November 2, 2020
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS
Vol. XLIX No. 61
The House met at 1:30 p.m.
MR.
SPEAKER (Reid):
Order, please!
Admit strangers.
Statements by Members
MR.
SPEAKER:
Today we will have Members' statements by the hon. Members for the Districts of
Terra Nova, Bonavista, Placentia - St. Mary's, Windsor Lake and Grand
Falls-Windsor - Buchans.
The hon. the Member for Terra Nova.
MR.
PARROTT:
Mr.
Speaker, I have the pleasure to speak about, once again, volunteers in the
District of Terra Nova and throughout our entire beautiful province. Volunteer
groups, like the Royal Canadian Legion, are the backbone of many communities. In
the last 90 years, over 300,000 members have contributed countless volunteer
hours and raised millions of dollars.
In my district I have three very active Royal Canadian
Legions: Clarenville, Branch 27; Port Blandford, Branch 48; and Eastport, Branch
41. Legionnaires support everyone: veterans, Special Olympic groups, cadets,
seniors, scholarships, people in need, community and school groups just to name
a few.
As a veteran myself, I feel it is critically important
for us to continue to recognize and honour the sacrifices that have been made by
our comrades on Remembrance Day. Young men and women lied of their ages to serve
in wars and fight for our province, country and freedom.
A very humbling picture I saw over the weekend sums it
up: “When you go home, tell them of us and say, 'For your tomorrow we gave our
today.'”
Please join me in recognizing the Royal Canadian
Legion, all veterans, all legionnaires and their dedication to their surrounding
areas.
Lest we forget.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Bonavista.
MR.
PARDY:
Following on the theme of volunteerism, Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure
to celebrate the volunteerism and dedication of Mr. Harold Duffett, Port Union,
within the municipality of Trinity Bay North.
Harold, at a very young age of 84 years, has been
involved in many organizations over the years. Beginning with his confirmation
at 11 years of age, he remained involved with St. Peter's Anglican Church ever
since. He was involved in the start-up of the Sea Cadet Corps in Catalina, the
school breakfast program, the Relay For Life, as well as the Christmas Seals
program.
In addition, Harold was a Member of the Red Cross,
Heart and Stroke, and CNIB Newfoundland and Labrador fundraising initiatives.
Today he volunteers on committees for the community playground, 50-plus seniors,
Tidy Towns and the Trinity Bay North fire department fundraising auctions.
He never misses a committee meeting and is often the
first to volunteer his time. The Trinity Bay North town manager, Mr. Darryl
Johnson states: Harold spends more time volunteering than anyone I know. The
ultimate volunteer.
I ask the Members of the 49th House of Assembly to join
me in thanking Mr. Harold Duffett for being such a committed volunteer who gives
so freely of his time for the benefit of others.
SOME
HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Placentia - St. Mary's.
MS.
GAMBIN-WALSH:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, on October 26, Mrs. Theresa Jarvis
celebrated her 100th birthday. Mrs. Jarvis, one of three children, was born at
Pinch Gut to Joseph and Sara Smith. Her family resettled to Fair Haven and she
married John Jarvis. Together they had 10 children.
After her husband passed away in 1986, Mrs. Jarvis
lived independently in the family home until she was 98 years old. She presently
resides in a senior's apartment in Dildo, with the support of home care. Mrs.
Jarvis lives a fairly independent life. Mrs. Jarvis's memory is impeccable.
Until recently, she baked her own bread and made her own preserves. She also
loves to shop.
While Mrs. Theresa Jarvis has endured many hardships
throughout her 100 years, including the loss of three of her children, she
continues to live her life with faith and perseverance. Mrs. Jarvis has 23
grandchildren, 34 great grandchildren and 11 great-great grandchildren. Many of
her family members live outside the province but those who are here, along with
friends, helped her in celebrating this milestone.
Mr. Speaker, I ask that all hon. Members in this House
of Assembly wish Ms. Theresa Jarvis a happy 100th birthday.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Windsor Lake.
MR.
CROSBIE:
Mr. Speaker, I rise to say a word of affection for the Member for Cape St.
Francis, who announced his pending retirement.
The Member's reputation is built on dedicated district
work. No one in caucus has to ask, where is Kevin? Because the answer is always:
He's attending a funeral. And he knows the departed, as he knows the loved ones,
and they know him.
There was a picture on social media some months ago. It
showed the Member, shovel in hand, fixing a pothole, practicing civic duty and
district politics in the most honourable of ways.
In his younger days, the Member had a reputation for
toughness in hockey. Who better to put in charge of Public Accounts Committee.
The Member has honourably served in this House under
six premiers. I regret he will not be with us to serve under a seventh.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Grand Falls-Windsor - Buchans.
MR.
TIBBS:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
Gerald Hurley was born in Inverness, Scotland, on April
6, 1942. After moving to Badger in 1947, Gerald met his wife of 53 years, Mary
McKenna.
Mr. Hurley wore many hats over his lifetime and touched
so many lives. His first job was a schoolteacher in Little Bay, where he
influenced the future of so many. Pivoting from his teaching profession, he went
on to become a welder and kept with that trade into his retirement.
Gerald Hurley was a firm believer in volunteerism and
loved to give back to his community. When he wasn't coaching either school or
senior hockey, he was serving as St. John Ambulance adult division leader. A
member of the Badger Recreation Committee, he also served on the Badger
Volunteer Fire Department. He didn't stop there, as this extraordinary man was
also an active member of the Knights of Columbus and a Eucharist minister.
Mr. Hurley served several terms as mayor in Badger,
including the 2003 flood that watched a community come together, like we are
known for here in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Gerald Hurley passed this year but will always be
remembered for his service. Today we honour him, as we should, God bless you,
Gerald Hurley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
Statements by Ministers.
Statements by Ministers
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Premier.
PREMIER FUREY:
Mr.
Speaker, I rise in this hon. House today with a heavy heart.
Last week's passing of the hon. Robert Wells, Q.C.,
comes with great sadness for his family, my own family and for many
Newfoundlanders and Labradorians
Since first getting to know former Justice Wells and
his family as a child when I delivered their daily newspaper, I have been
inspired by his thoughtfulness and compassion.
Mr. Speaker, as a lawyer, MHA, Cabinet minister, judge
and commissioner of the Offshore Safety Helicopter Inquiry, Justice Wells served
Newfoundlanders and Labradorians for decades with great pride and distinction.
He set an example of what it means to serve the public and will be deeply missed
by all.
His work led to important changes in improving offshore
safety and his legacy will live on for years.
On behalf of Members of this Legislature and all of
Newfoundland and Labrador, I spoke with former Justice Wells's son Senator David
Wells on Friday to express condolences to Justice Wells's wife Lucy and his
entire family.
To honour and commemorate former Justice Wells, flags
have been lowered to half-mast at the Confederation Building since Friday.
They will remain lowered until sunset today and lowered
again on the day of his funeral.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Leader of the Official Opposition.
MR.
CROSBIE:
I thank the Premier for an advance copy of his statement.
On behalf of the Official Opposition, I join with the
Premier in expressing our condolences to the family and friends of the hon.
Robert Wells, Q.C., a man who I knew well both in politics and in law.
Mr. Wells served the people of Newfoundland and
Labrador through a long and storied career. From electoral politics to presiding
over the inquiry that made recommendations for offshore safety, Robert Wells was
a giant. Our province owes Mr. Wells our deepest gratitude.
He served in the House of Assembly from 1972 to 1979,
was president of the Newfoundland Law Society from 1977 to 1981 and was the only
Newfoundland and Labrador president of the Canadian Bar Association and a
Supreme Court justice.
I offer my condolences to Mr. Wells's family, his wife
Lucy, his son Senator David Wells and his large circle of family and friends.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Leader of the Third Party.
MS.
COFFIN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I would also like to thank the Premier for
receiving an advance copy of the statement. On behalf of the Third Party caucus,
I would like to take this moment to recognize the life of the hon. Robert Wells,
Q.C.
Throughout his illustrious career in public service his
dedication to the people of this province was unwavering. We take this
opportunity to send our condolences to the family. Justice Wells will be sorely
missed.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
Further statements by ministers?
The hon. the Member for Justice and Public Safety.
MR.
CROCKER:
Mr.
Speaker, I am pleased to inform this hon. House that the statutory review of the
Access to Information and Protection of
Privacy Act, 2015, is under way and there is now an opportunity for public
input.
As a government, we are committed to openness and
transparency. We are fortunate to have someone with the stature and experience
of retired Chief Justice David B. Orsborn to conduct the review which will
examine the operation of the act and, as appropriate, make recommendations to
ensure the act is working as intended.
Mr. Orsborn is requesting written submissions no later
than November 27. Written submissions can be made by email, fax, hand delivered
or regular mail. Mr. Speaker, I want to encourage residents and stakeholders to
get involved in the review by making a written submission or applying to make a
presentation, either in person or virtually, at public hearings. All comments
and submissions received will be made available online and all hearings will be
public. Further details of the statutory review and more specific information
about how people can participate is available at nlatippareview.ca.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank former Chief Justice
Orsborn for taking on this important task and I look forward to the review and
his final report, expected to be delivered before the end of March 2021.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Harbour Main.
MS.
CONWAY OTTENHEIMER:
I thank the minister for an advance copy of his
statement.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to
acknowledge retired Chief Justice David Orsborn and to thank him for his
diligent work he is currently undertaking on the statutory review of the ATIPP
legislation.
I'm sure that all Members of this hon. House will agree
that this is an important piece of legislation, which must remain up to date,
responsive and one which ensures government and public information can remain
accessible by those who request it.
As a public call for input into this review is under
way, I encourage individuals to use ATIPP to reflect upon the types of
information they request and how the system could be more user-friendly. I am
hopeful that the statutory review will result in more proactive disclosure and
greater resident involvement in our democracy.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Leader of the Third Party.
MS.
COFFIN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I would also like to thank the hon. minister for
receiving an advance copy of his statement.
We, the Third Party caucus, are glad to hear that this
government is making a commitment to openness and transparency.
We would also like to thank Chief Justice Orsborn for
leading the review of the ATIPP act. He is an excellent choice for the job and
we look forward to his final report at the end of March.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
Further statements by ministers?
The hon. the Minister of Environment, Climate Change
and Municipalities.
MR.
BENNETT:
Mr.
Speaker, I am pleased today to speak about the $27.4 million from the Safe
Restart Agreement and the funding allocations that each municipality in
Newfoundland and Labrador will receive. The federal government portion is being
matched on a 50-50 cost-shared basis with provincial government expenditures
retroactive to April 1, 2020.
Mr. Speaker, the Safe Restart funding is distributed
based on 2016 census data and is guided by a per capita basis allocation to all
municipalities. No applications are required and payments will be processed once
Budget 2020 is fully adopted by the
House of Assembly. Allocations for each municipality can be found on the
Department of Environment, Climate Change and Municipalities website.
The Government of Canada announced the Safe Restart
Agreement in July, with details released in September and it supports critical
needs to protect public health and safety, prepare for future waves of COVID-19
and further supports the safe reopening of the economies in Canada.
Mr. Speaker, our government supported Municipalities
Newfoundland and Labrador as the organization advocated for communities at the
onset of COVID-19. The province also wrote a letter of support to the Canadian
Federation of Municipalities in the national organization's effort to secure
funding for municipalities.
We thank the federal government for partnering with us
in support of municipalities. We know it has been a stressful time for municipal
leaders, and they have been eagerly awaiting word on how much they will receive
through this funding program. Our government appreciates the vital role that
municipal governments in our province have, and we want them to remain strong
and operational as we live with COVID-19.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Mount Pearl North.
MR.
LESTER:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I thank the minister for an advance copy of his
statement. Mr. Speaker, the members of Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador
have been waiting for information about this funding for some time now. I know
they lobbied hard for additional support and we, the Official Opposition, are
pleased to see the program details finally announced.
Mr. Speaker, many municipalities across this province
have been negatively impacted by the pandemic and have budget shortfalls. While
this program will provide some much-needed financial relief, there is much work
to be done as municipalities try to move forward. In addition to the unplanned
expense caused by the pandemic, municipalities must also address important
issues such as drinking water, fire and emergency services and waste water
regulations.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to
recognize the valuable work of Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador and all
municipal leaders across the province. These individuals, many of whom are
volunteers, are tireless in their commitment and we certainly appreciate
everything they do to make our municipalities better and stronger for our
residents.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Labrador West.
MR.
BROWN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I'd like to thank the minister for an advance copy of
his statement and I want to thank George Murphy for dropping it off.
I applaud the minister for securing this funding from
the federal government for our communities. We have seen several communities
suffer a dramatic loss in revenue from the closure of the recreation facilities
and increased costs to municipalities from implementing COVID measures. This
funding will go a long way towards helping our communities get back on their
feet, but I suggest government consider increasing the funding to provide to
municipalities going forward.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
Further statements by ministers?
Oral Questions.
Oral Questions
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Leader of the Official Opposition.
MR.
CROSBIE:
Mr.
Speaker, election rumors have arisen in recent days.
With more than 15,000 people thrown out of work: Does
the Premier think an election before Christmas is in the best interest of the
people of the province?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Premier.
PREMIER FUREY:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Once again, we've answered questions on this but the
Member opposite seems to continue to want to go down this line of questioning.
I've said it's not my intention to call an election before, but it's not up to
me and me alone. We're in a minority government and this is democracy at work.
There are confidence motions before this House this
week, and this is not my decision to make alone. It's not my intention to call
an election before December certainly, but it appears that it's just the Members
opposite who are interested in talking about elections. They're the only ones
with their cars wrapped. They're the only ones getting materials ready. Maybe
the question is best reflected internally from the Member opposite.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Leader of the Official Opposition.
MR.
CROSBIE:
Premier, I spoke to a 32-year-old electrician with a young family who worked in
Argentia, and if he doesn't get work within the next six months he'll lose his
house.
What does the Premier have to say to this worker and
his family?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Premier.
PREMIER FUREY:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It is people like that 32-year-old worker and the
families who – I think I speak for all Members of the House when I say that
we're all incredibly empathic towards the trying times that these families are
facing, the uncertainty ahead of them and their families moving into the
Christmas season and beyond. I want to express my sincere empathy and compassion
to them.
With that said, we are moving forward. We are
continuing discussions with operators, including having a healthy and good
discussion with the CEO of Cenovus on Friday. We're continuing to discuss with
the operators about how we can be prepared to continue to do work in 2021 and be
ready for when the rebound in this commodity happens and we can lead the world
as an industry with a valuable resource moving forward for the future of
Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Leader of the Official Opposition.
MR.
CROSBIE:
Thanks, Mr. Speaker.
A jobless oil industry worker who lives in CBS says
that he's been watching the Northeast Avalon dying, with businesses and
restaurants closing, panhandlers increasing and the roads becoming quiet.
What does the Premier have to say to this jobless
worker?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Premier.
PREMIER FUREY:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Once again, I would express my empathy and concern for
the families during these uncertain times in a global positioning of
uncertainty. This isn't a crisis that's facing the Northeast Avalon or
Newfoundland and Labrador or Canada; this is a crisis that is affecting the
entire world, whether it's Saudi Arabia or Russia, the United States. Cities are
going through the same thing: Houston, Aberdeen. Everyone is feeling the pinch
of this global economic crisis with a downward pressure on the energy sector in
particular.
What I will say is that we're doing everything we can
and everything that's available to us in our tool box, including policy
instruments and whatever fiscal capacity that we have to ensure that our oil and
gas industry is well positioned for when this industry does return, and it will
return.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Leader of the Official Opposition.
MR.
CROSBIE:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Last week cast a cloud over labour relations in the
province. Unifor National announced legal action against the Royal Newfoundland
Constabulary, claiming a breach of Charter rights. The minister insists that
there is no role for him in this issue.
I ask the minister: Does he have full confidence in the
decisions made by the leadership at the RNC which resulted in this legal action?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Justice and Public Safety.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the hon. Member for the question.
As we were in a situation we were in last week, again,
I was extremely disappointed, like everybody in this House, that the talks
didn't last longer than they did and they weren't successful, because it's very
important, first and foremost, for those people to get back to work.
Mr. Speaker, the Member asked me about confidence in
the police force. These are independent decisions made by the police force. I do
have confidence in the RNC and the RCMP and the work they do in our province.
I also am very pleased today to see that the Member
across the way, my critic, has accepted the invitation to sit down and have a
conversation with Chief Boland, I think, later this week. It's very important to
have that opportunity to sit down and see what decisions like these and how
they're made and what actual processes are followed to get to a place where you
make a decision to actually see the police deployed.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Leader of the Official Opposition.
MR.
CROSBIE:
Mr.
Speaker, we're hearing heartbreaking stories from Dominion workers that are on
strike and struggling to make ends meet. These front-line workers sacrificed so
much for all of us during COVID-19 and they deserve to get back to work with
fair pay.
I ask the Premier: Has he reached out to Galen Weston
to encourage him to settle this matter?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Immigration, Skills and Labour.
MR.
BYRNE:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
We were encouraged and were very much applauded for
reaching out to both the employer and their bargaining unit, the union Unifor,
to get them back to the table last week. It's very unfortunate that that meeting
did not result in a successful collective agreement, but still we remain
hopeful. I have reached out to both the CEO of Loblaws, again as early as this
morning, along with the national president of Unifor, to continue on a
discussion but, most importantly, to get the parties back to the table.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Leader of the Official Opposition.
MR.
CROSBIE:
Search Minerals, Mr. Speaker, is sending rare earth minerals from Labrador to
Saskatchewan for processing, creating no processing jobs in this province.
Why is the Premier allowing this to happen?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Industry, Energy and Technology.
MR.
A. PARSONS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I'm certainly glad to get a question on the mining
sector because it is certainly a bright spot in this province right now; one
that I've had discussions with multiple Members on and, in fact, we've been
reaching out even today on different issues.
The issue that the Member mentions is not one that's,
honestly, been brought to my attention, but what I can do – and I'll undertake
to report back to this House tomorrow with an update as to what is going on and
the reasoning behind it.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Leader of the Official Opposition.
MR.
CROSBIE:
Was the decision to send these minerals to Saskatchewan made when the Premier
was on the board?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Premier.
PREMIER FUREY:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I was never on the board of Search Minerals.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Opposition House Leader.
MR.
BRAZIL:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
This morning the minister announced that the isolation
requirements for rotational workers are not going to change.
Minister, these workers and their families are very
heavily impacted by this pandemic. Will this policy be reviewed again and, if
so, when?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.
MR.
HAGGIE:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
The review by Quality of Care NL showed very clearly
that there was no need to make these restrictions on rotational workers any
tighter than they already are.
The situation in the rest of the country is what
determines a lot of our action. We had over a thousand cases on Saturday in
Ontario; a thousand cases on Saturday in Quebec. We've seen Alberta set records
for the number of active cases, Mr. Speaker.
Recognizing that rotational workers work in a somewhat
protected site is permissive in that it has allowed us these relaxations, but we
cannot let our guard down, Mr. Speaker, beyond a certain point. This is evidence
based. If the evidence changes, we will change.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Opposition House Leader.
MR.
BRAZIL:
Many families in this province have children attending educational institutions
in other parts of Canada and in other countries who want to return home for
Christmas. Flight availability is decreasing while ticket prices are increasing
and these families and individuals need to make plans.
Can the minister offer any insight on what the
isolation requirements will be for those residents hoping to return home for
Christmas?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.
MR.
HAGGIE:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
That is an active topic with our Public Health
department. Myself and Dr. Fitzgerald have undertaken to have something out
within the early part of this month.
Again, I must go back and say that the situation in
other parts of the country does not look very optimistic when you look at their
hospitalization, their infection rates and the curve in Ontario is like a cliff
face, Mr. Speaker. We have to look after the safety of the people in this
province, much as I would love to see my daughters too.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for Bonavista.
MR.
PARDY:
Mr.
Speaker, a local child care operator in Witless Bay has spoken out about the
heavy-handed tactics of the minister's department. This home-based daycare has
been ordered to reduce their rates in order to avail of $25-a-day child care for
her families.
Why is the minister forcing operators to reduce
programming and even meals in order to survive?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Education.
MR.
OSBORNE:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The $25-a-day program provides an operating grant
that's been in place – the operating grant has been in place since about 2014.
Back then, when government introduced the operating grant to the child care
centres, many of them expressed the same concerns we're hearing today from the
family centres who we've now included in the operating grant under the $25-a-day
child care program. This may not be for all family-based child care centres, but
for any of the child care centres that are family-based that wish to come under
the operating grant program we welcome them.
We are open to feedback, Mr. Speaker, and we're
starting a consultation process to hear feedback and to view what child care
looks like into the future.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Bonavista.
MR.
PARDY:
Mr.
Speaker, this child care operator was under the family-based operation, and in
an online forum this morning mentions that she may be losing up to $200 a week.
She has stated that she was sick to her stomach as she wonders what to do next.
How does the minister expect to create more quality and
affordable spaces if we are potentially pushing operators out of business?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Education.
MR.
OSBORNE:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It's certainly not the intent to push anybody out of
business, Mr. Speaker. I know when the previous administration brought in the
Operating Grant Program, some child care centres had to give a little bit.
Government provided an operating grant to ensure that child care was affordable.
The current Premier promised $25-a-day child care. More
than 70 per cent of the centres are under the Operating Grant Program. Mr.
Speaker, we've had other centres express an interest in joining. We've also
invited the family-based centres. Again, we're hearing some of the same concerns
today the previous administration did in 2014 when they started the Operating
Grant Program for the centres.
Mr. Speaker, we are looking at this. We are not forcing
anybody to join. If a family-based centre doesn't want to join the Operating
Grant Program, we're certainly not forcing anybody to do so.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Bonavista.
MR.
PARDY:
Mr.
Speaker, the previous administration the minister was a part of since 2015.
Losing $200 a week is rather significant from a home care operator who was on
the program last year.
Mr. Speaker, concerns have been raised that the Casual
Caregiver Pilot Program will allow untrained and unqualified individuals to work
in child care centres. This is yet another band-aid solution to chronic staff
shortages with early childhood educators who feel undervalued.
When is the minister going to deal with the real
underlying issues affecting staff, including training and access to course work?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Education.
MR.
OSBORNE:
Mr.
Speaker, I hate to provide a math lesson to a former administrator in a school,
but in 2014 I wasn't a part of the former administration, I was a part of this
party.
Mr. Speaker, our government has provided, over the last
three years, bursaries and training money for early childhood educators. There
are certainly some stresses within the system. Those stresses are felt across
the country. We provide wage subsidies to early childhood educators, between
$12,900 and $16,900, to enhance their wages.
Does this answer all the questions? No. For example,
the $25-a-day daycare is a very, very solid first step, Mr. Speaker, as we
continue to consult with the industry and look –
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. Member's time has expired.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Conception Bay South.
MR.
PETTEN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, on Friday the minister spoke to the CEO of
Cenovus for the first time.
Did the Premier participate in this call and, if not,
why not?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Industry, Energy and Technology.
MR.
A. PARSONS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I'm happy to report that not only did we have a
conversation with Cenovus and their CEO on Friday, but the Premier led the call
with Cenovus on Friday.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
A. PARSONS:
While it was an introductory call, the wording, I would say, that was used by
the CEO of Cenovus was very positive in nature, saying he has a connection with
this province and very excited to be here. While we know that we have a lot of
work to do, what I can say is that the call was positive in nature and we've
committed to continuing our ongoing discussions.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Conception Bay South.
MR.
PETTEN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
When asked about potential job cuts, the minister said
it did not form part of the conversation.
Jobs are important to the people of this province,
Minister, and why did you forget to ask for a commitment about maintaining jobs?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Industry, Energy and Technology.
MR.
A. PARSONS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Certainly, what I can say is twofold here. Cenovus
being very new to this, it's like every other oil and gas company in this world.
They're reassessing what they are doing and where we are going in this
ever-changing landscape.
That being said, I also spoke to the VP of Husky on
Saturday. There were no job cuts discussed in that call. In fact, the largest
portion of that call was discussing the ongoing scope of work that they have put
forward to us and the opportunity for investment and job creation here in the
province.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Conception Bay South.
MR.
PETTEN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Maybe job cuts should have been part of the
conversation, Minister; it's a big issue here in this province.
The Transocean Barents has left the province and is en
route to Norway, a jurisdiction that supports and encourages the offshore oil
industry. Bull Arm has become an aquatic storage facility with two other drill
rigs, and the Terra Nova will be there shortly.
Premier, what is your plan to resume exploration
drilling in this province?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Industry, Energy and Technology.
MR.
A. PARSONS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I'm certainly very happy to speak to this and, yes, the
Transocean is going. The contract signed some time ago has concluded, as was
expected a number of months ago, but I am proud to talk about the discoveries
that they made while they were here. We had two announced just last week.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
A. PARSONS:
They did do great work while they were here, and we're very happy about that.
Also, today in a phone call, actually between the Premier's Office and myself,
we spoke to CNOOC and we spoke about the exploration well that they will be
drilling, starting in 2021, and they talked about the exploration incentive that
we had.
In fact, the Premier and I spoke today to all the
members of CAPP, and one of the things that they were unanimous in was talking
about our exploration incentive and the fact that they know they can count on
this provincial government being behind them during this tough time.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Conception Bay South.
MR.
PETTEN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
There is no more exploration for another year, so that
answers that question, and the government, obviously, did nothing but cheer them
on.
Six weeks ago, government announced an exploration
initiative, yet details are still unavailable.
Premier, when will the details be announced?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Industry, Energy and Technology,
MR.
A. PARSONS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Just to go back to the previous question; what I can
say is, yes, there will be drilling. Hopefully, in about six months is when
we're going to see that drilling happen, as committed to by CNOOC. That's what
they've committed.
The other thing, we have announced an exploration
incentive program, one that's about $40 million this year, which is coming from
the bid deposits. Again, there's unanimous support from all the operators. They
realize that we are in a very tough environment but they appreciate the support
that we've put there. This will help form part of the bid process which will,
hopefully, be happening this week.
They appreciate the fact that with very limited
options, financially, that the province can offer, this was a big one and will
help go towards to, hopefully, continued and increased drilling potential in the
future.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Topsail - Paradise.
MR.
P. DINN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Last week, I asked some important questions regarding
an expiry date and renewal fees attached to journeypersons' certificates of
qualification and I did not receive an acceptable response.
The minister has now had time to follow up with his
staff.
Again, I ask the minister: Why were such policies
adopted?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Immigration, Skills and Labour.
MR.
BYRNE:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
I will admit I was somewhat confused by the question.
I've had an opportunity to process some of the question and the potential
answer.
It appeared to me that there was some debate as to why
the government had imposed an expiry date on journeymen's Red Seal certificates.
I could point out to the hon. Member that expiry dates have been in place on
journeymen's certificates since the 1990s. I was unaware how that policy could
have impacted and created job losses for individuals so again I'll repeat:
Expiry dates have been in place on certificates for many, many years.
If the hon. Member has any information of any
individual that has been impacted negatively by something that's been in place
for decades, I'd be happy to take that information.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Topsail - Paradise.
MR.
P. DINN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The minister does talk to the expiry date; however,
journeypersons have brought their complaints forward to his department on a
number of occasions; they have not received an adequate response. In fact, they
had to register a complaint to the Office of the Citizens' Representative. The
report actually quotes the department as saying: There has never been a
requirement for a journeyperson to renew their certificate of qualifications,
yet there is an expiry date and renewal fees attached.
What does the minister say to the hard-working men and
women who had to go through this?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Immigration, Skills and Labour.
MR.
BYRNE:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
The hon. Member does now recollect and state the facts
which are there has been an expiry date that has been in place on these
certificates for many, many years; in fact, decades. There was a simple change
where there was a fee that was to be collected back some five years ago of $50
for a five-year period. There was a decision, and I think a good decision, not
to collect that fee anymore.
With regard to the complaints that the Member refers
to, we've reviewed our files, our records and we find no such instances. If he
would like to bring forward particular concerns from individuals, I'd be more
than happy to receive them because that would be new information to us.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Topsail - Paradise.
MR.
P. DINN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I guarantee you this complaint to the Office of the
Citizens' Rep didn't just appear; it resulted in complaints that were unanswered
by the department. This report also states, and I quote – this is coming from
the department – in the fall of 2018, it was concluded that the historical
practice of including an expiry date would cease as the individuals'
qualifications does not in fact expire. Yet, under this government, August of
2016, they not only looked to solve the issue, they actually attached a $50 fee
on top of it. The minister has already alluded to correcting it.
I ask the minister: Will the minister refund these fees
for a policy that should never have been put in place?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Immigration, Skills and Labour.
MR.
BYRNE:
Mr.
Speaker, again, we kind of come to the conundrum of the notion of harm or
whether or not some individuals have been negatively impacted. I'm more than
prepared and anxious to receive any information regarding that. If he would like
to bring that forward I'd be happy to receive it and will act on it.
With that said, expiry dates have been part of the
certificates for many, many decades. The certificates are now issued without an
expiry date after a decades-long policy and 11,000 certificates were issued some
months back, some years back without expiry dates attached to them. If there's
ever a certificate that's lost, we can replace that certificate without an
expiry date attached to it.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Topsail - Paradise.
MR.
P. DINN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
His own department says it should never have occurred.
The department is after charging people $50 – 14,000 journeypersons for a fee
that should never have been charged.
Mr. Speaker, the PC Opposition advocated on an expanded
insulin pump coverage and government listened. The minister responsible has
touted investing in health, choose wellness over illness.
I ask the minister: Will he do the same and provide
full coverage for advanced continuous glucose monitoring devices for people
living with diabetes?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.
MR.
HAGGIE:
Thank you very much indeed, Mr. Speaker, for the question.
I know that there are various business groups lobbying
for glucose monitoring. The issue is around the evidence to support their use,
Mr. Speaker. There are flash glucose monitors and there are continuous glucose
monitors. I await the decision of the medical profession to tell me which is
most relevant and which should be supported. At that point, we'll be in a
position to make a decision. As yet, I haven't had the answer.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Topsail - Paradise, time for a quick question and a quick
answer.
MR.
P. DINN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Given this is Diabetes Awareness Month, it's timely to
look at this. Flash monitors, of course, as we know, they take at periodic times
and the continuous one is ongoing.
If we are truly invested in health and choosing
wellness over illness, will government provide assistance to people who
desperately need this?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.
MR.
HAGGIE:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
We made the expansion to the Insulin Pump Program on
the basis of recommendations from clinicians. I refer the Member to previous
comments about using evidence to inform our decisions. That evidence has not yet
been presented to me and I'm not aware that it actually exists in the form the
Member opposite would have me believe. Certainly, should the clinicians have
that, I would happy to have my staff look at it, Mr. Speaker. At the moment, we
have $3.3 million for a universal Insulin Pump Program.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Labrador West.
MR.
BROWN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We're hearing from family-operated child care centres
that the information released about the $25-a-day program will make it difficult
for them to be able to operate.
I just ask the Premier: What is he doing to ensure that
the province doesn't lose valuable child care spots?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Education.
MR.
OSBORNE:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, we certainly want to work with our
partners in early learning and child care to ensure that we grow the number of
child care spaces in the province. We intend to do that. We have a consultation
process that is starting early in the new year.
Having said that, I've welcomed and continue to welcome
feedback from early learning and child care centres between now and then to get
their feedback and to look at options and suggestions and concerns that they
have.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Labrador West.
MR.
BROWN:
Thank you.
Child care operators in Labrador West have reached out
to me multiple times and, in turn, I've reached out to the minister multiple
times, about concerns that their child care centres will have and the
possibility of closure if the program is not improved.
I ask the Premier: Has he spoken to child care
operators in Labrador to understand the vital roles that they play in the
community?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Education.
MR.
OSBORNE:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
There are heightened concerns in some areas of
Labrador, in particular the Member's district, because of the competing jobs and
higher wages as a result of the resource sector. We understand that, Mr.
Speaker.
I know that the Peacock learning centre in Labrador,
government had invested about $900,000 over the past two years to get that
centre up and running. They are facing challenges with the recruitment of early
childhood educators. We've put in place a pilot project to allow centres to hire
temporary replacements in the event of an absent worker or in areas where it's
harder to recruit. We continue to look for options.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Leader of the Third Party.
MS.
COFFIN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
When asked about a living wage last week, the minister
deflected and congratulated both sides of a labour dispute for getting back to
the table. He also deferred discussions about a living wage to the committee on
basic income.
To clarify, basic income is a form of a social safety
net to help individuals who are often not working or are partially employed;
whereas, a living wage will ensure that working individuals can afford to build
better lives for their families.
I ask again: Will the minister legislate a living wage?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Immigration, Skills and Labour.
MR.
BYRNE:
Mr.
Speaker, a living wage is a circumstance which would require a description and a
definition that I would ask the hon. Member opposite, the Leader of the Third
Party, to come forward with her perspectives, because I appreciate her
perspectives.
Obviously, a living wage would be very different for a
student than an adult, or an adult who has dependant children. So a living wage
has a very different context and definition, depending on the person involved.
It's difficult to legislate that. It's difficult for employers to make decisions
around hiring based on a requirement to be able to make the living wage of a
particular individual.
These are important questions, important issues, and I
look forward to discussion at the All-Party Committee because I think, maybe,
that could be a good venue for such a discussion.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
minister's time has expired.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for St. John's Centre.
MR.
J. DINN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I understand that on Friday a memo went
out to schools promising that laptops and Chromebooks would soon be in the hands
of teachers and students. It's encouraging to see that my question on Thursday
elicited this much action.
With this in mind, I ask the Minister of Education:
Will he now table a list of schools which have received these devices, how many
teachers and students have these devices in hand, and a timetable of when the
remaining schools can expect to receive theirs?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Education.
MR.
OSBORNE:
Mr.
Speaker, I just had a vision of the CEO of the English School District sitting
on the edge of his seat anticipating the next question from the Member.
Mr. Speaker, I will endeavour to get a schedule of
schools and the timelines involved in getting these devices out. I know that the
devices have to be formatted. The laptops, my understanding is they've arrived.
They're in the process of being formatted. Some schools may already have them.
Certainly, the English School District is working diligently to get these
laptops into the hands of teachers.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
time for Question Period has expired.
Presenting Reports by Standing and Select Committees.
Tabling of Documents.
Notices of Motion.
Notices of Motion
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
Notices of motion – sorry, Mr. Speaker.
I give notice of Bill 53, An Act To Amend The Vital
Statistics Act, 2009.
MR.
SPEAKER:
Further notices of motion?
The hon. the Member for Burin - Grand Bank.
MS.
HALEY:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I give notice of the following private
Member's motion, which will be seconded by the Member for Fortune Bay - Cape La
Hune:
WHEREAS Wednesday, November 11, 2020, is Remembrance
Day; and
WHEREAS Remembrance Day is a day to honour and remember
the people who have served, and continue to serve Canada during times of war,
conflict and peace; and
WHEREAS Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have an
illustrious history of service and have suffered great tragedies in the line of
duty; and
WHEREAS the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic will restrict
many annual commemorative ceremonies;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the House supports
veterans in Newfoundland and Labrador and recognizes the sacrifices made by all
members of the Canadian Forces; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED the House urge the Government of
Newfoundland and Labrador to work with the Royal Canadian Legion and other
partners to rehabilitate the Newfoundland National Memorial in time for the
Memorial's centennial on July 1, 2024.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Pursuant to Standing Order 63(3), the private Member's
resolution entered by the Member for Burin - Grand Bank shall be the one debated
this Wednesday.
MR.
SPEAKER:
Further notices of motion?
Answers to Questions for which Notice has been Given.
Answers to Questions for which Notice has been Given
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Industry, Energy and Technology.
MR.
A. PARSONS:
Mr.
Speaker, pursuant to an undertaking that I made in Question Period, I undertook
to this House to provide information on Search Minerals, and I was a bit
surprised that I didn't realize that there was processing going out of province.
The reason I was surprised is because there isn't.
What I've had confirmed from Search is that, in fact,
there is a few samples of concentrate of this rare earth that is going to a
research facility in Saskatchewan to be processed to determine feasibility. In
fact, the goal is to – again, this was a project that was worked on by the
government as well as ACOA with the hopes – there is no separation facility in
North America right now. The goal is to determine feasibility so that this
company can continue on with their mining, which I would point out is in
Cartwright - L'Anse au Clair, in the hopes of discovering 200 jobs.
I would point out to anybody that was listening; there
is no commercial processing of these minerals going on. I felt the House should
be aware of that information.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
Further answers to questions for which notice has been given?
Petitions.
Petitions
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Topsail - Paradise.
MR.
P. DINN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
WHEREAS small businesses are the backbone of
Newfoundland and Labrador's increasingly diversified economy and their
contributions and the role they play in society is anything but small; and
WHEREAS they are creating jobs and opportunities,
strengthening and building communities and fortifying the provincial economy as
well as creating innovative solutions; and
WHEREAS there are supports available to small
businesses during the pandemic, there are small businesses that continue to
struggle;
THEREFORE we petition the hon. House of Assembly as
follows: We, the undersigned, call upon the House of Assembly to urge the
Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to develop a course of action to assist
small businesses that are unable to avail of the current supports or are in need
of other supports to ensure they survive the current pandemic and continue to
contribute to the success of our economy in the long term.
Mr. Speaker, I don't think anyone in this House will
deny the contribution small businesses have made to our economy and what they've
done during our pandemic.
There are approximately, somewhere in the ballpark of
15,000 to 17,000 small- and medium-sized enterprises in Newfoundland and
Labrador. They cover a range of services and products, and they are there when
we need them. Some of these became essential workers during the pandemic. Some
of the funding programs that are available, some have not been able to avail of
those.
Unfortunately, we've seen some of these businesses
close shop. We've seen others try to adjust and are operating at a lesser
volume, but they continue to survive. With Christmas season coming along, it's
going to be hard on many people who are concerned about employment and people
concerned about where they're going to buy their groceries or their essentials.
I would ask that all of us in this House of Assembly
make an effort to get out and support our small- and medium-sized enterprises.
These people need it for us.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
P. DINN:
In
the past, you'd normally call them mom-and-pop shop; some of them are family
run. There is absolutely no reason why we cannot get out and support them as the
Christmas season approaches and with that support, buy local, buy Newfoundland
and Labrador. If we take that approach then we're going to come out of this on
the other end looking a lot better.
I thank you for your time.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Ferryland.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The background to this petition is as follows: An
extension was approved to Robert E. Howlett highway on March 25, 2014. An
environmental assessment, design and engineering of this project was completed
and continued residential and commercial growth has increased traffic flows to
the Southern Avalon.
Therefore, we petition the hon. House of Assembly as
follows: To reinstate the approved extension of Robert E. Howlett highway to
improve and ensure the safety of the travelling public to the Southern Avalon.
The reason I speak on this is, in 2014, this was
already done, approved and the government, in its wisdom, has decided to cancel
this project or move it back. It's detrimental to the safety of all the
residents in the Ferryland District. I look at some of the bypass roads or
extensions that were done, one in Torbay, one going to Carbonear and they're
vital for the safety of the people in the community.
If you can remember going down through Bay Roberts and
all those areas, you're not going through the centre of the communities in
regards to that. Some people are driving on the highways and it's a little safer
for the communities themselves. The speed limits in these communities, as you
drive through, the reduced speed is 50 kilometres.
With this extension, it brings people to our area, to
our tourism, to our marine bases that are there: one in Bay Bulls and another
proposed one in Fermeuse. It's vital that we get back to looking at this.
Not a part of this, but we also had the Team Gushue
Highway, which was stopped, and there was an extension done to that to join the
Robert E. Howlett, that has also been stopped. We don't hear anything on that
and we'd like to know where it is in our area because people travel that
highway. I would say there are a good many residents that use the Team Gushue to
get to Robert E. Howlett right now as it is. We'd like to see that reinstated,
if we could.
Thank you.
MR.
SPEAKER:
Further petitions?
The hon. the Member for Terra Nova.
MR.
PARROTT:
Mr. Speaker, the background of this petition is as follows:
WHEREAS residents of the area troubled with the unsafe
conditions of the road; and
WHEREAS residents of the area concerned with the lack
of maintenance repairs to the road; and
WHEREAS the road is owned and maintained by
Transportation and Infrastructure Department, Government of Newfoundland and
Labrador; and
WHEREAS the road is the only access to and from the
Town of Terra Nova; and
WHEREAS the road is travelled by schoolchildren that
travel to Glovertown school;
THEREFORE we, the residents of the geographical area
surrounding Terra Nova, petition the hon. House of Assembly as follows: We, the
undersigned, call upon the House of Assembly to urge the Government of
Newfoundland and Labrador that the roads be repaired and maintained to a
standard that is safe for travel by all residents of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Mr. Speaker, since May of 2019, I have been asking
questions about the road in Terra Nova and there have been a multitude of
excuses. First, I asked what the standards were for repair of road and I was
told it was a measurement taken from centre line. Well, I'll tell the Speaker
that the only thing remaining on the road going into Terra Nova is the centre
line.
I went out and I took multiple pictures, 30, 40
pictures, on several occasions and sent in. There are spots where they put some
asphalt in one pothole, skipped over one, went to the next. It was every second
or third pothole being done. There are also large sections of as much as eight
feet where there's probably one foot of asphalt replaced and the remaining seven
untouched.
This year, we went looking for a plan, after
consultations with the town, trying to find a solution. We figured a solution
would be to do small patches of full pieces of road. I personally went out
myself, took all the coordinates and sent in. The response I got from the
minister's department was they could tear up the existing – chip seal is what it
is – and treat it as a gravel road. We've heard all the excuses.
I went back to the department and I asked the
department about the chip seal, which was supposed to be a pilot project. I
asked them what the results of the pilot project were. No one could answer me.
There was supposed to be work done the year after the chip seal was applied. No
one answered me.
I know there could be an excuse coming that says it was
a previous administration or it was your government or something like that, but
the reality of this is it's not about who's in power; it's about what's
happening right now and the safety of children that travel to school on a daily
basis and the safety of the residents that live in Terra Nova.
The road is in unacceptable circumstances. If our
solution for people who live in rural Newfoundland is to tear up the existing
asphalt and replace it with gravel roads, we're heading down a pretty scary
path.
Mr. Speaker, as I said, we're looking for this road to
be maintained and fixed up.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
I call Orders of the Day.
Orders of the Day
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Mr.
Speaker, I move, seconded by the Minister of Tourism, Culture, Arts and
Recreation, for leave to introduce a bill entitled, An Act Respecting Tourist
Accommodations, Bill 52, and I further move that the said bill be now read a
first time.
MR.
SPEAKER:
It
is moved and seconded that the hon. minister shall have leave to introduce a
bill entitled, An Act Respecting Tourist Accommodations, Bill 52, and that the
said bill now be read a first 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.'
Carried.
Motion, the hon. the Minister of Tourism, Culture, Arts
and Recreation to introduce a bill, “An Act Respecting Tourist Accommodations,”
carried. (Bill 52)
ACTING TABLE OFFICER (Hammond):
A bill, An Act Respecting Tourist Accommodations. (Bill
52)
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
bill has now been read a first time.
When shall the said bill be read a second time?
MR.
CROCKER:
Tomorrow.
MR.
SPEAKER:
Tomorrow.
On motion, Bill 52 read a first time, ordered read a
second time on tomorrow.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I move, seconded by the Deputy Government House Leader,
for leave to introduce a bill entitled, An Act To Amend The Condominium Act,
2009, The Co-operatives Act And The Corporations Act, Bill 51, and I further
move that the bill be now read a first time.
MR.
SPEAKER:
It
is moved and seconded that the hon. minister shall have leave to introduce a
bill entitled, An Act To Amend The Condominium Act, 2009, The Co-operatives Act
And The Corporations Act, Bill 51, and that this bill now be read a first 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.'
Carried.
Motion, the hon. the Minister of Digital Government and
Service Newfoundland and Labrador to introduce a bill, “An Act To Amend The
Condominium Act, 2009, The Co-operatives Act And The Corporations Act,” carried.
(Bill 51)
ACTING TABLE OFFICER:
A bill, An Act To Amend The Condominium Act, 2009, The Co-operatives Act
And The Corporations Act. (Bill 51)
MR.
SPEAKER:
This bill has now been read a first time.
When shall the said bill be read a second time?
MR.
CROCKER:
Tomorrow.
MR.
SPEAKER:
Tomorrow.
On motion, Bill 51 read a first time, ordered read a
second time on tomorrow.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I call from the Order Paper, Motion 11.
Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the Deputy Government
House Leader, that under Standing Order 11(1) this House not adjourn at 5:30
p.m. on Monday, November 2, 2020.
MR.
SPEAKER:
It
has been moved and seconded that pursuant to Standing Order 11(1) that the House
not adjourn at 5 p.m. on Monday, November 2, 2020.
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
MR.
SPEAKER:
All
those against, 'nay.'
Carried.
The hon. the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I call from the Order Paper, number 5, second reading
of Bill 46.
MR.
SPEAKER:
It
is moved and seconded that Bill 46, entitled An Act to Amend the Credit Union
Act –
AN
HON. MEMBER:
(Inaudible.)
MR.
SPEAKER:
Okay. Sorry, I didn't realize this is a continuation of a debate that we had
already started.
The hon. the Member for Ferryland.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
First of all, I would like to thank the Member to the
left of me there for Cape St. Francis who filled in last week when we introduced
the bill. He took over and did that part while I was off, and I certainly thank
him for that.
I'd also like to thank the department. When we did our
briefing, they were very informative on giving us all the details on this. It's
a pretty comprehensive bill. There are 86 proposed amendments to this, so it's a
lot of detail. We, on this side, certainly support the changes to the bill. I'll
read through some of the stuff we did at our briefing, and I'm sure he probably
touched on it the other day but I just want to touch on some of the parts of the
bill that we'll be looking at.
First of all, like I said, Bill 46 includes 86 proposed
amendments to the Credit Union Act. Some of the stuff is the disclosure of
potential conflict of interest by directors and officers; establishing by-laws
for engaging external third parties; separating the roles and duties of the
superintendent and the CEO; updating the responsibilities and structure of the
Credit Union Deposit Guarantee Corporation – the acronym is CUDGC, it's pretty
hard to say all that out every time, so we'll use that if we can; facilitating
the establishment of a federal credit union; some record keeping; definitions;
modernizing language; penalties and offences; enhanced membership; timelines;
increase regulation making authority, and other minor amendments in that as
well.
Some of the background on this; the current act has
been in effect since 2009. Associated regulations were amended as recently as
April of last year. According to the department officials, there are nine credit
unions in the province serving over – we had a letter from the credit union also
supporting that, and to update on the number it was serving. We had 62,000.
There are currently 63,800 members and they're also in support of that. They
sent out a letter supporting this bill as well and in favour of it. So we
certainly appreciate that.
Credit unions cover over 36 locations throughout
Newfoundland and Labrador and currently employ 317 people. They also offer a
wide range of financial services similar to banks, including chequing, savings
accounts, loans, mortgages and credit investment services.
Going on to some other information as well. Credit
unions are independently owned by members. The credit union – which, again, is
CUDGC – is a provincial Crown corporation and responsible for administering and
ensuring compliance with the Credit Union
Act and regulations.
The current act identifies a superintendent of credit
unions to also serve as the CEO of the credit union. That's some of the proposed
regulations they're changing. I'll just go down and touch on some of those.
We're not going to be able to do them all, obviously, but I'll go down and touch
on some of those.
When we were doing our briefing, the officials noted
that some of the key arrangements are: requiring directors and official officers
of a credit union and of the CUDGC to disclose potential conflict of interest.
This isn't spelled out in our current legislation. So the proposed amendments
will identify what constitutes a conflict, require disclosure and provide a
process for disclosure as well. I think it's important to get away from one CEO
– so to separate that. I think that's important.
Requiring credit unions to establish bylaws for
engaging external third parties to perform services on behalf of the credit
union. An example is an IT service provider. This is addressed in section 47.1
and added to the act. Officials noted this addition would help minimize
potential risk to members from third party arrangements.
Also separating the roles of the duties of the
superintendent and the CEO, which I just touched on. Also we're going to be
updating the current structure of the board. This will align with the
international guidelines and the structure within other jurisdictions.
Also, we'll be updating – we'll all be updating, I
guess – duties, powers and responsibilities of the CUDGC and the superintendent.
Officials had said that this aligns with best practices, and other jurisdictions
will require to report significant issues to the superintendent.
Again, to highlight how many amendments are there:
There are 13 amendments related to record keeping; there are 10 amendments that
are related to new and revised definitions in the act. An example would be
several definitions are added related to federal continuance, which is a new
section added to the act, and another example of that is the definition of
material contact. It's also added to the act as well.
There are nine amendments that are related to
modernizing and updating the language. Section 36 on trust funds is updated to
include electronic transactions. There are also instances where wording is
changed for clarity. Such as under section 180, to clarify when notice is sent
by mail or electronic means.
There are seven amendments related to facilitating the
establishment of credit unions. A new section is added to the act to address
this. Officials explained that this is a long way off, but it would permit
provincial credit unions to operate as a federal credit union upon approval from
provincial government and subject to federal regulations. Some pretty in-depth
regulations that are here.
There are also five amendments to increase offences and
penalties. Under section 169 and 170, the upper limit of fines for individuals
is increased to $25,000, and the fines for corporations between $10,000 and
$50,000.
There are also five amendments that are aimed at
enhancing membership in credit unions, allowing members for more input into
dividend decisions.
There are also four amendments dealing with timelines
under the act. So the references, notification periods for meetings and allow
electronic meetings, which officials noted as a modern way to do business,
particularly in the current health emergency. During COVID, some of these banks
and credit unions or whatever the case may be, I guess they found it difficult
at the time to be able to have meetings in general and try to do them virtually
and some new regulations that are going to be added.
Also, there are four amendments that are dealing with
timelines under the act, so references, notification periods for meetings – no,
I already said that. Sorry.
There are also several other amendments including
expanded regulation-making authorities.
That's touching on some of the 86 amendments on that.
When we get into Committee, we have some questions there for sure that we will
ask and be able to get some answers to. Hopefully, when we get there, that there
are other people that have some questions, we will certainly try to get them
answered.
Thank you.
MADAM SPEAKER (P. Parsons):
The Member for Mount Scio.
MS.
STOODLEY:
Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.
I just want to thank the Members for speaking about
this bill. It seems like there is general support, so I'm very thankful for
everyone for that.
I'd like to thank the MHA for Labrador West. His points
about digital banking and how consumers' interests are changing is very
relevant. So thank you very much.
I'd like to thank the MHA for Cape St. Francis for his
very relevant remarks last week about this bill as well; a lot about protecting
members. So thank you very much.
The MHA for Ferryland, thank you very much for your
feedback today as well.
I look forward to discussing this in Committee and
answering any questions that Members have.
Thank you very much.
MR.
SPEAKER (Reid):
The
hon. the Deputy Government House Leader.
MS.
DEMPSTER:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I move, seconded by the Minister of Digital Government
and Service NL, that the House resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole to
consider Bill 46, An Act To Amend The Credit Union Act, 2009.
MR.
SPEAKER:
It
is moved and seconded that I do now leave the Chair and that the House resolve
itself into a Committee of the Whole to consider the said bill.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
MR.
SPEAKER:
All
those against, 'nay.'
Carried.
One second, before we do that, we did that procedure a
little bit wrong there. We didn't do the vote on second reading before going
into Committee. I'm going to revert to – the minister spoke and we didn't take
the vote on second reading. So just to make sure we have everything right.
Is the House ready for the question?
The motion is that Bill 46 be now read a second time.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
MR.
SPEAKER:
All
those against, 'nay.'
Carried.
ACTING TABLE OFFICER:
A bill, An Act To Amend The Credit Union Act, 2009. (Bill 46)
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
bill has now been read a second time.
When shall the said bill be referred to a Committee of
the Whole?
MR.
CROCKER:
Now.
MR.
SPEAKER:
Now.
On motion, a bill “An Act To Amend The Credit Union
Act, 2009,” read a second time, ordered referred to a Committee of the Whole
presently, by leave. (Bill 46)
MR.
SPEAKER:
It
is moved and seconded that I do now leave the Chair and that the House resolve
itself into a Committee of the Whole to consider the said bill.
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.'
Carried,
On motion, that the House resolve itself into a
Committee of the Whole, the Speaker left the Chair.
Committee of the Whole
CHAIR (P. Parsons):
Order, please!
We are now considering Bill 46, An Act To Amend The
Credit Union Act, 2009.
A bill, “An Act To Amend The Credit Union Act, 2009.”
(Bill 46)
ACTING TABLE OFFICER:
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.
ACTING TABLE OFFICER:
Clauses 2 through 86 inclusive.
CHAIR:
Clauses 2 through 86 inclusive.
All those in favour, 'aye.'
The Chair recognizes the hon. the Member for Ferryland.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I had them broken down in different clauses, I didn't
know if you were going to go through five or 10 at a time, but in clauses 5 and
6, sections 11 and 12 of the act references names and prohibited names. There
was a reference in the Explanatory Notes of the bill to removing the authority
for credit union's to use the title: Co-operative Credit Society.
Are there any instances –?
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Oh,
oh!
CHAIR:
Order, please!
I'm having trouble hearing the speaker.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
Are
there any instances of that being used now? I'm not sure if you could hear the
question or not.
CHAIR:
The
hon. the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.
MS.
STOODLEY:
I'm
just wondering if you could just clarify one more time the exact question.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
There's a reference in the Explanatory Notes of the bill to removing the
authority for credit unions to use the title: Co-operative Credit Society. Are
there any instances of that being used now?
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.
MS.
STOODLEY:
No,
there are not.
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Member for Ferryland.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
Section 35 references a member's right to withdraw deposits. With these
amendments, the authority for a credit union to require 90 days written notice
from a member to withdraw money is to be removed.
What replaces that now? Will notice be required?
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
Chair recognizes the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.
MS.
STOODLEY:
Sorry, can the Member repeat the question.
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Member for Ferryland.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
Section 35 references a member's right to withdraw deposits. With these
amendments, the authority for a credit union to require 90 days written notice
from a member to withdraw money will be removed.
What replaces that now? Will notice be required?
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.
MS.
STOODLEY:
Nothing has replaced it. The requirement is simply removed. There will not be
any notice required.
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Member for Ferryland.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
Under sections 37 and 38, the requirements in the act regarding payouts of money
upon death will be replaced with a requirement that credit unions establish
policies regarding deceased members.
Can you offer further details on this?
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.
MS.
STOODLEY:
I
think, obviously, if members have a loved one who's deceased, it's important
that each credit union, or a group of credit unions, have policies and
procedures in place to ensure that loved ones or family members or partners or
spouses or descendants or beneficiaries receive money that they're entitled to
legally that might be remaining in their account. I believe this change will
just ensure that each credit union – will make it lawful that each credit union
has to have those policies and procedures in place.
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the hon. the Member for Ferryland.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
Section 117 references amalgamation of credit unions. The requirement that at
least 60 per cent of the creditors of an amalgamating credit union must consent
to amalgamation is being removed.
Why is that? Can you offer further details on that?
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.
MS.
STOODLEY:
Sorry, what number was that?
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
Section 117.
MS.
STOODLEY:
Sorry, can the Member repeat the question.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
The
requirement that at least 60 per cent of the creditors of an amalgamating credit
union must consent to amalgamation is being removed.
Why is that? Can you offer further details?
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.
MS.
STOODLEY:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
When the changes for this Credit Union Act were put in
place, one of the things we're doing is aligning them with credit union
legislation in other provinces. That's one reason why we're making this change.
I'm just waiting for additional information at the
moment. Can we potentially come back to this so I can add more clarity in a
minute, please?
Thank you.
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Member for Ferryland.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Yes, no problem. If you don't have the answer there,
then just let us know that and we will move on to the next one.
Section 131.1 is a new section that's added to the act
referencing federal continuance. In our briefing, we were told that this will
allow credit unions in our province to apply for federal continuance and to
facilitate establishing a federal credit union. We were also told that this is a
long ways off but it was decided to put it in the act in order to avoid the
options available.
I am wondering why that is being put in there now
rather than being dealt with in the future amendments.
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.
MS.
STOODLEY:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
As these acts don't get modified very often and we are
doing a very comprehensive review, we felt like it was important to add that in
case a credit union was, say, big enough to meet the federal criteria to become
a federal credit union. My understanding is none of our current credit unions
meet that criteria at the moment. I think we were just trying to be
comprehensive so that if, in the future, a credit union did meet the credit, we
wouldn't have to come back and change the legislation.
I did, Madam Chair, have a response for the previous
question, if that's okay. I just wanted to add also that in terms of putting
regulations in for a deceased member, in terms of the credit union putting
members in place, we did that change because it just kind of aligns with general
credit union principles. It was important that when someone has an heir, there
are policies and procedures in place to direct appropriately how that money
flows.
Thank you.
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Member for Ferryland.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
Sections 169 and 170 deal with offences. The fines have increased for
individuals, but not for corporations. Is there a reason for this and are the
offences and penalties in line with other jurisdictions?
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.
MS.
STOODLEY:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
We did review the fines for other provinces for
individuals and for corporations. They're in alignment, but also proportional to
the size of our credit unions, the size of our credit union holdings. Obviously,
a very large credit union in Ontario with many, many more members than we have
would have larger fines in that instance. Based on the size of our credit
unions, the amount of holdings, the amount of members, we did review across the
country and we felt that these were proportionate and appropriate for our credit
unions in the province.
CHAIR:
Thank you.
The Chair recognizes the Member for Ferryland.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
Regulation making authority is expanded with these amendments. When will the
associated regulations be available?
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.
MS.
STOODLEY:
The
team will be drafting regulations, I believe that's already started, and that
goes through the process of getting Cabinet approval. I would anticipate within
the year. I think that's standard once a piece of legislation comes to the
House, there's a year before regulations are in place. So I would expect that
would be the case.
CHAIR:
Thank you.
The Chair recognizes the Member for Ferryland.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
How were the credit union members engaged in this review process, if they were?
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.
MS.
STOODLEY:
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
There was an extensive consultation process with credit
unions and credit union members. We also have the Credit Union Deposit Guarantee
Corporation, which is a Crown corporation, as well as a board and we have the
superintendent of credit unions as well within our department. We are confident
that we have listened to and incorporated credit union member feedback in the
proposed changes to the legislation.
CHAIR:
The
Member for Ferryland.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
Do all of these proposed amendments stem from the review of the credit union
legislation completed by the Credit Union Deposit Guarantee Corporation?
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.
MS.
STOODLEY:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm not familiar with exactly where each amendment has
come from, specifically, where it originated. It is a result of the thorough
review of each provincial legislation, our current legislation, a review by the
Credit Union Deposit Guarantee Corporation, the board and a thorough stakeholder
engagement ensuring that we have a safe legislative environment.
The foremost thing, Madam Chair, is protecting the
interests of the members of credit unions in Newfoundland and Labrador. That's
our primary goal, having a dependable, trustworthy, reliable financial system
that residents of the province can have faith in and trust and protect the
members, protect their hard-earned money that may be held in these credit
unions.
CHAIR:
Thank you.
The Chair recognizes the Member for Ferryland.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
Do these amendments include and address all recommendations made by the CUDGC?
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.
MS.
STOODLEY:
Sorry, I didn't quite understand the question.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
Do
these amendments include and address all recommendations made?
MS.
STOODLEY:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
My understanding is the Credit Union Deposit Guarantee
Corporation is in alignment with most of the recommendations here. I would say
that, as the provincial government, we have a unique perspective as the
regulator and we are trying to protect the interest of members. Not all
stakeholder groups are happy with all elements of the legislation, but this is
our kind of proposed that aligns with the other provinces and also protects
members and maintains a trustworthy, reliable financial system.
CHAIR:
Thank you.
The Chair recognizes the Member for Ferryland.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
Officials indicated that credit union legislation in other jurisdictions was
also reviewed. Are these amendments in line with other jurisdictions? Is there
anything that is an outlier or different from best practices in other
jurisdictions?
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.
MS.
STOODLEY:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
This review is a result of provincial and territorial
review of credit union legislative changes that we have done. My understanding
is that while we do have kind of a unique situation here with the Credit Union
Deposit Guarantee Corporation, as being a Crown corporation, there are some
nuances that make it different from the credit unions and how they are governed
in the other provinces. But, specifically, there are no legislative outliers
here that make this system substantially different than any other system.
CHAIR:
Thank you.
The Chair recognizes the Member for Ferryland.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
Are
all stakeholders supportive of these amendments?
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.
MS.
STOODLEY:
I
am aware of a few changes that a few stakeholders would like us to make that
aren't reflected here, but we are confident that this reflects the best
legislative package we could put forward to protect the people and protect the
members. But my understanding is, generally, everyone is very supportive of this
bill and these proposed changes.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
CHAIR:
The
Member for Ferryland.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
When will these changes take effect? You might have said that but I'm not sure
if I caught that.
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.
MS.
STOODLEY:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
The regulations that accompany this bill would – I just
received information. We're hoping to have those in summer 2021 so that's when
this bill would take effect.
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Member for Ferryland.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
What is your plan to communicate these changes to the stakeholders?
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.
MS.
STOODLEY:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Once we have the regulations developed and they pass
through the appropriate Cabinet processes, they would be communicated through
the Credit Union Deposit Guarantee Corporation to all the credit unions. We have
a communications plan in place to make sure that all credit unions are aware of
the changes. This act also has, as we know, changes that they'll have to make in
terms of how credit unions operate, how their boards operate and how they
communicate with their members.
I would also anticipate members seeing, perhaps next
fall, the result of these changes where information that they receive from their
credit unions is updated and is more appropriate and aligned with this
legislation.
I can't remember what the question was, sorry.
Thank you.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
No,
that was good. I had asked: What was your plan to communicate these changes to
the stakeholders?
All good, that's it for me on questions.
CHAIR:
Any
further speakers?
Shall clauses 2 to 86 carry?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
CHAIR:
All
those against, 'nay.'
Carried.
On motion, clauses 2 through 86 carried.
ACTING TABLE OFFICER:
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.
ACTING TABLE OFFICER:
A bill, An Act To Amend The Credit Union Act, 2009.
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 without amendment carried?
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
Chair recognizes the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Madam Chair, I move that the Committee rise and report
Bill 46.
CHAIR:
Is
it the pleasure of the House that the Committee rise and report Bill 46?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
CHAIR:
All
those against, 'nay.'
Carried.
On motion, that the Committee rise, report progress and
ask leave to sit again, the Speaker returned to the Chair.
MR.
SPEAKER (Reid):
The
hon. the Member for Harbour Grace - Port de Grave.
MS.
P. PARSONS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Committee of the Whole have considered the matters
to them referred and have directed me to report Bill 46, An Act To Amend The
Credit Union Act, 2009, without amendment.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
Chair of the Committee of the Whole reports that the Committee have considered
the matters to them referred and have directed her to report Bill 46 carried
without amendment.
When shall the report be received?
MR.
CROCKER:
Now.
MR.
SPEAKER:
Now.
When shall the said bill be read a third time?
MR.
CROCKER:
Tomorrow.
MR.
SPEAKER:
Tomorrow.
On motion, report received and adopted. Bill ordered
read a third time on tomorrow.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
I call Order 7, second reading of Bill 50.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
I move, seconded by the Minister of Transportation and
Infrastructure, that Bill 50, An Act To Amend The Auditor General Act, be now
read a second time.
MR.
SPEAKER:
It
is moved and seconded that Bill 50, An Act To Amend The Auditor General Act, be
now read a second time.
Motion, second reading of a bill, “An Act To Amend The
Auditor General Act.” (Bill 50)
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
I'm pleased this afternoon to take some time to give
some information and a little bit of background around Bill 50 which deals with
an amendment to the Auditor General Act.
This bill will amend the act to replace the reference
to a sitting of the House of Assembly in subsection 7(2) with a reference to a
session of the House of Assembly.
Just some context: on March 11, 2020, the former
Auditor General resigned. In July 2020, the Deputy Auditor General was appointed
in an acting capacity. The Deputy Auditor General can perform the duties of the
Auditor General; however, it's important that we make this change here today to
the act, because the act currently states: “Where the office of the auditor
general becomes vacant and an acting auditor general is appointed under
paragraph 1(b) or (c), the term of the acting auditor general shall not extend
beyond the end of the next sitting of the House of Assembly.”
Today we want to change sitting to session. There are a
number of reasons for this. It's due in lots of parts to the reference to how
long a sitting can actually be. Technically, a sitting can be as short as a day.
We've had many extraordinary sittings since COVID-19 here in this Chamber and
this would fall back in line. With the changes around the Auditor General being
selected by the Independent Appointments Commission, it does take more time.
Again, the proposal today is we change that.
The amendment outlined in Bill 50 would address this
timing issue by removing the word “sitting” and replacing it with “session.”
This would have the effect of changing the acting appointment from “… shall not
extend beyond the end of the next sitting of the House of Assembly” to “… shall
not extend beyond the end of the next session of the House of Assembly.” The
term “session” is the period of time between Speeches of the Throne and
prorogation.
Prior to 2016, the tender for enacting an Auditor
General was not an issue as the appointment could be filled at any point during
the vacancy. Using the new Independent Appointments Commission, their
recruitment process does take some more time.
Mr. Speaker, I'm not going to belabour the change any
further, but I'll certainly look forward to other Members, if they have some
input or want to make some comments about this change.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Stephenville - Port au Port.
MR.
WAKEHAM:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I'll just have a few comments to make. Obviously, we
support this change.
As someone who started his career in public service
with the Department of the Auditor General, I can attribute to the important
work that the Auditor General department does.
In my time there, of course, we were way back. At that
time, we were actually doing municipal audits as well as Crown audits. I had the
pleasure of going around several areas of this province and I used to say we'd
put on our accounting hat and do the accounting work first to get the financial
statements in order and then we'd audit our own work. It's come a long ways, I'm
glad to say, from municipalities and government. The Auditor General is a very
important office, as we all recognize, and the work they do allows us to be able
to have informed decisions a lot of times in our House of Assembly here.
Again, the minister has alluded to the appointment of
the Auditor General as being for a 10-year term through the Independent
Appointments Commission and a recommendation of the House of Assembly. We've
seen where the previous Auditor General had stepped down prior to that period
being up and we find ourselves in a situation where we have an Acting Auditor
General. The idea is that the work continues, and even though the word acting is
in front of the Auditor General currently, that work does continue and the
Auditor General and the Auditor General's department continue to do valuable
work on behalf of the people of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Again, this change in wording will allow us to move, as
the minister referred to, from a sitting to a session and give more flexibility.
We support the change and I'll conclude my remarks.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
MR.
SPEAKER:
Further comments?
The hon. the Member for Labrador West.
MR.
BROWN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Here in the NDP caucus or the Third Party caucus, we do
support this change to move from sitting to session. We think it's important to
give the comprehensive review that gives them ample time to select an Auditor
General. We respect the work that is done in that division. We support that
motion.
Thank you.
MR.
SPEAKER:
Seeing no further speakers, I'm going to ask the hon. Government House Leader to
close the debate.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
I'm not sure if that was a record or not, but this just
goes to show that this is pretty much a housekeeping piece of legislation. I
thank the Members opposite, the Member for Lab. West and the Member for
Stephenville - Port au Port for their input.
I note one of the things that the Member for
Stephenville - Port au Port noted was in this circumstance, the past Auditor
General left mid-term or part way through her term. This did leave a situation
where there was little time for planning. Again, that's why we find ourselves
here.
Mr. Speaker, I thank you and we'll move to Committee.
MR.
SPEAKER:
Is
the House ready for the question?
The motion is that Bill 50 be now read a second time.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
MR.
SPEAKER:
All
those against, 'nay.'
Carried.
CLERK (Barnes):
A
bill, An Act To Amend The Auditor General Act. (Bill 50)
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?
MR.
CROCKER:
Now.
MR.
SPEAKER:
Now.
On motion, a bill, “An Act To Amend The Auditor General
Act,” read a second time, ordered referred to a Committee of the Whole House
presently, by leave. (Bill 50)
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Mr.
Speaker, I move, seconded by the Deputy Government House Leader, that this House
resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole to consider Bill 50.
MR.
SPEAKER:
It
is moved and seconded that I do now leave the Chair for the House to resolve
itself into a Committee of the Whole to consider the said bill.
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.'
Carried.
On motion, that the House resolve itself into a
Committee of the Whole, the Speaker left the Chair.
Committee of the Whole
CHAIR (P. Parsons):
Order, please!
We are now considering Bill 50, An Act To Amend The
Auditor General Act.
A bill, “An Act To Amend The Auditor General Act.”
(Bill 50)
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:
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:
The
Chair recognizes the Member for St. John's East - Quidi Vidi.
MS.
COFFIN:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm curious to know: What will happen to this bill or
the Auditor General's position if an election is called before we get a chance
to appoint a new Auditor General?
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
In that circumstance, the Acting Auditor General would
continue. The reality here, this is an officer of the House of Assembly; it's
not an officer of the government. I'm actually speaking today, I guess, on
behalf of the House of Assembly, but this is independent from government itself.
This is an office of the House of Assembly.
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Member for St. John's East - Quidi Vidi.
MS.
COFFIN:
So we're not going to get one if there's an election called before one is
appointed? I'm sorry, I wasn't quite clear on what …
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you very much.
Normally, you would be sitting here in Committee and
you would be looking at getting words back from the department. In this case,
I'm getting some of the answers from the House itself, being a House position.
So the Acting Auditor General would continue in that situation.
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Member for St. John's East - Quidi Vidi.
MS.
COFFIN:
Will this have any affect on the timing of the Auditor General's report for this
year?
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
I think, as the Member for Stephenville - Port au Port actually said, the
function of the Auditor General continues on. The Auditor General is an officer
of the House, so his or her work would continue on regardless of an election.
Any time we have an election, every four years or
whatever it may be, the work of the Auditor General continues on. The Auditor
General is a 10-year appointment. I think that's one of the reasons why the
Auditor General is appointed in a 10-year term so that the Auditor General is
not tied to a specific Parliament or an Assembly.
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Member for St. John's East - Quidi Vidi.
MS.
COFFIN:
I think that's all of my questions for now. I just wanted to have those on the
record for the House.
Thank you.
CHAIR:
Thank you.
The Chair recognizes the Member for Conception Bay East
- Bell Island.
MR.
BRAZIL:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm not quite sure if the minister can answer this.
Knowing that it is an officer of the House, is there a
time frame that we're working towards to have the new AG appointed?
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
It's my understanding that the process through the IAC
is moving along and has actually progressed substantially along the way, so I
would expect to see that in the not too distant future.
CHAIR:
Any
further speakers?
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 Auditor General 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
Chair recognizes the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Madam Chair, I move that the Committee rise and report
Bill 50.
CHAIR:
Is
it the pleasure of the House to rise the Committee and report the bill?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
CHAIR:
All
those against, 'nay.'
Carried.
On motion, that the Committee rise, report progress and
ask leave to sit again, the Speaker returned to the Chair.
MR.
SPEAKER (Reid):
The hon. the Member for Harbour Grace - Port de Grave.
MS.
P. PARSONS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Committee of the Whole have considered the matters
to them referred and have directed me to report Bill 50, An Act To Amend The
Auditor General Act, without amendment.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
Chair of the Committee of the Whole reports that the Committee have considered
the matters to them referred and directs her to report Bill 50 without
amendment.
When shall the report be received?
MR.
CROCKER:
Now.
MR.
SPEAKER:
When will the said bill be read a third time?
MR.
CROCKER:
Tomorrow, Mr. Speaker.
MR.
SPEAKER:
Tomorrow.
On motion, report received and adopted. Bill ordered
read a third time on tomorrow.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
I call from the Order Paper, Motion 2, Bill 48, a
resolution respecting the imposition of taxes on vapour products.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Finance.
MS.
COADY:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I move, seconded by the Government House Leader, that
the House resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole on Ways and Means to
consider certain resolutions and a bill respecting the imposition of taxes on
vapour products, Bill 48.
MR.
SPEAKER:
It
is moved and seconded that I do now leave the Chair for the House to resolve
itself into a Committee of the Whole on Ways and Means.
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
MR.
SPEAKER:
All
those against, 'nay.'
Carried.
On motion, that the House resolve itself into a
Committee of the Whole, the Speaker left the Chair.
Committee of the Whole
CHAIR (P. Parsons):
Order, please!
We are now debating the related resolution on Bill 48.
Resolution
“Be it resolved
by the House of Assembly in Legislative Session convened, as follows:
“That is it is expedient to bring in a measure
respecting the imposition of taxes on vapor products.”
CHAIR:
Shall the resolution carry?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
The Chair recognizes the Minister of Finance.
MS.
COADY:
Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and I appreciate having the opportunity to
speak for a few moments on this particular resolution.
For the members of Newfoundland and Labrador who are
listening today, e-cigarettes are battery-operated devices that mimic the
smoking experience, using an inhalation and heating process that vaporizes
liquid within the device. The liquid solution varies in composition but it's
usually a glycol-based or propylene-based and can be combined with other
ingredients and flavours. Nicotine can also be present or not.
While early studies demonstrated some potential
benefits to e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation device, current research remains
inconclusive and the body of evidence is rapidly growing and shifting in terms
of concern for various health impacts.
In Budget 2020,
the government outlined concerns about some harm caused by vaping and
tobacco, particularly, Madam Chair, among youth. Smoking and vaping are a
significant public health concern with long-term impacts to our health care
system.
In Budget 2020,
we introduced a 20 per cent tax on vaping products, as well as increases that
we've already debated here in the House on tobacco. The budget also had about
$1.7 million to prevent and reduce tobacco and vaping use, which I think is
very, very important. We're only the third province in the country to implement
a tax. British Columbia, as well as Nova Scotia, have already put their taxes on
these products, Madam Chair.
I will also say that I've been in touch with
some members of industry who are supportive of an excise tax to ensure that we
deter people, especially young people, from consuming these products. I have
read an interesting study, Madam Chair, from the World Bank Group. There are
several studies they talk about, but they've estimated the price elasticity of
e-cigarettes and they talk about that it's been “revealed that higher prices for
e-cigarette disposable appear to be associated with reduced e-cigarette use
among adolescents ….” I think that's critical, that we continue to deter people
from utilizing these devices.
I also think it's very important, Madam Chair,
that we put the supports in place to help people, to dissuade them from using
either tobacco or vaping. I can tell you that according to Health Canada, vape
use is far more prevalent among younger Canadians, age 15 to 24. That's Health
Canada 2019 Canadian Tobacco and Nicotine Survey.
You're starting to see the use of vape amongst
the youngest of our society and we really do need to start deterring these
people. It would make, I'm sure, this government and, indeed, every Member of
this House of Assembly pleased if we were to collect no tax that we're putting
in place today, because what it would mean is that people weren't utilizing
these devices.
We really want to have a healthier population.
Some people say maybe we should just ban vaping and tobacco, but we've seen that
prohibition doesn't work. We've seen that time and time again. What we want to
do is really try and dissuade people from smoking and from vaping. As I said,
the World Health Organization says that increasing taxes on “tobacco products is
the single most consistently effective tool for reducing tobacco use,” with
greater impact on young people and low-income individuals.
What we want to do here today – and I think I
have the support of the House based on our debates of a week or so ago that we
had a private Member's resolution come forward and there was some great
discussion and debate in the House of Assembly to really reduce the prevalence
of vaping. I heard from all of our colleagues in the House of Assembly in
support of trying to help people curb their addiction to vaping and to tobacco.
I was really interested to learn that
e-cigarettes were first introduced only a short time ago in the Canadian market.
I think it was 2004, according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation. It's only
been in recent times that we're starting to see some of the health concerns.
I will say, Madam Chair, I think this is the
right thing for the House of Assembly and for government to do at this point in
time. I encourage people who need supports and assistance to reach out. We do
help to fund the Smokers' Helpline and we do fund other programs to help to
deter people from this addiction.
On that, Madam Chair, I'll listen to my colleagues and
their thoughts on this particular bill. I do believe I have the support and
encouragement of the House of Assembly in order to do this. I think it's very
important that we address the concerns around vaping.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
CHAIR:
Thank you.
The hon. the Member for Conception Bay East - Bell
Island.
MR.
BRAZIL:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Again, it's an honour to speak in this House, as it
always is for every Member of the House of Assembly, particularly when we're
taking about the revenues for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and the
expenditures.
Now, myself and the Minister of Finance may very seldom
agree on a tax increase in any way, shape or form but I will start my discussion
with saying in this case, I personally, wholeheartedly agree with the fact this
is a necessary evil. If taxes are considered evil, this is a necessary evil.
I'm one, and I think some other Members of this House,
a number of years ago when we had all night sessions, spent a fair bit of time
debating a piece of legislation around vaping. At the time, as I still do
realize and accept, it's a necessity as a cessation program for certain people.
The process here always has been and continues to always be particularly people
in the health profession. I've talked to those leaders from the Heart and Stroke
Foundation and from the Lung Association and the perspective here is, how do we
find the best ways through education, through supports to encourage people to
wean themselves away from their dependency on any forms of tobacco as such?
In some cases, as the minister had outlined, sometimes
it has to be people do it for various reasons, but the biggest deterrent
sometimes is the financial cost. Sometimes you have to make decisions that may
not necessarily be relevant to the same way you would increase taxes for revenue
generating necessities but while at the same time it may generate some
additional revenues, that's secondary to the fact that maybe it will do what
it's hopefully meant to do, deter people from using that particular issue that
are causing more severe health issues. Outlining the fact that it becomes a
bigger financial burden on all taxpayers, not counting the most important thing,
the health of those individuals or the individuals around them.
At the time I felt, and I still feel, there's a need
for the vaping materials and the vaping products; but, at the time, I was hoping
that the pendulum was going dramatically down from the number of smokers to
those who were vaping to those who would eventually even wean themselves off
vaping as part of the cessation program. I felt that government had a role in
support that, as we did on a number of other cessation programs over the years
that were proven to help people get themselves away from dependency on tobacco
itself.
Unfortunately, what I did discover, while that worked
for some people, the alarming issues were – we all know, and we all grew up,
particularly if you went to high school in the '70s or even in the '80s and
probably beyond, you knew when you went around the corner there were 15 stood up
having a cigarette during recess or lunchtime or as soon as they got out before
they got on the bus. That itself was alarming. Those were days when we weren't
as educated about the impacts of tobacco, the health conditions, the situation,
the impact it would have long-term on people. We didn't see it as something
people needed as a stress reliever or a coping mechanism.
We've evolved since then and we realized that some need
it. For some, it's an addiction, we understand and accept that. So we need to
deal with an addiction with giving supports that doesn't add more to the
addiction in other ways or make them just as much dependant on a particular
necessity. In this case, it's the vaping from the tobacco parts or the vaping
products that are part and parcel of it. As a result, that doesn't really
achieve the effect that we had hoped to.
Only a few months ago, I was at a school just before
COVID, a high school, and when I came out I saw the cloud of smoke come around
the corner. I saw at least six or seven vaping. The alarming thing, it wasn't
what I would've thought now with Grade 12 that these were 17- or 18-year-olds.
These were 12- and 13- and 14-year-olds. That really was alarming to me for two
reasons. One, how they accessed it. I understand we're creative in this province
at any age to be able to get products that we probably shouldn't be having
access to. What was really alarming was, at the end of the day, I could see the
appeal. This was a trendy appeal thing. It was different than a cigarette. It
was different than the whole concept of doing what your parents are doing and
these types of things. It became a trendy thing.
Personally, I think we all have to take a bit of blame
for that because when we brought it in, we probably weren't aware a few years
ago of how we also had to add other support mechanisms from education to access
to minimize how younger people could be taken in, that this is a trendy thing.
It's the hip thing to do. It engages you with the socially acceptable groups. I
think we missed that. The more I read up on it and the more I looked at it, the
industry took us off a little bit. Industry found ways to entice a new market.
When I heard about flavour vaping and these types of
things, and the cool-looking vaping machines, I said do you know what? At the
end of the day, industry came in with the right intention. I'm hoping they did.
I know the medical profession, when they were talking about what role vaping
could play in cessation programs and getting people off their dependency, the
industry was going to be co-operative. Unfortunately, I'm not 100 per cent
convinced that the industry didn't see an opportunity to change their market
flow and still be very successful from a profit margin point of view, and by
expanding the number of clients and customers that they would have.
I go back in my days, back in the '80s as a civil
servant; I was responsible for most, if not all, of the research around youth
issues. That included everything from alcohol and drug dependency to tobacco
use, to sexually transmitted diseases to teen pregnancy: all the things that
were relevant to it. I was fairly aware of where the trends were going and had
seen a positive that trends were coming down.
I gave credit to government programs and health
professionals, but organizations like the Lung Association and Heart and Stroke
and their education programs, the education system itself and leaders within the
community, and thought we were going in the right direction. Again, thought that
this whole process around vaping might be something that would be better fit to
get those teenagers who took up smoking, give them an opportunity to get
themselves off that dependency and the adult population as such.
To my surprise and horror, I noticed that the trend has
gone upward when it comes to young people. That's alarming because there are
three major issues here. One, there's still discussion around that vaping may be
actually more dangerous from a health point of view; two, it becomes much more
expensive as part of it; and three, it becomes much more attractive to a younger
population around the attraction of how it was being sold.
Like I said, when I started hearing things and seeing
products that are bubble gum flavour, then I'm trying to think what audience or
what customer base are you really going after. That makes me alarmed; it makes
me a little angry that industries would go that route, but I understand they're
profit driven. Maybe their intentions in the beginning were honourable, but some
have gone a different direction, which is a little bit alarming and personally
insulting that at least they didn't stick to what the intent of it was and still
keep their market value going.
Adding a tax, there's a value of trying to say to those
– at least if we get 3 per cent who say here's my threshold. I remember my
mother always saying – who was a smoker – if cigarettes get to $1, I'm done. I
remember they went from 95 cents to $1 – and it might have been 1980 or '78 or
'79 – she stopped cold turkey. People need some motivations. Sometimes it's
about, physically, I'm going to do something else; sometimes they get a medical
scare; sometimes they see somebody else who's gone through traumatic events
because of their lifestyle and that changed it. Some it's financial. A lot of us
know what it means if something costs more.
While we talk about tax increases, which is never the
flavour in the House of Assembly and it's very seldom that we're going to agree
to anything. In this case, I personally see the value of sending the message out
there. This is not an attack on those who provide those products in their retail
outlets. This is not what this is about. This is not to stifle their business.
What it is, from my understanding, is to centre the business around those who
were initially, when these products came onboard and they were legislatively put
out there with safeguards, that indeed the industry would cater to those who
would need the vaping products as their mechanism for their dealing with their
tobacco needs either weaning themselves off, or this would be the approach that
they would take as their social reliever, for want of a better phrase.
To get to a point now when we're seeing dramatically
where it's going, and we know the whole evidence is not there yet because, don't
forget; this is new. As the minister said, we're talking only the last 15 years
or so. This is relatively new when you do research. People have been smoking, I
guess, since the dawn of time, but we've been doing research in the last 100
years or more and now realize that even changed dramatically; how more and
negative it is on our health.
As we go forward, I'm suspecting we're not going to
find that vaping has been overrated in the sense that it's not as dangerous or
have such a negative impact on people's health. I'm fearful that we're going to
find the opposite. I'm particularly fearful that if young people are, at this
point, finding it as a socially acceptable vice to be part of in society, then
that worries me because, again, once they start getting addicted, an addiction
is an addiction. Does it lead to other things? Possibly, it does, but the fact
is that they're still addicted to that. I don't know what the mechanism is to
wean them off something that we thought would be used as a mechanism to get
people off the tobacco use itself.
We've got some challenging times here. This is a small
step forward to at least sending the message that we're serious about what needs
to be done to keep people safe and healthy in Newfoundland and Labrador.
I hope the industry understands this is not an attack
on them from that perspective. It's about maybe there are other ways that we can
help them provide products to people who in turn are finding ways to either cope
with whatever their needs are or, at the same time, get them to move away from
their dependency on, particularly, tobacco.
Madam Chair, I, as the Health critic for the PC Party
and the Official Opposition, will be supporting this. It's not very often, if at
all, you're ever going to hear me say that again, I suspect in the House, that
we're supporting a tax increase. But in this case we see the value of it and we
hope it gets the end result that less people, particular those who are more
vulnerable, do not find themselves addicted to this forever and a day.
Madam Chair, I'll end on that and hope that, at the end
of the day, the desired effect comes out of this that we hope it does.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
CHAIR:
Thank you.
The Chair recognizes the Member for Lake Melville.
MR.
TRIMPER:
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I'm very pleased to speak on this. It's certainly not a
coincidence that a couple of weeks ago I was very pleased to, in this House,
introduce this private Member's resolution about keeping vaping products out of
the hands of our youth of our province. In combination with the tax that the
minister is escorting today and the concerns that the Member for Conception Bay
East - Bell Island just outlined, we are very serious in this House of Assembly
about tackling this problem in society and, in particular, keeping it out of the
youth of this province.
I just wanted to remind everyone, because it was a very
successful PMR just two weeks ago, there are a couple of key elements that went
in there and I just want to remind everyone who is watching and here on the
floor what we are trying to do. I don't want to read it completely word for
word, the PMR, but I do want to highlight a couple of items. For example:
“WHEREAS, a 2019 British Medical Journal survey of youth in Canada, England and
the United States found that from 2017 to 2018, the prevalence of vaping for
teens aged 16 to 19 jumped from 8.4 per cent to 14.6 per cent, representing a 74
per cent increase year-over-year; ….”
Therefore, our resolution, what we wanted to do in this
Legislature was take the very many good ideas, suggestions and recommendations
that we heard on that day – I still got my notes and the people that are around
me, my researchers and so on up on the fifth floor – once we take a little break
from the House we are going to be compiling those ideas and we'll be taking it
forward to the Social Services sector, of which I'm the Chair. We're going to
have a very serious look and see from those ideas, from those suggestions what
we might be able to do in terms of legislation to actually address that. I want
to assure everybody that activity is ongoing and we are going to keep our
promise of coming back and reporting back to this House by March 31, 2021.
A couple of other things I wanted to put out there.
Just to go back again a couple of weeks, but two weeks is a long time in
politics and I wanted to remind people, with everything else going on, some of
the other players that are involved in this action and would support the
Minister of Finance's tax that we're discussing here today. From the
Newfoundland and Labrador Alliance for the Control of Tobacco, that team is
already involved in a series of commercials, and they've just started those in
the last few weeks. I note that I get to see them often on the newscasts.
Much of the impetus for myself wanting to lead this PMR
was through a science fair that I attended as a judge at St. Bonaventure's high
school. I met a young student there, Julia McCarthy. She's only 13 years of age,
and there she was very concerned about her own peers and concerned about vaping,
smoking and what it was doing to the health of her friends around her.
Two Wednesdays ago, Julia gathered – we had excellent
discussions with the NL Alliance, and there we go to the floor. Again, we had
excellent discussion here on the floor. People really dug deep, came up with a
lot of ideas and I'm very pleased to see it.
It's interesting, I was listening to what the Member
for Conception Bay East - Bell Island just said about a tax. A tax is – you
might as well make it a four-letter word for all that it conjures up, but often
the strategy around a tax is to incent society, to incent people to go in a
different direction.
When it comes to the concept of vaping – I can also
remember back, and it was really about six years ago that vaping products first
burst onto the scene as a means of smoking cessation. For folks who were
struggling with trying to be able to quit smoking, vaping was offered as an
excellent alternative. I even recall my colleague, the Minister of Health and
Community Services, the Member for Gander, saying that perhaps it does have some
merit in that regard, but after that he didn't see it. Frankly, in the work that
I've been doing since, I haven't seen it either.
Also, I wanted to refer to my colleague from Conception
Bay East - Bell Island's thoughts around industry and what were industry's
motives and what are industry's motives around the use of this product. Again, I
still remain struck by the fact that I believe we had a press release at about 5
o'clock or so on that particular Monday, and within two hours I was receiving
messages.
My phone is just ringing now, so I'll take a look later
and see what's happening there. Industry and lobbyists were coming at us already
and defending their position, sending us a great deal of information. Defending
what they felt was a legitimate strategy; however, health and science, and
certainly our concerns, are proving otherwise.
I think I'm going to end with a saying. I'm going to
quote again my colleague, my buddy from Gander, because he had identified four
important strategies when dealing with curbing anything that perhaps might be
affecting the health of the citizens of this province. He listed them as
education, treatment, legislation and enforcement. As I look at those boxes, I
want to put check boxes in them.
I'm very pleased to say that on the education front
that has already started off in earnest through NL Alliance, the Alliance for
the Control of Tobacco, and I thank them very much. That's a partnership with
this government. We've invested substantial dollars, as the Minister of Finance
alluded to, and we're off to the races there. I think the commercials, the
messages are very effective, and I'm hoping they're going to gain traction.
In terms of legislation, that's exactly why we're here
today, to see what we can do as legislators to tighten it up, to make it tougher
and to keep it out of the hands of the youth of this province.
Enforcement; well, that will also come perhaps with
aspects of what we're going to be doing as a result of the PMR. I believe in
terms of keeping sales of these products away from minors, also seeing what we
can do to perhaps control, eliminate the idea of flavours. In terms of
strategies, I'm sure we're going to be looking that way.
In terms of treatment, I have not gone in great detail
in that regard but I am afraid for what I'm seeing already in some of the people
who've reached out in the last couple of weeks. Folks that I've spoken to
previously, talked to me about the addictive nature they already are going
through, the light amounts of nicotine.
I believe the Minister of Health and Community Services
identified that some 11 cigarettes are sufficient to start an addiction around
cigarette smoking. With the most sinister amounts of nicotine and perhaps other
– there's a real hodgepodge of chemicals and I would suggest contaminants
included in this vapour. I'm very concerned in that regard, and I'm afraid that
if we don't act now as a jurisdiction, we are going to be struggling with all
matter of treatment that's going to be needed to address serious health
concerns.
With that, it renews one's faith in the democratic
system when you see everyone coming together to tackle a serious issue. Even if
it means a tax, often, as I say, it's a four-letter word, but today it's a
strategy that we're going to use to protect our province.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Member for Grand Falls-Windsor - Buchans.
MR.
TIBBS:
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I really appreciate the chance to speak here today.
It's about something that's very, very important and it should be very important
to all of us parents that own kids; everybody in society, when it comes to any
health threats or anything that can be detrimental to our health and a tax that
we can put on it.
No doubt COVID-19 has definitely fuelled addictions
within our society. I truly believe that; people at home longer, more time on
their hands, mental health and trying to find out ways to deal with their mental
health. Turning to substance abuse is one way that people have dealt with it in
the past and they'll continue to do it in the future.
Of course, it's not the right path to take but it
happens. It's something that we have to deal with throughout our society. You
can see it; it's more on the rise today. I can definitely see it day in and day
out.
The tax itself, of course, nobody likes to see
additional tax on anything. I know I don't, but if you're going to place a tax
on something to be a deterrent, this is definitely it. There's one thing that we
have to keep in mind and that is the fact that for some people, they're going to
have their addiction. They're going to get it no matter what. It doesn't matter
how much tax you put on it, they're going to have it.
One thing we have to be cognizant of is those people,
where are they going to pull that money from to fuel that addiction. In some
cases, you have to look at a possibility of if groceries are tight for the week
– it happens – or if children need something, that money has to come from
somewhere to fuel an addiction. It'll be pulled from there because certain
people will have it, no matter what.
When we put a tax on something, yes, it's great to say
it's a deterrent, it's going to deter people, but for some people it won't. For
some people – parents of children – they might pull that from a different area,
like I say, groceries or recreation for children. It's not a big tax but in this
day and age where every dollar counts, you might see some children do without
because of another tax it's on. It's just something to be cognizant of in the
future, that's all, for taxes.
Where this tax money goes, of course, I hope it goes to
treatment of addiction or deterrent in the future so you won't get addicted.
That's something that we'll be looking towards as well. How to deal with the
addiction itself. The best way to deal with an addiction, of course, is not to
have it. We all know that. So any information out there to anybody, parents,
children, that's the first line of defence, in my opinion, to make sure that
people don't get addicted in the future. The more information that's out there
the better it is.
Also, to all those parents at home, the Member for Bell
Island just mentioned it. Back in the day, it was the 16- or 17-year-old smoking
out around the parking lot or behind the school. They are in Grades 6, 7 and 8
vaping now. Imagine, 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds. It's an absolute sin. When
you're that young and you're trying to figure your way through life, the only
thing that should be going into your lungs is oxygen. That's it. As parents, we
try to do our best and talk to the kids, but I encourage all parents out there
to keep the dialogue open. Ask your kids if they're vaping. Sit down and chat
with them and let them know how bad it is for them. It can be a very frank
dialogue, but don't beat around the bush about it, don't dance around about it,
just ask them, sort of thing.
I remember when my sons were very, very young, Declan
and Xander, I made a deal with them that if they didn't lie to me, they couldn't
get in trouble. I wouldn't get upset; I wouldn't get mad. There could be a
punishment, but I would not get mad. We've held that deal right now until
they're 15 and 13. It worked out to be a great deal. But I talk to them all the
time: Have you been vaping? The oldest boy: Have you had a beer?
I just encourage all parents out there to keep that
dialogue open and don't have the dialogue once and six months later have it
again. Make sure you chat with your kids on a daily basis, on a regular basis.
It doesn't have to be overpowering. Just invite them for some inclusion and see
what their stance is, because the information out there that we're getting, it's
bad for them, but it needs to be passed on to the kids.
The old way of when I was younger mother would give you
a smack or whatever, those days are gone. We need preventative measures now and
talk to the children and see where they sit with it.
I think the Member for Baie Verte - Green Bay had a
couple of smacks maybe when he was younger as well.
AN
HON. MEMBER:
(Inaudible.)
MR.
TIBBS:
Yeah, you have that right.
Do you know what? It made me a better man today, I can
say that. But we're in a different era and we need to make sure – because being
young nowadays, it's not easy. Back when we were all young, you'd leave the
school and if you got to the sanctity of your home after a school day, that was
it, it was done. Nowadays, it's different because of these devices that we have
and social media, you're 24 hours a day, seven days a week connected. That's
both good and bad. So the kids out there, the young people, they don't have it
easy. We need to be cognizant of that as well.
When I had my oldest son Declan, my mother, for
instance, she saw Declan; she was a smoker all of her life. That was 15 years
ago we had Declan, as soon as she saw him she said: I'm going to quit smoking.
She smoked for over 30 years. I'll never forget it. We were like, yeah, mom,
come on, no chance. She never picked up a cigarette since.
It was very encouraging because she saw Declan and she
said: No way, I want to see my grandson get older and whatnot. It was very
inspiring because about three years after that she got lung cancer and she had
to have most of her right lung removed because of it. The doctor said if you had
kept smoking for that three years, it would have gone very, very quickly and she
probably wouldn't be with us today. Kudos to her for that.
If I could just take a quick moment here, it's a great
tax, if there is going to be a tax on something; I will support that. I just
want to take a quick moment and talk about something else in my district here,
which are the Dominion workers. The Dominion workers across Newfoundland and
Labrador, we all know are having a very hard time now. They are definitely
getting the short end of the stick when you look at different places in Canada
where Loblaws is as well.
I went to a rally last night with the Dominion workers
in Grand Falls-Windsor. I had to go because I had to see the looks on their
faces .That's how I work, like I say, I work purely on passion and intent. I had
to see the looks on some of these people's faces as they struggle to bring it
home. I don't get my information from a lot of books or a lot of reading, I'm
boots on the ground and I always will be. That's why I was there last night.
We learned last night that a lady working there 22
years was making $14.10 an hour. Another lady working three years, four years
was making the exact same wage. It's just not fair. For all of these people who
go back from full-time to part-time, it's absolutely disgraceful.
I just want Dominion workers to know we are with you.
We will do everything we can on our end to help you reach some sort of a deal.
We will support you. That's 1,500 families we're going to have now out again in
the cold. It's a strain and, hopefully, it's not the direction that the province
is going because we don't want that and these people work very, very hard.
Like I say, they're our family, they're our friends;
they're our neighbours. We wish the Dominion workers the best of luck on their
picket lines in this cold, cold weather. I'm sure most Members here have been
down to their local Dominion. I know you have, Madam Chair, as well, and I'm
sure they appreciate that. Anybody who hasn't, get your butt out there and talk
to these people because they're on the line now and it's getting pretty cold.
Stand with them. We will support them and we will unite them.
The only other thing about that is the food supply and
price gouging. By God, a year ago we were talking to people who were on fixed
incomes, seniors and whatnot and these people had their budget down to the
dollar. So when we get groceries, because of our food supplies and one place
shuts down and another place might try to take advantage of it or whatnot, it's
pretty scary out there when you look at the food prices going up. These people
have to find extra money to get it and they don't have it. It's a real sin to
not be able to buy food.
The Dominion workers, a lot of them, would fill up
carts for people, help people, smile at them all day long as they watch people
go with their carts with their family groceries for the week; at the end of the
day, they would hit the food bank themselves. That's sad. That's unfortunate.
We're all thankful for the food banks that are there, but to see that every day
and then have to go to a food bank yourself, it's pretty demoralizing. There's
nothing to be ashamed of, guys. We're with you. I just want you all to know
that, Dominion workers on the picket line there, we'll always stay with you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
TIBBS:
Anyway, Madam Chair, I see my time is up. I really appreciate the chance to
speak on this and, of course, I will be supporting this tax.
Parents: Have the chat with your kids, keep an open
dialogue and I wish you the best.
Thank you very much.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
CHAIR:
Thank you.
Order, please!
The Chair recognizes the Minister of Health and
Community Services.
MR.
HAGGIE:
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
It's a pleasure to be able to speak to this. The Member
for Lake Melville has stolen my usual stump speech on addictions with the four
pillars that he references. I will come back to that in a little bit.
I also would like to just draw the House's attention to
the fact that wellness has, as part of the changing portfolios from August 19,
now kind of been repatriated into the Department of Health after the great
divorce of 2014 where it was hived off. That will allow opportunities and
synergies because we do have, through the regional health authorities, a
parallel wellness stream and I think we were diluting our effort by a lack of
common focus. This is really part of the first test of that bringing home of
wellness, and as I was quoted earlier on in Question Period, I really would like
to see one of the real sea change for my department to become the department of
wellness and not illness.
Health is important, it's crucial and health care
delivery is one of the pillars of society in Canada, but the facts of the case
are it still spends disproportionate amounts of its time dealing with things
that have gone before and things that have happened, which brings me to
nicotine.
We have seen a huge rise in the prevalence of vaping of
nicotine products in youth. They are lured in by flavours: bubble gum, cotton
candy, all these kinds of things. When you look at that combination, Madam
Chair, there's only one reason to do that: It's to get them young and keep them
paying. Once people are exposed to nicotine, it is the latch upon which all our
smoking-related illnesses have been based.
People smoke cigarettes because they become addicted to
the nicotine component of cigarettes. That has really stressed Western, Northern
Hemisphere health care in ways that no one really ever imagined. Even though the
information was out there around smoking of cigarettes as early as 1964, with
Richard Doll and his landmark study from the UK on smoking-related illnesses,
we've seen the illnesses that are associated with cigarette use expand in scope.
It's no longer just lung cancer, as it were, but it's heart disease; it's
peripheral vascular disease. It exacerbates diabetes. It produces all sorts of
challenges.
That brings me back to the whole idea of vaping.
Nicotine as tobacco is a shrinking market because of the successes around the
Alliance for the Control of Tobacco, because of society's slow but steady
realization that it isn't the cool thing to be doing. It isn't something you now
see doctors advertising as a cure-all, as once they did at the turn of the
previous century. So the tobacco manufacturers have to do something with all
this leaf, and nicotine salts work very nicely in vape machines. Once you get
people into vaping, then you have an addict on your hand; you have someone who
is hooked.
The facts of the case are if you look at the nicotine
products that are available, the flavoured ones, while some of them ostensibly
have low nicotine concentrations, there are vials there that will contain the
equivalent of three to five packets of cigarettes. That's three to five packets
of 20, so that's 60-plus milligrams of nicotine in one vial.
Now, no newly initiated vaper will physically be able
to smoke that without making themselves acutely ill with nicotine poisoning. The
facts of the case are that is there as a gateway. People, when they become
addicted, they've got you one way or another. If it isn't the cigarettes and the
tobacco, they've got you with the derivatives of tobacco in nicotine.
There is evidence out there that suggests people who
smoke large quantities of conventional cigarettes over the course of a day will
actually have some medical benefits by simply taking in nicotine through vaping.
They don't get the tars; they don't get the carbon monoxide. They don't get all
the other things that produce significant problems from a medical point of view.
Vaping with candy-flavoured products is not designed
for people who have been smoking for 40 years. It's designed for the 12-year-old
who wants a cool little gadget, wants to sit there in recess or hang out with
their buddies and look as though they are 18 or 20. These machines are designed
to appeal to young girls and to young fellows with the big chunky things, a lot
like a bit that fell off a Hummer. That's what they're doing; they are snaring
our youth and getting them addicted.
Since the budget announced an increase in tax on
tobacco, there is a deterrent effect. We have had people calling asking about
smoking cessation programs. So price is a deterrent, even for people with
established addictions. It is even more of a deterrent, I would argue, for youth
who have modest discretionary income and will have challenges getting it.
It's not the be-all and end-all. The education piece,
as the Member for Grand Falls-Windsor - Buchans alluded to, of parents sitting
down and doing some active parenting with their youth is a key thing. It's a
piece because, at the end of the day, youth are influenced more by their peers
than they are by their parents.
That's why we gave a significant amount of money to the
Alliance for the Control of Tobacco for targeted campaigns to youth themselves
and to mentors outside the home who would deal with youth in a way that they
would listen to: the basketball coaches, the volleyball coaches, the swim meet
coaches, the Guides and Scouts counsellors, these kind of people who would
actually have a role here.
Price is just a part of it. The bulk of this document
here is actually to define what is a new area for taxation in terms of the
devices, in terms of the product, in terms of who sells them and where the tax
might actually be financially collected. I would much prefer that we don't even
have to go down this road and impose a tax, which is actually a five-letter
word, not a four-letter word in the context of the plural.
The fact is that we need to use a multi-pronged
approach, and you've heard me talk about that in relation to a lot of public
health issues, and this is one of the prongs – the talking to your kids, the
talking to youth, the financial piece and the enforcement piece around people
who choose to flout these regulations.
Then, at the back end, we have treatment. The latest
treatment, even on the vaping scene as far as getting people off tobacco is
concerned, is that vaping nicotine for heavy smokers is no more or less, to be
fair, effective than conventional nicotine substitute-based treatments. So it's
a treatment that, yeah, it's an option for some, but we have treatments that are
just as effective already. We have vaping, it's here and we have to deal with
it.
So with that, Madam Chair, I would urge the rest of the
House who feel they would like to contribute to this, to continue what I hear is
pretty well unanimous support thus far for a bill which will help protect our
youth from the evils, literally, of nicotine.
Thank you very much.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
CHAIR:
Thank you.
The Chair recognizes the Member for Ferryland.
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
It's interesting to sit here and listen to everybody's
take on the vaping and I certainly support it. You just have to keep in mind,
for the people that do have the addictions, they're the ones that have to take
from their own pocket. Everybody has said that as well, but I just think about
them sometimes. They do have an addiction and they have to try to feed that
addiction. Again, no matter what price you put it to, they're going to get it.
Certainly, keep that in mind.
I just spoke to a teacher here in front of me. I just
asked him a question, because when we went to school, smoking – I think the
regulations now is 19 years old to buy cigarettes, as I just asked one of my
colleagues here. No matter how old they were or how old you had to be, you could
get cigarettes or somebody got them for you. When you went to school, you always
knew that spot at your school where there was a smoking ground. It's not allowed
to be at the school grounds, but there was a smoking ground. There were always
groups of kids that went there.
It's amazing how many people, you would look out there
and they would walk half a mile to have a cigarette as a kid and we never did
get that changed. We never changed it. You always look on society that people –
that's going to happen, no matter what. When you look at it in school – and the
teacher's hands are tied. They can't enforce it.
I was going to do a petition last year on vaping, not
that I wouldn't do it now, but I was going to do a petition on vaping. I'm
getting it from concerned parents; kids are 14, 15 years old doing vaping.
They're doing it in school. They're doing it in the washrooms or doing it in the
hallway. The problem is, there's no lit cigarette. It's just smoke in the air.
How do you know who done it? They take the vape and put it in their pocket. How
are you going to chase them around school and try to figure out who done that or
who's got them?
They went through certain age groups; it was the in
thing to do. They had groups of 15 or 16, they all had different kinds of vapes;
as was said, different flavours as well. Who's going to control it? Again, it
doesn't matter what age you put it to. I would like to see it increased to maybe
21, but it doesn't matter what age you put it to, they're still going to avail
or they're still going to get it and there's not much you can do to stop it. We
can put all the policies in or all the legislation but it's really hard to
curtail.
Now, we did hear the Member for Grand Falls-Windsor say
as well, that it's great for the parents to be able to speak to that. I can only
speak on my behalf that my kids never smoked. I never smoked. My wife did before
we got married, but they never smoked. They look down on it. Maybe that's from
listening to their parents talk about smoking, but they really look down on
smoking and it's something they never took part in.
I have two daughters, and my oldest daughter never
drank until she was 19 – one of my oldest daughters. Now, that's unheard of in
today's society I can tell you. I never drank until I was 32, so it wasn't me.
My first drink was when I was 32. It was just something that I didn't do, and I
didn't smoke. I played sports and I stayed clear of that stuff, but I never
drank until I was 32 and she never drank until she was 19.
I remember the first night she went out and had a drink
with her friends, went downtown, sent a picture, put it on Facebook. The first
night downtown showing a picture laying there on the floor, and I instantly
called her, get that picture down. It was only a joke. She had her first drink,
so she was making a joke, but it was no joke to me. I said it might be a joke to
you, it's no joke to me, get that picture down and get it off Facebook. That was
down pretty quick.
I think parents have a major role to play in it,
keeping an eye on their kids. I'm not saying be forceful, but you have to preach
to them that it's not something that's accepted. If they're still going to do
it, then you have to deal with it in a different way.
Again, as the Member for Grand Falls said, you can't go
out and punish them or smack them or anything like that. That day in society is
gone. We were never brought up like that ourselves, but the way society is
today, everything with phones, everything happens. It's just so hard to control.
We sit here and I try to listen to everybody that's
speaking, but we really as parents – and we can put all the legislation in we
like, and hopefully people are listening to some of this stuff – that as
parents, you have to keep your eyes open, your ears listening to the stuff
that's going on around you that you can follow this stuff and, hopefully, bring
the level of it down. It's never going to happen, that everybody's not going to
smoke or not going to drink or do whatever, but we really have to keep an eye on
it in the schools. Again, the parents, or I'm going to say the teachers that are
in school trying to put it onto the parents – and the parents are always picking
up for their kids, always.
One day when we were young, if you went out and jumped
over a fence and broke a guy's fence, he came over and gave you a swift boot to
you know where, right in the butt. Then when you went home you had to deal with
it because you broke their fence. They didn't pick up for you and call that
other parent. They punished you as well for doing the same thing, that you're
destroying or breaking somebody else's property. So you had to deal with it
twice: first with the person you dealt with; then when you got home with your
parents. Today's society is now they go back at somebody or try to blame someone
else. It's the way it is. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it is.
Anyway, I'd just like to touch on a couple of other
things in my district. I know we can speak of different things. I had the
privilege of going to a meeting at the Colony of Avalon probably about a month
ago, maybe a little more. They were unfortunate enough that they didn't open
this summer because of COVID. Ninety-five per cent or more are tourists that
come into the area. I'll tie two together, that when I'm talking about tourists
coming into the area, I'm talking about, obviously, the advertising they're
going to try to do now to bring tourism from Atlantic Canada, I'm going to say,
in here for next year, and also tie it to roads and the conditions of roads. I'm
going to speak in my district, I guess, as much as I can.
The other thing I'll touch on is that sometimes you get
here and you're trying to speak on your district and you have so much stuff
going on, the districts are so vast, that I will apologize if I don't touch on
every community in my area that is so hard to speak on and brag about. You try
to touch on the major ones I guess, or as time permits you to do so.
Just getting back to the roads. We were here talking
last week about tourism, and some of our colleagues brought up the top three
visited places in Newfoundland. One was Gros Morne, the other was St. John's and
the third one leaves me – Bonavista, sorry, is the other one.
Now, I know that St. John's is number one, you got Gros
Morne number two and Bonavista number three, but I bet you dollars to doughnuts
that in the district of Petty Harbour, because it's counted in St. John's, it's
probably one of the most widely visited areas in tourism in this province. If
you drive down there yourself, you look down, it's inspiring to drive through
it. They had to put parking meters in their community of Petty Harbour for the
people that are visiting the area.
I don't want to start naming different businesses
because if I miss one, I'm going to be in trouble.
AN
HON. MEMBER:
(Inaudible.)
MR.
O'DRISCOLL:
Yeah.
I look at there's a zip line in Corner Brook and
there's a zip line in Petty Harbour. I did it myself, probably not last year but
the year before, before I ever started at this. But it's a great tourist
attraction, if you haven't done zip lining. I got up on the first try and I
said: What am I at up on this hill, I wonder? What am I doing up here? I'm not a
big fan of heights but when you get on the first one there's no return, you have
to keep going to get back home, but I tell you it's unbelievable how nice it is.
It's unbelievable.
To go down in those communities and look at the
condition of the roads for the tourists, it's unbelievable. They keep calling
me; we go down to patch up a road. It's a vital industry in that area, and
that's right next to St. John's. We're always talking about rural, it's right
next to St. John's, and the road conditions are unbelievable going into the
community. I drove down there a good many times, to get around some of these
holes, it's unbelievable that a tourist attraction – it's probably the most
visited. I think it's number one. It's just because it's grouped in with St.
John's that it's not number one. That's my opinion, I might be wrong on that and
there's no way to tell, but it's unbelievable.
Also looking at the tourist industry down there, they
have an aquarium down there that you can go visit. It's a great fishing
community. You can go down there and look at – it's probably as dated as it is
now when you go down and look at it. Just look at all the fishing that goes on
in that community. There are so many tourists who go down just to drive by and
look at the area, it's so beautiful. It's a great tourist attraction.
I really think we have to – and we're going to figure
out how to get it done. I'm going to certainly propose and go over to the
ministers to work on the road conditions in that area, because it's a
spectacular area. Hopefully, we can upgrade it and take care of those tourists
that are coming here. You don't want to deter them from going down there because
the road conditions are so bad. Are they that bad? No, but it really does need
to be looked at as a tourist attraction area and the condition of the roads for
sure.
My time is up.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the Minister of Education.
MR.
OSBORNE:
Thank you, Madam Speaker.
It's only by habit that you –
AN
HON. MEMBER:
Madam Chair.
MR.
OSBORNE:
Madam Chair.
I think it's pretty unanimous, from what I've heard,
and it's not often you introduce a tax bill in the Legislature and get support
from all Members of the Legislature to a tax bill, but this is different, Madam
Chair. All you need to do is drive by a school half an hour before they open and
you see students walking to school, puffing on their vapes. The fact that the
tobacco industry or the vape industry – sometimes they're one and the same –
actually flavour their products with cotton candy or bubble gum or other
flavours to attract young people says a lot about vaping and a lot about the
industry and the intent to attract young people to vaping.
I would say anybody in this Legislature who looks at an
old picture of a movie star or even a politician – there's a picture of Joey
hanging in the building with a cigarette. It was the thing to do years ago. When
you had your photograph taken, especially somebody of stature, they had a
cigarette in their hand. You look back at it now and it just seems so out of
place, but in the '50s and '60s and '70s it enhanced the photograph. That's the
way young people look at it today, almost, with the vape: They buy the vape
products and they vape and the peer pressure involved with vaping.
I saw a survey not long ago where they talked about
more than 50 per cent of children, I think it was in Grades 7 to 12, had tried
vaping. That's shocking. When you think about it, it's shocking, shocking
numbers. It is absolutely the intent and focus of the vape industry to attract
young people, to get them hooked.
Just like smoking, where the pictures in the '50s and
'60s and '70s, you saw people of – premiers and movie stars and so on had to
have their photograph with a cigarette or their portrait with a cigarette, at
that time had no idea the health implications of smoking. Now, we started to
hear later in the '60s, certainly into the '70s you got some understanding. Then
certainly in later years you got a greater understanding of the health
implications of cigarette smoking.
I would say when we look back 30 years from now or 40
years from now – we already know of popcorn lung and some of the other health
implications involved with vaping, but I would say when we look back 30 or 40
years from now when we get a true understanding, and instead of a year or two of
somebody vaping, you get 20 or 30 years and look at the health implications and
the cost to society, the cost to those families and their children – because by
30 or 40 years from now the kids going to high school today that are vaping will
look back and more than likely regret the fact that they vaped.
Now, we don't yet know what the full health
implications over the course of a number of decades will be. My guess is they'll
look back with a great deal of regret for the fact that they vaped. Just as
people who smoked for decades looked back with a sense of regret. If it's not
for the health implications, certainly the cost involved.
Somebody who smoked a package of cigarettes a day – and
you've heard of a lot of people who were lifetime smokers who would tell you
that they spent as much on cigarettes over their lifetime as they would've on a
new car, a lot of people. If not for the health implications, certainly for the
cost involved in vaping or in cigarette smoking.
My guess and my hope is that with this tax it will be a
disincentive. That's the design of it, to be a disincentive for people to start
vaping. My hope is it will be such a disincentive that the province doesn't
realize any revenue from this tax because people will stop vaping. That's the
hope with this. Because this is not about the revenue, it is really to try and
persuade people or a disincentive for people to vape in the first place. My
guess, if you look at it and if you talk to people, the amount of tax on
cigarettes, to some people, is a disincentive. No matter where you go, no matter
what province you go to in this country, if you eliminated all of the taxes on
cigarettes, I would say you'd see a significant increase in the number of people
smoking. Even knowing the health implications today, you'd see a significant
increase in the number of people smoking.
It is a disincentive on cigarettes. It's intended with
vaping to be a disincentive on vaping and I hope it is. I hope it is. I know
some people will say it's up to the parents to set the example and I agree with
that, I'm not disagreeing with that. I can't remember, one of the previous
speakers said that. My children who are in Grade 10 and in Grade 9, I speak to
them regularly about vaping – speak to them regularly.
I hope they don't, I hope they won't, but peer pressure
plays a bit of a role in this as well. If you've got one or two friends in a
group of six or eight friends that are vaping, you can almost be assured that
the others are going to try it, just to see what it tastes like or to see what
it's like. That's where it starts, just trying it and if you like the flavour of
the cotton candy or the bubble gum flavoured vape you might do it again and you
might do it again. That's the concern.
I can assure you, whether it's talking about drugs or
other products, as much as it is about vaping, the numbers of times I've had the
conversation with my children about vaping. You can do that, but peer pressure
plays a role and you can't always guarantee, is the point that I'm making; no
matter how hard a parent would try to have their children not try products that
they shouldn't try.
Madam Chair, I will be supporting this bill for all of
the reasons that I've just outlined and it's a pleasure to do so.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
CHAIR:
Thank you.
Order, please!
The hon. the Member for Terra Nova.
MR.
PARROTT:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Madam Chair, some 30 years ago, when I joined the
military, the common saying was: Smoke 'em if you got 'em. It was kind of a
funny thing because pretty much everyone in the Canadian Armed Forces at that
point smoked. The reason being was that when you got a break, if you didn't
smoke, you stayed inside and you did a tedious task or whatever was associated
with what was happening at that moment. If you had cigarettes and the sergeant
major or the warrant officer or whoever said: Smoke 'em if you got 'em; you
would see a mass exodus and everyone would have their cigarette. I guess by a
fact that's a bit of peer pressure.
So some 21 years ago, I guess, I quit smoking, and I'm
proud to say that.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
PARROTT:
Then we'll fast forward to probably four or five years ago when I was driving
down Manitoba Drive in Clarenville. I came to a stop light and directly across
from me was a young girl, probably 16 or 17 years old. Certainly, she had just
got her licence, novice driver in the window. She was sat there singing, hand
out the sunroof and the next thing her head disappeared. I said, oh my God, what
was that. It was a vaping machine. I had never, ever seen it before. The cloud
of vapour that came out of it shocked me. Anyhow, certainly you question it and,
at that point, the first thing I said was: There is no way that this could be
healthy.
Here we are now having this discussion, and I agree
with what the previous speaker just said, the Minister of Education, we don't
even know where this is going. If you look at 10, 20, 30 years down the road
when the real data is out there, we don't know how it's going to affect our
children.
In Clarenville last year, as an example – well,
throughout my whole district, actually, in Glovertown the same situation – kids
in elementary school, so Grade 6 and under, there were notices that went out to
the parents that there were kids in elementary school vaping in both areas. To
me that was shocking. I have a little boy who is 12 now, in Grade 7 this year,
and my little girl is 14, but last year he was in elementary school. So he came
home and, of course, it was the first question we asked: Gavin, is this
something – no, Dad.
Like the Member for Grand Falls-Windsor said, and
certainly the Minister of Education said, we have the conversations with our
children all the time. My 12-year-old, my 14-year-old, it's a constant thing for
us. We need them to understand that the supports are there for mom and dad. But
we also understand the effects of peer pressure.
Peer pressure is probably one of the greatest things
that our kids face today, and technology, I believe, has made that a lot worse.
Between Snapchat and Facebook and everything, kids are pressured into things now
without even realizing they are; simple photos or barbs from other kids. Vaping,
I believe, has become a very, very serious issue.
If you go to the high school in my district there are
three trails. Notably, my kids say it all the time, I said, so what are the
three trails. One is for the smokers, one is for the vapers and the other is for
another issue that's coming up and I believe vaping has a direct effect on it.
The kids that go and smoke weed. These are middle school and high school kids
that go to separate trails, depending on what their poison is.
It's off school grounds, obviously, but there are three
separate trail, so I said to my kids: Where's the fourth trail for the kids that
don't do it? The answer is: Well, we just don't leave the school during recess
or dinner or whatever. It certainly has become a very, very big problem, I would
suggest throughout the whole province and throughout the whole country.
What's the solution? Again, I'll echo the previous
speakers; I believe that increasing the tax will have an effect on access. I
think it will have an effect on whether or not people decide to pursue and use
these products. I will absolutely be supporting this bill and I have no issues
doing it. The health of our children should be very important and not just our
children, but our adults.
That brings me to the next point. If you look at us as
adults, we certainly have a big effect on kids. Kids tend to do what they see
their parents do also. That's the next thing, as parents we have a
responsibility, not just to talk but to set the examples. I grew up in a mining
town up in Labrador and I can tell you back from 1972, when I was born, up until
I left in 1990, I would argue that the bulk of the population up there smoked.
It was a normal thing to do.
If you went into a bar or you got on an airplane or you
went anywhere, that's what people did. I would say now it's the opposite of
that, which is good. That has happened through increase in taxes, knowledge and
health care initiatives. I applaud this tax. It's tough to say because we don't
normally like to support taxes, but I applaud it and I think it goes in the
right direction, so I will be supporting the bill.
Madam Chair, I'd like to say a little bit about my
district. The District of Terra Nova is comprised of 10 local service districts,
11 town councils and over 30 communities. We have a population of just about
15,000 people. There are 13 volunteer fire departments. There are eight schools
and approximately 1,800 students throughout the entire district. We have a
hospital, multiple long-term care facilities, seniors' homes and clinics. The
district is approximately 6,200 square kilometres.
We have lots to offer from a tourism standpoint; we
have lots to offer from a health care standpoint and employment standpoint.
Obviously, the last seven months has changed a lot of that. The District of
Terra Nova has certainly suffered a very similar fate to most every other
district in Newfoundland.
Contrary to what the Minister of Health would have us
believe, we have issues with doctors. We don't have enough family medicine
doctors in the district. All the studies in the world aren't going to convince
me that we do. People can't get appointments. We have specialists leaving on a
regular basis with no replacement. We've constantly heard from the health care
facilities questioning the recruiting regime and how they can change things. We
lose doctors to other portions of the province and other provinces so it
certainly is a big issue.
We have a large lack of availability in beds for
long-term care and it's a serious concern in our area. Hospital wait times, no
different. Again, I would argue this is a very common theme throughout most of
the province but, in particular, in my district it hits close to home.
Internet is a huge issue throughout my entire district.
Right now, we have no reliable Internet in Southwest Arm, Hatchet Cove, St.
Jones Within and Random Island. Communities such as Petley and Hickman's Harbour
have Internet providers go right by them. Unfortunately, they pass by these
communities and they aren't hooked up.
Then we have St. Brendan's and Traytown, the same
issues, no reliable Internet. St. Brendan's doesn't have any community Wi-Fi,
which really bothers me and puzzles me because we have a school out there that's
underutilized for sure. It's a large facility where there could be a community
Wi-Fi station set up, and Traytown has little or no cell coverage. Certainly, a
lot of areas in my district have little or no cell coverage; all things that are
fixable. When you look at going down Southwest Arm and Random Island,
specifically, the Internet service provider physically goes past some of these
communities. There's a solution right there. It's literally right there, but
nothing is happening.
In these COVID times when you look at the situation
with these schools, if we were to go to a scenario where kids are sent home to
do their schooling, they would have their new Chromebooks, hopefully, within the
next few weeks. They don't have them yet but hopefully in the next few weeks,
and they would not be able to utilize them which is a scary thought. When you
look at these communities and you understand that in between two communities
there's no Internet where the two outlying communities have Internet, it makes
no sense whatsoever.
The other big issue we're hearing in our district for
sure is a lot of people are complaining about government offices not being open.
Now, the government offices not being open are a situation because of the lack
of Internet availability. People who need to access Motor Vehicle Registration
or other departments in government don't have access to it because there is no
Internet availability in some of these communities.
While I applaud the initiative to get government
services out from a technological standpoint, it really doesn't help everyone.
Contrary to what people would have you believe, the 1,400 per cent increase is
out of necessity, not out of availability. When you look at areas – again,
Random Island, Traytown, St. Brendan's, Southwest Arm – these communities can't
access the services that we, as a government, have said we're going to provide.
It's not a real fair scenario.
One of the other big issues we see throughout our
entire district is Eastern Waste and garbage collection. Eastern Waste and
garbage collection have failed the residents of Terra Nova miserably. This is
another board which – I believe there are maybe seven or eight of Eastern Waste
boards, all paid positions. You look at the RHAs and they're not paid positions,
it bewilders me.
Eastern Waste needs to be looked into in a big way. The
residents of Southwest Arm and Random Island are really struggling with their
garbage collection, bulk garbage collection. It just isn't working.
On that note, Madam Chair, I'll leave it for now and I
appreciate the time to talk.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the hon. the excited Member for Corner Brook.
MR.
BYRNE:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
It goes without saying that taxation and public
enthusiasm are rarely synonymous. This is one case where I find that there is
large-scale public support.
What we're talking about here is less about taxation;
what we're talking about here is less about government revenues. It's really
about public health and, in particular, the health of our children. It's the
health of those who find themselves in a situation of addiction which they did
not necessarily understand could be a possibility made so by advertising which
was false or misleading or glamourized. This is the history of the tobacco
industry, Madam Chair, where we find ourselves in a situation where
retroactively we're trying to correct something which we didn't necessarily
understand the full consequence of before.
Well, when it comes to vaping, no one – not one Member
of this Chamber, not one member of the health community, of the general public –
can say that they are not fully informed or able to be fully informed about the
potential negative health consequences. I'll retract one word: potential. Nobody
can be ill-informed about the negative health consequences from vaping. That
information is well understood and the knowledge base is improving and expanding
all the time, but we know this is not an activity that we necessarily want to
support or condone.
With that said, Madam Chair, the Minister of Finance
and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, and I believe with the full
support and endorsement of all parties of this House, will be enacting a special
taxation measure to curb enthusiasm or to curb intake of vaping and vaping
products. Why? Well, no explanation can be better put than that offered by the
Minister of Health and Community Services who has really best outlined what the
potential consequences are to your health, to your physical health, to your
mental health. The consequences of addiction are very, very serious.
With that said, while we balance two competing rights
or two competing concerns – one is the right for consumers to choose their own
behaviours – we have to also balance the public good and the public nature that
this is an addiction, this is an addictive substance which can cause harm. We
need to try to create measures to reduce that harm and to reduce the behaviours
that cause the harm.
One way to tackle that is to tackle the industry
directly. I understand there are various elements at the national level and by
special interest groups to look at vaping for what it truly is. It will allow
that process to continue, but we here in Newfoundland and Labrador, we here in
this Chamber, we here in the government, in particular, know that we need to do
this and act quickly.
There will always be those who suggest that this is
overstated, that the health consequences are overstated, the mental health
consequences are overstated, that the addiction consequences are overstated. We
know this to be false. I believe it's fair to say that the tobacco industry
tried to counter very similar complaints and similar concerns with almost
identical language and rhetoric. It did not work. With that said, Madam Chair,
we do have choices that we can make as legislators, as public policy-makers and
I think this is a good one.
I want to really pay a certain special attention to one
of the comments that was made earlier, that if we are to be successful, this
will not increase the taxation coffers of the government; in fact, it will
reduce it. While we increase the tax, which would imply or assume that we will
increase revenue to government, really what's happening here is that we want to
eliminate vaping and eliminate the revenues from it. That is an important
element to this debate.
I'm hearing the cries from some circles that would like
to advocate a particular position that this is really just about a money grab.
It's a money grab by government that just simply wants to exploit one particular
sector, one particular group of society, one particular industry to be able to
create a money grab. Madam Chair, the opposite is true. What this is, is an
initiative to eliminate this as a revenue stream. That's a really important
point that I don't think needs any further argument or consideration.
With that said, I want to say a special thank you to
all those community leaders that have helped bring us to this point in time
where we are, not only publicly acknowledging the serious consequences and risks
of vaping but acting upon it. Our community health leadership, our community
health leaders, those who work directly with our children, our younger adults,
have really been some of the strongest advocates and leaders in this effort to
curb, if not eliminate, vaping. It's the next tobacco.
I know that in my own son's reality, my own son's world
experience, vaping is very common. I take some comfort, given the relationship
that I have with my son, we have a very, very open honest dialogue with each
other about anything and everything. He tells me that this is pervasive
throughout young people, that it's dangerous because excuses are constantly
being made amongst young people trying to convince other young people that this
is innocuous; there's no danger here. Ironically, what he said to me is that
they were never the words of the young people that I heard. It was almost a
verbatim repetition of the marketing campaigns that came from the vaping
companies and those that extracted commercial, financial benefit from vaping.
This is the insight that my own son offered, is that at
no point in time was there an independent sort of reason: this is what this
group of kids thought or what that group of kids thought. He always said to me:
Every time I heard someone extol the benefits or the innocuousness of vaping, it
was almost always a verbatim repetition of the marketing campaign.
When you see about the different flavours that are used
to – I've never heard tell of many campaigns directed at mature, older adults
like myself, probably over-mature or under-mature adults like myself, I've never
heard marketing campaigns which talked about tutti frutti or passion peppermint
or other kinds of flavours, that's usually – I remember back in my day when we
had Certs and we had Sweet Tarts. That was kind of the flavours that attracted
me to that sugary dish called Sweet Tarts or Love Hearts, I think they were
called at the time. I'm starting to digress now, I'm going to get back on target
because this is too important a subject.
I've never ever heard tell of marketing campaigns which
were so directly, knowingly exploitive of the vulnerabilities of young people as
the original tobacco campaigns played and now the vaping campaigns play. Anyone
with any world experience can see it for what it is. Sometimes a young and
impressionable 13-year-old or 14-year-old or even, in some cases, younger, in
some cases older, but an impressionable pre-teen or teenager, there's a reason
why those companies know that they're vulnerable, because it is positioned in
such a way that it seems to bear no harm. How can something called peppermint
passion fruit or whatever it is you want to call it, whatever the flavour of the
day is, how can that possibly be bad for you?
Well, Madam Chair, it is. It's deliberately disguised
that way so that young people are duped and they follow a path, which they would
never or should never be expected to be suspicious of. That's why we, as adults,
big people in a big room, need to act in the best interest of our young people
and all those who face addictions or potential addictions through access to
vaping products.
With that said, Madam Chair, I hear and see my time has
concluded.
CHAIR:
Your time has expired.
Thank you, to the hon. Member.
The hon. the Member for Stephenville - Port au Port.
MR.
WAKEHAM:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Before I get started on the particular bill that we're
debating here, I want to make reference to my colleague from Grand Falls-Windsor
-Buchans who talked briefly about the Dominion workers in his district. I want
to talk about the Dominion workers in my district. Those of us that have shopped
at Dominion always know that when you walk into that store these workers are
there to greet you with a smile. They're there to help you when you can't find
something and if you go to the meat department and you need a special cut or
need a special product, they're there to assist in every way.
It was only a few months ago now that we were shutting
down schools, we were shutting down the University; we were closing government
offices and people were told to stay home, don't go out unless you really had
to. Yet these same workers, these same Dominion workers were putting on their
uniforms and heading off to work every single day to make sure that we had a
place to go when we needed food and we needed supplies.
So I'm glad to hear today that a mediator has been
appointed. I look forward to a resolution to this strike. It's gone on way too
long. It needs to be settled and I would hope that it will happen sooner than
later. These workers, they want to work full-time. They want to go to work. Yet,
for some reason their company just doesn't seem to want to make that happen. So,
hopefully, with a mediator in place we'll get that done.
I want to share a little story, as I talk about this
bill, when I was a CEO in Labrador-Grenfell Health. I once met with a
Pentecostal minister and alluded to him that in some ways we were in the same
business. When he looked at me it was kind of strange. I told him you're in the
business of trying to get them in; I'm in the business of trying to keep them
out. It alluded to that when I heard the minister talk about health because
health, as I said, we should be in the health care business and not in the sick
care business. Again, this is another attack on health care.
I spent a lot of time in sports, too, and I know the
value of exercise and physical fitness. We get one body, it's ours, and what we
do with it is up to us. It's very, very important that we try to help people.
People may refer to it as a tax, but it's not a tax, it's simply trying to get
an awareness to people that there are more and more issues out there that we
should all be concerned with.
The Canadian Cancer Society has described youth vaping
as a public health crisis. That's what it is, so we need to take action on it.
The big smoking companies have been around for hundreds of years, we know that.
Their original target, of course, was men. The Marlboro Man, we all remember
those ads and everything else. When they figured they had the male market
saturated, they went after the female market.
In the '50s, you could see ads in the papers of
doctors' offices encouraging women to smoke to relieve stress. They were
encouraged to smoke to lose weight. As a matter of fact, actresses were often
paid to smoke in movies just to encourage more people to smoke. Now, what we're
seeing is they're now attacking our youth and they're focusing on our youth.
They're focusing on them, not through a cigarette but through a vaping product.
At the end of the day, they have been very, very successful.
What can we do? I think the Minister of Health alluded
to it earlier on, as well: education. I mean, those are the kinds of things that
we have to do as a government, as a people. We sit down as parents, and those
with young kids can talk to them about the effects of smoking. We have to keep
all of that up, but taxation is one piece of that.
I've heard a couple of colleagues say that taxation is
not about generating revenue. It's not, but whatever revenue we generate from
this, maybe it needs to go back into sport and recreation or maybe it needs to
go into education or maybe it needs to be directed into whatever we can do to
promote wellness and to promote ourselves so that we encourage people. Let's
turn a negative into a positive and use this to help people and to try and keep
people active in our communities. If we do that, we have a shot. It's not too
late.
I think this particular measure is just one small step.
We're not out to tax people just for the sake of taxing people. That's not what
this is all about. This is about recognizing that we have a problem, that it
exists and this is one measure we can take to help address it.
The Newfoundland and Labrador Alliance for the Control
of Tobacco is doing other things from an education point of view, but, again, I
think it sends a message. That's literally what we're trying to do. We're trying
to send a message to people: This is not good for you. Maybe if the parents are
out there and are the ones providing the money for some of this that the kids
spend, maybe this will have a way and kids will have a choice.
Again, though, whatever revenue we generate, let's turn
around and find a way to use that revenue to promote so that it becomes a
positive. Let's turn this negative into a positive. If we do that, I think we'll
have a shot at it. Obviously, there are lots of other things that have been
done. There's been the restriction on flavours and there have been other things
tried and stuff.
We all support this legislation, I think, in the House.
Again, it's not about the individual, it's about the idea that we need to help
make changes; how do we keep our people healthy and how do we improve our health
outcomes. At the end of the day, it will pay off down the road.
I don't need to speak for 10 minutes. I just wanted to
get that message out there, and I thank you for your attention.
Thank you.
CHAIR:
Seeing no further speakers, shall the resolution carry?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
AN
HON. MEMBER:
No,
no, more speakers.
CHAIR:
More speakers? Okay.
The Chair recognizes the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
I'm
okay (inaudible).
CHAIR:
The
Chair now recognizes the Member for Placentia West - Bellevue.
MR.
DWYER:
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Oh,
oh!
CHAIR:
Order, please!
MR.
DWYER:
Sorry, thank you.
Just listening to everybody speaking about vaping and
the new tax that is being introduced, I think one of the underlying themes here
from all speakers has been communication with children. Obviously, adults will
make those decisions for themselves, it's their responsibility to understand
what's going to be helping them with their health; but, for anybody under the
age of 18, obviously we need to communicate with them and let them know what the
consequences of any actions are, let alone just vaping. I'm a firm believer in
keeping the lines of communication open with all your children and making sure
they are getting the guidance that is so needed.
One of the things that kind of really threw me for a
loop – I'm a smoker. I never ever tried vaping. It kind of sounds hypocritical
to say that you choose one over the other or anything, but from my perspective,
I don't understand how it got even approved to this point by Health Canada. We
already know the underlying effects of cigarette smoke. With this being
something along those lines, and like people have even said, the cloud of smoke
that comes out of them, if even half of it gets in your lungs, I think it's more
than any one cigarette.
I think more needs to be known about what the long-term
effects are before we have it introduced to society or anything like that,
because it's incumbent on us to know the consequences of our actions. At this
point, there are no proven consequences to the actions of vaping. I do agree
with the increased tax but, again, if it's somebody that's addicted, it doesn't
matter what price is on it they'll find the resources to get it. We just hope it
doesn't be pulled from something a little bit more important in a family's
budget.
The taxes that are being introduced are there to cover
the added health responsibilities that are put on the system. We look at MCP –
and I talk to a lot of people. I talked to one gentleman one day and I said
something about his care. He said: I'm not worried about that, MCP is free. I
said: Nothing could be further from the truth my friend, because we actually pay
for that out of taxpayers' dollars.
We have a system in place that we want to make sure
that everybody's health is paramount to living in Newfoundland and Labrador. It
might be something we can do to – it's not that we're sending invoices, but we
could send a report on what it cost to have a visit or anything like that. I
think there's a responsibility on the patients as well. If they have to cancel a
meeting or just don't show up to a doctor's appointment or anything like that,
when we know that we're more than burdened in our doctor's offices.
There needs to be a little bit more responsibility when
it comes to our health care. It's an opportunity for us to get away from the
waste that is still costing us money, but people don't see it because it's
obviously not charged directly as opposed to being taken out of the taxpayers'
dollars. Everybody is still paying for it, it's just the fact that we don't see
it directly.
I will be supporting a tax on vaping, as I supported a
tax on tobacco, for the simple fact that these decisions are adding to the
health care responsibilities and we want to make sure that the system we have in
place stays viable and universal to all.
Just to switch gears a little bit and talk a little bit
about my district. I'm very proud to be the MHA for Placentia West - Bellevue
and I appreciate the fact that the people of Placentia West - Bellevue have put
their trust in me to come represent them in this House. It's like I always say,
there's no grass going to grow under these feet. Like I said, there are no days
off or anything like that. It's certainly go, go, go all the time and that's
what I signed up for and that's what I promised to the people, that I would
communicate with them and work hard on their behalf.
I have 45 communities in my district and they all have
very similar needs. That covers 5,503 square kilometres of this beautiful
province. For the most part, I go basically from about seven kilometres outside
of Whitbourne, you take the turn in Goobies and you go right to Marystown. It's
a very large district but, like I said, that's what I signed up for. I knew it
would be something that I was engaged in and that I would want to do, because
what I promised, and I have always promised from day one, is to work hard and
communicate with my constituents. It's paramount, and I represent all
constituents. Once the votes are counted, there's no favouritism or anything
like that. Each and every person has access to their MHA in the District of
Placentia West - Bellevue.
Some of the better things, the more positive things
that are happening here right now, currently, in my district is that while
sometimes it is a little bit frustrating when there's roadwork on the go and
stuff like that, it's certainly a necessary evil. It's nice to see some of the
stuff that's getting done here before winter to improve the travel for many of
my residents on Route 210 on the Burin Peninsula.
The one from Red Harbour to Marystown is a very big job
that we have back on the books for the five-year road plan to cover about 25
kilometres. It's a really big job for the area. It really needed to be done and
it really needed to be done badly. Like I said, when I drove through just
recently a lot of the brush cutting and ditching was already done. I must say, a
very good job and hats off to the contractors and our own people.
In the Grand Le Pierre area, we're currently doing
about 18 kilometres of brush cutting and ditching. Like I said, I actually
requested from Route 210, from the branch right down to Terrenceville, English
Harbour and Grand Le Pierre. The department saw the largest problem area at this
time to be around the Grand Le Pierre area. Like I said, that's something that
certainly needed to be done and it would be incumbent on me to make sure that
other needs are taken care of in the next construction season.
We also have some roadwork and brush cutting to be done
on the Fairhaven road, which is long overdue as well. It's nice to see these
improvements being done, because it's the commuting public who have invested in
their vehicles and stuff like that. We want to make sure that they do have the
good roads to drive on.
It's a busy life being a politician, there's no doubt
about that, and it's something that I've very much enjoyed. It's something that
I've pretty much wanted to do my whole life. It's like I told the people in my
district when I ran the first time, I didn't necessarily come looking for a job,
because I had a good job at the time, and getting a pension and all that kind of
stuff, but I went back to my hometown to pick up my true calling and represent
the people who got me to this in my life.
One thing that I'll always do is bring respect and
integrity to the table because I find that they're a reflection of ourselves and
they should always be available and at the ready for everyone.
I see my time is coming short, I would just like to say
thank you again to all of the constituents of Placentia West - Bellevue for
giving me the opportunity to represent them in this hallowed hall.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
CHAIR:
Thank you.
The Chair recognizes the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I'm going to take a few minutes starting off this
afternoon to recognize a gentleman in my district, Mr. John Pinhorn, who turned
99 years young today.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
CROCKER:
Mr.
Pinhorn's story is even a little more impressive and respectful. Mr. Pinhorn,
over 70 years ago, served in the 166th (Newfoundland) Field Artillery. He
trained in England, went on to North Africa and went on to an invasion in Italy.
He fought in the Battle of Monte Cassino and returned back to Newfoundland and
Labrador where he spent his life in the community of Winterton.
Today, Mr. Pinhorn resides at the Josiah Squibb
Memorial Pavilion in Carbonear where he's celebrating this afternoon with his
family.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
CROCKER:
When we think about next Wednesday, just slightly over a week, being Remembrance
Day, and our number of World War II veterans are certainly getting fewer all the
time. It's important that we recognize people like Mr. Pinhorn who is again
celebrating his 99th birthday today.
Happy birthday, Mr. Pinhorn.
Madam Chair, I'm going to pivot back to today's bill
right now and talk about, as a parent, the value in what we do around taxation
sometimes as a deterrent because, as a lot of people have said here this
afternoon, taxation, in this case, is not about revenue; taxation, in this case,
is about a deterrent. The best thing that could ever happen from a piece of
taxation like this is that we don't collect anymore money.
There are points, and there was a point made earlier
this afternoon, about cessation and how vaping has actually helped in removing
some people from smoking. That's also a very important part to remember in this.
After listening to the debate this afternoon and having, I guess, 19-year-old
and 21-year-old sons, some of the comments I've heard here today about where
vaping is taking place and how cool it seems to be, that is certainly what I'm
hearing as a parent as well.
We need to work with groups like the Alliance for the
Control of Tobacco and others to make sure that we curb this to the best of our
ability and educate so that, I think, what would be some disastrous things from
tobacco vaping that we would see down the road are averted.
We've seen it. We've heard it here referenced this
afternoon regularly. If you think about tobacco, 25 or 30 or 40 years ago it was
sold as the, I guess, cool or sexy thing to do. We certainly learned that it
wasn't. If you think about tobacco ads and how they were portrayed back in the
'70s and the '80s, they were portrayed in a way that was meant to be attractive
to people; no different than the way vaping is today.
Some of the mediums, the way companies with vape are
doing it from my understanding, are through modern avenues, like TikTok and
Snapchat and all of those things. I know very little about them; only I know
they're apps. This is a very important piece of legislation, in that way, that
we're dealing with today and, certainly, I'll be supporting it.
Coming into Remembrance Day – I'm going to pivot again
just for a minute and talk about a couple of things in my district. One would be
the Poppy Campaign and Branch 23 of the Royal Canadian Legion in Carbonear. It's
actually the only Legion that I have left in my district. If you think about it,
this branch actually encompasses the vast majority of the district in the region
that they serve. They serve all of the communities or most of the communities in
the district and they do a great job in doing that, so here's to them.
I know they're going to be around the district in the
coming week, I guess, selling poppies. They kicked off the Poppy Campaign at the
Legion in Carbonear on Thursday. Again, if you can and if you see an opportunity
to support the Legion through the Poppy Campaign, please do so.
This has been a tough year on organizations like the
Legion and many others when it comes to fundraising. This is a very important
part – the Poppy Campaign – of what they do each and every year when it comes
for their membership. That's a very important campaign that we're into right
now.
Madam Chair, I'm going to actually finish my remarks
right now. I think I'm going to move that we recess for supper until 6:30 p.m.
CHAIR:
Is
it the pleasure of the House of adopt the motion?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
CHAIR:
All
those against, 'nay.'
This House stands in recess until 6:30 p.m.
November
2, 2020
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS
Vol. XLIX No. 61A
The House resumed at 6:30 p.m.
CHAIR (P. Parsons):
Are
the House Leaders ready?
Okay. Just a reminder now, we are in Committee of Ways
and Means discussing Bill 48, An Act To Amend The Revenue Administration Act No.
4.
Order, please!
The Chair recognizes the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
We call from the Order Paper, Motion –
CHAIR:
We
are in the Committee of Ways and Means still. That's where we left off. We're
still here.
MR.
CROCKER:
Right, so next speaker.
CHAIR:
We
left off at you.
MR.
CROCKER:
We
left off with me, so …
CHAIR:
Okay, you're finished.
The Chair recognizes the hon. Member for Torngat
Mountains.
MS.
EVANS:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm sorry. Language is very, very important.
I already spoke on this bill previously, but I have a
few more comments. Just looking at this bill now, one of my biggest concerns
with the tobacco industry is we have to learn from the past.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Oh,
oh!
CHAIR:
Order, please!
Just a little order, please.
I'm having trouble hearing the speaker.
MS.
EVANS:
It's like a zoo in here, Madam Chair – see.
Sorry about that, Madam Chair, it's like a zoo in here.
Thank you for restoring order.
Just speaking on this bill, I'm in total support of
this bill. There's a lot of value in this bill and I think what it is, is we're
learning lessons from the past. We just have to look at the history that we've
had with cigarette smoking and basically all the harm that it's caused in the
past. Not only was harm created to our citizens from the impacts of smoking, but
a tremendous cost on the health care system as well for people who'd gotten sick
because of cigarette smoking.
One of the things that I am concerned about is all the
lessons that were learned from the tobacco industry in terms of advertising and
in terms of actually getting people to purchase their products is now being used
with vaping. We look at methanol cigarettes. I never really smoked so – methanol
cigarettes, a lot of times people were smoking methanol and they didn't really
realize the harm that was being caused. Now we have people who are vaping and
they don't really know the harms and effects that it's causing to their health.
When I was looking at the research before I noticed
that in Canada and the United States, there's much more nicotine in the vape
than in actual fact that's over in the United Kingdom. I think that's something
that we should be looking at as well is limiting the amount of nicotine because
nicotine is really what's addictive about vaping and about cigarette smoking.
That's something that we need to look at as well.
One of the things, on a personal note – and I think
everyone here probably has similar experiences – is in this day and age, in
2020, we expect people to have learned that cigarette smoking is bad for you.
It's bad for your health; it's bad for your overall wellness, and there's really
no reason now for people to smoke. But I think most people here have had some
disappointment when they come across a young person and see that young person
smoking.
Actually, it happened to me on my last – I was going to
say my last turnaround – on my last trip to my district. I was waiting and it
was a young person that I'm friends with and he was out on the steps – that's
how we talk home; he was out on the steps. I was thinking: What's he doing out
there? It's pretty windy; it's a little bit of rain, and I looked out and this
is a young man, probably about 21 years old, prime of his life, super athlete,
hockey, badminton. Any kind of sport he's really good at. He was actually
standing out on the steps, on the deck, having a smoke. I thought: Do you know
something? We haven't learned.
I was going to go out and talk to him and I didn't. I
said: Okay, I'm going to see him later – we were travelling together. I really
should've made the time, and I have to make the time to talk to him about
smoking and how harmful it is. Just I think it was about two days ago, I saw him
post on Facebook – now, he's only 21 – about he's trying to quit smoking and
it's really, really hard, but he's going to do it. I thought: Have we learned
anything? This is the cycle again of somebody picking it up, getting addicted
and then now they're struggling to quit. Haven't we learned anything?
That's cigarette smoke. We're not sure exactly what's
going to happen with the vaping, but the vaping with all the really nice smells
and the taste that comes with all these additives now, it's going to be really,
really difficult. And now they're targeting even younger. That's something that
I really think needs to be addressed.
I only have half my time left, but one of the issues
that I wanted to talk to a little bit was health care in my district. I've never
really gotten a chance to emphasize here the importance of the availability of
medical care in my district. I've already talked about the Nain airstrip not
having night lights so that we can't actually medevac somebody after dark. The
Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure did mention about having to get
search and rescue in, if needed, but in actual fact a lot of work goes in to
trying to stabilize a person. Then, if they need to be medevaced, then making
arrangements for search and rescue at the last minute can mean the difference
between somebody living or dying in my district.
That being said, I want you to make a correction. I'm
going to take a couple of minutes here to actually correct it. When I was
speaking on the Nain airstrip, I talked about Nain, Labrador – Nain, Nunatsiavut
– being the only community, the only clinic on the North Coast of my district
that had ventilators. I said that they had two ventilators. I want to correct
that. That's actually incorrect.
The information I was given in the spring when I was
concerned about COVID, I was told that there were two ventilators on the North
Coast in Nain; no other communities had ventilators. That's necessary for
advanced cases of COVID. So, in actual fact, no community in my district has a
ventilator. If somebody is struggling to breathe, they can't ventilate them.
Then what can happen is the weather is bad, it's dark in Nain and people will
not be able to actually get access to this medical service that we so
importantly need.
The other thing I was going to mention, too, is in the
community of Postville there's only one nurse. I've gone back and the
AngajukKâk
from Postville has gone back, we've checked. We've been trying to see if it's
possible to have a second nurse because it's creating a lot of issues. I was
told it's based on population. I can accept that but I find there are other
clinics in Newfoundland and Labrador that have a similar population that
actually has two nurses.
If you look at Postville, there's no road access. So if
the weather is down, there's no way you can get help in to assist that one
nurse; there's no way you can get a person out through medevac, which is weather
dependent on the flights. When you look at Postville, it's very, very
vulnerable.
Another issue impacting nursing in Postville is
retention. It's really difficult to retain a nurse and the reason why: There's
one single nurse in Postville. There's not a backup nurse waiting to change
shift, there's just one nurse. To add on top of that, there's no RCMP presence.
There's been very little RCMP presence since I got elected. In the middle of the
night if there's some trauma or there's a fire or a big accident or whatever,
that nurse has to go out and look after the patients, try to restore order, try
to actually stabilize and try to do triage.
In actual fact, the RCMP officer in that type of
situation is not about enforcement, it's about professional services,
professional support to a nurse that's struggling to save a life, that can
actually take care of a medical crisis. No professional support – none, none,
none, none – because the RCMP officer that we were promised for 20 days out of
the month is not there and has never been there since I got elected. Comes in
for a couple of days, comes in on a boat ride, comes in on the flight and leaves
again. That is a lack of not only enforcement but professional assistance to a
nurse.
I'm not talking about COVID. You add COVID on top of
that, you add a crisis in the Postville situation where a nurse gets called out;
you get a nurse that has to deal with a situation at night, then in the morning
she has to go work; fatigue: All these things impact a nurse and it's impacting
my community because we don't have road access. We can't actually have an
ambulance go to Postville when the weather is bad. We can't have a police car go
to Postville when the weather is bad.
I'm directing my points to you. I'm sorry; I'm looking
at you kind of hard. I apologize but it's very, very emotional. The thing about
it with my district is medical care is essential, but what's important is
medical care that the rest of Newfoundland and Labrador is getting is essential
for my district.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
CHAIR:
The
Chair recognizes the hon. Member for St. John's East - Quidi Vidi.
MS.
COFFIN:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
This is a wonderful opportunity. I'm going to talk a
little bit about the smoking tax as well as the vaping tax.
Just to give you some indication, I used to play
football and there was a gentleman that played football with me. His job was to
snap the ball back to the quarterback. He'd walk out and line up with a smoke in
his mouth. He'd get to the starting line; he'd have a couple of draws; he'd put
the cigarette down and he'd hike the ball, pick up the cigarette, walk two steps
and catch it perfectly. It was really something to watch.
You think that athletes don't always smoke so much; in
fact, they do. I have to admit that this person was older than I am and I'm sure
that he has tried to quit numerous, numerous times and had just failed
repeatedly. I bring that story up because I want to make reference to the
commitment that someone has to smoking.
Another quitting story: I had a boyfriend one time who
was an enthusiastic smoker. He went through the process of, I'm going to try to
quit. One morning he had been quit for long enough. I got up and I started
making toast and somewhere along the way I made the toast wrong. At that point,
I went: Just go smoke again, will you, because I know I'm not making toast
wrong; it's pretty basic.
Madam Chair, the reason I wanted to talk to this today
was more about why we have taxes. There is a variety of reasons why one might
put a tax on a particular good or institute tax for a particular reason, one of
which is to raise funds. That's essentially what we're doing; we're raising
money to put it into general revenue.
Another way we can have a tax is to discourage
consumption of things. We see that with smoking taxes and we see that with the
tax on vaping goods. Another thing we do is we impose taxes for a redistribution
of income. Often we see that in terms of things like a wealth tax or an income
tax. It's designed to redistribute income from people who tend to have a little
bit more money and can afford to buy extra stuff for themselves into individuals
who are less able to do that. It evens out the income in our economy.
When we're talking about vaping taxes and smoking
taxes, that's essentially what we call a luxury tax. It's a tax on something
that is a luxury. It's also a tax on something that is an addiction, so we're in
this weird space where it is a bit luxurious to smoke because it is very
expensive to smoke. Sometimes people will smoke just to – this is my peace of
mind, this is my one little treat for the day. There are others who are
horribly, horribly addicted to smoking. When we put taxes on cigarettes and
vaping products, we are essentially putting on a luxury tax. It is designed
partially as a smoking deterrent and partially to add to general revenues or to
raise funds.
If we think of putting taxes on smoking and vaping,
it's not really a deterrent if it is something that we are incredibly addicted
to. What it is in fact is a self-perpetuating cycle of I'm addicted to it but
it's very expensive. It takes up the most of my income, but I still can't get
rid of it, so I must continue to smoke. It becomes just a vicious, vicious
cycle. In fact, what I have heard is if you have higher levels of education, if
you have a higher income, quite often you have access to other smoking cessation
products. Several studies I read – and I can quote from one in particular:
Smoking is now a tragic habit of the poor. That is rather disconcerting because
these are the people who are least able to afford to smoke.
The other study I read talked a little bit about the
lower the income and the employment status of an individual, generally the
higher the rate of smoking. This goes for societies as well as individuals in
general. The general overall assumption is that you will have higher rates of
smoking when you have lower income and lower employment status. That is very,
very disconcerting. We are essentially taxing individuals for having an
addiction.
The other thing that causes me some concern is when we
are raising these taxes, we know that we want smoking-cessation programs. I
haven't looked up exactly how much money we are spending on our
smoking-cessation programs, but I did a little bit of math on how much money our
cigarette tax will generate. Turns out, some of the numbers that I found are
men: there are 48,000 men in Newfoundland who smoke and they smoke an average of
24.2 cigarettes per day; women: there are 42,000 women in Newfoundland and
Labrador that smoke and they smoke on average 12 cigarettes per day.
You do the math of this and it turns out that we smoke
about 609 million cigarettes in Newfoundland and Labrador. You multiply that by
the tax that we're getting, which is 29.5 cents per cigarette, and we're looking
at revenues of about $180 million. I can pretty much guarantee that we are not
spending $180 million on smoking cessation or smoking deterrence. The addition
of this tax on smoking, on cigarettes, turns out that we're actually getting $55
million more in revenue by taxing smoking. Again, here's where the incongruence
comes in: We're not spending as much money on smoking cessation or helping
people quit smoking than we are in the money that we're raising.
At the same time, remember I had said smoking is now a
tragic habit of the poor. We are actually taxing individuals that are least
capable of managing this tax. These people are individuals who have often lower
levels of income, who are least able or have a smaller capacity for any other
discretionary income and they are being caught in this horrible cycle of having
to pay more for something that they are unfortunately addicted to, and not being
able to break from that because they don't have access to those same programs.
Just think: There are a whole pile of help-you-stop-smoking medications out
there and programs out there, many of which are not accessible to individuals
without health care plans.
This is where, I think, if we are turning to smoking as
a way of raising revenues in our province but we're not doing the things to help
people stop smoking, then we're also contributing to a whole pile of other
negatives. Those things include: cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung disease and
COPD. All of which, I will point out, are comorbidity factors for COVID-19
severity. When you start thinking about all of these things coming together, we
are creating a mix of unfortunate effects that is going to be very difficult to
parse them out into separate piles and be able to solve these problems. We need
revenue – absolutely. We need people to stop smoking – absolutely. But this
revenue is being generated from an addiction and that is not the right way of
going about this.
If I go over to vaping, I didn't speak on the vaping
tax or the vaping deterrent, but I did note – had I been given the opportunity –
if we want to deter young individuals from vaping, I suggested perhaps we only
allow vaping on metro buses because I will guarantee you that teenagers and high
school students will not get on a metro bus. If they're only allowed to vape on
metro buses, we'll either increase ridership or we'll stop vaping altogether.
However, that is likely not going to be the case and that's just a silly example
of what we might do.
The other thing, for anyone who has tried to quit
smoking, if you thought about it a little bit, I can offer one suggestion here
that may or may not help. You smoke for two reasons: (1) you have a habit and
(2) you are addicted. That addiction paces the nicotine and the toluene and the
benzene and all of the 'enes' that they put in cigarettes, as well as the
formaldehyde. Then that habit part is: I'm in a daily pattern, I'm having my
first coffee of the day, I'm having a cigarette, I'm going out with my buddies,
I'm having a beer, I'm having a smoke. You have these patterns, you fidget.
Break those two. How do you break those two? Start smoking clove cigarettes or
rum cigarettes or things that don't have nicotine in it and so you will break
your nicotine habit while you maintain your fidgeting habit. Eventually, the
nicotine habit will be gone and then you can break your fidgeting habit.
Hopefully, that is a reasonable way to stop smoking.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
CHAIR:
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
CHAIR:
Any
further speakers?
Seeing no further speakers, shall the resolution carry?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
CHAIR:
All
those against, 'nay.'
Carried.
On motion, resolution carried.
A bill, “An Act To Amend The Revenue Administration Act
No. 4.” (Bill 48)
CLERK (Barnes):
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 through 8 inclusive.
CHAIR:
Shall clauses 2 through 8 inclusive carry?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
CHAIR:
All
those against, 'nay.'
Carried.
On motion, clauses 2 through 8 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 Revenue Administration Act No. 4.
CHAIR:
Shall the long 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 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
resolution and a bill consequent thereto, carried.
CHAIR:
The Chair recognizes the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I move that the Committee rise and report resolution
and Bill 48.
CHAIR:
The
motion is that the Committee rise and report the resolution and Bill 48.
Is it the pleasure of the Committee to adopt the
motion?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
CHAIR:
All
those against, 'nay.'
Carried.
On motion, that the Committee rise, report progress and
ask leave to sit again, the Speaker returned to the Chair.
MR.
SPEAKER (Reid):
The
hon. the Member for Harbour Grace - Port de Grave.
MS.
P. PARSONS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Committee of Ways and Means have considered the
matters to them referred and have directed me to report that they have adopted a
certain resolution and recommend that a bill be introduced to give effect to the
same.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
Chair of the Committee of Ways and Means reports that the Committee has
considered the matters to them referred, have adopted a certain resolution and
recommended that a bill be introduced to give effect to the same.
When shall the report be received?
MR.
CROCKER:
Now.
MR.
SPEAKER:
Now.
On motion, report received and adopted.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Mr.
Speaker, I move, seconded by the Deputy Government House Leader, that the
resolution be now read a first time.
MR.
SPEAKER:
It
is moved and seconded that the resolution now be read a first time.
Is it the pleasure of this House to adopt this motion?
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
MR.
SPEAKER:
All
those against, 'nay.'
Carried.
CLERK:
“Be it resolved by the House of Assembly
in Legislative Session convened as follows:
“That it is expedient to bring in a measure respecting
the imposition of taxes on vapour products.”
On motion, resolution read a first time.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I move, seconded by the Deputy Government House Leader,
that the resolution be now read a second time.
MR.
SPEAKER:
It
is moved and seconded that the resolution now be 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.'
Carried.
CLERK:
“Be
it resolved by the House of Assembly in Legislative Session convened as follows:
“That it is expedient to bring in a measure respecting
the imposition of taxes on vapour products.”
On motion, resolution read a second time.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Mr.
Speaker, I move, seconded by the Deputy Government House Leader, for leave to
introduce a bill entitled, An Act To Amend The Revenue Administration Act No. 4,
Bill 48, and I further move that the said bill be now read a first time.
MR.
SPEAKER:
It
is moved and seconded that the hon. the Government House Leader shall have leave
to introduce a bill entitled, An Act To Amend The Revenue Administration Act No.
4, Bill 48, and that the said bill now be read a first 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.'
Carried.
Motion, the hon. the Minister of Finance to introduce a
bill, “An Act To Amend The Revenue Administration Act No. 4,” carried. (Bill 48)
CLERK:
A
bill, An Act To Amend The Revenue Administration Act No. 4. (Bill 48)
On motion, Bill 48 read a first time.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I move, seconded by the Deputy Government House Leader,
that Bill 48 be now read a second time.
MR.
SPEAKER:
It
is moved and seconded that the said bill 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.'
Carried.
CLERK:
A
bill, An Act To Amend The Revenue Administration Act No. 4. (Bill 48)
On motion, Bill 48 read a second time.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I move, seconded by the Deputy Government House Leader,
that Bill 48 be now read a third time.
MR.
SPEAKER:
It
is moved and seconded that Bill 48 now be read a third 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.'
Carried.
CLERK:
A
bill, An Act To Amend The Revenue Administration Act No. 4. (Bill 48)
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
bill has now been read a third time and it is ordered that the bill do pass and
that its title be as on the Order Paper.
On motion, a bill, “An Act To Amend The Revenue
Administration Act No. 4,” read a third time, ordered passed and its title be as
on the Order Paper. (Bill 48)
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
I call from the Order Paper, Motion 10.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
I'll just take a few minutes to start the conversation
on tonight's –
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
motion has to be moved and seconded.
MR.
CROCKER:
I'm
sorry, Mr. Speaker.
I move Motion 10, seconded by the Deputy Government
House Leader.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
I'll just take a few minutes to introduce this motion a
little further as we move into some debate on it this evening. This is the
concurrence of the House with the Lester
Report, dated September 24, 2020, and it's done under section 39 of the
House of Assembly Accountability,
Integrity and Administration Act.
Mr. Speaker, this issue arose in April, I do believe,
and there are subsequent dates through July, August and even into September. The
findings of the legislative Commissioner, in this case, were a violation of two
parts of our principles in the House of Assembly – principle 5 and principle 6.
You can see, Mr. Speaker, from reading the report and some of the actions that
were taken here, there are consequences. We as a government have put forward a
resolution, actually, that has a number of those consequences.
I'll just outline those: The Member is to stand in his
place and unequivocally apologize to this Assembly; submit an unequivocal
apology in this Assembly in writing; submit an unequivocal apology to assistant
deputy minister Keith Deering, director of Agriculture Production and Research,
Dave Jennings, and conservation officer, Scott Martin, in writing; again, meet
with the Commissioner for Legislative Standards and, before January 1, 2021,
establish a blind trust; and provide written confirmation from the Commission
for Legislative Standards that the Member has established said trust within the
time frame that's outlined in the resolution.
Mr. Speaker, I guess in my time here in the House, this
is probably the second or third time we've dealt with such issues. I don't think
there's anybody who takes joy in these issues. These are issues that are
important for us to deal with and important that we always learn from them as we
move forward.
When you look at this case, it's been laid out quite
well for anybody who's had the opportunity to actually read the report. There
are some things that happened post- or pre-laying out the report that are a
little concerning, but, again, if we follow the resolution tonight as it is
proposed, I think we will achieve what the Commissioner for Legislative
Standards set out.
Mr. Speaker, when you think about the consequences here
this evening – and I believe it's important, as we lay this out – one of the
consequences is the blind trust. Just for those who aren't familiar with a blind
a trust, a blind trust is designed so that a person in a circumstance that might
sometimes be vulnerable because of their interactions – it sets out some
guidelines, most of all for protection of that individual as much as protection
of a government. I would encourage anybody that doesn't understand what a blind
trust is certainly to go and look at the definition of said trust.
I guess in previous debates here in this House we've
heard a lot of comments and Hansard
actually has a great memory. I won't belabour that point right now, Mr. Speaker,
I'm not sure that I need to at this point of the evening.
At this point in time I'm going to turn the
conversation over to the House, and, Mr. Speaker, we will hopefully bring this
to some resolution.
Thank you.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Opposition House Leader.
MR.
BRAZIL:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It's an honour, again, to speak in this House as we
reflect on the roles and responsibilities we have as elected officials in the
House of Assembly. We are, at times, held to a higher standard in society
probably than some other entities or individuals, and we agree to that. When we
sign on as politicians we realize the scrutiny we fall under and the microscope
we're under is somewhat broader than the normal general public. Sometimes
inadvertently, things that you would think would be the day-to-day activities or
the day-to-day interactions are found to be somewhat less acceptable as you have
the title of an MHA, based on the principles of the responsibilities that also
goes along with that title itself.
There are different degrees of your ability to
influence things in the House of Assembly, but that's why the rules are written
for all of us across the board equally and we all must adhere to them. I know we
aspire to do that. There are times we're probably being overzealous for our
constituents, being very passionate about a particular piece of legislation or a
program or a policy that may inadvertently cause us to not think in the same
mind frame that we would normally when realizing we're dealing with people
outside the House of Assembly, we're dealing with bureaucrats, we're dealing
with the general public and our mannerisms and our actions may be interpreted
differently and may say something different than what the intent was.
I know looking at the report of my colleague here and
reading it, no doubt we have responsibilities for our actions and our words and
our discussions with individuals. No doubt, there are times we may not realize
that we're being a little bit more assertive than we should have been, or we're
outlining our responsibilities and our interpretation of what we feel should be
the right move forward that may be interpreted differently.
Having the title sometimes by bureaucrats and the
general public does add a certain sense of intimidation, which is never meant to
be that. At the end of the day, some may feel intimidated more so than others
and that would never be the intent of what's here. So we have to be so cognizant
of that. We have to be cognizant of the fact that people's interpretation of
ours may be totally different than our own interpretations of our own selves and
our own actions. As a result, we are accountable for everything that we say and
every action that we take.
Looking at my colleague and knowing my colleague and
reading the allegations, but particularly reading the information that was
supplied and seeing that a number of the individuals involved didn't feel that
there was anything untoward in any way, shape or form; that the individual
himself didn't gain financially in any way, shape or form, and the Commissioner
has identified that. The Commissioner may have identified that there was perhaps
the situation may have lent itself that one of the individuals involved felt
somewhat uncomfortable in the situation.
We have a responsibility to do that. We have a
responsibility to be very cognizant of not putting anybody in that predicament.
Again, we're only human, we try to do to the best of our ability what's right
and just and try to ensure that we're fulfilling our responsibilities and our
duties. There may be times when the interpretation or the misinterpretation or
the inadvertent loss of judgment at one given point might make somebody feel a
little bit more uncomfortable. There may be that fine line between where it is
that you're outlining a concern to somebody taking that as if you're being a
little bit more too assertive than you should've been. So we have to have that
balance and we have to find where it works best for people.
Knowing my colleague, knowing his reputation for
working and volunteering in the communities, knowing his background,
particularly in the department that he was dealing with – he has a vast
background so he would be quite aware of various programs and policies coming
before politics that he may not have always agreed with and that probably his
colleagues in that industry would have themselves thought would not be the most
frugal or beneficial to the industry itself. Sometimes you have a responsibility
to outline those concerns from people that you know could benefit or,
particularly, could be hurt by a particular policy or program.
So when you weigh all these things together, there
becomes a fine line between going out and expressing your views, expressing your
concern to how they may be interpreted. Again, I'm not in any way, shape or form
trying to say that there's a leeway for it; it isn't. We have to be so cognizant
of how we make people feel in our interactions, particularly when we're dealing
with civil servants. They're too valuable to the people of Newfoundland and
Labrador. They're too valuable to us in our support mechanism and they're hired
to do a job.
We know they give the best foot forward to ensure that
programs and policies that are put forward and 99 per cent of the programs and
policies that people are implementing, they probably had very little to do with
the design of those or the implementation of those, but they are following their
responsibilities to ensure, here are certain criteria, whether or not they
believe that they're the best criteria possible or do they believe there is need
for changes. That's not at their leverage to be able to say it should change one
way or the other.
Sometimes I've personally done it, particularly as a
former civil servant. When I became a politician, I thought I would change the
world. I thought there were a number of policies that I didn't like and I would
have those discussions with former colleagues of mine or other civil servants
about where I thought they should change. I would have hoped that in no way,
shape or form did I think I overstepped my boundaries in being assertive or
saying that there was a fallout in any way, shape or form. I'm convinced that my
colleague did the same, that he was outlining his concern around certain issues.
But again, certain mannerisms or certain words can be
taken by other people as different interpretations. What I see as one colour can
be somebody else seeing it as a different colour, so we have to be extremely
cognizant of what we're doing here. We have a responsibility. A number of times
in this House, Mr. Speaker, we've had debate around what's acceptable behaviour,
where the line is if somebody is overstepping their boundaries when it comes to
their authority, if there are things that we think might paint all politicians
in a negative light and get the general public to question our own credibility.
We have responsibilities here. It depends on how we use
those responsibilities. There are different degrees of what you're responsible
for in this House of Assembly. There are different degrees of what types of
restitution would have to be paid, depending on your actions. They have to be
weighed based on the merits of exactly those actions taken, the responsibilities
you had at the time, and the impact it had on individuals that were engaged.
We have to be cognizant in what we do. One, we have to
be cognizant as the politicians and our responsibilities, but the rest of us
have to be cognizant at the same time on what we feel when we make
determinations. In this case, if there's some type of punishment, for want of a
better phrase, that has to be put in place, that is reflective of what the
situation was, but in particular, what impact it had on people. That's what we
have to be cognizant of. We can't compared apples and oranges, because, Mr.
Speaker, that's not fair in any way, shape or form in society.
You have to compare things based on the merits of what
they are; the impact they've had; the intent, particularly, of what the whole
situation was about. As I read the report, the Commissioner talks about – there
were a number of allegations made there, but he talks about in most cases, with
the exception of one, that there would be no intent for anything to happen and
that there would really be no impact on any of the individuals involved. In only
one case was it seen that there may have been a feeling that they were
uncomfortable with the way the discussion had gone around a particular policy.
While, again, I'm not trying to minimize it, because we
are responsible and we do have to take responsibility for our actions and we do
have to accept that we have a different process here. When we have the
Commissioner for Legislative Standards and there's a process of being able to
make a complaint from a colleague here to the Commissioner or for somebody
outside, based on the principle of violating one of the codes of conduct. If we
do that the process is supposed to be fluent, that it's investigated, that all
are interviewed, and that all the evidence is presented. That may not always be
the case in how things are done, but that's the process that's supposed to be
followed here.
In this case, I feel the evidence was put forward; all
sides were given an opportunity to outline their issues, what went on and
transpired during the process. Then, the Commissioner took an assessment of that
and then determined at the end of the day that there would be, from his
perspective, a minimal restitution by the Member for violating one part of the
Code of Conduct as such. And that those involved didn't seem to be, in any way,
shape or form, adversely affected by the discussion that went on and the
situation that was looked into.
Again, while I reiterate that we all have
responsibilities, we have a bigger responsibility in this House to do the right
thing. Sometimes the right thing is looking at the evidence as it is, not as you
would want it to be, and comparing it based on what would be right and just in
the situation and what would be acceptable. What the Government House Leader has
presented for the hon. Member to do in restitution for this violation of the
Code of Conduct, I feel, is in order. I can say he's already, in my opinion,
dealt with most if not all of them, with the exception of an apology to the
House. In my understanding, he's reached out and spoken to some of the
individuals involved, even prior to the report coming to the House. I know he's
already had a conversation with the Commissioner about the blind trust to ensure
that everything is equitably put forward.
It was mentioned here by the Government House Leader
that it protects the general public, but it also protects the individual. It
protects the elected official from ensuring that their business entities cannot
be, in some way, shape or form misconstrued, that there's something that they
may be taking advantage of. In no case here was that seen in any way, shape or
form.
I do ask that we have an open discussion here. I do
hope that we keep it very civil. I hope we stick to the issues of this
particular case. I hope, at the end of the day, we realize we all have a
responsibility here to ensure that honourable things are done in the House of
Assembly. Regardless if people agree or disagree on the past in the House of
Assembly, Mr. Speaker, we have to agree that we need to set the bar that's
acceptable, the bar that's realistic and the bar that's based on the facts of
the evidence that's presented to us.
On that note, I do ask that the House have a good, very
civil, very professional debate on this. Mr. Speaker, hopefully then we can move
forward and ensure that we all learned a little bit more about our own
responsibilities in the House of Assembly.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Immigration, Skills and Labour.
MR.
BYRNE:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
May I begin by thanking the Commissioner for
Legislative Standards, Mr. Bruce Chaulk, for his work on this particular issue.
This is important. It's important work and it's been done well.
I also want to say a thank you to the Member for Mount
Pearl North. He obviously has received the report and has handled himself very
honourably and very appropriately. I say that very deliberately, Mr. Speaker,
because we are all hon. Members. The moment that we forget, when we try to
partition each other or to discriminate against each other as being somehow
dishonourable or assumed to be dishonourable, we lower the integrity and the
honour of the entire House. I do want to say how much I've appreciated sometimes
testy exchanges but friendly exchanges with the Member for Mount Pearl North.
We're at a point today where an action simply had to be
taken for two reasons; one is that as the evidence will indicate, there was a
sense of uncertainty, apprehension and potentially perceived intimidation by
senior government officials. They were unaware or just uncertain and concerned
about their interactions with a Member of the House of Assembly.
I have to say, Mr. Speaker, my duties as a minister –
my duties as the minister at that particular time, as they would be of any
minister at any particular time – would be to protect the interests of your
staff. They need a voice. Staff, a senior executive to any member of the civil
service of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, need a voice and need
protections.
You can appreciate, Mr. Speaker, that it is difficult
for the head of the civil service, whether it be the Clerk of the Executive
Council or a deputy minister of a department, to make some sort of assertion or
confrontation with a Member of the House of Assembly on a concern or allegation.
There is no conduit or avenue for that, for a member of the civil service,
whether they be the top civil servant in government, the Clerk of the Executive
Council or anyone else – a deputy minister or an assistant deputy minister – to
have a format, a forum, for communicating with a Member of the House of Assembly
about a concern about interactions with the department.
That's one of the reasons why Mr. Chaulk – well, more
specifically, why the Commissioner for Legislative Standards – is with us as an
Officer of Parliament, an Officer of the House to be able to provide some
resolution, some adjudication and some recommendations to matters such as this,
and he has done so.
The House will also note that at no point in time was
anyone ever made aware that a review was underway, except for the complainant,
the MHA and whatever testimony or witnesses the Commissioner sought to seek out.
I say that very deliberately, Mr. Speaker, because as we know if you were to act
on the principles that we are all hon. Members – we know in this world that
accusations appear on page 1, rebuttals appear on page 5 and corrections or
retractions or whatever appear on page 30.
Sometimes the complaint is the thing that is
weaponized. That should never happen. That's one of the reasons why no one knew
of this complaint until the recommendations or the review was tabled. I say that
very deliberately, Mr. Speaker.
We are all hon. Members, and while at times swirling
around us is a tempest of cynicism, contempt and just outright disregard for our
own humanity, there are people who try to dehumanize us. Not the majority, but
there are a cadre of people that would be very content with taking away each and
every one of our humanity and reducing us to something smaller than what we are.
We are all human and we all make mistakes, each and every one of us.
With that said, the tone of this discussion is far more
improved than the tone that I've heard on other occasions. This issue tonight is
not just about determining what is the right course of action on this particular
complaint or issue; it's about how we, as a House, deal with these matters. Do
we torque them? Do we let the tyranny of the majority be imposed upon the
minority?
When you're a government and you have a majority as a
government, you can do some awful things to the minority. It doesn't make it
right. In fact, we're judged by that and we should be judged by that. We should
have a process in place which judges issues on their merits, doesn't politicize
them, doesn't weaponize them and deals with them honestly and sincerely on the
weight of what they're worth. We have an expectation of a higher standard. We
know that, we need to act on that. But we can take a lot of time and a lot of
energy to reducing the integrity of this House by our own actions.
This debate is now taking a much more measured tone
than what I have heard in the past. My hope, Mr. Speaker – and this is an old
fool who's been around for 25 years. I've seen how this place can work, I can
see its highs and I can also forecast its lows. What we need to do is, if we
truly believe this is an hon. House, which I think we do – every one of us does
– I think we need to display that in our own actions. While I could use this,
some other Member could use as a pylon and say: Ha, ha, ha, got you now. Let's
not do that. Let's measure the issue on its merit.
Mr. Speaker, this report is instructive. It does give
us some insight as to how Mr. Chaulk views certain issues. It does give us
insight as to what we, as parliamentarians, as legislators, can – how we should
interpret the act. It is fair to say that – I think, based on my reading of the
report – Mr. Chaulk takes a particular interest in financial interests as
opposed to other interests. It is really important to recognize the balance of
the intent. I think Mr. Chaulk reviews that very thoroughly and I think that we
can take that away.
What I will say is that I raised these issues because I
thought they were legitimate and genuine, but sought a review by a competent
Officer of the Legislature. I think it is remarkable that the Commissioner said
– and I'll just read from the executive summary: “It is not my duty as
Commissioner to review any penalty or recommendation that departmental officials
have decided upon in relation to an individual or entity's participation in a
government program.” And an MHA's participation in a government program. I think
that's instructive. It's interesting and it's instructive that all MHAs can take
way.
He also indicates that it's no consequence that an MHA
engaged a peace officer in a particular infraction of non-criminal matters,
regulation or statutory performance of certain things. I think that's
instructive. I may have a different view of that, but it's instructive that the
Commissioner for Legislative Standards feels this way. So we can all take this
as precedent. It is important because, do you know what? That's the thing that
matters. My opinion doesn't matter. It's the Commissioner's opinion and his
findings. That's what matters.
The Commissioner's preoccupation was largely on matters
of financial interest. I think that's fair to point out in the course of the
report. That would be my summary, not his.
If I were to offer suggestions, I am concerned about
certain elements in this, which are that through no fault of their own, through
no intention of their own, through no desire of their own, senior government
officials were drawn into this. The assistant deputy minister of Agriculture and
Lands as well as the senior director of agricultural development were drawn into
this. During the course of the report – because, of course, they were
communicated to by the hon. Member. That's some of the points the Commissioner
found to be in contravention was not only the act of communication, but the
style of communication, what the overall perception of reality may have been.
I am concerned that the reader of this report may have
been left with an assumption that there were some faults or frailties on the
part of senior executive of government officials. Mr. Speaker, let me say: There
were none. There could be no findings that either the assistant deputy minister,
Keith Deering, or the director of agricultural development, Mr. Dave Jennings,
should in any way be faulted. If I did have one concern that there could be –
and this is where I think it would be helpful if we were to review the process
of how these reports are done. It would not be unhelpful for Mr. Chaulk to
appear before us in Committee of the Whole, or some forum, to be able to answer
to his report because there is some indication that there was some hearsay that
was adopted within the report.
Mr. Speaker, before anyone notches this up, the intent
of this is to get a better report. If there are going to be findings – like, for
example, there were things that were referred to in the report that could not be
tested. They were provided by third parties that were never actually tested for
fact that I'm aware of. That being the case, we should all be very careful about
third party hearsay being adopted within a report.
I would really appreciate some consideration of that
and make no allegations against Mr. Chaulk – none whatsoever. His report is his
report and it stands on its own. It is important, I think, in due process that
if things are adopted within a report, that explanation can be provided,
questions can be offered.
I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that is not unusual. I am
a decade-long veteran of a different standing committee of Parliament in Ottawa
in federal governance: the public accounts committee, where the Auditor General
of Canada is regularly called before the committee to defend and answer to his
reports or to explain his or her reports. The commissioner of languages – all
officers of Parliament are always called before a parliamentary committee to
answer to their reports.
If I were make one suggestion – because this is what
this is all about. This is not just about the MHA for Mount Pearl North; it
should not just about that. It's about how do we make a better system and how do
we apply our own rulings as a House, as a body, whether you or I are a Member of
that House in the future or not. How does the House establish a jurisprudence,
sort of an established way which is consistent and fair minded, that does not
let the majority be the tyranny to the minority, that is reasonable and can
stand the test of time.
One of the suggestions I would make is that it would be
perfectly reasonable and acceptable for Officers of Parliament to come before
the House in some form, at a Committee level or Committee of the Whole or
whatever, to just simply answer questions to their report. I think that would be
helpful. One point that I have to make clear – and I say this within the tone
and the context that I've already provided – is that no one should be victimized
or perceived to be victimized as not having done their job when those
individuals did their job.
I am left with some question as to whether or not ADM
Deering or Jennings may have been – the perception may have been did they do
something wrong here? Mr. Speaker, the answer is categorically, no, they did
everything right. I am sure the hon. Member for Mount Pearl North will attest to
that and include that in his own statements. They did nothing wrong. They did
not provide any information which was not to the very best of their ability and
knowledge to be accurate, which they would stand to. I would like to make that
point very, very clear.
With that said, Mr. Speaker, I can't say any more than
I have. This is not inconsistent, the recommendations from me. There was a
report that was tabled not long ago where I did implore the House to be very
much aware of the road you take. The law of unintended consequences can take
hold. The majority should not be to the tyranny of the minority ever.
The day that we have a majority government, which will
come – there will be a majority government sometime, somewhere. I would never
ever, ever want the Opposition in minority, by definition at that point in time,
to be subject to arbitrary decisions and rulings of the majority government. It
would be patently inappropriate, it would be contrary to the natural rules of
justice and it would lower the integrity of the House. We should do no less
today in a minority situation where actually the balance of power is somewhat
different.
Mr. Speaker, allow me to say that it's very simple: Do
today what we will do tomorrow, not necessarily what we did yesterday. Apply a
reasonable course of action where those who are found to be in offence to the
Code of Conduct are held to that standard, but in a reasonable way. We are not
letting ourselves off with an easy one. This is a tough job and sometimes, yes,
people do make errors. I make them, you make them and we all make them. Let's
not torque them, but let's not just simply stand by and let them go by. Let's
deal with them fairly and deal with them in a way today that we would deal with
them tomorrow.
With that said, Mr. Speaker, that is my perspective.
This is before the House tonight because I felt I had no choice. I had to deal
with this for the safety and protection of my staff. It was the right course of
action. It was dealt with in an appropriate way. It was not weaponized, it was
not torqued and it was not made to lower the integrity of a Member.
I can tell you, despite what some may suggest outside
and inside this House – mostly outside – I have a deep admiration for the MHA
for Mount Pearl North. I'm sure the MHA will be the first to say that in my very
early days, as minister responsible for agriculture, it was I who suggested to
him go get yourself a blind trust. Very early, years ago, I gave him counsel and
said probably the best way to protect yourself from this kind of a situation was
to establish a blind trust. I respect the fact that at the time he didn't. Now
today, of course, we're in a different situation and, obviously, that would
probably be a prudent course of action under the circumstances we're in.
With that said, I think all we would need to know is
does he support the Commissioner's findings and apologize for the breaches in
the code that the Commissioner identified. Will he apologize to the government
officials? I think that while it's been said that we believe he's apologized, I
think it's important for their sake that be made explicitly clear what was that
apology, how was it given; or if more prudent, to say it and say it now, what is
that apology. I think this is the House; this is where these sessions are
recorded. That would be helpful. Also, will the hon. Member confirm that no such
exchanges have occurred since this matter was first initiated in the spring?
Will he confirm that he's agreed to a blind trust? Will he confirm that he will
abide by the actions?
That's the thing that should come out. If there can be
plucked something good from all of this – I say and believe it can – we can
become better as a House. We can prove our integrity more as a House and as
individual MHAs by actually pronouncing that this is a reasonable way to proceed
– that which we do today is that which we will do tomorrow – and allow every one
of us but, most importantly, the people outside of this House to see the
integrity of this House in action.
That, Mr. Speaker, is all I have to say about this
matter.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for St. John's Centre.
MR.
J. DINN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It's interesting. In my career as a teacher – and I'm
certain the Member for Bonavista will attest to this – in many ways you're very
much called upon at times to have an awful lot of judgment and trying to come up
with something, parse the facts, often knowing that you don't have the complete
facts and you're having to think on your feet.
I'll tell you that in many cases, as a teacher it's not
always about precedent. That's part of it, but you have to weigh each – and
that's the approach I took – individual case separately. Not only look at what
was done before but, since I was dealing with children, young people, about
their level of contrition – it's the first time they've done it, what are the
mitigating circumstances – any one of a number of things and then move on. It's
not very much like a court of law. Often you get the accusation that that's not
fair. Well, it depends on the situation. In many cases, I never looked upon
precedent strictly in terms of precedent. I'd always weighed the facts, the
situation and so on and so forth.
I read through this report and I was looking at this
from the point of view as to what level, compared to other issues that we've
raised here, where this stands. I'm looking at certain facts here on page 7 of
the report, it's interesting, it says: “Conservation officer Martin concluded
his interview by advising that because he was dealing with a 'political person'
he did start to second guess his actions, but confirmed that he did not feel
that MHA Lester tried to influence him in any way because of his stature.
“When interviewed, MHA Lester confirmed that his issue
with a ticket was that it indicated that he 'permitted' the cow to roam and
according to MHA Lester he did not 'permit' this to occur.” I would assume this
is a disagreement.
Here is the interesting thing in this section: “MHA
Lester indicated in his written submission that he was not upset personally with
conservation officer Martin, and when” he found out, basically, about the
“above-noted accusation … he apologized for unknowingly causing the conservation
officer any discomfort.” I think in many ways that speaks to an hon. individual,
too, things that I'd be looking for if I were dealing with a student.
With regard to, it looks like here, the Vegetable
Transplant Program on section 3, again it's interesting here that we're talking
about respect. As an MHA in the Third Party, too, it's sometimes very difficult
to get answers. Even here, it was noted that it was inappropriate for the person
to refuse to answer Mr. Lester's emails and phone calls.
I can see a certain level of frustration and I can see
a certain amount of, here, that it's not as clear as it might be. Nevertheless,
there's the issue with deputy minister Keith Deering. I look at that one as
probably certainly the one that the Commissioner for Legislative Standards said
was probably the most egregious, I guess, if we want to look at that. Even
there, what was the threat, as such: We'll have to wait what happens that next
election.
Here is what I'm looking at: We're in the Opposition on
this side, so really what influence do we have. I'm always conscious about this,
because really influence comes from a power imbalance. I was conscious of it
when I was president of a union in dealing with my employees – they were the
employee; I was the employer; I was the boss. I was always very careful of that
power imbalance. However, with my peers in the executive and that we could go at
it hammer and tongs because it was very much of a battle amongst equals. For the
most part you focused on the issue and never on the personalities. Always that.
If you did veer into personalities, if you did veer into personal attacks, you
were quickly reined in for it. It's as simple as that.
So I look here in some ways, yes, that might be
perceived certainly as a veiled threat. I don't know what if it means that
you'll be out of a job, or when if we're elected you'll be forced – you'll have
to answer to me. I don't know what it is. That's predicated on the assumption
that person's party will be in power and that person will be elected. I guess
it's like promising when I win the lottery I'll pay you back what I owe you.
Then it comes to the recommendation. I'm going to go
with the conflict of interest piece, too, and the setting up of a blind trust.
There's nothing there that says or that really clearly defines that an
Opposition Member would have – a Member of the Third Party, independent,
whatever you want to call it – because really there is no agency to influence. I
can make no decision on this side that would in any way benefit or influence.
From my brief stint here, it very much involves me going to speak to a minister
and saying: Here's what we need in this situation and make my case. Then it's
really still up to the minister, Mr. Speaker, to say yea or nay.
I notice also, too, that the Commissioner recommends
but doesn't direct, and still I think the Member for Mount Pearl North has done
that. It's an interesting thing, because I resigned from an awful lot of
volunteer boards when I became an MHA for the Third Party. I remember a few of
my friends, former colleagues in NLTA, said: Not bad, you're doing what any
other president of the association would do, you're using it as a stepping stone
into politics. I said, really? I run for the Third Party and this is my stepping
stone. Really? Maybe someday.
Right now, I look at in terms of what I stepped down
from, because I was only too well aware and experienced the accusations that if
I'm involved with a not-for-profit, such as the Salmonid Association of Eastern
Newfoundland, the accusations that could be levelled against me. I stayed away
from it. I was on the board of directors of The Gathering Place, on a number of
places, things that brought me a lot of personal fulfillment.
I wrote the Commissioner and I asked, and nothing, in
fact, stops me from sitting on these boards of directors, except that should I
be in a position where I wanted to address something in the House of Assembly, I
would really have to recuse myself from that. I was prepared to do that, but on
the other hand I wanted to be able to advocate for groups if I thought they were
deserving of this. So I've stepped down from a lot of those things, not because
I had to; I chose to, and not because it's in my best interest but in this case
in the best interest of the organizations that are near and dear to me.
I was looking at this here and I've gotten to know the
Member for Mount Pearl North. I know we're in different political parties,
probably different political spectrums in many ways, but certainly an hon.
individual who didn't wait for this to get to the House of Assembly, but
actually took the corrective action necessary to begin with.
I want to talk a little bit about, too, the fact that
we should not be made to lower the integrity of a Member of this House. That I
do agree with, wholeheartedly. As I said, I come from a tradition where we could
really go at an issue hammer and tongs. You could be passionate and you could
argue your point as strongly as you wanted. You could attack with fact, reason,
whatever you want; you could defend your position. The line that was never
crossed was into the realm of the personal. That was a clear line.
I look at it in this time when I hear these words that
we should not be made to lower the integrity of a Member. Yet, early on in my
career here there was an accusation that somehow I'm racist; another Member, the
implication of poaching. I, too, want to see – I do believe in this, that we
should not be made to lower the integrity of a Member, but that's all Members
here, that we go forward and we look at each case individually on its merits
there.
I do believe here in this House that, yes, when we deal
with an issue, we deal with the issue. We deal with the facts. We don't need to
go into personal attacks as well. We look at an individual case, and I have to
look at this case here compared to others.
I think I'm looking at it as a teacher here. I'm trying
to use my judgment because we have to move forward. I'm thinking if this were a
student in front of me, I'd say, yeah, there's some questionable stuff here,
there's some questionable details but it's very clear the Member, before being
asked, made the necessary apologies and took the necessary steps to make sure it
didn't happen again.
I think in many ways, while I'm not too worried about
the – I don't always look at the tyranny of the majority or the tyranny of the
minority, I always look at what are the facts of the case itself. If the Member
were in a position of power, I'd be reading this a little bit differently. If
the Member were in a position where he or she could influence the employment of
an individual, I would be looking at this differently.
Is it wrong what the Member did? From reading this
report, the Member has certainly indicated a very clear willingness that he was
contrite, making the apologies even when there's been no – as in one case, there
was no example that the Member was abusing his authority nor did the person feel
he was influencing his nature, but still the Member took the steps to apologize.
You know what? That's what I look for in an individual.
We've had people in this House who have done that, who
have taken those steps from the get-go. When accused of something, they take the
necessary steps. They did the honourable thing, and in some cases stepping down
from a position. To me, Mr. Speaker, that's what I look for. I don't need to see
it dragged out in the House before coming to an apology.
I look at this report and I see here something that on
the level of scale of things as a teacher, it has elements of concerns. Whether
it rises to a level of seriousness, I don't know, but I will tell you that if I
had students like this all the time, my life as a teacher would have been a lot
easier. That much I can tell you.
With this, I think the report does mete out what I
consider to be fair and justified action. The Member has certainly done his best
to meet those demands and to show the appropriate level of contrition and a
willingness to do better.
Thank you.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Fisheries, Forestry and Agriculture.
MR.
LOVELESS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I just want to reference the previous speaker when he
said: If the Member was in power, he would look at the report differently. Well,
I have to disagree with that. Because in power, no matter where we sit or stand
in this House of Assembly we all have to hold ourselves in high standard and
high regard, whether we are governing or not. We are all leaders here and people
in this province expect us to all be leaders no matter where we sit in this
House of Assembly.
Mr. Speaker, it's always a pleasure to speak and
represent the people of Fortune Bay - Cape La Hune, where there's a lot of wind
tonight and rain. I just hope everyone is certainly safe out there. Speaking to
this is not something that I desire or anybody desires to be doing but I believe
is necessary, especially in my role as minister and the department that's in
question in the report, and necessary because the MHA in question needs to do
better and a reminder for all of us, moving forward.
This is about leadership and adopting change. Change
that is necessary and I believe there is a responsibility for the MHA in
question, his leader, to reflect upon the actions as well. It would be
interesting to hear the response to that.
On August 19, I was appointed Minister of Fisheries,
Forestry and Agriculture and certainly honoured to have this opportunity. I also
have to speak to it, as my colleague for Corner Brook said, because he was
minister at the time, but I'm minister now and responsible for that department.
Any minister in government has employees that work
tirelessly day after day on his or her behalf and deal with a lot of stressful
circumstances. No one deserves any type of such aggressive behaviour from anyone
elected or not. My department is no different and I value each and every one of
them that work in that department.
I want to put on record in this House, Mr. Speaker, the
employees in my department that are referenced in the report are very
hard-working individuals, and I know the hon. Member opposite will agree. I
value them very, very much. They are like other employees that work within their
means and they make decisions based on what they have to work with. Their answer
sometimes is not what the proponent, whether it's a MHA or someone from the
outside, is looking for and, in this case, the discussion is just that. I
certainly support my colleague, the Minister of ISL; they didn't do any wrong.
They absolutely didn't.
Mr. Speaker, I guess, personally, as well as a father,
I try to instill within my children to have respect for others. Life will throw
you many challenges and when you're faced with those challenges, always respond,
do not react. When you react, there is trouble. As my former days as a
constituency assistant and executive assistant, I tolerated no aggressive
behaviour from anyone and certainly encourage my current CA and EA to follow the
same.
Mr. Speaker, I will go to the report and reference it
because I believe the report talks about – and it's a reflection upon reaction
versus responding. I am a newly elected MHA and in the ministerial portfolio and
believe referencing some of the stuff that's in the report goes to the principle
of accountability. I will read some stuff directly from the report, Mr. Speaker.
The MHA for Mount Pearl North was interacting with
government officials and it was often difficult for them to distinguish between
his role as MHA or his former life. That is problematic. This is about conduct;
this is about control and this is about respecting our public servants who do
their job and do it well.
The MHA in question had “direct dealings with ADM
Deering wherein he made the comment 'he
would have to wait and see what happens after the next election' ….” I know
different people look at it different ways, but, again, that statement, to me,
Mr. Speaker, is troublesome and behaviour that is not and should not be a part
of our democratic system.
Continuing on in the report, I reference the MHA's
interaction with conservations officers. Again, here, if you have read the
report – and I'm sure all people in this House of Assembly have read the report
– we see, again, behaviour that is out of line, as far as I'm concerned, Mr.
Speaker, with an MHA, and that is also in a debate with a public servant about
his business – again, wrong and not appropriate.
I move onto the interaction with ADM Keith Deering, who
I work very closely with, and if you read down through the report, Mr. Speaker,
again I reference the interaction between these two individuals and I know there
are differences of opinion in terms of this report, but in referencing the
cancelling of an application that the MHA for Mount Pearl North was in contact
with the ADM regarding the matter. According to the ADM, the MHA was rattled by
the decision.
I guess at that point if you're rattled by a decision
you should remove yourself from the situation. In that reference, MHA Lester was
disappointed in his decision and he talked about taking the department to court.
Again, it goes back to whether you react or you respond to it.
Also in the report it references a policy. I know the
MHA in question, in his job, we know what he does and he does it well and
passionate about it in terms of his business, he made reference: “I had been
advocating for change on this policy long before I became an MHA and personally
believe that changes will strengthen the agriculture industry.” That's okay if
he wasn't an MHA. I know he's passionate about the agriculture industry and
respect his comments, but I believe, at that point, he was crossing the line.
Mr. Lester did go on to say that “was not meant as a threat in any way,” but
when you reference: see what happens in the next election, I think it was beyond
the line in the context of the whole conversation.
I know in another reference, Mr. Speaker, with the MHA
in question and another employee, Mr. Jennings, it was back and forth. I know,
in fairness to the MHA in question, the department was told not to talk to him.
I don't agree with that, but, again, I guess it should never have gotten to that
situation where they not wanting to talk to him, and he was having grave
difficulty with it. It should never have reached that point.
Mr. Speaker, referencing from the report, too – and
this is a very important point that I'm going to make. This came from the
principles 5-6 of Code of Conduct. “Prior to engaging in an analysis of MHA
Lester's conduct in relation to these Principles, the comments of MHA Lester's
legal counsel at the conclusion of his August 27, 2020 submission are worth
repeating:
“If the
Commissioner finds that there are breaches of the Act or Code of Conduct (which
is denied by Mr. Lester) then the problem stems from Mr. Lester having direct
conduct with civil servants in the Department of Fisheries and Land Resources.
While it is Mr. Lester's position that a blind trust is neither practical or
necessary ….”
I know he referenced that there's more that talks about
his recommendations and recommendations to in further interactions it would be
handed over to some family members, but a very important point is that after
that fact, he still engaged with staff in the department. That interaction is
problematic.
Mr. Speaker, I'm going to clue up and I think it's
important that it's referenced and it's repeated and read into the record here.
The commitments, Members' Code of Conduct – and this is for all of us: “Members
of this House of Assembly recognize that we are responsible to the people of
Newfoundland and Labrador and will responsibly execute our official duties in
order to promote the human, environmental and economic welfare of Newfoundland
and Labrador.
“Members of this House of Assembly respect the law and
the institution of the Legislature and acknowledge our need to maintain the
public trust placed in us by performing our duties with accessibility,
accountability, courtesy, honesty and integrity.” Mr. Speaker, in this whole
report I want to add as well – and this speaks to all of us – the word
“respect.”
It goes on to talk about the principles and I just want
to reference a few to clue up: “It is a fundamental objective of their holding
public office that Members serve their fellow citizens with integrity in order
to improve the economic and social conditions of the people of the province ….
“Members will not engage in personal conduct that
exploits for private reasons their positions or authorities or that would tend
to bring discredit to their offices.”
Members “are individually responsible for preventing
conflicts of interest and will endeavour to prevent them from arising.” This
didn't happen in these cases.
Mr. Speaker, it goes on to say: “Members should have
regard to the duty of public service employees to remain politically impartial
when carrying out their duties….
“Members should promote and support these principles by
leadership and example.”
Mr. Speaker, we're all elected here. No matter what
side of the House we sit on, where we sit, where we stand, you don't need to be
in government to lead by example. I say to all of us at this point moving
forward: Let's all be leaders for the great people of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Member for Humber - Bay of Islands.
MR.
JOYCE:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I'm going to stand and I'm going to speak on a few
different things here tonight that are related to the process, the Commissioner
for Legislative Standards and why we're here. People might know I'm a bit of an
expert on that lately. I've been going through this for so long and the
foolishness I had to go through. I just wanted to go through some of this with
Bruce Chaulk.
As you know, Mr. Speaker, there are a few things you
wouldn't allow me to say in this House. I just wanted to inform the House that
we're supposed to give the Commissioner for Legislative Standards our finances
if your RSPs are self-directed. I refused to do it because I want it brought
back to the House so I could speak about the issues concerning. So there will be
a report coming soon, but it will be over me giving out the RSPs. I had the
information but I want to make sure that I get my point across here in this
House, which I couldn't do on several occasions. I just want everybody to know
so it's not a big thing. I have the information. If the House says give it, I
have no problem. But I will be speaking of why I would not give the information,
Mr. Speaker, and there are legitimate reasons for why I won't.
The question I have to ask, too, before I even start
was: Did the Commissioner for Legislative Standards speak to anybody else
outside? That's the question I have to ask, because I have a confirmation that
during the report for myself and Dale Kirby that he did speak to the premier of
the province. This is why – and I know the Member for Corner Brook mentioned it
earlier – that it would be nice to have him here to answer questions – not dodge
them, answer them. Can anybody in this House confirm to me if he spoke to
anybody? Because I know in our case he did.
That's one question that I need answered before you
want to do anything about – was there any undue pressure. I'm not saying there
was. I'm not saying there wasn't. But I'm just saying in our case, we had it
confirmed that he was speaking to the premier and the premier's staff. He
directed staff members to speak to him during the investigation. So was this
done here? That's something I don't know. I'm not saying it was, but I don't
know.
The other thing, and the seriousness of the report,
like we all say we have to treat public sector employees with respect, and we
all agree with that. When you say one thing, how does someone feel? But the
seriousness of what the Member – and I'll just read it. I don't mean to be
reading this, but there's a reason why I'm doing this. Principle 5 – and this is
in the Code of Conduct – states: “'Members
will not engage in personal conduct that exploits for private reasons their
positions or authorities or that would tend to bring discredit to their offices.'
As a result of MHA Lester having direct dealings with ADM Deering wherein he
made the comment 'he would have to wait
and see what happens'” and continuing to engage with ADM Deering to discuss
and attend the application process. A reasonable person is left with the
appearance that the MHA was using his position to further his private interest
of his business.
The reason why I say that, when that was brought in
here it's what Dale Kirby was found – Principle 5: “Members will not engage in
personal conduct that exploits for private reasons ….” Here's a Member that the
Commissioner for Legislative Standards said is doing it for personal reasons,
but he found Dale Kirby the same thing, for personal reasons. He was talking to
someone outside a hotel in Gander.
Do you see the double standard that I'm using here, how
serious this one is? Either what MHA Lester is saying is so serious, what – Dale
Kirby there was nothing to it because there was no private interest, absolutely
none. If he's using MHA Lester, there is absolutely no private interest. Do you
see the discrepancy and the reason how different reports are done and how
serious this actual report is that was done?
I just wanted to put this on the record too: A lot of
times when these reports come up, then we get MHAs dragged out in the media and
it brings down the House of Assembly. I just want to point something out; I was
here for every one. From 2008 to 2017 there were two. I went out and defended
both of them because it was so foolish to even talk about. We took care of it.
From 2017 to 2020 there are nine extra. From 2017 to
2020 there are now nine Code of Conduct violations. From 2008 to 2017 there were
two. That was it. When everybody wants to look around and say that we're
bringing it down, we have to look at ourselves. Is there another way that we can
deal with this?
I heard the Member for Corner Brook say that it
shouldn't be in the media. I agree with you. Great job it was never in the
media. Just imagine, the day that you're told there was an allegation was here
on the floor of the House of Assembly. What process does anybody have? Just
think about it. What opportunity does anybody have?
This is where we have to find a mechanism to ensure
that it's not in the media. If there are issues, we have to deal with them,
there's absolutely no doubt. But there has to be a better way than dragging
people through the mud. If there's something very, very serious, I have no
problem with it, but we have to find a way to work on this because we all come
down.
Before I go any further, I just want to thank the
people of Humber - Bay of Islands for their support over the last 2½, three
years through some of the situations that I went through. It's on both sides. I
know a lot of my former colleagues there, except for two who really stood up for
me – and they know who they are – the rest came to me privately: Oh, b'y, we
wish we had our time back. We were told to do this and all that. You'll have
your opportunity very soon to straighten this out, except for two – they know
who they are – who went to bat and stood up. I'm appreciative of that, Mr.
Speaker.
I just wanted to go on to the report itself. I just
explained about how one could be in violation of Principle 5 and another one
because they're talking to someone with no private interest, absolutely none –
not even finances discussed. So which one is right? This is what you have to
weigh when you see the report. Someone like myself, who's been through it, these
are the kinds of things you have to weigh.
Also, Mr. Speaker, the other thing I noticed with this
– and I know the Member for, I think, Conception Bay East - Bell Island made –
that everybody was interviewed. Do you know who wasn't interviewed in the
report? This I ask again: Do you know the only person who wasn't interviewed?
Myself. Yet we can take everything and throw it out here and talk about this
report as if this is gospel because the Commissioner did it.
I also read in the report how you don't actually do an
investigation until you get the response from the respondent. Do you know in the
report that was myself and Dale Kirby, the investigation was already started
before they even got the response? This is why I have to question, before we
want to nail someone to wall, how this was done. I know discrepancies in the
reports that were done for myself and Dale Kirby and the discrepancy done here
for the Member. Those are the kind of things you have to weigh also.
I say to the Opposition also, and this goes for
everybody, it's a chance for all of us to learn on this, Mr. Speaker. I remember
when – and I can take out the quote – I was going through it, the Leader of the
Opposition said because it looked like I should have violated Principle 6, I
should get 21 days out of the House of Assembly. That's what drags everything
down.
What we should do is try to say, how can we make this
system better? How can we ensure if there are issues that MHAs have, that we
find a way to do it and do it properly. I'm explaining some issues I have with
the report itself and why I feel I have questions about the report from the
Commissioner for Legislative Standards.
Another one here that he has in to the Member is when
you get information and if anything new comes up we'll send it to you. Do you
know there were 21 people interviewed and I never saw what they said? The
question with me is just because you say it, how true is it.
I know I'm speaking to the Member for Mount Pearl
North. Did he have a chance to give you all the information? I don't know. I
honestly don't know if he did or didn't. Because you put that statement in
there, the Commissioner for Legislative Standards, I know personally that just
because it's there it's not true. I know the information he put in my report it
was the same thing; it just wasn't true what he said.
Was it true in this case? I don't know, but every time
I see something like this I have to ask a question on it. Why is there such a
discrepancy in reports on how you conduct the report? Just six, eight – two
years away the same person, why did you do that?
The other question I have to ask also, who did the
report? Did he go outside and get an outside expertise investigation? If not,
what are his investigative skills? That's very important here. What are the
investigative skills here? That's a big question you have to ask. Did the
Commissioner do this on his own or did he go out and get an outside agency? It's
not said in this report if he did or didn't. That's a big discrepancy that I
would have also in the report that you have to look at.
When I read the report, and I read it all, there are
some concerns there. I say to the Members, it takes a man to call back and say,
look, I'm sorry, and he said it. There are some other things here, Mr. Speaker,
that you wonder how someone said it and how it was taken. Only personal feelings
would know that. Only your personal feelings would know how you felt. If Mr.
Deering said that, all fine, but that's the only way you would know that, is if
a Member said that himself.
Mr. Speaker, the other thing I find strange about all
this here is that the Commissioner himself, and then of course the report went
through it all. When the allegations were denied in some case, what weight do
you put on the probability of truth or false? I'm not saying how it went down, I
wasn't there. I wasn't on the phone call. These are questions I would have to
ask because of the personal experiences I went through. I have to question a lot
of it.
It's like I said before, Mr. Speaker, I know there's
something coming to the House that I – and it's sad. It's actually sad for me,
for a person who has been around politics so long, that I would have to
engineer, actually engineer a report that comes to the House so I could have
information brought forth that I can't in this House. It's sad. It's actually
sad. And I'm fine with it. I'm more than fine with it, because it's just
personal stuff about the RRSPs, which is, you can have it. I just need to get
information in this House, which I couldn't do in several ways from the former
Speaker and then from your ruling recently.
Those are the kinds of things, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to
be looked at in this House and in the whole report itself. “In accordance with
the legislation, the subject MHA can make submissions to the Commissioner in
writing, or in person, or by counsel or other representative. The Commissioner
does not have to interview any witness including the subject MHA if he does not
have any follow-up questions based on the evidence.”
That is contrary to the act. The act says you have to
make every reasonable opportunity to be present. That is contrary to the act,
that statement in this report. I think it's 38(4), if you go back and look at
it. It says you have to make every reasonable opportunity to be present.
When you make statements like this and you look at the
report and say, okay, we know someone else was found in violation of five which
had no financial bearing whatsoever, which obviously Principle 5 is. Now, all of
a sudden we're going to go off and try to crucify someone over Principle 5. It
raises a red flag for me, as I seen it happen before and it wasn't used
properly. Is it being used properly now?
I agree with the Member for Corner Brook, if we had the
Commissioner for Legislative Standards here we could ask questions and be open.
I know the Auditor General does appear before the Public Accounts and others. So
it is something that I think we should look at from here on in, Mr. Speaker, and
see if we can put in legislation somewhere that the Commissioner would stand in
here.
I have a few minutes left. I won't belabour it too much
more, but there are concerns I have with it. I will go along with the
recommendations that are made here, but I just hope we can find a better way.
When a report comes in against all of us, it brings us all down. We all know
that; it brings us all down. If there's some way we can do it, some way we can
possibly – Mr. Speaker, this is a prime time to bring it up now, the
interpretation of different principles in the House.
I have here now Principle 5, all financial. We have
Principle 5 for former MHA Dale Kirby for talking to someone outside a hotel. He
was in violation because he was talking to someone; no financials, none
whatsoever. Principle 10 for me, for example, a certain MHA is a government
employee. There are sworn affidavits that MHAs aren't, and here you are
questioning all the different principles because it's all according to what
you're going to put in it.
There are affidavits in the Supreme Court of
Newfoundland and Labrador that Members aren't government employees. This is the
flaws I have in the whole process with Bruce Chaulk, with the Commissioner for
Legislative Standards. I'll mark it down, Mr. Speaker.
Those are some of the concerns I have with it. That's
why I feel that if we're going to move forward, let's move forward with this;
let's get this done and let's move on and do the job that we need to do. We have
a $2-billion deficit: Those are the kinds of things we have to look at here in
this House.
Again, Mr. Speaker, I'll look forward to my chance to
have a few words in the House, hopefully, this next four or five days on the
inconsistencies of the Commissioner for Legislative Standards about myself. I'm
looking forward to it and I hope I'll be able to speak freely. As Madam Sauvé
said: Anything that happens in this House of Commons cannot have any influence
on any court proceedings. That was Madam Sauvé's own ruling in 1983.
I'm hoping to be able to speak free on it and show the
inconsistencies here. I look forward to it and I welcome the debate, especially
on Principle 10. That's one, Mr. Speaker, that I'm going to bring up in this
House. Also, the other one I'm going to bring up is how I have confirmation –
and this is why I asked this question here – that the former premier of this
province, Dwight Ball, was in contact with Bruce Chaulk during this and that was
never disclosed during the debate that we had in this House of Assembly. Those
are the kind of inconsistencies I have to weigh into the factors in this report;
it was never disclosed.
One of the violations that I was accused of was
Principle 6, my personal finances. I ask anybody in this House – and I don't
mean the Members before because you weren't here then – can anybody guarantee me
that my finances weren't discussed with Dwight Ball's staff or the Commissioner
for Legislative Standards? If no one can confirm to me that it wasn't, we're
going to have a very healthy debate on that.
When you have the premier of the province stating
publicly – I have the information there that he would never interfere, he would
never seek any information, but he did and that was never disclosed by the
Commissioner for Legislative Standards. This is why I feel that we have to weigh
that when we vote on this here in this Legislature.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Minister of Industry, Energy and Technology.
MR.
A. PARSONS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I want to take an opportunity to speak here to this
resolution or motion tonight. I think you could go back to just under a year ago
and I spoke to the last similar type motion that this House heard. At the time,
I spoke and said that I was on two minds, didn't know if I wanted to speak, but
I felt that I should because I felt that I should get my thoughts or my feelings
or positions on the record.
I actually heard a Member speak to that earlier today,
not this evening, but today, talking about: I ask these questions to get them on
the record. That is the point many times, is that you speak because you want to
have it reflected that you asked a question, you made a point or you talked
about a certain issue, for Hansard to
show, in perpetuity, what's going on and what happened in this House. So I feel
I need to do that. Again, I'm speaking very similar to how I spoke last year,
and I guess that's some foreshadowing of some of the comments that I have to
make tonight.
I've taken an opportunity to listen to all my
colleagues have their say to this and I've listened carefully to their points,
I've read the report, I've reviewed the motion and I've gone over the
Hansard from previous motions of this
type. Again, I apologize in advance because you lay out what you think is going
to be a coherent piece and then you sort of hop all around and try to make
something that people can follow along, so I apologize in advance.
Now, I just want to point out that a lot of what, I
guess, you do or how you present something it's got to do with precedent. I've
heard Members talk about precedent when it comes to these types of motions. I
know my colleague across the way, the Opposition House Leader, spoke about
precedent in the past. I think last year he mentioned precedent as well. I think
the motion that has been put forward today is very much in line with what was
done last year, in the sense that a motion was put forward for a breach of the
Code of Conduct and it was similar to what was, I guess, recommended by the
Commissioner for Legislative Standards.
Now, I will point out one significant difference. Last
year's motion was amended and that motion was amended to make it much more
punitive in nature and that motion was adopted by this House. I heed the
comments of the Opposition House Leader when he says we should stick to this
particular case. I appreciate that, there's no doubt I do. I also think it is
necessary to provide context for some of the debate that we're having here and
the points that we put out. Again, I'm not going to get into the points or the
report itself. Anybody that is interested, it's available. It might be online.
I'm sure that's there. I don't need to read this for other people to know; they
can read that themselves. But they do need to know that there's a Code of
Conduct. There was a complaint made. There was an investigation. There was a
finding and a breach and finally we end up here debating in the House.
I would point out, as much as everyone loves being a
part of this House, as much as everyone loves representing their constituents,
there's no one in this House that relishes having to speak to this. There's one
comment that I've heard before: An affront of any kind like this is an affront
on us all. We are all subject to this; how one goes, we all go in many ways.
What I wanted to point out is just a couple of the
differences. Just point out what I've heard tonight and some contrasts or
similarities, what I agree with or disagree with; what I've noticed in the
debate between this year and last year that I think is noteworthy to point out
here. Then, more importantly, to come with the conclusion of where I would –
just my view of where I'd like to see this House go. That's my view. It may not
be shared with anybody, but I have every right to put that out there, as does
every Member in this House have a right to speak.
I listened to the comments from my colleague, the
Opposition House Leader. I would point out in advance for people that may be
watching or may be listening – I don't know if there are – a lot of this is not
personal. As someone who is trained to do this, you point out sometimes what you
view to be an inaccuracy. My colleague pointed out – and he spoke out very well
to – that this was inadvertent, that there was an overzealousness; how we all
can be overzealous for our constituents. Sometimes it causes us not to think.
Sometimes in the sense of trying to handle the responsibilities for our
constituents, we go overboard.
The thing I would point out for the record here is that
this was not for a constituent; this was by an MHA and for an MHA. I think I
need to put that on the record to point that out because that is factual. I
would say, if there was an underlying tone or theme to my speech, it would be:
there but for the grace of God go I, because all 40 of us live by a code.
I've been lucky enough here – in fact, I counted it up
here tonight. There are six people in this House that have been here longer than
me or the same time as me. I've been here a long time, I've seen a lot of this
and, thankfully, I haven't found myself in this position, but that doesn't mean
it won't happen. That doesn't mean it can't happen. Every one of us should be
guided by that.
I heard the comments intent or merit or the impact that
they've had. I would point out that when we talk about our public servants,
things like this of any nature have an impact. Everything – when we are brought
here, this has an impact on everybody.
My colleague, the House Leader for the NDP, talked
about how sometimes when you're a leader there's a different treatment. I would
point out my disagreement with that because there is a Code of Conduct that
guides all 40 Members that we are all subject to and we are subject to equally.
We can talk about the differences between one or the other, but when it comes to
this, this report is about the same Code of Conduct that guides us all and when
there's a breach it must be treated as such.
We talk about the willingness to do better. I don't
doubt that is there from my colleague, the Member for Mount Pearl North, the
want, the desire to do better. It must be pointed out for this record that as my
colleague, the Minister of Fisheries, Forestry and Agriculture pointed out, that
in fact the very conduct that lead to this, which are emails to a civil servant
and contact with a civil servant, which is referred to this in the report, which
occurred in 2020 and which was the subject of this, the investigation, went into
August 2020. There was commentary made back to the Commissioner. This report was
dated September 24; it was tabled on October 1. There have since been further
communications between that Member and that civil servant.
To me, Mr. Speaker, that shows that perhaps we need to
continue to impress upon all of us, that the same thing that got us in trouble
is still happening and needs to be taken care of. I come back to what the Member
said about the willingness to do better. We must continue to show that. I think
that's something that can guide us all.
I listened to my colleague for Humber -Bay of Islands.
He talked about the process and you know what, he has some points. The process
is difficult. The process, I think, can be done differently. I think that's
something that this House should take upon itself, because as the Member for
Corner Brook said, sometimes it has been weaponized. We look at how many of
these have been used in the last few years – and I'm going to lead into that now
in a second because I'll point out what I think is a significant contrast
between before and after.
When we talk about the after, my assumption is that I
may be one of the last speakers to this. That's my understanding. I may be wrong
but we will see. In fact, this debate tonight will go on for roughly an hour to
an hour and a half possibly. That doesn't bother me. I'm not complaining about
that at all. We've had a chance to speak, we're doing our part and as the Member
said, it's been, I think, a civil, a responsible debate on a serious issue.
Again, even when you point out something that's difficult to hear, that doesn't
mean it's not responsible, it just means it's difficult to hear. It's difficult
to hear for all of us.
I would point out that last year this same debate on a
similar issue, which was a breach, took three days. Tonight's speech, I believe
we have three Members of the Opposition – of which there are equal numbers,
Opposition and government – of 20. Last year, there were 17 Members. Seventeen
Members spoke to this. I think that points out the difference here about us
trying to do something differently as we move forward. I think we've shown that
we're doing this. This is not about being political; it's not about being
partisan. It is about trying to do something different: serve the people and try
to move forward.
I think that's a relevant point to bring up. That's a
stark difference: 85 per cent participation less than a year ago and 15 per cent
participation tonight. I think that's relevant. The reason I bring up last year
is because last year was difficult. It was a difficult debate. It was
vociferous, it was nasty and it ran three days. It dominated Question Period and
every one of us felt that, but I tell you it was difficult for everybody.
I can only speak about myself but when people are
accusing you of having – as I did in Question Period – no integrity, when people
accuse you of being in a corrupt government that is not anything that anybody
cherishes. I can tell you I won't be saying anything like that, but I'm just
reflecting what was said to me last year, whether it be in Question Period or in
the debate.
I guess what I want to point out is – and this is to
point out the thing about it again – we all can learn a lesson here going
forward. We all need to look at the difference between last year and the
difference this year. We all know the political difference between the two, but
I think it needs to be pointed out. The best way for me to point that out is not
to use my words. The best way for me to point that out is to use the Member's
words in a debate where we spoke about a breach of conduct. That's the best way
for me to do it. I'm not going to identify Members; anybody who wants to read
Hansard can do so. I'll point out some
of the comments that were stated last year over three days of debate and have
not been stated tonight. I'll point some of that out, Mr. Speaker.
One Member said, “Not only have we seen the public
service disrupted, have we seen the integrity of the public service disrupted,
have we seen the mutual respect of individuals working for the minister has been
distorted and disregarded” and the staff having a difficult time, “We have
sullied the reputations of all House of Assembly Members.”
“An apology will not suffice….
“I think we need stronger measures and I think that
needs to be very resoundingly heard, not only here in the House of Assembly, but
by the people of Newfoundland and Labrador who elected us …. This is what has
been egregiously mismanaged in this process….
“This is inappropriate. The motion does not go far
enough and I will, again, reiterate, we will not support it.” Last year, when a
motion was made that called for apologies – and I can't remember what else it
was – that was turned down and stiffer punishment was meted out by the will of
this House, which is allowed.
I'll point out this is a speech: “The fundamental
objectives of his holding public office is to serve his fellow citizens with
integrity in order to improve the economic and social conditions of the people
of the Province.” Mr. Speaker, if this is our ethical obligation to do what I
just read out – serve our fellow citizens with integrity in order to improve the
economic and social conditions of the people of the province – if we're not here
to do that –
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Oh,
oh!
MR.
A. PARSONS:
They will not shut me down, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Oh,
oh!
MR.
SPEAKER:
I
think we're going to take a short recess.
Recess
MR.
SPEAKER:
Are
the House Leaders ready?
Government House Leader ready?
Opposition House Leader ready?
Third Party House Leader ready?
Order, please!
Just for the viewers who are watching at home or
somewhere else, we had a power outage here in St. John's, in the House that has
disrupted our broadcast for a while. We are on generator power now and we've had
to reboot the computers that operate our mics and some of the cameras.
We're going to resume the debate on this motion now.
I'm going to go back to where we left off with the Minister of Industry, Energy
and Technology speaking. He has seven minutes left on the clock.
MR.
A. PARSONS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
For anybody that may have been watching, to sort of go
back to where I was, I'm referring to
Hansard and talking about the last time we had a motion or a debate of this
sort to look at comments that were made.
I have one colleague on the other side last year in the
debate that said: “One thing I did state with my colleagues was that probably
not to count on me to stand and defend something which is really indefensible. I
made it clear to expect me to stand and to try to give some kind of credence or
normalcy for something that is blatantly incorrect is not in my nature to do.”
Again, I see the correlation there, Mr. Speaker, between standing and sitting.
To me, standing and defending something is no different than sitting and saying
nothing, is what I would point out. It's my opinion, Mr. Speaker.
I go to another comment that I look here from last
year: “When we look at this, Mr. Speaker, we have had no choice but to discuss
this and debate this, and why is that? Because when we're talking about misuse
of public power by elected officials who are put in here by their constituents,
by the people, this threatens so many things, Mr. Speaker, in our society, what
we see here. It threatens ethical values. It threatens justice. It, in fact,
destabilizes our society and it endangers the rule of law. Hence, it is
important that we give this its due recognition in terms of addressing it.”
Again, we see some of the hypercharged commentary last
year that is not present here when we talk about a breach of the Code of
Conduct. In fact, the comment last year was: “This is about a breach of ethics.
It's a misuse of power and authority, perhaps even akin to corruption. When we
look at what corruption is, in essence, that's a misuse of public power by
elected politicians that are elected to represent us.” Mr. Speaker, I point out
the fact that what we are discussing and debating here tonight is a similar act
but without the similar commentary that was made last year.
I look at another colleague on the other side that
spoke last year and said: “The core values of fairness where all employees
conduct their work objectively and free from influence and bias and are
supportive of the diversity of our clients. Respect; where all employees treat
clients in a just manner and accept responsibility for their work obligations
and contributions. Professionalism; where all employees strive towards service
excellence and continuing professional development ….” When we look at the
subject matter of what we're debating tonight, we're talking about a public
official's treatment of a civil servant.
I go to one commentary here last year when we talked
about: “There's a report here with findings in black and white.” I find it
difficult to see good people rise and defend bad behaviour.
“Because eventually the public tars us with the same
brush…. stand here and to look at the behaviours here, that's shameful,
shameful…. Because when we defend bad behaviour, when we defend things that are
not defensible we lose our credibility …. You have to know what was wrong and,
you know something, sometimes you have to take the consequences.
“What we're saying here is that an apology really is
not enough, because it's so blatant and it does so much damage to our
credibility as MHAs.” Again, Mr. Speaker, I point out that these were comments
made last year for a breach of the Code of Conduct, comments that I have not
heard here tonight when we're talking about, again, a Code of Conduct breach.
I have comments here, when you talk about some of the
hyperbole: “This is about our whole province, the future of our province. This
is a process that we had hoped was dying” in the old days. A deliberate action,
inexcusable and someone has to pay the cost.
Why is it that we can sit here today, we've listened to
people say, yeah, sorry is good enough. Do you know what? Sorry is not good
enough. Sorry is far from good enough because there's a real cost to this
decision, a real cost that someone else is going to have to pay.
I will point out, Mr. Speaker, that the same person
that made those comments, the ending comment was that if we “dismiss the
recommendations of this report, I will be walking out those doors with my head
hung in shame.” Again, I point out commentary made during the course of this
debate last year when we were talking about breaches that we did not see here.
I will save some for the last speaker who is the Leader
of the Opposition. The reason I have to point this out is because just in the
last week outside this House the Leader of the Opposition has talked about
scandal and how this is a government that finds itself enshrouded in it and it
reflects on the leader.
I should point that the leader, last year, spoke
multiple times, made multiple comments, talked about the fundamental objectives
of holding public office and said – we talked about gross mismanagement – honest
leadership and what we're seeing here today is the opposite of honest
leadership; impunity masquerading as good government.
I have to point out the significant contrast I see in
that, last year, there was a number of comments about a Member that was
contravening the act, multiple debates and the Member opposite, the leader, took
multiple opportunities to point it out and has continued to point that out at
every opportunity, every juncture that he gets. Yet, when a Member of his caucus
is accused and then it's shown that there was a breach, I have to question: A
breach of leadership of one of us is a breach of leadership of all of us.
I have to point to the Member opposite, I need to see,
I would like to see those comments about leadership because, this again, I've
heard a difference between Members and Cabinet Members, but what I would say is
the Opposition strides to be Cabinet. The Opposition strides to be government
and the Opposition strides to make those decisions and the leader will strive to
be premier. Again, we must measure ourselves and we must look at that: What's
good here, is it good there?
On that note, Mr. Speaker, I have 27 seconds left. What
I would point out is that I don't take any pleasure in doing any of this,
absolutely not, but, the fact is, I think these debates serve as a guide to all
of us, that when we come in here our words are recorded and they can be read
back later on. I think that we all need to keep that in mind as we move forward.
I think we all need to recognize that the actions of one guide us all, it
reflects on us all, but if you can talk about the actions of one, we must talk
about the actions of all.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
MR.
SPEAKER:
Is
the House ready for the question?
Motion 10 on the Order Paper.
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
MR.
SPEAKER:
All
those against, 'nay.'
Carried.
The hon. Member for Mount Pearl North.
MR.
LESTER:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I'd like to thank all my colleagues for their
contribution to the debate tonight. Therefore, I apologize unequivocally and
agree to abide by the will of the House.
Thank you.
MR.
SPEAKER:
The
hon. the Government House Leader.
MR.
CROCKER:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
I move, seconded by the Deputy Government House Leader,
that this House do now adjourn.
MR.
SPEAKER:
It's been moved and seconded that this House does now adjourn.
All those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
MR.
SPEAKER:
All
those against, 'nay.'
Carried.
This House is now adjourned until tomorrow at 1:30 in
the afternoon.
On motion, the House at its rising adjourned until
tomorrow, Tuesday, at 1:30 p.m.