the House knows, and we all felt passionate about it because it is our people we represent in the rural parts of the Province. There is no doubt about that. If we pass this here today, if this goes through, Premier Williams or nobody else will ever be able to come back in this House and say to FPI: You have to make sure that your commitment is done in Bonavista, or that your commitment is done in Fortune. They never have to come back here any more. They do not have to come back here any more to get the other 60 per cent too. It is a real leap of faith to give to a company who has not really had a good trademark, a group of people who have run the company in the sense where names of people, faces of people in Harbour Breton or any other community, are not there. It is about money. This is all about money.

Sure, every company has a right to make to a profit and to succeed. That is market value, that is what capitalism is all about, but there has to be some concern for the people who are there in the communities, the people who have delivered sweat, blood and tears for a company. FPI, over the years, have made money in Harbour Breton. They have probably made about $500 million of it. Where are they today?

One of the commitments that they made to us in short term was $3 million, providing, of course, that we did not take them to the Labour Relations Board because they did not give the proper notice for the layoff. Think about that. What a precedent they are setting. Any company in Newfoundland and Labrador can allow their business to run down almost to a state of being dilapidated. Then, when the people go for a proper layoff they say: Oh no, the precedent has been set with FPI. If it is not occupationally safe to work in that particular plant, you do not have to pay the proper layoff, even though probably right now on the surface we might think that might not be approved. I cannot think that any lawyer, any court, would allow a company to get away with that. That is what we are dealing with here. They are really, in a sense, giving us the runaround.

I think about another person who is involved with FPI, Derrick Rowe. Just think about him. Look at where his tentacles are. They are like an octopus. He is DFO's representative, one of the main guys in DFO. He is also Canada's representative in NAFO, and he will admit to you, and he said: I am here as a CEO of the company only pro-term. I do not know anything about fish.

Well, he had better. He had better, because that is the situation we find ourselves in. So really, in a sense today, I am hoping - and I am not going to speak any more because I have said all of those things before many, many times and I do not want to prolong it, but really I want everybody - and I am sure everybody will. I am not trying to be condescending because that is not my nature, but I am sure that at the end of the day when we vote you have to take into account that this particular company has not been fair. Nobody knows today what they are going to do if they are given this particular ability to raise the money on the open market. Nobody knows where they are going be a year or two or three from now. There are no guarantees. I do not really want to be a part of a Legislature when my children and grandchildren say, well, you did in the House of Assembly what you did for Churchill Falls or something else because you supported it.

I definitely will not be supporting it because really, in a sense, first and foremost it has been a slap in the face for the people of Harbour Breton and I could never, ever, support them selling off the marketing arm of their company and treating the people that way.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Further speakers to the amendment?

MR. E. BYRNE: (Inaudible), Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The amendment is as follows: That all the words after the word "That" be deleted and the following substituted therefore: This House declines to give second reading to Bill 41, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act, because adequate agreements have not been reached with the company for the provision of a quota that would secure the future of Harbour Breton and the Connaigre Peninsula.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: The amendment fails.

On motion, amendment defeated.

MR. SPEAKER: Under the agreement put forward on the first day that we sat on this particular bill, Bill 41, there was an agreement made that toward the end of the second reading the Premier will have an additional twenty minutes when he speaks for the end of debate and the Minister of Justice will have an additional twenty minutes to speak to close the debate.

I am just asking now if these speakers are going to speak at this stage or shall we proceed thereto? To the call of the vote, I mean.

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

No, we will move right to the vote and call the question.

MR. SPEAKER: Is it the pleasure of the House that Bill 41, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act, be now read a second time?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair is unable to reach a decision. Shall we call for a standing vote, or I can call it again to get -

AN HON. MEMBER: Call it again.

MR. SPEAKER: Call it again? The Chair is seeking direction.

MR. E. BYRNE: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: A point of order has been raised by the Government House Leader.

MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, I certainly would recommend to the House for a standing vote. If people want to get up and rise in division, I would ask some of my colleagues to stand with me please. There you go, we will have division and then we will be clear.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Division has been called.

Division

MR. SPEAKER: Are the Whips ready for the vote?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Ready.

MR. SPEAKER: Ready.

All those in favour of the adoption of Bill 41 at second reading-

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Sorry, I asked if the Whips were ready and I did not hear any objection to that.

Are we now ready for the motion? The motion is: Is it the pleasure of the House that Bill 41 be adopted at second reading?

All those in favour of the motion, please stand.

CLERK (Noel): Miss Dunderdale, Mr. Ottenheimer, Mr. Taylor, Mr. Tom Marshall, Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. O'Brien, Ms. Burke, Mr. Tom Osborne, Ms Whalen, Mr. Hodder, Mr. Wiseman, Mr. Denine, Mr. French, Mr. Young, Mr. Hunter, Mr. Jackman, Ms Johnson, Mr. Skinner, Ms. Elizabeth Marshall, Ms Foote, Mr. Harris.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against the motion, please stand.

CLERK: Mr. Williams; Mr. Edward Byrne; Mr. Jack Byrne; Mr. Hickey; Mr. Harding; Mr. Ridgley; Mr. Reid; Mr. Parsons; Mr. Butler; Mr. Barrett; Mr. Langdon; Ms Thistle; Mr. Andersen; Mr. Sweeney; Mr. Joyce; Mr. Collins; Mr. Manning.

Mr. Speaker, twenty-two ayes and seventeen nays.

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair declares the motion carried and bill adopted at second reading.

CLERK: A bill, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act. (Bill 41)

MR. SPEAKER: This bill has not been read a second time. When shall this bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House?

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

MR. SPEAKER: Now.

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act," read a second time, order referred to a Committee of the Whole presently, by leave. (Bill 41)

MR. SPEAKER: 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 the matters before it with respect to Bill 41.

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 Bill 41, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act.

It is 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 the said bill?

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.

Committee of the Whole

CHAIR (Fitzgerald): Order, please!

Bill 41, "An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act."

CLERK: Clause 1.

CHAIR: Shall clause 1 carry?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

Clause 1 is 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'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

CHAIR: Clause 2 is carried.

On motion, clause 2 carried.

CLERK: Clause 3.

CHAIR: Shall clause 3 carry?

The hon. the Member for Carbonear-Harbour Grace.

MR. SWEENEY: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have an amendment that I tabled the last time we met. The amendment basically says that section 3 of Bill 41, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act, be amended by adding, conditional upon approval of the final agreement with the company being reviewed and approved by the House of Assembly.

Mr. Chair, I have been told the amendment is in order.

CHAIR: Order, please!

The Chair has had an opportunity to confer with the Table and the Chair rules that the amendment, as put forward by the Member for Carbonear-Harbour Grace, is certainly in order.

MR. SWEENEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I put this amendment forward the last session. It is becoming more and more obvious that this amendment should be included in Bill 41. When we were called the very first day, I think it was around June 6, to come back here, we were notified to come back here to the House of Assembly to vote on the Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act," tabled by the hon. Minister of Justice and Attorney General, it was only a day or so after we received notice that Fishery Products International had sent a package along to all the members informing them of some proposals that they had. That, to me, showed that this was not proper, or what the government had called us for was not the same as what we were going to be meeting on, on that Thursday and Friday.

Lo and behold, we received notification earlier this week, a couple of days ago, that the House was going to resume and vote on Bill 41. Well, lo and behold, half an hour before we were to come to the House today we received another package from Fishery Products International with a letter from the Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Derrick Rowe, dated June 24, 2005, with some other updates. So, I thought that this bill, in keeping with why we are here, to represent our people and to make sure that we use our best judgements, that we would have the opportunity to review this final agreement, because it does not seem as though we have a final agreement yet; not to me. Half an hour before we are supposed to vote on something.

So, I would like to have the opportunity - as I am sure all the members of this House would like to have the opportunity - to review and approve the final agreement by the House of Assembly. Now, this does not impact, in any way, the outcome of Bill 41. All this does, this amendment, is ask that the House of Assembly get to review and approve the final agreement before it is brought into law.

It is quite interesting, as I sat here today and I watched and watched and I listened and I saw that the Premier was on a little while ago saying that there was going to be a free vote, an absolute free vote, but we had six amendments and all six amendments were defeated. It did not seem like there was a free vote then. I think this amendment here will probably be the test of the free vote, if there is any such thing.

The Premier said in answer to an earlier question today that he has not talked directly to FPI, his officials did it. On a further question he went on to say that he spoke to them as late as last night. I think the time he used was 11:00 p.m. There are too many question marks for me to leave this House today without the assurance that I will see what the final agreement will be. There is too much riding on this; far too much riding on this. There is language in there like: FPI will entertain a request to provide the quota for Harbour Breton. You know, we need to see the real language. Another problem I have with all of this is that a Minister of the Crown, a minister of that government, the government that rules this Province, brought a bill into this Assembly that the Premier disagreed with. He said he cannot support it. The Government House Leader has troubles with it.

I have been around politics since 1999 and I have sat in the Cabinet room for a period of time but it was always incumbent upon on all of us, even through our caucus, before something came to the floor that we had the clear understanding of what it was all about, whether we agreed or disagreed. One of the things for certain, that it was hashed out in that Cabinet table or in that caucus room, but one thing that never happened, was that a bill would come to this floor without consensus from our members. This is about leadership. It is not about, as the Member for Trinity North was talking about, a free vote. We had free votes, I say to the Member for Trinity North.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

CHAIR: Order, please!

I ask the Member for Bellevue if he would be kind enough to restrain himself.

The hon. the Member for Carbonear-Harbour Grace.

MR. SWEENEY: Thank you, Mr. Chair, for protecting me.

MR. WISEMAN: (Inaudible).

MR. SWEENEY: Mr. Chair, the Member for Trinity North, if he wishes to have some comments he can wait and get on his feet himself, because I know all about him and his trust and freedom and everything else. I know all about that.

Mr. Chair, this is all about, and as the story goes, all being done in good faith.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. SWEENEY: Well, Mr. Chair, I think there should be more than good faith because I have always had a problem with good faith and the obligation of making more money for shareholders. I have always had that problem because, at the end of the day, when the boardroom doors are closed, the tendency to make money certainly supercedes good faith, because that is why we have courthouses, as the Premier will know. I am sure you have represented a lot of people in your day who have been into transactions that bordered and were based upon good faith. That is why we have judges and lawyers and juries. That is why we have that.

So, I am not willing to accept anything beyond today with regard to Fishery Products International. I am not willing to accept the word that Fortune will have its processing line, Bonavista will have its processing line, because three years ago Harbour Breton was going to have a new plant. That was in good faith. Those people took their word at that time in good faith. That is why I would like to see this amendment passed as simple as it may be, as simple as it may be, that the final agreement be brought back to this House to be reviewed and approved by the House of Assembly before it is brought into law. That is a very basic request on behalf of all the people of this Province because we are all shareholders. We are all shareholders in the resource that Fishery Products International was created to protect and help feed the people in our Province. That is just what it was done for, and all of a sudden it has become a company on the Toronto Stock Exchange. It is going to create an Income Trust Fund. The problem with an Income Trust Fund is that the shareholders, once it is all started and all done, then will reap the benefits of the Income Trust Fund. It certainly will not be the people of this Province who helped build the fishery for the past 500 years. It certainly will not be them.

To me, this is a very basic amendment that should be passed here today and be given full consideration, because that way, then, the agreement is made public before it is brought into law.

Mr. Chairman, I am not going to belabour any of this because if it is going to be like the other amendments it is going to hit the downward spout and be defeated. I think it is necessary that something as simple as this should be brought into effect for the protection of all of our people, because the government, at the end of the day, though the argument might be they do not have control over quota, they certainly have control over the licences that FPI has and where they are being used in this Province. So, I would like to see this pass.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: Order, please!

Is it the pleasure of the Committee to adopt the said amendment to clause 3 as put forward by the Member for Carbonear-Harbour Grace, clause 3 of Bill 41?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

CHAIR: The Chair deems the amendment defeated.

On motion, amendment defeated.

CHAIR: Shall clause 3 carry?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

CHAIR: Clause 3 is carried.

[Disturbance in the gallery]

CHAIR: Order, please!

While visitors are always welcome here in the House of Assembly to the galleries, the Chair must remind visiting members that they are not to show approval or disapproval for anything that happens here on the floor of the Chamber.

I would ask -

[Disturbance in the gallery]

CHAIR: Order, please!

The Chair will call for a recess and will return when the House resumes some form of order.

This House now stands recessed.

Recess

CHAIR (Fitzgerald): Order, please!

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: A bill, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act.

CHAIR: Shall the title carry?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

CHAIR: The title is carried.

On motion, title carried.

CHAIR: Shall I report Bill 41, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act, carried without amendment?

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, ‘nay'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

CHAIR: Bill 41, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act, is carried without amendment.

A bill, "An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act." (Bill 41)

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. Chair.

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'.

Motion carried.

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

MR. SPEAKER (Hodder): Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Bonavista South and Deputy Speaker.

MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the Committee of the Whole have considered the matters to them referred and have directed me to report Bill 41 passed without amendment, and ask leave to sit again.

MR. SPEAKER: The Chairperson of the Committee of the Whole reports that the Committee have considered the matters to them referred and have directed him -

[Disturbance in the gallery]

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Chair understands the desire of the people who are visitors in the galley to wish to be present for the continuation of this debate; however, attendance in the gallery is a privilege, it is not a right, so therefore I would caution all hon. people in the gallery and ask for their co-operation. The Chair does not wish to have the galleries cleared, but if he must he shall.

 

The Chairperson of the Committee of the Whole reports the Committee have considered the matters to them referred and have directed him to report Bill 41 passed without amendment.

When shall this report be received?

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

MR. SPEAKER: Now.

When shall the said bill be read a third time?

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

MR. SPEAKER: Now.

On motion, report received and adopted, 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 that Bill 41, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act, be now read a third time.

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that Bill 41, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act, be now read a third time.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion that Bill 41, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act, 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: The Chair is unable to reach a decision.

AN HON. MEMBER: Division, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Division has been called.

AN HON. MEMBER: Ring the bells.

MR. SPEAKER: Ring the bells.

Division

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Are the Whips now ready?

All those in favour of the adoption of Bill 41, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act at third reading, please stand.

CLERK: Ms Dunderdale, Mr. Ottenheimer, Mr. Taylor, Mr. Tom Marshall, Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. O'Brien, Ms Burke, Mr. Tom Osborne, Ms Whalen -

[Disturbance in the gallery]

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

CLERK: Mr. Jim Hodder, Mr. Wiseman, Mr. Denine, Mr. French, Mr. Young, Mr. Hunter, Mr. Jackman, Ms Johnson, Mr. Skinner, Ms Elizabeth Marshall, Ms Foote, Mr. Harris.

[Disturbance in the gallery]

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

All those against the motion, please stand.

[Applause from the gallery]

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

CLERK: Mr. Williams, Mr. Edward Byrne, Mr. Jack Byrne, Mr. Hickey, Mr. Harding, Mr. Ridgley, Mr. Reid, Mr. Parsons, Mr. Butler, Mr. Barrett, Mr. Langdon, Ms Thistle, Mr. Andersen, Mr. Sweeney, Mr. Joyce, Mr. Collins, Mr. Manning.

[Disturbance in the gallery]

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

CLERK: Mr. Speaker, twenty-two ayes and seventeen nays.

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair declares the motion adopted.

The hon. the Government House Leader.

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

I move that the House now adjourn and will return at - I am sorry, go ahead.

[Disturbance in the gallery]

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

CLERK: A bill, An Act To Amend The Fishery Products International Limited Act. (Bill 41)

MR. SPEAKER: This bill has now been 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 Fishery Products International Limited Act," read a third time, ordered passed and its title be as on the Order Paper. (Bill 41)

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

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

I move that the House now adjourn for the spring session and return at the call of the Chair.

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved that the House do now adjourn and that the House will be recalled at the call of the Chair.

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

The motion is carried.

This House now stands adjourned until the call of the Chair.

On motion, the House at its rising adjourned to the call of the Chair.