April 28, 2008             HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS              Vol. XLVI   No. 17


The House met at 1:30 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (Fitzgerald): Order, please!

Admit strangers.

On Thursday, April 24, the hon. the Government House Leader raised a point of order concerning the relevance of the comments of the hon. Opposition House Leader during the debate on Bill 21, An Act To Amend The Pension Benefits Act, 1997.

It seems to the Chair that the hon. the minister was rising to point out to the House that the debate was too wide ranging on the bill in question rather than formally raising a point of order, as the comments having been complained of had concluded. So there was no question of there being disorder at that point.

The hon. the Opposition House Leader agreed that he had been straying from the subject matter at hand, and in the opinion of the Chair there was certainly no point of order. However, this might be a good time to say a few words about the often repeated comment that debate on a money bill can be wide ranging. This has, indeed, been the practice in this House. However, it is important to remind hon. members that not every bill which can be said to be remotely related to money is a money bill. Practically everything government does requires money, but not every bill that government introduces is a money bill. I think it is fair to say that bills which have their sole objective, the appropriation of money such as supply bills and the raising of money through taxation and loan bills, are money bills.

There is a comprehensive definition in Erskine May, the twenty-second edition on pages 806 and 807, which quotes the Parliament Act, 1911 of the United Kingdom as follows: "…a ‘money bill' as a public bill which in the opinion of the Speaker of the House of Commons contains only previsions dealing with all or any of the following subjects, namely, the imposition, repeal, remission, alteration, or regulation of taxation; the imposition for the payment of debt or other financial purposes of charges on the Consolidated Fund or the National Loans Fund, or on money provided by Parliament or the variation or repeal of such charges; Supply: the appropriation, receipt, custody, issue or audit of accounts of public money, the raising or guarantee of any loan or repayment thereof; or subordinate matters incidental to those subjects or any of them."

While the definition may not be the last word for us in this Chamber, it seems to the Chair that it is instructive and it is useful. Mr. Speaker, Hodder, ruled on December 12, 2006, that bills relating to supply and the budget admit to wide-ranging debate. A broader statement of what is contained in the definition that I have just quoted.

Today, the Chair would like to recognize an employee of the House of Assembly who will be retiring this week, Mrs. Madonna O'Connell.

Mrs. O'Connell has worked with government since 1984, and with Hansard since 1998.

I know that all hon. members will join with me in wishing Mrs. O'Connell, Madonna to her friends and co-workers, a healthy and happy retirement, and I thank her for her faithful and diligent service over the years.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: I am always amazed that the people in Hansard can take what we say here and make it sound so sensible when we read it.

The following members' statements will be heard today: the hon. the Member for the District of Placentia & St. Mary's; the hon. the Member for the District of Port de Grave; the hon. the Member for the District of Mount Pearl North; the hon. the Member for the District of Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair; the hon. Member for the District of Humber Valley; the hon. the Member for the District of Kilbride.

The hon. the Member for the District of Placentia & St. Mary's.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. COLLINS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in this hon. House today to congratulate the Town of Whitbourne for participating in the Municipal Wetlands Stewardship Program. This program was the result of the Eastern Habitat Joint Venture, which was formed in 1989, as the body tasked with forwarding the goals and objectives of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan.

Whitbourne is one of the seventeen communities across the Province which has demonstrated an appreciation for this unique habitat and is committed to taking responsibility for this initiative.

The town is participating in the nest box for the common goldeneye project, whereby nest boxes will be installed and monitored by community workers enabling increased breeding of the common goldeneye, also known as the white winged diver.

The population of the goldeneye has decreased in the Whitbourne area, and it is hoped that this project will lead to increased numbers due to the availability of extra nesting sites.

The monitoring of this project and the local support by the community of Whitbourne is a great example of the interest and stewardship of the residents of this noteworthy environmental initiative.

Mr. Speaker, I ask all hon. members to join me in congratulating the Town of Whitbourne and all the other communities across the Province, for their initiative in this program.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. BUTLER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Luanne Dominix was recently recognized for winning the first place in the Royal Canadian Legion Provincial Senior Poster Colouring Remembrance Day Contest.

The Grade 11 student at Ascension Collegiate in Bay Roberts received a certificate and approximately $200 in cash.

In addition, Mr. Speaker, on July 1, 2008, Luanne will travel with Legion members to Beaumont Hamel, France, to visit war memorials honouring the fallen soldiers of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Kearsty Ryan, a Grade 9 student at Amalgamated Academy, placed second in the International Poem Contest.

Mr. Speaker, Kearsty's poem honoured her late uncle, Corporal Jamie Murphy, who was killed while serving with the Armed Forces in Afghanistan. Kearsty received a certificate and $100.

Luanne's poster and Kearsty's poem have been sent to the Royal Canadian Legion Dominion Command to be judged on the national level.

I ask all hon. members to join me in extending congratulations to Luanne and Kearsty and Branch 32 of the Royal Canadian Legion, Bay Roberts.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Mount Pearl North.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise in this hon. House today to recognize the participants and winners from Sport Newfoundland and Labrador who recently attended the Toronto Air Gun Grand Prix Shooting Competition.


I would like to congratulate our Mount Pearl residents, and medal winners; in particular, Jason Harnum, who won a bronze medal in the sub junior rifle competition, and Samantha Marsh, who received bronze medal recognition in the sub junior rifle competition. I would also like to recognize Megan Harris from Mount Pearl and Richard Power from St. Catherine's.

Mr. Speaker, it is very important to encourage all people to participate in sport, but especially our youth. I commend these young athletes for their participation and achievements in this recent shooting competition. They have all represented our Province well.

Mr. Speaker, I ask all members of this House to join me in congratulating the participants and winners from Sport Newfoundland and Labrador who performed brilliantly at the Toronto Air Gun Grand Prix Shooting Competition.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair.

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise in the House today to recognize Dr. Selma Barkham's thirtieth anniversary of discovering the sixteenth century Basque whaling site in Red Bay, Labrador.

This anniversary was celebrated in the community with ceremonies organized by Parks Canada and the Town of Red Bay, and were attended by Dr. Barkham and her two children, Michael and Serena.

In 1977, Dr. Selma Barkham travelled to Red Bay and linked roofing tiles and whale bone she discovered there to the Basque whaling industry of the sixteenth century.

Mr. Speaker, it was through her painstaking investigating of documents in the Basque archives that established the early presence of the Basque in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, it was also Dr. Barkham's work that led to Red Bay receiving worldwide recognition and being named as a national historic site. Red Bay has gone from a small quiet community with few visitors to a place where people from all over the world come to see the history that has been revealed there. Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have come to embrace this site that has provided many missing links in our Canadian history.


Mr. Speaker, I ask all my colleagues in the House today to join me in paying tribute to Dr. Selma Barkham who, thirty years ago, was responsible for the discovery of the Basque whaling site in Red Bay, in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. KELLY: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to stand in this hon. House today and pay tribute to the volunteer fire departments in my district. This is volunteer week, and the theme "Volunteers! You're Part of the Picture," speaks to the fact that volunteer fire departments play a major part in contributing to fire and emergency services in their community.

Since being elected in October, I have had the pleasure of visiting several fire departments in my district. The fire departments I visited included the communities of Pasadena, Deer Lake, Reidville, Howley and Jackson's Arm.

I have been very impressed by the efforts of these volunteers. The fire departments in all communities have averaged over twenty volunteers, and appear to be strong, vibrant departments.

In the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador there are approximately 6,500 firefighters, of which 6,000 are volunteers, in approximately 300 different communities in our Province.

In my district, a volunteer fire department worthy of special note is the fire department in my hometown of Howley, a community with only 240 residents, which has a volunteer fire department with twenty-three members. I am not sure if this is a provincial record, with 10 per cent of a local community being a volunteer firefighter, but it is certainly an accomplishment worthy of special recognition in this hon. House.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage all citizens to support their volunteer fire departments, especially in their fundraising efforts, and I ask all members of this House to join me in congratulating these outstanding individuals for the work they do on behalf of their communities.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DINN: Mr. Speaker, I rise in this hon. House today to commend the Goulds Winter Carnival Committee and the many volunteers for the outstanding job they did this past winter in organizing and running all the events of the Twenty-second Goulds Winter Carnival. The Winter Carnival is a very successful annual ten day event in Goulds.

The Goulds Winter Carnival incorporates most of the service groups and organizations in the community. The two parishes, the three schools, the Goulds Kickers Soccer Association, the Goulds Seniors' Club, the Goulds Lions Club, the Goulds Leo Club, the Goulds Recreation Committee, the Goulds Scouting movement, the Goulds Girl Guides, the Goulds Hoopsters, the City of St. John's, the Goulds Library Board, the Kilbride and Ferryland Family Resource Coalition and the Goulds Arena Board, all took part in this year's Winter Carnival.

This year, we tried a few new events as part of the Goulds Winter Carnival program, along with the usual events. These new events turned out to be very successful. We had the first ever Amazing Challenge, sponsored by the Goulds Recreation Committee. The local Leo Club hosted a St. Kevin's Idol Contest. We had about a dozen contestants, and about 200 spectators showed up for this event.

Mr. Speaker, I ask all members of this hon. House to join me in congratulating all the volunteer groups, the individuals and corporate sponsors, who made this year's Goulds Winter Carnival such a great success.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Statements by Ministers.

Statements by Ministers

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SKINNER: Mr. Speaker, I rise today in this hon. House to recognize today, April 28, as the National Day of Mourning. In 1984, the Canadian Labour Congress initiated this day, and in 1991 the Government of Canada declared it a National Day of Mourning.

It is now observed in over seventy countries around the world, and serves as a point of remembrance for workers who have been killed or injured on the job.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, we join together to remember colleagues, friends and relatives who have been killed or injured at work. Last year, there were twenty-three fatalities reported in this Province, with seven due to incidents in the workplace and sixteen as a result of occupational disease. In Canada, deaths from workplace injuries average nearly 1,000 each year.

Mr. Speaker, making our workplaces safer must be a daily effort. On this day, I commend the efforts of workers and employers and call on them to renew their commitment to improve health and safety in the workplace.

On this day, I would also like to acknowledge the important role that the Workplace Health, Safety and Compensation Commission and the Occupational Health and Safety Branch of the Department of Government Services serve in ensuring that our workplaces are safe and healthy.

By educating and engaging both workers and employers in the area of occupational health and safety prevention, we can and will reduce the number of work related injuries and illnesses. Together, we must strive to ensure that the workers of Newfoundland and Labrador are safe in the workplace.

Mr. Speaker, I now ask all hon. members of this House to observe a moment of silence in remembrance of workers who have been killed or injured on the job.

MR. SPEAKER: I ask all members to rise.

[A moment of silence is observed.]

MR. SPEAKER: I ask all members to be seated.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is an honour for us today to certainly join with government and with the minister in recognizing the National Day of Mourning.

Just earlier today I had the opportunity to take part in a ceremony that was held in the main foyer of Confederation Building to honour the injured workers, those who have been killed on the job, and to certainly pay tribute to them, their families and their co-workers.

Mr. Speaker, not only was it an opportunity to recognize these workers and the tragedies that had certainly happened within their lives, but it was also an opportunity for all of us to be more cognizant of safety factors in the workplace.

I think that safety in the workplace is certainly paramount in a Province where we have highly industrial activity that is ongoing. We have seen more and more lately, I guess, people in our Province working in very risky professions, and I guess every time we hear of one of these injuries it is always a reminder to us of the tremendous risk that many people put themselves in each day.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remember, I guess, the safety practices in our work environment and, in doing so, reflect upon some of the accidents that we have seen throughout Newfoundland and Labrador: explosions at Come By Chance, a recent explosion with an oil tanker, a number of helicopter crashes we have seen in the Province over the last number of years, and, in addition, the fishing vessels that have sunk in our Province as a result of tragedy on the ocean. I think all of these things cause us to be more cognizant of policies that we make here to ensure that there is safety in the workplace and that those practices are put to use for the betterment of those employees and for their families.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Further statements by ministers.

The hon. the Minister of Environment and Conservation.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS JOHNSON: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House of Assembly to provide the results of a review of our Provincial Parks Campsite Reservation Service conducted by my department.

In 2007, the Parks and Natural Areas Division introduced a new Provincial Parks Campsite Reservation System in response to public demand for a better system of booking and guaranteeing campsites in our provincial parks.

Government committed to improving amenities and services within our parks in recognition that the parks system is a key part of developing an internationally competitive outdoor nature tourism product for the Province.

Mr. Speaker, the report addressed the following concerns: During the 2007 camping season there was a cancellation fee of $8 plus GST if bookings were cancelled. Mr. Speaker, this fee was dropped in July 2007 and this will remain in effect again this year.

Mr. Speaker, at start-up in 2007, persons who wanted to extend their stay while at a site would have to make another reservation on line or by phone and, as a result, pay another reservation fee. Also, people who preferred a site different than the one reserved had to contact the reservation service to change their site and incur another reservation change fee.

This season, campers who are occupying a site for up to seven days can extend their stay, depending upon site availability, one day at a time, for up to seven extra days at the park checkpoint, rather than having to contact the reservation system. The reservation fee for staying additional nights will no longer apply. Also, upon arriving at the park, a camper wishing to change their site, depending upon site availability, can do so at the park checkpoint. Again, the reservation change fee will no longer apply.

Mr. Speaker, the original reservation system had a twenty-four-hour delay, meaning campers could not make same-day reservations. I am pleased to report that, this season, same-day reservations are now available.

Another issue raised by campers was that, when travelling across the Province, they would make reservations at multiple parks; however, they were charged a fee for each park reservation. This season, patrons involved in trip planning can make reservations at multiple parks and only have to pay one reservation fee.

Mr. Speaker, last season, the latest park check-in time was set at 6:00 p.m. with a check-out time of 1:00 p.m. Campers felt that the check-in time did not allow enough time to get to the park of their choice, especially after work on a Friday evening; and, check-out time at 1:00 p.m. interfered with their noon meal.

This camping season, we have changed the check-in and check-out times to make it more convenient for people arriving and departing the park. Latest check-in time will be 8:00 p.m. and check-out time will now be 3:00 p.m.

Mr. Speaker, many people who live next to a provincial park thought that they had to contact the reservation system to stay at the neighbouring park and pay the reservation fee.

Local people can drop in to their local park and get a campsite without having to make a reservation and incur the reservation fee. Drop-in sites are set aside in each park for such purposes; however, I do recommend reservations at our busier parks, especially during long holiday weekends.

Mr. Speaker, there are forty seasonal campsites available at Butterpot Provincial Park. Demand for seasonal sites in Butterpot is very high. Twenty-five of these sites were set aside for some patrons; however, on a go-forward basis, government will no longer set aside these sites. All forty seasonal sites will be available through the reservation system.

Mr. Speaker, our provincial parks are a public resource and everyone should have equal opportunity to access seasonal sites, and that is the reason for this change.

Mr. Speaker, overall, the Provincial Parks Reservation System is operating very well. The system has seen several innovations and changes in the past couple of years with increased services and amenities. Previously, Parks and Natural Areas could only handle 2,000 reservations per season. In 2007, reservations increased to almost 8,000. Sixty-one per cent of reservations were made on-line and 39 per cent were made through the 1-877 telephone service.

The telephone and on-line reservation service will be available May 1 for Notre Dame, Blow Me Down, Frenchman's Cove and Pinware River Park reservations. On May 3, reservation service will be available for Barachois Pond, La Manche, Lockston Path, J.T. Cheeseman and Sir Richard Squires Memorial Provincial Park. The reservation system for Butter Pot, Dildo Run, Pistolet Bay and Sandbanks Park will be available May 5.

Mr. Speaker, for more information or to make a reservation, the public can contact the Provincial Parks Reservation Service at 1-877-214-CAMP (2267) between 7:00 a.m. and 11:30 p.m. or on-line twenty-four hours a day at www.nlcamping.ca.

I trust these changes will significantly enhance the upcoming camping season for all visitors to our provincial parks.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. BUTLER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I want to thank the minister for an advance copy of her statement and to say that this is, no doubt, for our campers throughout our Province and those who visit our Province, a good news story.

Let me assure you, I know last year we used to ask questions with regard to the on-line reservations and so on, but it is good to see that the cancellation fees, the reservation fees, the one-night stays, and things like that have changed, and have changed for the better, Mr. Speaker.

The only thing, I guess, I would mention to the minister is the one - and being an avid camper myself and travelling throughout the summer - I know the check-in time before was 6:00 p.m. and now it is 8:00 p.m. Lots of times, for people travelling to our Province, not knowing what location they are in, it might be a bit later than 8:00 p.m. when they get to the parks, so hopefully there will be some leeway for those people when they come in there.

I have to say that, with those changes, hopefully our local residents alone will use our provincial parks more than in the past, because those are wonderful changes, no doubt.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Further statements by ministers.

The hon. the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HEDDERSON: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to acknowledge April 27 through May 3 as National Volunteer Week.

Volunteer Week is an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the great work that volunteers do in every neighbourhood and community right across our Province. Volunteers make a significant contribution economically, socially, and culturally to the way of life we cherish so much in this Province.

There are approximately, Mr. Speaker, 187,000 volunteers who contribute thirty-five million hours of valuable unpaid time to their communities and community organizations. Furthermore, currently in Newfoundland and Labrador, there are over 23,000 people employed by volunteer and non-profit organizations in a concerted effort to make our Province stronger.

Mr. Speaker, this year's theme, "Volunteers! You're Part of the Picture", encourages us all, young and old alike, to get involved in the community and volunteer. Not only do volunteers help people in the community lead happier, healthier and more productive lives, but the volunteers themselves benefit in the same way.

Our government has made a commitment to the voluntary and non-profit sector. We are continuing to strengthen the relationship between government and the voluntary and non-profit sector to make the best use of all our skills and resources. We want to support the sector as it strives to improve its capacity and address the challenges shared by so many of us in a quickly changing society. Government has much to do to address its own policies to support volunteerism, encourage partnership and get the best value for public resources.

Mr. Speaker, I have had tremendous opportunities to engage with groups and individuals from Labrador West and Goose Bay, down the West Coast, Central Newfoundland, the Burin and Avalon Peninsulas, and I plan on continuing these meetings into the future. I have had the chance to listen to the challenges and concerns they face, but I have also heard innovative ideas, discussed exciting plans and heard wonderful success stories. I know the important and integral role these individuals and organizations play in our community. I know they do make a difference.

As hon. members go about their business this week, Mr. Speaker, I ask that they encourage their constituents to take some time to join with their community celebrations and honour the valuable work that the voluntary and non-profit sector contributes to our great Province. I am encouraging the people of the Province to volunteer; a few minutes a day, a few hours a week or a few days a month can make a tremendous difference. Volunteer and become part of the picture.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I appreciate the minister providing me with an advanced copy of his release.

We recognize and acknowledge and pay tribute to a lot of things in this House, and of course this is probably one of the most honourable things to do, pay tribute to the volunteers in our Province. I was, quite frankly, amazed when I heard the figure of 187,000 volunteers in our Province, of somewhere around 500,000. It is just amazing that number, and the number of hours, 35 million hours a year that these volunteers contribute. Of course, they range from all groups. You have your fire departments, your youth groups, your Meals on Wheels, literacy trainers, fundraisers, such as the Cancer Society and Daffodil Place, sports groups, church groups, women's centres and shelters. It makes our communities complete. If we did not have these volunteers, God knows where we would be. That is the whole word itself, volunteers without pay.

I have a soft spot in particular, although I have a lot of respect and admiration for all of these groups, fire departments in particular stand out to me because even though all of us as volunteers contribute to the economic and the social and the cultural fabric of our communities, I have always said, quite often, at fire department functions, that they make the ultimate sacrifice if required. They go above and beyond even that again. So, I always sort of put them on the top shelf.

I certainly agree with the minister, we need and ought to pay thanks and pay tribute to all of the volunteers in our Province. I, likewise, would encourage these groups, everybody in this Province to get out and get involved if you already have not.

I also appreciate, and I have had a lengthy conversation with the minister in the recent past about what his new division of his department intends to do. I look forward, as well, to him visiting the South Coast with me this coming summer, hopefully, so that we can convey that message of the new division to some of the seniors groups in that particular area.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Further statements by ministers?

Oral questions.

Oral Questions

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My questions are for the Minister of Health and Community Services.

We know that Bill 7 is before the House of Assembly right now and it deals with privacy of personal health information. We also know that Eastern Health has recently circulated the new confidentiality agreement to its staff.

Can the minister confirm that this new confidentiality agreement was formulated in response to what is being introduced in the new legislation in the House currently?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The policy statement that she is referring to with Eastern Health, as I understand it, is growing from a part of the process of consolidations. There have been many questions in this House in the recent past about transition and what takes place in transition. One of the things that happen is a consolidation of administrative policies and practices.

As I understand it, Eastern Health has just finally concluded some pieces of their administrative manuals where they are consolidating them. Each of the former seven or eight boards that existed had policies similar to this. In fact, each of the fourteen boards throughout Newfoundland and Labrador had policies similar to this and each of the four authorities now are in the process of consolidating that. So, what we saw in recent days announced by Eastern Health was a consolidation of their current administrative practices, not necessarily growing from any bill that we would have introduced in this House.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Mr. Speaker, there may be some clarification required. Our inquiries with Eastern Health told us that they were being asked to comply with confidentiality agreements under the personal health information bill.

We did, Mr. Speaker, obtain the contents of the confidentiality agreement within Eastern Health. It goes way beyond what the legislation is, that is in our House right now. In fact, what it does is it asks Eastern Health employees to sign agreements that would prohibit them from speaking publicly on any issues within our health care system.

I ask the minister if he is aware of that, and if he has concerns about it?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Just prior to coming to the House, actually, I received a copy of the new proposed agreements that Eastern Health are asking their staff to sign. I understand it has been a consistent practice in the past, to have them sign a confidentiality agreement. I understand the wording of this one is new, as I just described. It has been amended as a result of the consolidation of health authorities. I have not had a chance to personally review it in any level of detail, other than the fact that it is now in my office and I will get an opportunity in the coming days to review it to make sure that it is consistent with what would be normal and reasonable practice.

Also, if there is any legislation that it must comply with, it obviously must comply with that piece of legislation.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Doctors in the Province certainly have indicated their concerns with the legislation. Mr. Speaker, they feel it will stifle them in discussing issues publicly around health care in the Province. In absence of any whistle-blower legislation being passed in Newfoundland and Labrador, we share that concern and believe that it may be the case.

I ask the minister: What assurances will he give to the 12,000 employees within Eastern Health that this will not be the case and that there will be no penalties for speaking out on issues regarding our health care sector?

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

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I just shared with the member opposite, I just recently received a copy of the agreement, prior to coming to the House. What I can assure the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and the people who are employed with Eastern Health, I will have my office and I will personally review the policy that is now being drafted by Eastern Health and ensure that it does comply with existing legislation, but that it also reflects current best practices in human resource management with respect to protecting the confidential information that may be held within the organization.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My next questions are for the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

Over the weekend, both the fire services association and the school councils' federation called on government to provide more funding to the fire commissioner's office to allow for a more detailed inspection process.

I ask the minister: Will government be providing this funding, which will allow the fire commissioner to conduct full and detailed inspections of all public buildings within the Province?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I said time and time again, after the report came in on the facility, the report of the ten facilities that the fire commissioner went out to inspect, and came back with his report, I made recommendations to the fire commissioner's office and to the FES that we would look at all of the protocols that are in place. That is the sum of the things. Once we get all of the stakeholders in place, get a meeting, get recommendations, come back to government, to my office, then we will comment on that further.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Mr. Speaker, I am unsure, from the minister's comments, if there will be additional resources provided to the fire commissioner's office and if it will include all public buildings in this review of protocols and procedures, meaning schools as well as hospitals and other public buildings.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Mr. Speaker, again, the Opposition Leader is saying: Is there money going to be given to the FES?

Until we do the protocol review of this, I cannot tell you what is going to happen. I am going to wait and see what procedures are going to be put in place. Then I will be able to say this is what we are going to do.

When that review is completed, whatever time it takes to do it - it is not going to be done overnight, but when that happens - then we will do it and we will include whatever facilities are there.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We know that oftentimes reviews can be a lengthy process. In the meantime, I guess, it would be the volunteer fire departments around the Province that will still be expected to conduct these inspections.

I ask the minister: Will government provide full funding to ensure there is proper training in these volunteer fire departments right throughout the Province?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Mr. Speaker, there are ongoing training programs offered by FES over the year, and the fire commissioner's office, his officials, will be conducting seminars over this year to help with the problem of people to inspect these facilities.

Are we stopping and just putting something on the shelf? No. We are moving forward on some of the suggestions as we speak, now. He is also in the process of setting up seminars for people in health care facilities to come in and look at fire and life safety issues, evacuation procedures, et cetera. That stuff is being moved ahead as we speak.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We also know, from talking to many of these fire brigades, or volunteer fire departments throughout the Province, that they do not all have the training. We have also learned that many communities do not have active volunteer fire brigades; nor do they have the basic standard equipment to be able to respond to certain emergencies in their community.

In light of that, and the fact that these people are being responsible to enforce government policy and regulation, I ask the minister: Is he prepared to look at 100 per cent funding for volunteer fire departments in this Province to meet the basic standard equipment that they require, such as pumps, hoses, breathing apparatus and so on?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Mr. Speaker, I thank the Opposition Leader for that question; because, if she was paying attention on Friday, she would have heard the new cost-share ratios that this government put in, and that includes volunteer firefighters.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the minister for that clarification, because I read into it that it applied to water and sewer infrastructure and other projects, but I am pleased to see it does apply to volunteer fire departments as well.

Mr. Speaker, my next questions are for the Minister of Finance.

I guess we are on the eve of the Budget. It is almost like Christmas Eve in Newfoundland and Labrador. I guess the minister is Santa Claus come tomorrow morning. I am so excited, I don't know if I can sleep tonight, because I have never seen such a huge surplus budget being laid out in Newfoundland and Labrador.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MS JONES: Mr. Speaker, like every excited kid on Christmas Eve, it is always nice to –

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member to pose her question.

MS JONES: Indeed I will, Mr. Speaker.

It is always nice to try and guess what you might be getting in the morning.

I ask the minister: Can we expect a break on the price of gas at the pumps for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador tomorrow, Sir, when you bring down your Budget?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. T. MARSHALL: Mr. Speaker, all good things come to those who wait. Tomorrow, when I present the Budget, I am sure that there will be initiatives that will be very pleasing to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Mr. Speaker, that didn't give me the scoop I was looking for. It gave me the response but as of right now I don't feel like I'm going to save any money at the pumps tomorrow.

Mr. Speaker, the growing price of gasoline in our Province is no doubt contributing to a number of factors. Just recently we heard a story from a volunteer group, Meals on Wheels, who may have to change the way they have been serving the public in the Province because of the high price at the pumps.

Again I just want to ask the minister if strong consideration could be given to reducing the price, bringing it more in line with what the rate is across the country and providing some savings for consumers tomorrow.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. T. MARSHALL: Mr. Speaker, I think, as I said in response to a question from the Opposition House Leader some time ago, the Williams government certainly recognizes the problems that high energy costs have for the people of this Province. We are aware of it and we take it very seriously. That is why last year, for example, we introduced a number of measures to put more money in people's pockets, such as tax cuts, the biggest tax cut in history, help for seniors, low income tax benefits, and this year the Premier has already announced an additional $94 million, $75 million annually that will help people pay for the rising cost of food and the rising cost of energy. We will continue over time to take more initiatives that will put money back into people's pockets to help them deal with those rising costs.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I will just have to wait until tomorrow, I guess.

Let me ask a question to the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs about a funding I know they do have. That is the Off-Reserve Aboriginal Housing Trust. It was announced by the federal government well over a year ago, yet we haven't seen any of this $8 million flowing into aboriginal communities in Labrador to deal with the housing needs.

Can I ask the minister why the program has been delayed so long?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS POTTLE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Let me tell the House, Mr. Speaker, that within the last couple of weeks my department has met with all aboriginal groups. They are fully aware of how things are unfolding. A press release is hopefully going to be out in the very near future. Let me tell you that they are extremely satisfied with how things are progressing. Just keep tuned and hopefully we will have that announced shortly.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It doesn't answer my question, why we have seen a delay of almost two years in the program, and only last week I am aware of the fact that they are trying to put regulations around it.

Maybe the minister can tell me what the funding breakdown will be for each aboriginal group in Labrador and when the applications will be in the hands of people in Labrador who need this money.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS POTTLE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

All Aboriginal groups have been contacted. They have been kept up to date as to how this is progressing. They have been involved and they know that it is coming down shortly. They know what the break down is going to be, and as soon as the press release comes out, so will everyone else.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Maybe I will ask the minister this. Of the 150 applications that are currently on the wait-list for housing programs now in Labrador: How many of these will automatically be transferred into the Aboriginal program or will they have to reapply, because some of them have been on the list now for two years?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS POTTLE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

All Aboriginal groups know the process. They know there is an application form; they know they are still eligible for other programs that Newfoundland and Labrador Housing offers. They are kept attuned as to how this program is going to be delivered, and they are satisfied. They are happy with how things are progressing. It will be announced in the very, very near future and they are aware of it.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Our office recently requested a meeting with health officials to discuss ambulance services in the Province. A meeting was being arranged but was then cancelled after the minister's executive assistance was advised of our request. Instead, we were asked to provide a detailed agenda with questions, and our request will be considered. As indicated to the minister's political staff, the purpose of the meeting was exactly that, to find out what the ambulance services are like in this Province. That is why we could not give the questions and answers in advance.

I ask the minister: Does your executive assistant decide what information is allowed to be provided publicly by your department, and how does that process live up to openness and accountability?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Mr. Speaker, it is because we want to be open and transparent that we go through that kind of process.

My department gets a number of requests from individuals looking for information, and we want to make sure that when the Opposition or any other group would like to meet with officials in the department, to determine some issue or to understand an issue better, we want to make sure we understand what it is they really want to know so we can assign the most appropriate person to attend that meeting.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: It would be difficult if I were to assign someone, or someone in my office were to assign someone who really was not up to speed on the file and the information would be - probably not complete and then we would have another form of complaint. So, better understanding what the information the Opposition would want to have helps us better assign someone. Last week, we had a -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. minister to conclude his answer.

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Last week we had a briefing on the new legislation on privacy and personal health information. We knew they were doing that, we assigned someone who was very familiar with the file, and I understand it was a great briefing session.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

That answer was almost as clear and as transparent as the answer we received from the executive assistant.

I want to carry on with the issues relating to so-called openness and accountability. Mr. Speaker, two weeks ago we managed to pry a few reports and other documents out of various departments with our questioning. We are still waiting for some ministers to deliver on their commitments. Mr. Speaker, under the Access to Information Act, we requested briefing notes related to the Mealey Mountain National Park through the Department of Aboriginal Affairs. Here is what we received, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. PARSONS: Mr. Speaker, my question to the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs is: What is so top secret that we received two entirely blacked out pages from the minister? Is this (inaudible)?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member to pose his question.

MR. PARSONS: That is for the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, please.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr Speaker.

For the information of the Opposition House Leader; as he is well aware, when a request is made for Access to Information, the process is that it is vetted by department officials. The information is looked at and it is determined what information can be provided. If the Opposition House Leader is not satisfied with the information, there is a process that he can follow and I would suggest that he do the same.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I guess that is why the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs could not answer for herself, because all she got was the blacked out paper, too.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Chair will interrupt. The hon. member knows full well that props are not admitted here in the House and I would ask him if he would refrain from doing so.

MR. PARSONS: Yes, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, since the Minister of Justice likes to be on his feet, I will ask you minister. On April 16, I asked the Minister of Justice about a report which was prepared and forwarded to the minister in late January of this year. This report is supposed to the result of a tour to Nova Scotia, BC and Saskatchewan, conducted by a delegation of prison management and union officials. Almost three months after receiving it, and two weeks after I asked the question in this House, again we are still waiting for the report.

I am wondering if the minister can advise us when he is likely to release the report that was done concerning this tour of these provinces?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I indicated to the Opposition House Leader when that question was first asked, it was asked in the context of whether or not there was going to be a new prison built in this Province. At that point I indicated, and I reiterate, that there can be no further decisions made on anything until the federal government determines and outlines its position.

In relation to that report, I have to indicate that I am not aware of any such report. There are two aspects of this. There was, I understand, a visit to prisons by various people, not that I am aware of any report having been provided. Secondly, Transportation and Works, as is the norm in preparing for the report on prison sites, costs, et cetera, provided a - what I have seen so far is a draft consultation report. I think there must be some confusion there. If the Opposition House Leader can point me in -

MR. SPEAKER: Order please!

I ask the hon. member to conclude his answer.

MR. KENNEDY: If he can be more specific I can try to find out what he is talking about, but I have not seen any such report.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would refer the minister to a copy of The Independent - and I am not showing any props here. It is the February 8 to 14 edition of The Independent on page four, column five, which references that exact report I just talked about, and it references it as being given to Justice Minister Jerome Kennedy. That is what I am quoting from and that is where I got the information.

MR. SPEAKER: Order please!

I ask the hon. member if he would abide by the rules of the House. He knows full well that members should not be repeating member's names here, or refer to them either by reading of a transcript or by saying it directly.


I ask the hon. member to ask questions referring to members by the district they represent or by the executive position they hold.

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Speaker, I will come back to the point of order, because I understand it is proper to do a point of order on that point after Question Period is over. So, I will come back to that issue you just raised.

My next question is for the minister responsible for the Workplace Health, Safety and Compensation Commission. Two weeks ago I asked the minister about a report, which government commissioned, into the issue of client services. Apparently, this report was received by government in May of 2007. There was one released on Friday, but that was a 2006 statutory review.

When I asked the minister two weeks ago he said he would take it under advisement, ascertain the content -

MR. SPEAKER: I ask the hon. member to pose his question.

MR. PARSONS: My question of the minister is: When are we going to see that report?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SKINNER: Mr. Speaker, after receiving the question here in the House from the member opposite I did check into the situation. There was no report commissioned by government. There was no report presented to government about the client service. He is referring to a report that the board of directors at the commission prepared and, as I understand it, are dealing with as a board of directors, but it was not commissioned nor presented to government.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you.

A major issue for Labrador is the state of the Trans-Labrador Highway. My question is for the Minister of Transportation and Works.

It was reported in The Labradorian on May 29, 2007, that the Town Council in Happy Valley-Goose Bay was told that a government report on various grades of chip seal on the Trans-Labrador Highway would be released to them on April 1 – that is April 1, 2006 - three transportation ministers ago.

My question for the minister is: Why has this report not been published or placed on the government Web site, and when might we expect this to be tabled in this House?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Transportation and Works.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS WHALEN: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question.

We are indeed working with Labrador, in investments we have made in Labrador. We are doing, this year alone, a $45 million cost-shared investment in Labrador, surfacing and widening of our Phase 1 during the construction season. We are indeed using chip seal in a part of that road in Labrador, the Trans-Labrador Highway.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you.

Again, for clarification, can the minister confirm that the report will be released, and when?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Transportation and Works.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS WHALEN: Mr. Speaker, all reports that we do are released in due time. That report will be released when it is due to be released.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My final question is for the Premier.

Premier, contrary to what the minister just said, your government is on record as releasing reports within thirty days. We are three years, almost, into this one that I am talking about here. Saying you are going to release it when you are ready is not keeping the commitment to release it in thirty days.

Premier, you, yourself, said back on March 3 that you would scour the government coffers and departments and see what reports are hanging around and they would be released. They are still not released and we are here some sixty days later.

I am just wondering, has anybody given anyone instructions to do that, and can we look forward to seeing these reports actually being made public sooner rather than later?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WILLIAMS: No instructions have been given; and, yes, we can.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. BUTLER: Mr. Speaker, last week we asked the Minister of Municipal Affairs about the amount of money that has been spent to date on the government's waste management strategy, and if estimates have been made on the long-term cost that will be incurred by municipalities trucking garbage to the three mega-dumps that government has proposed.

I ask the minister: Has this government done a cost study into a more decentralized system of regional engineering landfills for the Province where such long-term fuel and equipment costs could be measured against short-term capital expenditures?

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

MR. DENINE: I am not sure what he is asking, but I will try to attempt to answer the question.

Mr. Speaker, there is significant money being invested into the waste management strategy. To date, over $41 million has been committed right now and there is more to be committed in the future – not too long into the future.

What happens, Mr. Speaker, is when the studies are done in each of the areas that will take in all the factors that the member across the way is saying: your gas, transportation, where they are going to be located. That will be done in the study. Until that is done, I cannot comment on that.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. BUTLER: Mr. Speaker, the minister has stated that the first 100 kilometres travelled by garbage trucks to the mega-dumps are the responsibility of the municipalities. We know that the New Harbour regional landfill is approximately 100 kilometres from the city. This extremely contaminated site was scheduled to close in 2007; however, it still remains open.

I ask the minister: Are you aware of the difficulties eight communities that use the New Harbour landfill are having in tendering to pick up the garbage for Robin Hood Bay? Have you been in touch with them, and have any discussions been held with those eight communities?

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

MR. DENINE: I am really trying to find the question here.

The thing here that I would like to say is, first of all, you are right. The responsibility for different municipalities to get it is the first 100. Then, the extra cost is going to be spread out over all the municipalities participating.

Mr. Speaker, everyone will be consulted on where the facility is going to be located, if it is going to be located in the Bay, and how to get the garbage there.

I also want to correct one thing. They are not gigantic dumps, mega-dumps. There is more to this. In the modern age of environment, these are called engineered landfills.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: They are not called dumps. I heard the Opposition Leader say that, I heard the member –

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

MR. BUTLER: Mr. Speaker, I will make it clearer for the minister.

With regard to the New Harbour landfill, there are eight communities at the present time which use that site and it is scheduled to be closed this year. All I am saying to you, Sir, is that those eight communities are finding it difficult to come up with the funds to transport their garbage to the site here in St. John's.

I was wondering: Have you been in touch with those eight communities, and what procedures are in place to assist them?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The committee for the Avalon Waste Management Committee is now completed and it is appointed. The first meeting will be early in May. I cannot give you the exact date because it has not been nailed down yet.

Those concerns that the member across the floor has asked me, those are the concerns that will be addressed to that committee and they will address those issues. So, as far as transporting the waste to an engineered landfill, they will look after that.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. BUTLER: Mr. Speaker, we know that Winterton has been approached by the Trinity Bay Waste Management Committee to take their waste on an interim basis. I ask the Minister of Environment - apparently they were supposed to do a cost feasibility study.

I ask the minister: Has the report been completed, and are you prepared to subsidize Winterton for the extra administration cost that would be involved?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Again, Mr. Speaker, any studies to be done will be cost shared by the committee that is there, and they will be whatever studies are needed to be done to help facilitate the movement of the garbage to an engineered landfill.

When we start consolidating, there is going to have to be a study to do that, to find out where they are going to put it, and that will be done. As the Opposition says - is it a mega dump? No, it is an engineered landfill, a mega one.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The time allotted for questions and answers has expired.

Presenting Reports by Standing and Select Committees.

Tabling of documents.

Tabling of Documents

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

MR. O'BRIEN: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand today to table the Summary Report of the Activities and Costs in respect of the Consumer Advocate in relation to Insurance Matters for the 2007-2008 fiscal year.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Further tabling of documents.

The hon. the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation.

MR. JACKMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Pursuant to Section 10 of the Transparency and Accountability Act, I am tabling today a document regarding the Newfoundland and Labrador Sports Centre which was established as a Crown Corporation on April 3, 2008.

MR. SPEAKER: Further tabling of documents.

Notices of motion.

Notices of Motion

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

I give notice that I will move that the House resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole on Supply to consider A Resolution For The Granting Of Supply To Her Majesty. (Bill 25)

Mr. Speaker, I also give notice that I will move the following motion: that this House approve in general the budgetary policy of the government - the Budget Speech.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Further notices of motion?

The hon. the Member for Mount Pearl North.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I give notice that I will move, seconded by the hon. Member for Fortune Bay-Cape la Hune, the following motion:

WHEREAS approximately 187,000 people in our Province volunteer, contributing a total of 35 million hours of valuable unpaid time to their communities and community organizations, in a concerted effort to make our Province stronger; and

WHEREAS the voluntary sector is facing increasing challenges of recruitment, retention, governance and capacity just at a time when their services and expertise are needed most; and

WHEREAS the relationship between the civil society and government is very important, and has improved substantially in the past few years, and there remains so much each can do with the help of the other, and to help the other for the long-term benefit of our people and our communities;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that this House recognize and congratulate the thousands of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who give their time and skills to the benefit of our communities and our Province, and encourage others to do the same; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this House encourage the government to continue its commitment to support the voluntary sector for the benefit of the entire Province.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Further notices of motion?

Answers to Questions for which Notice has been Given.

Petitions.

Petitions

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

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

I want to stand, and hopefully this is the last time I will have to stand on this particular petition with regards to a long-term care facility for Conception Bay North, because I am looking forward with great interest tomorrow in the Budget. Hopefully, government will say at least we are going to do another reassessment of the situation out there, because Conception Bay North was high on the priority list a few years ago for a long-term care facility. Plans were in place for a 240-bed facility. The infrastructure that is there now - like the Harbour Lodge and the Interfaith, they have served their purpose. They are still doing wonderful work there, the people who work in them on behalf of the residents, but the time has come, I believe, when that area - where it was high on the priority list, it is time for it to be reconsidered again.

I call upon my hon. colleagues in the neighbouring districts - there is still a bit of time to get in touch with the Minister of Health and the Minister of Finance to put the final touches on it, and hopefully, Mr. Speaker, we will hear some announcement tomorrow.

On behalf of the residents of the area I want to thank you for the opportunity to bring forward this petition again.

MR. SPEAKER: Further Petitions.

Orders of the Day

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

MR. RIDEOUT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to call Order 7, second reading of Bill 23, An Act To Amend The Labour Relations Act.

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that Bill 23, An Act To Amend The Labour Relations Act, be now read a second time.

Motion, second reading of a bill, "An Act To Amend The Labour Relations Act." (Bill 23)

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

MR. SKINNER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am pleased to stand here today in this House to introduce amendments to the Labour Relations Act. Bill 23 represents government's continued commitment to working in partnership with our labour community and our employer organizations to improve the Province's labour relations framework.

Mr. Speaker, the arbitration of disputes that occur during the life of a collective agreement is a critical component of a modern and effective labour relation system. Indeed, this dispute resolution mechanism is an important process that helps parties to resolve disputes or differences that they have or may encounter during the life of a collective agreement.

Our Province, Mr. Speaker, has a long history of stakeholders working together to ensure they have access to a pool of well qualified arbitrators to support the resolution of disputes. Indeed, for over thirty years we had a committee called the Labour Management Cooperation Committee, comprised of employer and labour stakeholders working in partnership to ensure the strength of our arbitration framework. The LMCC's management of the arbitration process operated well for many years and, indeed, became a model emulated by other provinces.

The LMCC has not been operational for a couple of years now and the stakeholders undertook a review to identify ways that the system could be enhanced to ensure the continued effectiveness of the Province's arbitration system.

This review is now completed, and as a result of this review, the members of the LMCC approached government and requested that a legislative framework be developed to formalize and legitimize the functions that were once the purview of this committee. This proposal was brought by employer and labour stakeholders to the strategic partnership initiative during the 2006-2007 fiscal year, where government, employer and labour stakeholders worked together to refine the proposal for legislative change.

Bill 23, Mr. Speaker, the bill before the House today, is a result of the excellent collaboration between government, labour and employer organizations that occurred through the Strategic Partnership Initiative. It is a testament to the kind of change we can make when we work in partnership with a sense of common purpose.

I would like to take this opportunity, Mr. Speaker, to thank the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labor, the Business Coalition and the arbitrators for the effort they have put into describing their goals and helping us translate them into the legislation that we now have before us.

If I could, Mr. Speaker, I would like to provide a brief overview of some of the key elements of Bill 23. The amendments contained within the bill will allow for the establishment of a committee to be known as the Labour Management Arbitration Committee, the LMAC, who will promote the establishment and maintenance of a high quality and effective arbitration process for those arbitrations carried out under the Act.

The Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour, the Business Coalition, the arbitrators and government will be represented on the committee with the respective groups selecting and appointing their own representatives. There will be nine members on the committee with three from labour, three from the employer community, two from the arbitrators and one ex officio from government, and the committee shall be co-chaired by both labour and employers. The members shall serve for a term of three years and can serve up to two terms.

The LMAC's powers and duties reflect their focus on supporting a high quality arbitration system. For example, Mr. Speaker, they will establish educational and experience standards for the arbitrators. They will oversee the qualification and training processes for arbitrators. They will establish and maintain a roster of persons who are qualified to conduct arbitrations under the Labour Relations Act and collective agreements. Finally, they will provide a copy of this roster to the minister for those occasions when the minister must appoint the arbitrator when parties cannot agree on an appointment. We are also extending good faith action protection to the LMAC.

Mr. Speaker, these are the essential components of Bill 23. I look forward to the debate that is going to occur and the successful implementation of these important changes that will enhance the process of arbitrating disputes that occur under the legislation or under collective agreements.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. BUTLER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to make a few comments with regard to Bill 23, An Act To Amend The Labour Relations Act.

As the minister has stated in the Explanatory Notes, this is "…to establish the Labour Management Arbitration Committee."

As he outlined in the bill, we don't see anything major outstanding there that is controversial; however, we do want to know that it is explained fairly well, the makeup of the board and the time frames and so on, Mr. Speaker.

It is interesting to note that once this is put in place there will be a time available for various educational and experience standards for the members of that board, and it outlines the duties they are to perform.

As the minister stated, I think there was a labour corporation enforced for approximately thirty years or so. I guess this is similar to what they were doing but there is more now changing in the legislation.

A couple of things I wanted to put forward to the minister, and I am sure he can respond later on in his closing remarks, is with regard to the arbitrators in the past versus this present time if there is a fee structure. I notice there is nothing mentioned in the bill, if there is a fee structure, what it was in the past, or how it will be set up at this particular time. It is not mentioned in the Explanatory Notes or in the main body of the bill.

The other item I want to bring forward, I was just wondering, this piece of legislation, does this also apply to the public sector? I know that is not mentioned in the Explanatory Notes or in the bill itself.

With those couple of comments, Mr. Speaker, those are the only two items I had to bring forward on this particular bill. Like I said, I don't see any major upheaval with regard to the bill.

Hopefully, the minister will respond to those couple of questions that I did put forward, when we have a few more comments to say on Bill 23.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

If the hon. the Minister of Human Resources, Labour and Employment, speaks now he will close the debate.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, again, I do want to just have a couple of comments to make about this bill.

There has been extensive consultation done with the arbitrator community that exists already in the Province, with the labour groups and also with the employer community.

The fee structure, Mr. Speaker, is something that I will check into for the member. I will come back with some comments on that. The labour and management committee that existed for the thirty years, Mr. Speaker, now basically what we have done is put together a more formalized process. We have also, because of the legislative provisions that we have here, afforded them some protection under the act in terms of liability protection and so on. That was something that was sorely lacking and something that was felt by the arbitrators as something they needed to have.

We have been able to bring that here in the legislation so that we can afford them the peace of mind while they are doing the work that they are doing relative to liability issues that they would have.

At that point, Mr. Speaker, I would close debate.

Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: Is it the pleasure of the House that Bill 23, An Act To Amend The Labour Relations Act, be now read a second time?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

The motion is carried.

CLERK: A bill, An Act To Amend The Labour Relations Act. (Bill 23)

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

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

MR. RIDEOUT: Now.

MR. SPEAKER: Now.

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The Labour Relations Act," read a second time, ordered referred to a Committee of the Whole House presently, by leave. (Bill 23)

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. RIDEOUT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to call Order 8, second reading of Bill 24, An Act To Amend The Mental Health Care And Treatment Act.

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that Bill 24, An Act To Amend The Mental Health Care And Treatment Act, be now read a second time.

Motion, second reading of bill, "An Act To Amend The Mental Health Care And Treatment Act." (Bill 24)

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

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Bill 24, as the title would suggest, is An Act To Amend The Mental Health Care And Treatment Act.

You may recall, back in 2006, our government introduced a new mental health care act. That was back in December 2006 and the act was proclaimed in October 2007.

There have been a couple of things that have surfaced since then, and what are trying to do is to make a couple of amendments to this bill to make a couple of corrections.

I will get to the specifics if there are any questions, but fundamentally what we want to do is to make a couple of amendments here to strengthen the legislation that is already on the books. We want to be able to deal with those individuals who are readmitted to hospital, who have been the subject of community treatment orders, and to strengthen what rights they have available to them and access to treatment that they have. Secondly, the bill would want to broaden the number of people to be appointed to the Treatment Review Board.

When the legislation was introduced, we had envisaged a fixed number of individuals to be appointed to that board. Even though we have not yet had anyone who has had to go to the board, we recognize that, given the composition of the boards and the mandatory requirement for a set composition for each review that would occur, we do not want to get caught in a spot where we may find ourselves not having individuals available to sit on the review or to hear a review that may, in fact, as a result of that, not provide the review in an appropriate timeline.

Given that we were about to make some changes to the legislation, we wanted to amend that particular piece to provide us with an ability, as a government, to appoint additional individuals to the review board.

That is fundamentally what the thrust of the bill, this Bill 24, does. It intends to make two minor amendments. One is to add to the number of people who can be appointed to the review board. Secondly, it intends to strengthen - strengthen, I say, Mr Speaker - strengthen the legislation and the language in the legislation to make changes to provide more protection for those individuals who may be the subject of community treatment orders.

That is the sum and substance of the amendments to the legislation. As we move through it, if there are some very specific questions that anyone might have around any aspects of this, as we move into third reading, I will be only too glad to answer any questions that might exist with respect to it.

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I certainly wanted to have a few words on Bill 24 because I think mental health services in our Province are very important, and certainly important to many individuals and many families that suffer from mental illness.

Mr. Speaker, I know that this bill looks at some minor amendments, but I think it is important to take the opportunity to point out the critical need for mental health services in Newfoundland and Labrador.

There are 20 per cent of the people in this Province who will experience a mental illness in his or her lifetime; and, Mr. Speaker, a number of these people suffer from very severe illnesses of mental health, things like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and oftentimes have to be involuntarily committed within our hospital facilities for the kind of help that they need.

Mr. Speaker, we have all, I am sure, in our lifetime, dealt with and been around and experienced the tremendous amount of pressure and strain that comes within a family when you have people who suffer from mental illness and disorders, such as depression and phobias and other things. They are real diseases and they need to have real treatment within our system. Unfortunately, not all of these mental health diseases can be treated in the way that we want to be able to treat them, but there are medicines out there, there are therapies out there, that can be provided to help improve the quality of life for many people who suffer from mental illness. It is our responsibility, as legislators, to ensure that we make way for those services and those treatments to be provided to people.

Mr. Speaker, the introduction of the new Mental Health Care and Treatment Act was welcomed by all the people in the Province that I am aware of, who work within the mental health community. The act is modern in its spirit and it takes a rights-based approach to those who involuntarily commit themselves under the new act and gives them some very basic, fundamental rights.

In our Province, in Newfoundland and Labrador, I think most people know that when you are involuntarily committed into a mental health facility - in our case, in Newfoundland and Labrador, that is mostly at the Waterford Hospital. That is where people usually go to seek the kind of treatment they need. Oftentimes, that is very complex and comprehensive therapies. These people are there because they are very ill and are suffering tremendously from this illness and they are there to seek out those treatments.

Mr. Speaker, I was really disturbed of late when we found out that the public health institution, the Waterford Hospital, was, no doubt, a building that was in disarray and required a tremendous amount of investment and repairs. I think in the assessment report that was done in February, it showed that the Waterford Hospital had all kinds of leakage within its windows. It had damage to its support structure. There was asbestos throughout the building. They had floor tiles that had outlived its life expectancy altogether. Anyway, the cost to do all of these repairs to the building alone was around $45 million. The critical and the potentially critical pieces to the hospital still were going to cost about $30 million.

Mr. Speaker, realizing that when people suffer from mental illness, not only are they suffering from a disease of depression and phobias, but often in cases the kind of therapies and medicines that they require need to be spiritually enhancing and uplifting to these individuals. When they are being hospitalized in buildings that, in essence, have outlived its life expectancy, that require up towards $30 million in critical upgrades just to maintain the physical structure and appearances of the place, it cannot be very uplifting to a patient, nor can the fact be that once these people are hospitalized they have very little privacy. Most of them are hospitalized and admitted into wards that are very cramped. In fact, there are cases at the Waterford Hospital where there are up to six patients housed in the one ward getting mental health treatment and services. That does not afford any kind of privacy, or privacy for therapy, or for people to be able to reflect on reasons and treatments for themselves. I think that is not an ideal concept in my mind. In fact, I think there is a much better way we can do this. It is unacceptable. If you look at new standards that are being, I guess, implemented right across the country now, this would be a very old, archaic standard of hospitalizing and treating mental health patients, and one that is certainly not acceptable in today's society.

Mr. Speaker, there is a sentiment out there that maybe we should not even be investing the $45 million in work that needs to be done at the Waterford Hospital but rather we should be investing into a new facility and that the Waterford Hospital should be closed. Now, I have no assessments or reviews that have been done on that particular suggestion, but I can certainly say from the limited experience that I have, is that it might be the most feasible option for government in the long term because if you look at this facility now requiring $30 million to $45 million in work and you weigh it out against the cost of a new facility that could, in essence, provide service for another forty to fifty years, I think in the long run it would make a lot more sense to look at a new mental health facility.

Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of people out there who would support that. They would also like to see it replaced with, not only a more modern structure, but probably a smaller structure in terms of being able to treat the particular needs of patients. For example - and I know we cannot compare to the numbers of mental health patients, for example, that they are seeing in larger provinces like in Ontario or in British Columbia and so on.

Mr. Speaker, I did actually do some research into mental health facilities in Ontario, in Toronto in particular. In Toronto right now they are actually the first province in Canada - Ontario is - to amalgamate its mental health services and addiction services under the one particular board and administrative structure. From what I have been able to learn and understand about it –

AN HON. MEMBER: It is the same as here, isn't it?

MS JONES: Pardon?

AN HON. MEMBER: It is the same as here, isn't it?

MS JONES: Let me just explain, Minister, just for a second, in terms of how they do it differently than what we do.

Ours is, I guess, under the one board structure in terms of the entire health board authority in the region. What they have done there, is they have specifically carved out the mental health and addiction services.

In addition to that, they not only provide for the hospitalization of mental health patients but they also provide for the hospitalization of people who suffer from addictions who require proper treatments in proper facilities. In lots of cases, obviously, addictions are connected to mental health, we all know that, and a lot of it is connected to depression and things of this nature. I guess there are concurrent problems, there is no doubt, between mental health and addiction services; but, in addition to that, we have been lacking in terms of the programs that we provide for long-term stays of addictions, people who suffer from addictions in our Province.

I think we need to look at, any new facility that we will implement, we need to take into consideration that addictions is a growing problem, and oftentimes it is a disease that is suffered through concurrently with mental health illness. Therefore, there is opportunity to bring both of these together under an appropriate facility for service delivery and hospitalization. That would be things that we would like to see government look at and consider if they were to move forward in a new process.

Mr. Speaker, I know now that in the Waterford Hospital there are different floors, there are different areas that are designated for different types of mental illness. I think we need to move away as well from this institutional kind of asylum kind of health care when it comes to mental health services, realizing as well that I know you have to have confinements for people who suffer from schizophrenia and bipolar disorders, people who are there for forensic investigation or observation, who are being placed there by our courts and so on, but a concept that would be a smaller, more appropriate concept that affords for more identification of people with certain diseases, so we are into a compound of small buildings, Mr. Speaker, as opposed to a large institution and a large asylum-type atmosphere. It does not mean it cannot all be comprised within the one ground that provides an opportunity to be able to migrate from one building to the other building within that compounded ground.

Mr. Speaker, I think that the facility itself, when you deal with mental health patients in this Province, and you talk about mental illness, it is one thing to talk about the services being provided but we also have to look at: in what infrastructure these services are housed, and in what infrastructure these patients are expected to live while they are taking those treatments and those therapies. I think that we do have a lot of work to do around that.

We also know that there is an extreme amount of work required on this building. I certainly hope that we will see some information in the Budget on it in the next few days, in terms of what is going to be provided to these health care facilities in terms of the critical upgrades that they require; because, as we know, the amount of money that government has already announced is going to be far short of what is required to do this amount of work.

I just talked about the Waterford Hospital, and what the critical needs are on that building. If you want to look at the other buildings within the St. John's area that also require a tremendous amount of infrastructure work, we are looking at a bill that could rise to $100 million just in terms of doing the critical upgrade and the work that needs to be done there. So, we will be looking to see, in the Budget, what kinds of monies will be required.

Mr. Speaker, in our Province, we have done a fair amount of work around the mental health piece. In fact, I talked about the new act, and these are just some minor changes, but all of that came out of an inquiry that was done. It was called the Reid-Power inquiry. Mr. Speaker, it was through that inquiry that we were able to identify where governments needed to go in terms of legislation around mental health in this Province.

I think the bill, in essence, did reflect a large portion of that. While it does reflect a large portion of that, I guess there is no way we can ever guarantee that there will not be incidents like we have seen in Piccadilly in the last few days, prior to this weekend, incidents where there have been crimes committed and certainly, Mr. Speaker, some allegations that lean towards histories of mental illness of people involved. That was the purpose of the Reid-Power inquiry. It talked about two individuals in our Province who had suffered from mental illness and, Mr. Speaker, found themselves in very difficult positions because they were not receiving the kind of treatment or the kind of therapy that they required for the kind of mental illness they suffered from. Therefore, serious crimes were committed.

Mr. Speaker, over time, I guess, we have all tried to learn from those experiences and to be able to implement legislation that would do a better job. In implementing the legislation you also have to provide the support services in order to carry it out. This is a concern that I have had for quite some time. That is, that when we talk about mental health services they are more readily available, of course, in the metropolitan areas, in the St. John's region.

For example, Mr. Speaker, we know that there are clinical operations that exist outside of the hospitals. If you were ever going down to the Terrance Clinic, you know that you could go in there and see psychiatrist or a psychologist, but, Mr. Speaker, we also know that there is a wait list to see those people. There is up to a two-year wait list from what I can understand right now for mental physiological services at that particular clinic alone. That is a long wait list, even in the city where you would think you can get those services on a much easier basis and a more timely basis we are learning that there are huge wait lists.

Mr. Speaker, what happens when you get outside of the city? We know that even through clinical operations here there is a two-year wait list for physiological services, so what happens when you get outside of the city? When you start living in the outport regions what kind of services are being provided in those regions?

We have seen incidents this year in the Summerford area, for example, in which the media alluded to the fact that there may be some connections to mental illness around that crime being committed. In Piccadilly we had another case where that may have been the case. We had the Reid - Power case back some years ago in the Bonavista Area. Mr. Speaker, you have to wonder if the services are getting into those regions, the mental health services that people require.

I think that needs a good, long looking at by government and by the health corporations because I am not convinced that mental health services are being provided to the degree that they need to be in all the regions of the Province. I know for certain it is not in the district that I represent, and I would know that because I am more intimately connected with my own riding. I deal with incidences all the time concerning mental health and mental illness, and I know the services do not exist there.

When you only have a travelling psychologist or you have to fly patients out to see a psychologist or to see a psychiatrist, you know that it is not readily available and it is not a routine schedule. So it is not like I am going to get to see a psychiatrist every six weeks or every six months. That is not how it works. It is based on the availability. It is based on how severe they think you are or whatever the case may be, and in a lot of cases it is none of those things. It is just a case that there is no one there, a professional there to fill the position, or the people who are filling the positions are so overrun with work that they are not able to be able to schedule individuals.

I know for a fact there are gaps in that area. We have been able to recruit some mental health nurses but not enough. More needs to done around recruiting mental health nurses for regions in this Province. For example, are there mental health nurses who service the area in the Summerford region? Are there offices there that are set up so that people can go in and look for mental health services? Does it exist on the Northern Peninsula? Does it exist on the Port au Port Peninsula? What do people do on the Connaigre Peninsula that are suffering from mental illnesses who need to see psychologists and mental health nurses and psychiatrists and those people?

I think that while we may have a good act right now, under the Mental Health Act, and while it did invoke a lot of the recommended legislation that was asked for in the Power-Reid Inquiry, I do not know if the actual human resources have been placed in the Province to be able to respond and react to what out intentions were. Maybe the minister can tell me if there have been any reviews done on the mental health services? I know right now that the Canadian Mental Health Association is doing a review of the services they provide in Newfoundland and Labrador, but they provide their services at a different level than what government does. Government is responsible for the clinical servicing of people who suffer from this particular disease.

So, Mr. Speaker, we would like to see more done in terms of the outreach piece to it, in terms of ensuring that we have mental health personnel available in different areas of the Province and that they are able to carry out the responsibilities and to meet the needs of the people in those particular regions.

Mr. Speaker, I am about to clue up. In conclusion, I just want to impress upon the minister a couple of points. One is that there needs to be a direction given to seriously look at the mental health facilities and the services that we are providing in the Province today. I think the timing to do it is quite adequate because it is coming on the heels of a report which that the current mental health hospital, the Waterford hospital, is in a state of disrepair and requires millions and millions of dollars in capital infrastructure costs alone just to bring it up to an acceptable level of service. We also know that in today's society of mental illness you need to have privacy in the treatment of these people. You cannot continue - I mean it is not adequate by today's standards to have up to six mental health patients in one hospital room any longer to try and provide for proper therapies and rehabilitation and so on for these people.

I think it has come a time where we need to look at how we are delivering our services to mental health patients in the Province and how it can be provided for and delivered under a better structure in terms of infrastructure but also how we can provide better outreach services to other parts of the Province. I know none of these things are going to come free to anyone but I think when you live in a Province where 20 per cent of the population, at some point or another in our history, will come into contact with mental illness, I think it is an important factor that needs to be considered in delivering those kinds of health services to people.

Mr. Speaker, that will conclude my comments on this bill. I certainly look forward to the minister's reaction to those actions and what the department may be undertaking to deal with some of these critical pieces that exist in mental health today in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

If the hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services speaks now he will close the debate on second reading.

The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker

I appreciate the comments made by the Leader of the Opposition, particularly as she commended government for the introduction of this very progressive piece of legislation.

As you might recall, when the bill was introduced in the House of Assembly back in October, or rather December of 2006, it was at that time that our government indicated very clearly that this was viewed not only by ourselves as a government, but throughout the Province. Key stakeholders were very much apart of the consultation process. It was endorsing what government was doing at that time in bringing in a progressive piece of legislation, an update to the mental health legislation of this Province, an update that had not occurred for some thirty-odd years, I say, Mr. Speaker.

What our government did in 2006 was establish a solid foundation, a solid legislative and regulatory framework to deal with mental health issues in this Province. Since that time, Mr. Speaker, to speak to some of the points the member opposite raised with respect to access to service, with respect to the kind of resources we have committed, each budget year that has followed the introduction of that legislation we have made significant investments in mental health and addiction services in this Province. We have a network of offices throughout Newfoundland and Labrador where we have counsellors available. I think there are some twenty-six mental health addiction counselling services around the Province, throughout Newfoundland and Labrador.

The member opposite raises the issue of the Waterford Hospital and its state of repair and the nature of that physical facility. That building is quite old, as the member opposite points out, but one of the things that we want to make sure we do not lose sight of here, as we discuss mental health and addiction services in this Province, we do not reduce the conversation to talking about facilities, talking about bricks and mortar, but we look more importantly, I say, Mr. Speaker, at the individuals who need supports, who are living in the community, who need the support of councillors, need the support of physicians, psychiatrists, physiologists, social workers and many others in the community who are able to support individuals living with mental illness.

The thrust, I say, Mr. Speaker, of this particular bill being introduced and being debated in the House today deals with some amendments to the already existing legislation that we talked about, some amendments that strengthen it. I want to point out just one more time, Mr. Speaker, the thrust of this particular bill. It provides for - even though it was fully intended in the original legislation, and as you read through it it is probably in there, embedded in the legislation, but this amendment makes it abundantly clear that those individuals who are living in a community today, who have a community treatment order, when they get readmitted to a hospital that they have the same rights and benefits and privileges afforded to them as do members who are admitted to one of those institutions who are not the subject of a community treatment order.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member opposite for her comments. I can assure her, as I will assure the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, that our government, through this legislation and our investments in recent budget years, truly have, I guess, signalled very strongly to the people of this Province that we are committed to strengthening our mental health services in this Province, and this piece of legislation introduced last year is a solid reflection of that kind of commitment.

Mr. Speaker, I will conclude my comments with respect to this bill at this period of reading.

MR. SPEAKER: Is it the pleasure of the House that the said Bill, Bill number 24, an Act to Amend the Mental Health Care and Treatment Act be now read a second time?

All those in favour ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

The motion is carried.

CLERK: A bill, An Act to Amend the Mental Health Care and Treatment Act, Bill 24.

MR. SPEAKER: This Bill has now been read a second time. When shall this Bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House? Now? Tomorrow?

MR. RIDEOUT: Presently.

MR. SPEAKER: Presently.

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The Mental Health Care And Treatment Act, read a second time, ordered referred to a Committee of the Whole House presently, by leave.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Government House Leader.

MR. RIDEOUT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move that the House resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole to consider certain bills .

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

All those in favour, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

The motion is carried.

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

Committee of the Whole

CHAIR (Osborne): Order, please!

The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. RIDEOUT: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to continue with Committee consideration of Bill 22, an Act To Amend The Law Society Act, 1999, which is presently before the Committee.

CHAIR: We are now debating Bill 22, An Act To Amend The Law Society Act, 1999.

The hon. the minister of Justice.

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, during our debate of last week, the Opposition House Leader raised an issue in subsection 42 of the Law Society Act, which we went through in great detail. The Opposition House Leader pointed out that persons appointed to the disciplinary panel, as outlined in section 42(4), did not have a set term of appointment. I thank the Opposition House Leader for his incisive analysis. I will state for he record - and he is not listening now, so I will state it before he hears it, that in fact he was right and that there does need to be an amendment to that Act. What we propose is that we would now add section 42, subsection (4.1), which would state, "Persons appointed to the disciplinary panel shall be appointed for a term of 3 years."

Mr. Chair, I would also like to thank the Opposition House Leader for his analysis of the bill because it is a very important point, that we do not want members of a panel appointed for life terms. The three-year term we are suggesting, I am hoping, we will meet with the recommendation and will allow for the recommendation of the Opposition House Leader also.

While, as a result of that flaw having been pointed out by the Opposition House Leader, we then engaged in a more comprehensive analysis of the bill and there was a second point that came out when we went to section 49 and section 50 of the act. As pointed out last week when I was reviewing this, a complaint committee that goes to the adjudication panel can be dealt with in a number of ways. One is that there can be a guilty plea, which is outlined in section 49. Secondly, the disciplinary panel can make a finding of guilt under section 50( 3). Also, under section 50(2) an adjudication panel can find an individual not guilty and dismiss the complaint.

Unfortunately, when we go then to the filing of the publication of the decision, as outlined in section 51 of the Act, there is no power for the panel to publish the acquittal or the finding of not guilty. Our suggestion, Mr. Chair, is that section 51 also be amended so that it would now read: An adjudication tribunal shall file a decision or order made under subsection 49(2), which is still as it is, that is the guilty plea, 50(3) which is finding of guilt and 50(2) would be added in there, and that would be where there is a not guilty verdict.

Obviously, Mr. Chair, the finding of not guilty – it is important that there be filing of a decision because an individual who is found to be not guilty is also entitled that that decision be filed and reasons be outlined therein. We have gone to great strides in this Act to ensure that individuals who are found guilty, who plead guilty, can be subject to sanction, they can have their names published in local papers, and that there be a decision filed.

Just as importantly, Mr. Chair, especially having to accord to the Principles of Natural Justice and the overriding presumption of innocence, if an individual is found not guilty of a complaint there should be reasons filed. This simple amendment to section 51 will allow for that.

This amendment, under the proposed sections 51(1) and (2), would then provide for the filing of a decision of an adjudication panel in the event of an acquittal as well as a finding of guilt, and in the case of subsection (2), clarify the nature of the information that is required to be made available to a person who applies to see it.

Those would be the comments that arise, Mr. Chair, from the Opposition House Leader's analysis last week. Again, I must say that I am impressed with the fact that this was picked up on, that this is an example of very good work coming out of the debate, and that the point that was made is certainly one that not only was taken into consideration, but one that I will readily admit is a necessary amendment.

Thank you to the Opposition House Leader for that, and despite the fact of many disagreements that we will have over the next period of time, that is an example of how we can agree.

Mr. Chair, I move, seconded by the Government House Leader, the amendment of Clause 10, Bill 22.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

CHAIR: The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate an opportunity just to make a few comments. I must say, right off the top, I am glad we have Hansard and I am glad we have televised proceedings. I have it on record and on tape and it will be in black and white tomorrow, that the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of this Province actually said that I was right.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. PARSONS: I say, Mr Chairman, there was absolutely no qualification to that comment. He said: He is absolutely right.

I shall retrieve a copy of Hansard and the video for posterity. I might need it, some time in the future, to say that I was right at least once.

Mr. Chairman, in seriousness, it does go to show that is the whole purpose of the House: Government has a responsibility to bring in the laws, government has a responsibility to make amendments, to keep those laws up to date and proper so that we reflect the changing values of society and the changing circumstances of society, and whenever we get an opportunity - we do not have to wait a month, a day, ten years, to find out that something does not work. If we are here as legislators and part of our obligation is to review the legislation and see if it works, if we find out as we are doing this that something is missing - and obviously in this particular case that we are dealing with here it was not a case of the government did not want to put it in. This was a case of somebody who drafted the piece of legislation - there happened to be a little oversight.

What we are talking about here, actually, is we are going to set up this committee. I had pointed out last week that it is fine and dandy we have a committee but there was no termination date on the committee members. So, my question was: Are they appointed for life, or is there going to be a termination date? The minister, again, took it under advisement, consulted, and said: Yes, obviously that is an amendment that is required.

We didn't wait. We did it now, here. Before this amendment becomes law, Bill 22, we will put in the proper recording so that it is done right; and, as he says, he picked up on section 51 as a result of a more comprehensive review. It became obvious that we needed another tweaking in section 51, so that is good to see. That is how the system is supposed to work.

I have said from day one - this member, at least – we may be harsh to government sometimes, if we disagree, and we may be firm in what we say to government when we disagree with government, but I hopefully try always to be constructive in suggestions.

Now, that will depend on any given issue, any piece of legislation, or what the issue is, obviously, but it goes to show that we are not always at odds. Just because we are the Opposition does not mean we oppose for the sake of opposing. This is a case where your Opposition should be constructive suggestion, and that is exactly what we had here.

Quite frankly, in this House, since I have been here, nine or ten years, I have seen a lot of that when it comes to different pieces of legislation. In fact, when I was minister myself, the current Government House Leader - and I remember one particular incident where the Member for St. John's East, who is not a member any more - he is now the Chairman of Hydro - there were several occasions when we brought in legislation and, after having our second reading on it and debating it, we would get together and he would say: What about this? What about that? What about something else? - and, yes, it led to amendments.

That is the whole purpose of the process. Why let something go through here and out the door if you spot it before it goes out? That is one of the important roles that we play as legislators, and I encourage anybody – you don't have to be, as the minister says, a lawyer or a rocket scientist. These are laws that are going to apply to everybody. If any member of this Chamber reads any piece of legislation and sees anything that is an obvious missing piece, a missing link, by all means, bring it to someone's attention, or bring it up yourself, so that we can get the appropriate amendments done.

I appreciate the minister's indulgence of my suggestion, and the fact that he brought this change about. As I said from day one, we have no problem with Bill 22. We will be speaking and voting in favour of it, and we look forward now to these two necessary amendments being incorporated as part of the package.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CLERK: Clauses 2 to 9.

CHAIR: Shall clauses 2 to 9 carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, clauses 2 through 9 carried.

CLERK: Clause 10.

CHAIR: Shall clause 10 carry?

The hon. the Minister of Justice.

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, "Clause 10 of the Bill is amended by adding immediately after the proposed subsection 42(4) the following:

"(4.1) Persons appointed to the disciplinary panel shall be appointed for a term of 3 years.

"(2) Clause 10 of the Bill is further amended by deleting the proposed subsection 51(1) and (2) and substituting the following:

"51.(1) An adjudication tribunal shall file a decision or order made under subsection 49(2), 50(2) or 50(3) with the society and provide a copy to the complainant, the respondent and the respondent's partners and employers, as designated in the rules, and the minister.

"(2) The society shall maintain a copy of a decision or order filed under subsection (1) for a period of 5 years, or the longer period the society may set, after the day the decision is filed and shall upon receiving a request to view the disciplinary records in relation to a member permit a person to view those records."

Moved by the Minister of Justice and seconded by the Government House Leader.

CHAIR: It is moved by the Minister of Justice that clause 10 be amended as read.

The amendment has been ruled by the Table Clerks to be in order.

Is it the pleasure of the Committee to adopt the amendment to clause 10?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, amendment carried.

CHAIR: Shall clause 10 carry, as amended?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, clause 10 as amended carried.

CLERK: Clauses 11 and 12 inclusive.

CHAIR: Shall clauses 11 and 12 inclusive carry?

All those in favor, 'aye'.

SOME HON MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, clauses 11 and 12 inclusive carried.

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

CHAIR: Shall the enacting clause carry?

All those in favor, 'aye'.

SOME HON MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, enacting clause carried.

CLERK: An Act To Amend The Law Society Act, 1999.

CHAIR: Shall the title carry?

All those in favor, 'aye'.

SOME HON MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, title carried.

CHAIR: Shall I report the bill with amendment?

All those in favor, 'aye'.

SOME HON MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

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

CHAIR: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. RIDEOUT: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I move Committee consideration of Bill 23, An Act To Amend The Labour Relations Act.

CHAIR: We are now debating Bill 23, An Act To Amend The Labour Relations Act.

CLERK: Clause 1.

CHAIR: Shall clause 1 carry?

All those in favor, 'aye'.

SOME HON MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, clause 1 carried.

CLERK: Clause 2.

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

MR. SKINNER: Thank you very much.

I wanted to, if I could, just comment upon a couple of the questions that came up during second reading that were asked by the member opposite.

In terms of the application of this to the public sector, this particular bill will apply to the public sector. We have representation on the committee, we as government, government being a significant employer in the Province. These arbitrators could potentially do work on arbitration matters that would be brought before them relative to government.

We are also, for the information of the member opposite, as a part of the Strategic Partnership Initiative, which is a joint group as he would know between the labour and employer groups, we are doing a broader review of all of the collective bargaining legislation in the Province with the Strategic Partnership Initiative and may be bringing some other amendments forward or some other changes to legislation forward in the future.

Relative to the arbitrators themselves and the fee structure that was asked about, as has been rightly pointed out the bill itself doesn't reference the fee structure. That has been left to the purview of the Labour Management Arbitration Committee to decide if, in fact, they want to implement fees, what the fees would be and so on.

Again, given that this was a group that willingly came forward, unions, employers and arbitrators who currently exist in the Province, we felt they could best manage that affair themselves. We have left it to them to decide whether or not they wish to do that, and that is basically what they have asked us to do.

The third point, Mr. Chair, just for a point of clarification, because I want to make sure I did not provide any information incorrectly to the House. Earlier when I referred to the fact that the Labour Management Arbitration Committee was going to be basically given - what is the term used? - good faith. The good faith process that is being applied here is being applied to the members of the LMAC. I did not mean to imply that it was being applied to all of the arbitrators who may be on the list. Actually, the committee who oversee are the committee that the good faith application will be applied to.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Just for clarification purposes, minister. We reviewed this piece of legislation, of course. We had it on short notice. Obviously, some of these questions, we have not had an opportunity probably to drill down into some of the details as we might normally get a chance to do.

It has been brought to our attention, for example, on the fee thing - and I believe that is why my colleague, the Member for Port de Grave, raised the question. From our understanding, and we have talked to people in the industry who get involved in this, that one of the problems was exactly the fee schedule. You had a group that, albeit they sort of self-administer themselves, that one of the issues became and still currently is today, that there is no set schedule of fees. If you get a certain arbitrator chosen, for example - and it is my understanding that if they could not agree amongst themselves the minister would appoint the person from a list that they have been using for whatever, twenty or thirty years.

What would happen is, if the parties could not come to an agreement the minister would say: Okay, you are going to get Mr. So-and-So or Ms So-and-So to be your arbitrator. That person -all the arbitrators could charge different fees. That became an issue because the arbitrator you might choose as a minister, for example, to do a certain arbitration, if his fee was $2,500 a day, parties were stuck with it; whereas if you had chosen arbitrator B, the fee might have been $2,000 a day. My understanding was that that was why both of these parties wanted some clarity brought to the issue, particularly on the fees. That is why we were a bit concerned that there was no reference here to a fee schedule. If that is the case, and again, we stand to be corrected, but if that is the case and the information we have, we have not gone to where they need to go. The whole point was to have a level playing field so that no matter who you picked off the list, that person was going to charge the same fees.

A specific example that was referred to us concerned Memorial University. It had been told to us that if the dispute, for example, involved something out of Memorial University, they have a standing practice apparently of picking an arbitrator from outside the Province. They do not even want the list. Apparently, they have always had their own suggestions from someone outside the Province, and that again adds to the cost and the fee issue.

I am just wondering, rather than saying that what we have here - and we do not disagree with what is here. If that is one of the major stumbling blocks, I am just wondering, is there anything we can do or whatever to make sure that we are going to have a fee schedule because we are no further ahead if we pass what it is? All we have done here, as I understand it, is take the existing practice and we are now going to codify in legislation what has been an existing practice for many, many years in this Province. In so doing, we have missed the boat on the fee piece, and that is, I understand, one of the root causes of disagreements.

For example, we dealt recently with appointments by the board of management committee of this House to the Audit Committee of the board of management. Under that Audit Committee the chief justice of the Province picks two outside accountants. The Member for Topsail and myself sat on the Audit Committee, the first thing we had to deal with when we got together was: What do you pay those members on the board? There is a fee schedule that exists in government, depending upon the nature of the services and the duties to be provided by the person who sits on the board, whether it is a quasi judicial board and so on. There is a different fee schedule that applies, but here we do not have that.

I just raised the issue that we are not going to be going to where I understand we need to go if we have left that big issue still up in the air and we still have our board of certified arbitrators, which the minister will ultimately pick if they cannot agree. What happens then is part of the issue might become who you picked. If we picked a cheap person, is what I am saying. If you have two groups who are at odds with each other and have to appoint an arbitrator, you are not only dealing then with the skill levels of the arbitrators, because they have all been certified, but you still have an issue that is not being dealt with here: Do we pick the cheaper one? We have to be careful we do not pick the expensive one.

I am just wondering if there is anyway around that? I don't know, maybe some simple amendment saying: The fee schedule to be decided upon by the minister in consultation with the group, or something like that. At least it leaves some leeway that right now you are not leaving it in the hands of the arbitrators themselves where it currently sits. As I understand it, once you appoint the person, that's it. You do not play any role in saying what they have to be paid. That is left to the arbitrator. I do not think that is necessarily fair to the parties or is subject to the arbitration. That is why I raise it. Now maybe there is a very logical explanation to this issue, but that is how it was explained to us and why it appears to still be a problem.

CHAIR: The hon. the Minster of Human Resources, Labour and Employment.

MR. SKINNER: Thank you very much.

The issue of fees is not meant to be a stumbling block, nor do we expect it to be, based upon the consultation that we have had, be a stumbling block for the parties.

The Labour Management Arbitration Committee will set the standards that the arbitrators must meet to be put onto this list. Part of that review to be placed on the list will include the fees that are to be charged. When somebody is placed on the list, both parties already know what the fee is that they will charge and have agreed, basically, to that fee should they use that arbitrator.

Some arbitrators, you are correct, charge different fees depending upon their skill level, their experience and so on, but the Labour Management Arbitration Committee, by placing them on the list, accepts that, and the parties accept that. When somebody has to be chosen by both parties, they recognize that if they choose me, I might be charging less than you would charge, but that is already known by the fact that you have gotten on the list. So the parties have agreed up front, by placing you on the list, to agree to the fee that you have charged.

We are not mandating the fees that people have to charge, but we are saying that if you want to have your name put on the list, both parties have to agree to put you there, and implicitly by agreeing to put you there, they have agreed to the fee that you say you are going to charge – if that helps.

Thank you.

CLERK: Clause 2.

CHAIR: Shall clause 2 carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, clause 2 carried.

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

CHAIR: Shall the enacting clause carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, enacting clause carried.

CLERK: An Act To Amend The Labour Relations Act.

CHAIR: Shall the title carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, title carried.

CHAIR: Shall I report the bill carried without amendment?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

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

CHAIR: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. RIDEOUT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to move Committee consideration of Bill 24, An Act To Amend The Mental Health Care And Treatment Act.

CHAIR: We are now debating Bill 24, An Act To Amend The Mental Health Care And Treatment Act.

A bill, "An Act To Amend The Mental Health Care And Treatment Act." (Bill 24)

CLERK: Clause 1.

CHAIR: Shall clause 1 carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, clause 1 carried.

CLERK: Clauses 2 to 4, inclusive.

CHAIR: Shall clauses 2 to 4, inclusive carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, clauses 2 through 4 carried.

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

CHAIR: Shall the enacting clause carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, enacting clause carried.

CLERK: An Act To Amend The Mental Health Care and Treatment Act.

CHAIR: Shall the title carry?

All those in favor, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, title carried.

CHAIR: Shall I report the bill without amendment?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

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

CHAIR: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. RIDEOUT: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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

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

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

Carried.

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

MR. SPEAKER (Fitzgerald): The hon. the Member for St. John's South and Deputy Speaker.

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

Mr. Speaker, the Committee of the Whole have considered the matters to them referred, have directed me to report Bill 22 carried with amendment and Bills 23 and 24 carried without amendment.

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 to report Bill 22 with amendments and Bills 23 and 24 without amendments.

When shall the said report be received?

MR. RIDEOUT: Now, Mr. Speaker.

On motion, report received and adopted, Committee ordered to sit again on tomorrow.

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

MR. RIDEOUT: Now.

MR. SPEAKER: Now, with leave, I ask the hon. the Government House Leader?

MR. RIDEOUT: Now, with leave.

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

MR. RIDEOUT: Mr. Speaker, I would like to move third reading of Bill 22, An Act To Amend The Law Society Act, 1999

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that the said amendments to Bill 22 be now read a first time.

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

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

All those against, 'nay'.

The motion is carried.

CLERK: First reading of the amendments.

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

MR. RIDEOUT: First reading is done. Second reading of amendments, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that the said amendments to Bill 22 be now read a second time.

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

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

The motion is carried.

CLERK: Second reading of the amendments.

On motion, amendments read a first and second time.

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

MR. RIDEOUT: Now.

MR. SPEAKER: Now.

On motion, bills ordered read a third time, presently by leave.

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

MR. RIDEOUT: Mr. Speaker, I move third reading of Bill 22, An Act To Amend The Law Society Act, 1999.

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that Bill 22, An Act To Amend The Law Society Act, 1999, be now read a third time.

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

The motion is carried.

CLERK: A bill, An Act To Amend The Law Society Act, 1999. (Bill 22)

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

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The Law Society Act, 1999," read a third time, ordered passed and its title be as on the Order Paper. (Bill 22)

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

MR. RIDEOUT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I move third reading of Bill 23, An Act To Amend The Labour Relations Act.

MR. SPEAKER: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion that Bill 23, An Act To Amend The Labour Relations Act, be now read a third time?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

The motion is carried.

CLERK: A bill, An Act To Amend The Labour Relations Act. (Bill 23)

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

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The Labour Relations Act," read a third time, ordered passed and its title be as on the Order Paper. (Bill 23)

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

MR. RIDEOUT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I move third reading of Bill 24, An Act To Amend The Mental health Care And Treatment Act.

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that Bill 24, An Act To Amend The Mental Health Care And Treatment Act, be now read a third time.

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

The motion is carried.

CLERK: A bill, An Act To Amend The Mental health Care And Treatment Act. (Bill 24)

MR. SPEAKER: Bill 24 is now read a third time and it is ordered that the bill do pass and its title be as on the Order Paper.

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The Mental health Care And Treatment Act," read a third time, ordered passed and its title be as on the Order Paper. (Bill 24)

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

MR. RIDEOUT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to now call Order 2, the Address in Reply.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am pleased to get up here to make a few comments on the Throne Speech.

This is my fifth year, starting my fifth year in the House of Assembly. I know you wanted me around a lot longer than that but I wasn't. That is okay.

The Throne Speech, Mr. Speaker, outlines what government is going to do over the next number of years. I listened to it very attentively because when our government came in not everything was good in our way.

MR. HICKEY: We had a mess.

MR. DENINE: Well, there was a mess there, there was no question about that and it was not denied by the Opposition at the time. They took a lot of credit for the things that they thought were good, but they would not take any credit for the debt that they left behind.

Mr. Speaker, over the last number of years, this government has turned things around. This government turned things around by strategically doing things the right way, by making sure that we look at the needs of our Province as a whole, looking at both urban and rural areas, to make sure that the infrastructure is there to help them be more prosperous.

Mr. Speaker, I can say that the Throne Speeches that I have heard over the last number of years and the action of this government, the pattern is very, very clear. As everything was outlined in that Throne Speech, they were outlined in our budgets and our policies as we moved forward. That is exactly what this government has done. We had vision and we had leadership and we had the commitment. Those are the components that are needed to move things forward with vision in Newfoundland and Labrador.

If you were to ask people today, are they better off today than they were back in 2003 when we got elected and we started on our initiatives, the answer to that is very clearly yes. When I went around door-to-door and talked to the people, that was the question I posed to them: Are you better off today than you were four years ago? That was back in October. To each and every one of them, they said yes. There are some things they would like to see, no question. They would like to see a lot of things happen.

Just think of the things we have done. I will mention the poverty reduction, second to none in Canada, let alone in the Atlantic Provinces, second to none in Canada. Even the Leader of the NDP has to support that; no question. She wants kudos to the fact that she thinks it was hers. Not seriously so, sir. It is ours. We developed that and we moved it forward, over a hundred million dollars invested in that strategic investment.

Tuition, education, what can I say about that? Ask the student federation what they think about our initiatives and what we have done. Mr. Speaker, to each and every one of them, they know what we have done. We did not just sit back. It is so easy for government to sit back on their behinds and say nothing, and say, oh no, we cannot do anything. That is not what this government has done over the last number of years. That is not what this government has done since I have been part of it. I am very, very pleased to be part of it because I think we can see some real tangible results, tangible results that people can say, did it put more money in my pocket? It did. The largest income tax reduction in the history of this Province, last year, the largest. Up front student grants, never heard of before until back in early 1960s or 1970s, when that was put in.

I know the hon. member, with a smile on his face, says I wish I was part of your government that did that. That is a good initiative. He is nodding his head over there saying, my God, I wish I was over on the other side with you guys; you are doing so many good things. I really can see it in his face. It is too bad the camera can't see you, Sir; because, I am telling you, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Anyhow, Mr. Speaker, on that, as Minister of Municipal Affairs, last Friday I had the pleasure to announce an initiative by this government. It wasn't by me, as minister. I was just the one delivering the message. Everyone here in this House of Assembly deserves credit for that.

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes.

MR. DENINE: On our side, not on your side. On the government side. Let me correct that, on the government side, even the ones who are next to you on the other side, Sir.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: The people looking at us today cannot understand what I am talking about because you have to see the whole House as it is set up.

Mr. Speaker, what did that do? As a previous mayor of a municipality, I know what it did. It put more money in the pockets of the municipalities, more money in the pockets of municipalities so they can spend it on other things.

We looked at it. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador, have always been advocating - the lack of infrastructure, the amount of money that is lacking in infrastructure in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and not only the FCM but they talk about Canada, billions of dollars lacking. Well, Mr. Speaker, over the next three years there is going to be $252.9 million invested by this government in infrastructure.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: That will be a total project of $404 million when all of the parties come to the table; $404 million, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Unprecedented in our history of Newfoundland and Labrador. Unprecedented.

Now, over last year's to this year's, it is a whopping 69 per cent increase.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: A 69 per cent increase in our investment, and that is significant. There is nothing shy about that, let me tell you. There is nothing shy about that, because we see the vision and we want to make sure that the infrastructures of the municipalities in Newfoundland and Labrador are looked after.

Now, are we going to do everything at once? I said, more than once: No, we will not, but we are on the road and we are moving full steam ahead to make sure it happens.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Now, what did that do? Just let me go over the cost-sharing ratios.

When I met with municipalities, since I became minister, the first thing they said to me: Minister - some called me Dave, because I knew most of them by name anyhow - can you do anything on the cost sharing? We cannot afford it.

I met with a lot of smaller municipalities, and I said: Right now –

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DENINE: Oh, yes, no question about it, Government House Leader. I met with the members, because it is my policy that I don't meet with municipalities - we meet with the members first. They know that. They are all smiley, they know that.

Mr. Speaker, look at what we did. We reduced the red tape significantly. I am trying to get to the story. I am trying to build up a little bit, because it is a good news story at the end of the day, the red tape; because, when I came in here - honest to heavens, I have been in municipal politics for fourteen years. You get 50-50 and this, you get 60-30 on that, you get 50-whatever; you can get one-third, one-third, one-third. Mr. Speaker, it would drive anyone to drink. I don't drink that much, but it would drive you to drink. I must tell everyone, I didn't start drinking.

Mr. Speaker, we listened to the municipalities of Newfoundland and Labrador. We listened to their complaints, we listened to their issues, and this is what we came up with.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Mr. Speaker, our new ratios are as follows: less than 3,000, our cost-share ratio was 90-10; ninety, Province, ten, municipalities. Can you imagine 90-10? Now, who does that serve but the 282 municipalities in Newfoundland and Labrador, the 258 municipalities?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Where are they located, Mr. Speaker? In rural Newfoundland and Labrador.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Over the weekend, I had many municipalities e-mail me and say to me: Minister, thank you so much. Thank your government for being so kind, looking after the smaller municipalities, looking after the infrastructure that is needed in smaller municipalities –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: - giving us the way to help with our roads and help with water and sewer.

Mr. Speaker, that is what I am so proud of, because it was long, long overdue.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: What did that do also? That spread the money around to the people who couldn't afford it. That spread it around to the municipalities that were struggling, the ones that I listened to when I went down to my first meetings at the federation meetings in St. John's. I sat down for three days, Mr. Speaker, and I listened to them all. I listened and I said: This is what they want; this is what they are looking for.

I relayed those concerns to the Finance Minister, to Cabinet and to my government. What did we do? We delivered, Mr. Speaker. We delivered on that issue

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: The other part of that, Mr. Speaker: 3,000 to 7,000, sixteen municipalities, 14 per cent of the population, 80-20.

Mr. Speaker, 7,000 and over, nine municipalities, 43 per cent of the population, a 70-30 ratio, and the higher per cent in this Province.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Local service districts, Mr. Speaker, will qualify under that funding also, and most of those will qualify under the 90-10 ratio.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: I wish I could give you some more, but the Budget Speech is tomorrow and I cannot do that.

AN HON. MEMBER: Stay tuned.

MR. DENINE: Stay tuned, I say to the hon. gentleman across the way. He is smiling there and he is moving his hands like that. Yes, let me tell you, there are more things coming.

Also, go back to what we announced last week – yes, I think it was last week - the HST on insurance policies. What did that do to municipalities? A lot of my colleagues here in this government are former municipal councillors and municipal leaders. They know what it did. It saved them the 15 per cent on the HST on their insurance policies.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: They all have insurance policies. Where does that money go? In their pocket, so they can spend it out to other things that are needed.

AN HON. MEMBER: Tell them what it did for businesses.

MR. DENINE: What it did for business is another thing. I am going to deal with municipalities right now. I am going to give the Minister of Business a chance to do that one, when he gets better.

Mr. Speaker, I was so pleased last Friday to sit at the table with the president of Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador. His words were: Minister, I didn't think we would get there.

Right after the press conference I had mayors coming up and saying: Dave – that is my name, not minister; Dave. They couldn't believe it, couldn't believe what happened.

AN HON. MEMBER: He was a former Liberal member.

MR. DENINE: He was a former Liberal Cabinet Minister, let me tell you that.

By the way, let's not leave the Liberal members out over here. They quietly said to me: Well done, Dave! Well done, boy! Good job!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: It is too bad that the camera can't see that wink of the eye to the hon. member across the way, because of the good news.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Thank you very much.

Mr. Speaker, our Premier, our government, has committed to rural Newfoundland and Labrador. From my perspective this is a significant contribution to rural Newfoundland and Labrador. Think about it; 258 municipalities, not including local service districts, that are now enabled to take advantage of 90-10 cost-sharing ratios.

AN HON. MEMBER: Unheard of.

MR. DENINE: Unheard of. Unprecedented.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Mr. Speaker, we also committed to projects like the Corner Brook water treatment plant, the Happy Valley-Goose Bay sewerage treatment plant, and $5.5 million in support of the waste management strategy; not for dumps for engineered landfills.

Now, the only problems with correcting the members across the way, one of these days I may slip up here and say dump. I am sure they are waiting for me to do that, when I say it may happen.

Mr. Speaker, this is a good time. We are putting money back into the pockets of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. We are doing that. Our government has a vision and that vision is to make us prosperous. How many of us would have ever dreamed that we would be a have Province?

I remember as a little boy reading about politics and saying, we have to be so dependent on Ottawa. Mr. Speaker, one of these days in the not too distant future we are going to stand up here and we are going to applaud that we will not be a have not Province, we will be a have Province and we will be significantly contributing to the Canadian economy.

Mr. Speaker, when I talk about this – to be honest with you I said I was going to lose my hair but that is all gone now, I can't talk about that. Again, when I look at it and what we have got to do here, we are providing an opportunity to our municipalities. We are providing an opportunity that they never had before. We are providing an opportunity to put infrastructure within their municipalities that is certainly needed, and we recognize that.

I cannot say enough about it. I am proud to be the minister who delivered the message. Again, to my colleagues in government, each and every one of you deserve the credit, because I delivered the message.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Mr. Speaker, I do not want to go on too long, because I think the people listening – I hate to brag too much, but it is not bragging, Mr. Speaker. That is probably a boastful word and I am sorry for using it. That is not a word that I really like to use.

Mr. Speaker, what I am trying to say is our government recognized the need, our government listened to the people and our government took action. That is what we did. We are sharing the money around to make sure all Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are beneficial of this. That is not in a boastful way, because all people in Newfoundland and Labrador deserve it, Mr. Speaker; every single one of them.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: Probably just to wrap up in a few more minutes, five or ten minutes, I think again I will go back to the Throne Speech. I am sorry, I am not allowed to use props, I will put it back. The Throne Speech outlined our vision of where we want to go.

Mr. Speaker, and I say this with all sincerity, that I listened to them, as I said in part of my speech before, I listened to the Throne Speech. It outlines again the strategy of our government, where we are and where we are going. We did not put them on the shelf, we did not let them gather dust, we put words into action.

Do I think this is any different from the Throne Speech that was delivered not too long ago? No, Mr. Speaker. We will put action to these words too. We will look at initiatives. We will look at furthering Newfoundland and Labrador. We will look at growing Newfoundland and Labrador. We will look at putting money back into the pockets of Newfoundland and Labradorians. We see that vision, we see it very clearly, and we as government members in this hon. House here are very, very buoyed up by these issues that I speak of. We are very enthusiastic and we are very positive. We have an upbeat image of Newfoundland and Labrador. We know where we want to go, we know what we want to do, and I tell you, Mr. Speaker, we are going to get there.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DENINE: When I look at it and I look at what we have done, I cannot be prouder of this government and this leadership that we have, and this government that was elected. Now, if you want evidence of that, Mr. Speaker, all you have to do is go back to the last election. That is evidence of that. We knocked on doors and doors and doors.

MS SULLIVAN: Some of us did it twice.

MR. DENINE: The hon. the Member for Grand Falls-Buchans said some people did it twice. Unfortunately, in that circumstance it could not be avoided. One of the candidates passed away and we are sorry for that, but that was something that had to happen.

Mr. Speaker, when we knocked on the doors we had a tremendous welcome. People at the doors saw our vision. People at the doors saw where we were going. People at the doors saw the leadership of this government. People at the doors saw what this government is all about.

Mr. Speaker, I see you look at you watch and I am going to clue up right now.

Am I very proud to be part of this government? Without a doubt. I want to thank all of the members here in our government, all of the members for that fantastic announcement, that unprecedented announcement, that was done last Friday that will benefit every single municipality in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER (Mr. Osborne): The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I appreciate an opportunity. I think I am the only member in the Opposition so far who has not had a chance to reply to the Throne Speech. Of course, we all get twenty minutes each over here to do that. Anyway, I do not know if I am going to need the full twenty. I probably might, in which case I am sure my colleagues in the House usually grant leave if I go beyond the appointed time. They have been very fair and reasonable with me so far, I must say.

In any case, just to get off and in response to some of the comments made by the Minister of Municipal Affairs, just for the record, for anybody who is viewing this on tv, because Hansard cannot reflect this, this member here was not the one quietly winking the approval of the announcement on the new municipal affairs funding formula, because this member right here personally told the minister that I thought it was a very positive, a very constructive formula.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. PARSONS: Now, not so quietly, I will endorse my private comments to him by saying it here. I do believe the announcement by the minister of Municipal Affairs this past Friday concerning the new funding formulas for the municipalities and local service districts in this Province is a good step forward; no question about it.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. PARSONS: I think we as Opposition members, albeit we get berated sometimes for being too critical and the way we say things and whatever, we are only going to have any credibility if you tell it like it is. Yes, it is one thing to be constructively critical but at the same time if something good is done, you have to acknowledge that something good is done.

I do not think that we as Opposition members are going to get any credibility with the people in this Province if you just turn a blind eye to those things. You cannot deny certain things that are good. You cannot ‘Denine' it, I guess, in this particular case. I say to the minister, it was very good because we all know who have been elected members not only in this elected body but previous MHAs in this Province, the difficulty that communities in the Province have had trying to get their funding.

Normally it is a fifty-fifty deal. A lot of municipalities, quite frankly, just did not have the money. You could go to government and government might say, yes, we are prepared to give you a million dollars towards your capital works things for this year, but they could not raise their share. What is the point in government saying, we will help you, if they could not help themselves, because they did not have the money available? They just could not raise their taxes any more. The fact that they did not have the money to put their share in did not take away from their need. They needed their roads done, they needed their water systems done, they needed their recreational facilities, but they simply did not have the money, based on a fifty-fifty formula. That is why I personally applaud the new program.

Just to take some examples in my district of Burgeo-LaPoile, the town of Port-Aux-Basques in this formula will fall in the ratio of between 3,000 in population and 7,000, which under the new formula, instead of being fifty-fifty they are now going to have an eighty-twenty. Burgeo for example, which has about eighteen hundred, it falls under 3,000, they are going to have a formula of ninety-ten, and that is very beneficial. That is just to name two communities in my district.

For example, the town of Port-Aux-Basques, under today's applications that are currently sitting in the minister's office, just to use an example, if they were looking for a million dollars of work this summer split up between road work, sewer work, replacement of culverts and so on, and it was going to be a million dollars, it was going to cost them five hundred thousand and the Province was going to put in five hundred thousand.

As of now, the Town of Port aux Basques only has to put in, under the new formula, $200,000 rather than $500,000. That opens up two things for them. It does not mean simply that they have saved $300,000. That is one option. They can say, yes, we are only going to take the $200,000 this year and put in and we still get the $1 million worth of work done because the Province is now going to give us $800,000. There is another option and the second part of that is they can turn to government and say instead of doing $1 million worth of work now, because we still have our $500,000 that we got, we want to do more work. We can get $2.5 million.

The way the formula is good, and I think it is good, is that this community, instead of getting one year's work worth $1 million - the Town of Port aux Basques, for example, can now get $2.5 million worth of work. What that does is speed up the process. They do not have to wait now to two or three years out to be able to get the same work done. They can use the same money they had allotted for this year, and if the government will come through with the 80-20 formula they can get that much work done. That is where I see another positive spin on this thing and where it is very good.

The other piece of this is – and a lot of people might not understand the distinction but when the minister talks about municipalities and he talks about Local Service Districts there is a big distinction because albeit Local Service Districts take their life, or take their organization, their rights, their duties and obligations from a section of the Municipalities Act, I believe it is part 6 of the Municipalities Act, they are actually not a municipality. It is a whole different ball game. A whole new set of rules apply to Local Service Districts. Basically, they deal with services, water and sewer and fire protection. Dog control I notice is in there. You can pass regulations about dogs and so on, but it is a different ball game than the municipalities. It is nice to see that these groups that really had no taxation arm available to them, they can charge, under LSDs, for the service. They have no way to simply impose, like a town could, a poll tax or a property tax or a water tax. Yes, they could put a water tax in because they were providing the service of water, so that one would fall, but some of the other ones they could not apply.

Under this rule now, these Local Service Districts – and, by the way, in a lot of cases the local service districts are in far greater need than the municipalities simply because over the years they have not even had a fifty-fifty funding ratio. I can tell you, for example, in the District of Burgeo & LaPoile, you take places like Grey River, you take places like Fox Roost-Margaree, they are not municipalities. Cape Ray does not have a town council, they have Local Service Districts. These groups, since 1949 that we had been a part of Canada, have never been able to avail even of the fifty-fifty deal. That is the big plus that I see there.

I give the department and the government and the minister full credit for accepting this new funding formula, and I am hoping that we do not see - we are talking eighty-twenty for example in the cases I described. If the towns have the money to put in still, the $500,000, I am hoping the government has the bucks to put in so that they can go the full tilt. Now, I realize there may be some limitations there. You cannot be all things to all people. Some people might try to be, but you cannot be all things to all people all the time. It is good to see and, as I say, I applaud that we have that and I am not being so quite about my support of that initiative.

I still have some questions, and this is not earth shattering stuff, still some concerns about when the projects get up and running. Now, that is a red tape issue I would think. That is an administrative issue, I think, because quite frankly I believe when all the money gets put out in this budget that is coming, whether it is through Municipal Affairs, particularly when it comes to Transportation and Works, I do believe that we are going to have a problem in this Province getting contractors to do all of the work. From the people that I have talked to we are going to have a problem getting the work done simply because we do not have enough contractors.

Now, I stand to be corrected but I believe on the West Coast last year that Transportation and Works, there was about a million dollars worth of work that could not get done because the contractors just could not get it done. Winter came upon them and they could not get it done. Of course, there are two facets to that. Number one, maybe there are not enough contractors given all of the money that there is to get all of the work done. You have a contractor limitation but it also ties into the question of how quickly we can get it out.

Here we are now, we are into the first of May very soon. The Budget is coming down tomorrow, the 29 of April, and we only have a short construction season. I do not know what can be done. I know the former Minister of Municipal Affairs tried to expedite things so that all the plans were in the works, the engineering work was all up and done so that as soon as the Budget came down, bang you could go to public tender on these things, hopefully get the tendering wound up by mid-June so that the construction companies can get out and get running. There is no point in having the money, no point if the process is going to take you to August before you start getting public tendering done. That way we are going to find ourselves into a fall over situation.

I have asked the minister, in fact, about some communities in my district. Is there any way that the community can even get a heads up on what is likely to be approved? Not because they want to go out and raw, raw, raw, we got this or we did not get such and such and complain against the government, but it gives that community the lead way of knowing how quick this is going to happen and unfold because they had to do planning too. The minister has given his commitment that, as soon as the Budget comes down, very soon the towns will know how quickly what it is they are going to get done. Because, if they have to go to banks to get their shares, and they have to put any fishing touches in places in terms of the engineering work and so on, the faster, I say to the minister, the better.

It is great to have the proper intentions, it is great to have the right program, but you know what they say is paved with good intentions if we do not actually put those intentions and make them become reality, and let it be done so the money can actually go and do the work in a timely fashion.

We are very fortunate that we are not here now talking about whether the money is there or not. We are not here talking about if the funding formula is proper. The only issue we have left now is how quickly can we get it wrapped up and get it out and get it done, so we are looking forward to that – and I like the word, soon. We will see how soon soon is.

Anyway, that takes me to some of the other comments about the Throne Speech. We are fortunate. It is obvious, I think, tomorrow, to anybody who has been listening and following the progress, we pretty well have a lot of the pieces of the Budget. Santa Claus is not going to have his bag fully stuffed tomorrow because he took a lot of gifts out before we get to tomorrow. Now, that is unusual for Santa Claus, but we have certainly seen Santa Claus, or at least some of the elves, dropping some of the gifts along the way, before we got here.

We had the 15 per cent tax on insurance being removed last week. I would think that is obviously a Budget initiative. We have had indications from the Minister of Transportation and Works about certain paving projects and highway projects that are going to take place around the Province, and work that is going to get done and so on.

We have had a lot of the goodies, and that is an understandable media piece that the government does. If you throw all your gifts on the table in one day, it is like Christmas morning. If a child has too many gifts, sometimes they tear them all open and they don't know who gave them what. They don't know what names are marked on the name tags, and you are trying to figure it out after: Who gave this or who gave that? You just don't get the proper credit that way.

Governments do that. That is a legitimate marketing tool, that, rather than put ten things out on the one day, we will put the ten things out over time, or at least six or seven of them. We will put them out in advance of Budget day, and then on Budget day we will do it all over again.

That is understandable. That is an acceptable marketing tool, shall we say, of any government, because part of being a government and doing all of these nice things is that you want to get credit for doing them, and the best credit you get is repetitive announcements that you are doing it, so that is understandable.

I am sure there are people in this Province - I have travelled extensively, particularly during the Easter break, because we thought the Budget was going to come a bit earlier. When I travelled throughout my district during the Easter recess, you get a lot of questions from concerned citizens, councillors, and you get them from everybody. I had fellows ask me, for example: Do you think, Parsons, we are going to get a break on the moose license fee? Do you think we are going to get a break on the car registration? The talk is that we are going to get it knocked down from $180 down to $140.

That is the nature of the things we got. The other one, of course, the Opposition poked great fun at back four years ago when the government raised all the fees, was the polar bear one. They raised every fee in this Province at the time, from a birth certificate, back in the 2004 Budget - to show you how far we have come in four years, I guess - you had fee increases on a birth certificate, you had fee increases on a death certificate, and every possible fee, including your marriage licence or anything else in between, you had an increase on four years ago, and that included the polar bear fee. Now, I think there were only about four of them issued in the Province, anyway, but even that was increased four years ago.

We have seen some changes, and the people are out there looking for a rollback on the fees. What does it take, for example, to go to a park? Is there going to be a rollback in the park fees, and that kind of stuff?

The big one, of course, despite what the government does tomorrow - and I stand by my earlier statement that you cannot do all things for all people - some of the questions are going to be still asked tomorrow. Because, contrary to what the minister says, are you better off today than you were four years ago? - and I believe that originally came from Ronald Reagan - and there is no doubt that some people are going to say yes, we are better off today than we were four years ago, there are still going to be some people tomorrow who are going to feel very hurt, and they are going to feel that they did not get helped by the Budget.

I think of just a couple of examples: people who need home care. That is a tough one. The Minister of Finance stood up here one day. I believe now we are up to forty-five cents of every dollar of our budget already goes to health care and education, if not more, if you put the two together. Somebody suggested it was a bottomless pit, that you could put whatever you wanted into health care and we still would not have enough money to satisfy all the needs.

That may be true, but that does not take away from the fact that there is still going to be a massive, massive, need in home care in this Province come tomorrow night, 5:00 o'clock. The government can very well put a lot of money into it tomorrow in the Budget, but I am sure there are still going to be people who will say it is not enough.

I am looking forward - because I have seen that. I have experienced that personally with people who do not get home care, who cannot get home care under the current rules. They are in bad straits and they are suffering, particularly when it is elderly people who just do not have the money to pay for private home care. They do not have it, but they have the need. When you find yourself in that situation, where you have a need but you do not have the money, it does not help for those people to say, we are trying our best.

I am looking forward to tomorrow. Hopefully, there will be something on the fees. Hopefully, there will be something on home care. No doubt, we should see something on hospital equipment. I would think there should be a sizeable investment in hospital equipment, even new hospital construction and so on. I certainly hope we are going to see a freeze on the tuition, a continuation of a freeze on tuition. We started it back well before 2003 when the government changed, at both CONA and Memorial. We are looking forward to seeing some of that tomorrow, and complacency is not acceptable.

I am anxious to see the figure now. I guess it has all been doctored and there is a great source of curiosity in the public as to what that figure is going to be on the actual surplus up to March 31, because we know as of November of 2007, I believe it was, the Minister of Finance gave a mid-year statement. He said: I think the surplus is $882 million - at that point. That is what he was projecting, $882 million, but that was based on a $76 barrel of oil. We know that the price of a barrel of oil has been nowhere near $76 a barrel since that statement was made. I think, at least for the last month or two now, certainly the last month, a barrel of oil has been up in the range of in excess of $100. If you just use simple math, I guess, and use 25 per cent above what he projected, for example, $76 a barrel, we are going to be well over $1 billion surplus on just the cost of a barrel of oil.

By the way, when you look at the price of a barrel of oil, some people say, and I have heard Opposition members say: Well, if such and such was not done you would not have White Rose and you would not have Hibernia, and you would not have this, but I am a firm believer that it was not just Liberal Administrations that brought all of that to be, and it was not certainly the current government that brought all of that to be. I am sure the Member for Lake Melville had nothing to do with the price of a barrel of oil, no more than I did. It was not only former Administrations Liberal. You have to give credit again where credit is due.

For example, the former Premier Peckford had a lot to do with setting certain things in place that led to the development of our offshore, as did former Minister Crosbie, and as did the current Premier when it came to some negotiations on the Atlantic Accord. Nobody can get up and toot their whistle as to I was the sole benefactor of all the stuff that has been caused, as to the creation of the pot in the first place and what has gone into the pot when you create those ingredients. A lot of that is outside the hands and control of this government or any government. It could be political unrest in Nigeria that drives the price up to $120 a barrel. It has nothing to do with us sitting here in this House.

The point is, regardless of who is responsible, the price is where it is and the money is now in the pot. That is where the test comes in now, is to see how responsible and reasonable this government is in the usage of that money. It is not a question any more, can I just pay for the groceries? We are gone beyond that. That is what a surplus means. We are not just talking about any more, can we put food on the table today? We are in a situation where you have your food on the table for today, for example, your normal budgetary needs, and over there sitting up in the cupboard you are going to have some more. You have to decide what you are going to do with them. Are we going to keep them up in the cupboard or are we going to share with people, because some families on the street might not be as fortunate as the ones who have it up in the cupboard?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I remind the hon. member that his time for speaking has expired.

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I understand I have leave from the Government House Leader.

MR. SPEAKER: The member has leave.

MR. PARSONS: Thank you.

So, the question is, tomorrow we are all looking anxiously to see what the government is going to do with the surplus they have up in the cupboard and what people they are going to help. That will be the test of the government, because the money is in the pot. Now you have to decide, what is the most positive, responsive, necessary ways to spend it?

The Minister of Finance, for example, I think - and times change, circumstances change. If you were to look at the Minister of Finance when he was going around the Province doing his pre-budget consultations - that debt clock frightened a lot of people right to death. It had them frightened to death. They said: My God, what is the point in making a presentation to the Minister of Finance because every minute I am talking to him it is tick, tick, tick, we are paying out millions of dollars? We are not going to get anything out of this. He is telling us right now that all of that money we are going to get is going into the debt. That is what he is telling us.

Now, I do not think he is going to do that. In fact, we pretty well know he is not because the Premier was out and himself, the Minister of Finance, only Friday past and said: We are offering to CUPE an 8 per cent pay raise for one year and then four, four and four. So, I do believe if you do the math and using their figures that each point works out to be about $30 million a year on a wage bill. I think if you were to take that just for this year alone, 8 per cent increase this year times $30 million, adds $240 million to the pot. So that $240 million has to come out of the government's budget. Then of course if you take the whole package - and I will deal with the 20 per cent rather than the 21.5 per cent. Just using a 20 per cent raise over four years times $30 million per point we are looking at what, $600 million that it is going to cost the government? By the way, that is not a bill that you are going to give them unless you are going to pull what Premier Wells did back in the 1990s, unless you are going to give it to them now and roll it back later. It is there, that is fixed. We know that four years out it is going to cost the taxpayers of this Province, at a minimum, $1 million more a year for the wage bill.

The minister quite understands that we cannot take all of the surplus and put into debt because he already knows the Premier has already committed $240 million over there for this year that has to come out of that. We already know there is $94 million going to come out for the insurance thing. We already know how much the Minister of Transportation and Works has to work with for a lot of the paving projects and stuff. All of that has to come from somewhere, the increases above and beyond last year.

The interesting question is going to be: How much is going to go on the debt? Then once we know that, the question is: Of what is left, what is it going to be used for? Everybody is going to be watching quite anxiously tomorrow to see what share of this pie they are going to get.

I guess my heart is in the wrong place sometimes. I think it is in the right place but some people think it is in the wrong place, because personally speaking - and I have referred to a lot of things here, fees, and I referred to the wage bill and I referred to health care costs and equipment cost. It is fine to help people - and if you can help people, you certainly should. That priority thing, as to how you help them and to what extend you help them is a pretty touchy situation sometimes and it is a hard thing to do. My personal thought on it is, and probably the worst experience I have had in the last four or five years - and it has nothing to do with this government, it was there before this government even - has to do with the home care piece. You can talk about having to pay $180 versus $140 for my driver's licence. We can talk about whether I pay $40 or $60 for a moose licence. That is things that is nice to do if you can do it, but probably the biggest one is the home care. I have been in people's homes and they cannot look after themselves, and they do not have the money to get someone else to help them.

This member, if there is anything that I see coming out of the Budget tomorrow that in any way diminishes the current hardship that a lot of these people are feeling in the home care, I, personally, think that government has put its money where its mouth is and has taken the right priority if you see that in home care. Aside from everything else that we might do, and I include in this having good (inaudible), I include in this having good water systems, if we are not compassionate enough to look after our people who are in need and who are sick and cannot look after themselves, we have a big problem.

I look forward to tomorrow seeing the Budget, and hopefully, there will be a chunk of money in this Budget that will be addressing the issue of home care.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. JACKMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

First of all, it is a pleasure for me to get up and address the Throne Speech and I was debating how I would approach this, whether I would approach it from some departmental perspective or if I would approach it from just looking back and reflecting on the time since I have been in politics. As the Opposition House Leader has put it, Santa Clause is coming tomorrow and the elves are over here ready to go. I thought the approach I would take today is to kind of reflect on some of the things that have happened since I have come into government and have been a part of this government. Mr. Speaker, I think from time to time it is important that we reflect on the things that have happened, because as quickly as some things come into the memory they can drop out of the memory just as quickly.

I thought what I would do is, I would start back around 2002 when I started to become interested in entering this political arena. I think a lot of people who know me would have been surprised that I entered this, probably no more surprised than I am that I ended up here. I can tell you one thing, Mr. Speaker, I am as pleased as I think anyone else in this House is to have been able to serve in this House and with this government going on five years.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. JACKMAN: Back in 2002, I sensed there was a change underway. Listening to some of the things that our current Premier was saying, and speaking to some of the people who had been involved with out party in the district, speaking to a lot of people on the Burin Peninsula in my district - if you spoke to people in political circles and around your community you sensed that there was a change coming.

I guess the question that we have to ask ourselves, Mr. Speaker, five years later – going on five years, it will be five years in October for me having entered into this in 2002 and started campaigning – I have got to ask myself: The changes that have happened, are we as a people better off now than we were back in 2002 or 2003?

I will just go through what I have just jotted down. When I was asked if I would speak on the Throne Speech today, I just took out a pen and a piece of paper and sat here for the last little while jotting down some things that have happened since our time in government. As I have said, I think it is very, very important that we reflect on those things. It is important that people out watching this and people who we speak to from time to time in the district, that we remind them of things that have happened because we have made major, major things that have impacted tremendously on the lives of people over the last five years.

Mr. Speaker, I have to say that myself and all of us who serve in this House, our intent when we come into this forum, enter into politics, our aim is to help people. We have cases that come across our desks and unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, from time to time there are people who we cannot help, for whatever reason. As much as you want to help them, there are times when you cannot. We all struggle with this. I think there is a genuineness in all people who serve in this House. I think our ultimate goal is that - we love this place. I think everyone who sits in this House, this Province - when I speak about this place, I speak about this Province - everyone in this House has a commitment to this Province, that this is their home, they are all proud of it and there is a certain thing that we want, we want a better Province for ourselves, we want a better Province for our children, and we want a better Province for our grandchildren.

In light of the theme that I thought I'd speak on, back to the thing on change, I wonder – and I know – that we have made an important change in the lives of many people. I have often said that words are easy to spew out. You can stand up here and you can spew out a campaign slogan that says, it is a time for change, we are about change. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak. When you reflect back on the things that you have done as a government, have you in fact changed the lives of the people that you serve?

I thought what I would do is speak specifically to the change in terms of certain things, in terms of resources, roads, healthcare, education, and general benefits for people around taxes or healthcare, things of that nature.

One of the things that we campaigned on, Mr. Speaker, was the change of no more giveaways. I suppose all people in the Province can speak to having resources and giving them away. I suppose everybody in this House can relate to the fishery. I think the Burin Peninsula was as reliant on the fishery as any other area in this Province. I do not know how many fish plants were down there but practically every community or every second community had a fish plant. One of the things that people talked about over and over - and I can remember working in the fish plant during the summers and it was a topic that was carried on then. You listened to dragger men and they talked about the same thing, and it was that the resource was always coming ashore, getting processed in the very first stage of it and then oftentimes it was shipped out.

Then came 1992, the moratorium and so on and so forth, the crisis that we faced with the resource and we were forced with a very difficult situation on the Peninsula as were many other parts of the Province. Even in our last tenure as government we had to work our way through the reorganizing of the fishery, the fish plants so on and so forth down there. I am very pleased to say now that we have the Burin operation and the Marystown operation up and running to the capacity that it was previously. That is something that we continue to work towards but we have recognized one thing, that we cannot manage the resource in the way that we have traditionally done it and therefore changes have resulted.

One of the key resources that we have come to rely on is the resource of oil. I think the history books will probably prove - lets go back to the day of the Atlantic Accord - I think the history books will prove that probably it was one of the best pieces of negotiating that will have happened in the history of Newfoundland and Labrador and it set a course for us for the future benefits of our resources. Since then, certainly, the Premier and others who have been involved in negotiating have negotiated improved royalties around that. We have a place at the table and I think one of the most important things that we are seeing - and I think it is reflected in how people in the Province feel about us as a people within this Province, is that we are finding our direction more and more towards self reliance.

This Ottawa syndrome that we often face is that we are going to be at a stage in this Province when we as 500,000 people will be a self reliant people. I think and I certainly hope that I can sit somewhere and be a part of group of people, certainly my colleagues here to sit around the table and say that we have finally become a self reliant Province. In that regard you know we look to all of our resource development, whether it be around the minerals, forestry, farming and even, Mr. Speaker, the resources in my tourism department around the outfitting industry that we bring people in here to hunt our caribou, our moose, our bear. That is a resource that we still reap benefits from, and management of that is certainly very important.

Mr. Speaker, I think that any of us in this House will have to say that as we go around and meet constituents, and when we met them initially back in 2002-2003, one of the things that kept coming up over and over and over was roadwork. So, let's take a little bit of time just to reflect back on the roadwork.

My colleague, the Minister of Municipal Affairs, when he got up and spoke, spoke about our first year in government. To say that we were in financial dire straits, I think, would be an understatement, and to talk about the challenges that we faced, and how we confronted them, I can honestly tell you, Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased that we are in a very different situation than we were in 2003 and 2004. Difficult decisions had to be made, were made, and I think the benefits of that are being seen today.

I just checked out the numbers, and I hope I have them right here, Mr. Speaker, but everywhere you went in the district you were hearing about roads. Open lines were talking about roads, community councils were talking about roads; everywhere you went, everybody was talking about roads.

Let's see if we have the numbers. I believe that in year one, we invested $26 million in roadwork. We have to remember, Mr. Speaker, this is from the provincial Treasury committed specifically to district work. This is not considering the roadwork that was done in conjunction with the federal government. We had, year one, $26 million; year two, we had $40 million; year three, we had $60 million; year four, we had $66 million; and, this year – I just checked with the Minister of Transportation and Works – we are committing $73 million into roadwork.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. JACKMAN: Mr. Speaker, that is a total of $265 million over five years. I don't care what anyone says - and people bring it up to me - I am telling you, there is a certain section of the drive from St. John's to Marystown that needs work, and we have been working on the ministers to see if we can do that, but the drive now across the Trans-Canada, down the Burin Peninsula, is as good, if not better, than it has ever been for the longest, longest time.

I can remember last year the Opposition talking about, there were years better than last year when the Opposition Liberals put more roads into it. I think, if I am not mistaken, that was during the time when the Roads for Rail project was approved, so that really came from the federal government.

Mr. Speaker, I have to speak to the provincial ferry replacement program. We have heard over and over that most of this fleet is beyond thirty to thirty-five years of age, a deteriorating infrastructure, all kinds of problems and breaking down. Of course, we as a government have committed to a series of replacement vessels over the next couple of years.

The Opposition House Leader spoke to having the social conscience. If you are going to move forward with the Budget, make sure you have the social conscience. He alluded to the amounts of money that certainly go into health care. You can always hear of issues around health care.

To be quite honest with you, Mr. Speaker, it is one of the most difficult ones that I find to deal with in the context of being an MHA. My saying has always been, give me anything and I can deal with it, but once you give me a health issue that is life-threatening, then that becomes more of a challenge.

We do continue to deal with the health care system. I believe that we have put $128 million into capital repairs and we have put $76 million into equipment, just to give you examples. There have been five new CT scanners placed around the Province, and I am pleased to say that one of them was placed at the Burin Peninsula Heath Care Centre. There have been two additional MRIs brought into the Province. There have been three new dialysis units put in place in Burin, again in my district, another one in St. Anthony, and in Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

Second to those initiatives, we have an enhanced provincial drug plan better than at any time, I think, in the Province. All you have to do is look around and listen to some of the stories around insulin pumps that have been put in recently, and the dental health services that have been expanded to thirteen- to seventeen-year-olds.

Again, one that I have heard about, that has had a tremendous impact on an individual in my district, is the coverage as it relates to MS drugs.

I know I am going on with a list of items here from roadwork to drug coverage and health care initiatives, but the thing about it is I think it is important that we reflect on that because it emphasizes a number of things and a number of initiatives that we have implemented over the past number of years.

I have to speak for a second or two on education. If we look at the initiatives that have been put into education in the last number of years – I think it is so important that we just look at it and reflect on it – last year $1 billion was invested in education. It is the first time in the history of the Province.

People may not remember it now, but during the teacher allocation last year, in the Budget, we retained 137 teaching units that were destined to be pulled out via the teacher allocation formula. Those teachers are left in the system, and that is two years in a row that was done. Tell me that is not an impact directly on the students and the teaching climate within a particular classroom.

All of us who entered this arena can certainly talk to the issue of fees. Any of the folks who are on either side of government, who were involved in education, will always remember September, when the fee structures came out. There were always issues around it, there were concerns around it; and, of course, the fee structure was eliminated last year.

Right now, we in the Province issue free textbooks to all students from Kindergarten to Grade 12. This lifts a tremendous burden from parents who, every September, have to dish out fees, have to dish out monies for textbooks.

These issues, some of the issues that we have implemented in health and education, they certainly speak to the social conscience that we have as a government.

Then, if we speak to post-secondary, again last year we continued the tuition freeze, and let's not forget post-secondary students and the $70 up-front grant that was issued on a weekly basis.

All of this, coupled with what is happening in post-secondary, I say to you, Mr. Speaker, the Canadian students' union has applauded this government for the initiatives that they have undertaken. Secondly, the students in the Province certainly recognize it, parents in the Province certainly recognize it, and it is something that again speaks to the social conscience and lifting the burden on students and parents.

Before I move on, I certainly want to speak to the stabilizing of the two pension funds, the Teachers' Pension Fund and the Public Service Pension. Having been a teacher before I entered this, the Teachers' Pension Plan was always something that seemed like the money had been robbed from. Well, that is stabilized well into the future and teachers are very cognizant of the fact that government moved into that.

I know my time is nearly up, Mr. Speaker, and I guess what I would like to just conclude with is this. I started out by saying that I entered into this political arena based on I saw changes coming, positive changes that I felt were for this Province. I have attempted to outline a number of initiatives that I think speak to more than just getting up here and talking about change within the Province. I think the biggest thing that we have done in this Province is we have implemented changes that have impacted very positively on the lives of the people of this Province. I think to my children and to my grandchildren, and to our future generations, to our present and our future, I truly do believe that we, as a Province, are much better off. I think into the future we will be a Province in this country that will be recognized as a leading Province and that we are - to use the clichι - masters of our own destiny. Well, I think, Mr. Speaker, we have reached the time in this Province that that is exactly where we are.

I close by saying this, Mr. Speaker, that I do truly believe we are better off as a Province and better off as a people.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. RIDEOUT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Tomorrow is Budget Day, and I am sure all hon. members have some preparation to do; certainly government ministers do, to get ready for tomorrow. So I think we will probably call it a day at this point.

I would like to move that the House on its rising do adjourn until tomorrow, Tuesday, at 2:00 o'clock. My understanding is that on Budget Days we have the Budget at 2:00 o'clock. There is no Question Period or anything of that nature. So the convenient time as of adjournment today will be tomorrow, Tuesday, at 2:00 o'clock and that this House now adjourn.

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

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

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

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

This House now stands adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, at 2 o'clock.

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