LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF
Thursday, June 18, 1992
The
House met at 1:30 p.m.
PRAYERS
ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS
PRESENTING REPORTS BY STANDING AND SPECIAL COMMITTEES
Mrs.
Louise Dacquay (Chairperson of Committees): Mr. Speaker, the Committee of Supply has adopted certain
resolutions, directs me to report
progress and asks leave to sit again.
I
move, seconded by the honourable member for La Verendrye (Mr. Sveinson), that the report of the
committee be received.
Motion
agreed to.
Introduction of Guests
Mr.
Speaker: Prior to Oral Questions, may I direct the
attention of honourable members to the
gallery, where we have with us this afternoon
from the
On
behalf of all honourable members, I would like to welcome you here this afternoon.
ORAL QUESTION PERIOD
North American Free Trade Agreement
Impact on Supply Management
Mr.
Gary Doer (Leader of the Opposition): On Tuesday night, Gordon Richie, the former negotiator for free
trade, acknowledged that there were
risks involved for
Yesterday,
thankfully, the minister admitted that the
proposals that were before the three governments were detrimental to workers and businesses in
Mr.
Richie's comments included another risk and that is supply management. I would like to ask the Premier (Mr. Filmon):
Are they in favour or opposed to the supply management sections contained within the Canada‑U.S.A.‑Mexico
trade proposals? Do they concur with Mr. Richie that we are
indeed at risk in these areas as well?
* (1335)
Hon.
Eric Stefanson (Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism): Our
position is consistent, as it is with the GATT negotiations where we are supporting the inclusion of
provisions for supply management. We are supporting at the federal level the strengthening and clarification of Article
11, which is the Canadian position, as
part of the GATT discussions.
We
have the same position with the federal government in terms of agriculture. I did allude yesterday that agriculture is another area of concern within the
negotiations, but the Canada position, I
believe, is consistent with our position in GATT and that is part of the negotiations that are
currently taking place. There is no agreement in that area, I
understand, of agriculture.
Our
position is supportive of supply management.
We have conveyed that again at
Trade ministers' meetings and in writing
to the federal government. I
believe that is their position, remains
their position, but it is an issue that is still part of ongoing discussion and debate in the
formulation of a final agreement between
the three countries, Mr. Speaker.
Mr.
Doer: Mr. Speaker, this is another very, very major
industry in
I
would like to ask the minister: Will he
share with us, with the people of
Mr.
Stefanson: Mr. Speaker, it is a difficult issue to
quantify in terms of the impact because
every time you make a different assumption,
it produces a different result. The
major source of our position on this
issue is the industry itself and the negotiations
that we have had with the industry and with the
supply management sector.
We
do support the inclusion of protection for supply management.
One suggestion that has been made is not to change the Canada‑U.S. agreement as it relates
to supply management and to have a
separate bilateral agreement between
We
support the supply management sector of our economy. The Canadian
government is publicly supporting that.
They are supporting it at GATT,
and they are supporting it at these negotiations. We will continue to do so, Mr. Speaker.
Mr.
Doer: Mr. Speaker, I would ask the minister to
share with the House and with the people
of
Today,
Mr. Speaker, a natural resources defence council in the United States, made up of 16
environmental organizations, including
the Sierra Club and other prominent organizations in the United States, has stated that the deal
and their review of the deal does not
provide enough safeguards for the environment.
Given
that this was a condition of this government in their discussions and involvement in the free trade
negotiations with the Canadian
government, will the minister responsible for these negotiations share with Manitobans, the
people of this province, our concerns
about the environment and the impact on our
environment with the Canada‑U.S.A.‑Mexico negotiations and proposals?
Mr.
Stefanson: Mr. Speaker, just in terms of the honourable member's preamble on agriculture, another
major source of information, as I
believe I mentioned yesterday, I think there
are 15 sectoral advisory groups.
One of them is agriculture. It is chaired, I believe, by a Manitoban, Mr.
Vaags, and their position is consistent
with the position that
In
terms of the area of environment, the honourable Leader of the Opposition knows that this is one of our
six conditions, in large part because of
the fact that provinces like
Discussions
are ongoing right now in terms of provisions for protection of the environment. That will ultimately form either part of a final agreement or part of a
parallel agreement. It remains to be seen what is in all aspects of
that. Negotiations are ongoing.
We are continuing to press the federal government on the importance of the protection of the
environment, the importance of not
decreasing standards in any way, that this is
unacceptable, that provisions have to provide for bringing everything up to the highest common
denominator, the standards that are
currently in place in
We
will continue to be a part of the discussions at the federal level in terms of ensuring that this
condition, which is one of our six
conditions, is in fact met before we would support any final agreement.
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(1340)
Mental Health Care Facilities
Bed Closures
Ms.
Judy Wasylycia-Leis (
Increasingly,
we are concerned about lack of planning and
indeed disjointed bed‑cutting proposals, particularly in the field of psychiatry. Last week, we raised the issues of a St. Boniface proposal for 24 beds, then at least
17 beds at Health Sciences Centre. Now we have learned that there is a proposal for a bed cut of five beds at
I
would like the Premier to give us some assurances that he will involve himself in this growing mess and
assure us that no beds will be cut
without the necessary planning, co‑ordination and community alternatives in place.
Hon.
Gary Filmon (Premier): Mr. Speaker, I believe that those assurances were given at the time that the
minister unveiled his health reform
plan. I will take any other specifics of
that question as notice on behalf of the
minister.
Ms.
Wasylycia-Leis: That is the problem, Mr. Speaker. There is
a big contradiction between the minister's stated objectives and what is actually happening.
I
want to ask the Premier, since we are talking now about 30 percent of all psychiatric beds on the table
to be cut, will he give us assurances
that the objectives of the stated health care
plan, the replacement of acute care psychiatric beds, will not occur until any array of community oriented
services are in place? Can he give us those assurances and give some
assurances to boards that are meeting as
early as this evening to discuss cost‑cutting
measures?
Mr.
Filmon: Mr. Speaker, I can assure the member for
Ms.
Wasylycia-Leis: I want to ask the Premier again to get involved because he knows that his Minister
of Health brought forward a report from
the Urban Hospital Council recommending only
beds at Misericordia be cut.
Mr.
Speaker: Order, please. Kindly put your question now, please.
Ms.
Wasylycia-Leis: I want to ask him if he can explain to us, why is almost 30 percent of psychiatric beds
on the table for cutting, and will he
give us some assurances that there will be a
planned approach to mental health care reform?
Mr.
Filmon: Yes, Mr. Speaker.
Shipment Statistics
Mrs.
Sharon Carstairs (Leader of the Second Opposition): My question is to the Minister of Highways and
Transportation.
Mr.
Speaker, can the Minister of Highways and Transportation give us an update on the activity of the
Hon.
Albert Driedger (Minister of Highways and Transportation): Mr.
Speaker, I have no good news at the present time regarding grain movement through the
Not
only myself and my colleagues, but the Premier (Mr. Filmon) himself has taken a very active part
in terms of trying to promote activity
and for the Wheat Board to ship grain through
the
Future Status
Mrs.
Sharon Carstairs (Leader of the Second Opposition):
But, in fact, there appears to be
some very bad news. The
He
went on to state that the provincial government had been informed of this. Will the Minister of Highways and Transportation now tell us exactly what they
have been informed of by the manager of
the
Hon.
Albert Driedger (Minister of Highways and Transportation): Mr.
Speaker, I cannot confirm that this kind of statement has been made or that it has come forward to my
office.
I
want to indicate that the last time that I had direct dialogue with the federal Minister of
Transport, Mr. Corbeil, as well as the
junior Minister of Transport, Shirley Martin, they gave the undertaking that the port would be
open this year, it would be ready for
grain, that they were amassing information and
figures and that before any decision was made regarding the future of Churchill, we would be able to
communicate and we would be able to
consult with them.
I
am waiting for that information and invitation from the federal government to see whether we can get
into that debate.
*
(1345)
Mrs.
Carstairs: But the information we received was that the
Will
the Minister of Highways and Transportation immediately make contact with his counterpart in the
federal government in order to inform us
as soon as possible as to exactly what the
events are to be faced by those people who find employment with the Port of Churchill?
Mr.
Driedger: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to do that.
I
also want to indicate that the latest information that I had was that the port lost $2.9 million last
year because of a lack of grain movement
through there which need not have been the
case, and had we gotten the requested amount, anywhere from 600,000 tonnes per year up, there would have
been no losses for the port.
It
is my understanding that this year, in order to open the port, there was going to be money allocated
from other ports. I think that is justifiably so because they did
not move enough grain through there,
that there would be money to operate the
port for this year. However,
based on the information that the member
has brought forward, I am prepared to follow that up, to try and get all the information I can and
report back to the House.
Law Enforcement Review Agency
Civilian Participation
Mr. Dave Chomiak (Kildonan): Mr.
Speaker, my question is for the Minister
of Justice.
Mr.
Speaker, LERA is basically a civilian‑oriented body that hears complaints about police
difficulties. Most jurisdictions are moving toward civilian bodies, over 30
American jurisdictions and many Canadian
jurisdictions, yet the
Will
the minister reconsider the decision to move from a civilian body to judges on the amendments
regarding LERA?
Hon.
James McCrae (Minister of Justice and Attorney General): Mr.
Speaker, I believe judges are civilians.
I believe judges are trained in
dispute resolution. I believe they are also trained in interpreting the law. They are also trained in weighing evidence, applying the appropriate
tests to decide, on the evidence, the
facts of a particular case.
In
that sense, as the honourable member says, others are moving in some other direction. You could turn that around I suppose and say that
It
is important to the public, I believe, that there be a strong perception that there is fairness
involved in these proceedings. I do not speak poorly in any sense of the
word about civilian participation, but
there is nothing wrong at all and
everything right, I suggest, with the people who are trained in the law, like judges, to adjudicate these
matters.
Mr.
Chomiak: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary to the minister
is: Is the minister not concerned that
the public may feel left out of the
process, in light of the many, many difficulties we have had in the city of Winnipeg and in the
province recently?
Is
the minister not concerned that the public may be left out of the process at a time when the public
should be more involved?
Mr.
McCrae: Every time something questionable comes up,
we are asked by honourable members
opposite to bring the public into this,
to make sure the public knows that what is going on is right.
Call a public inquiry. Get a
judge or somebody legally trained to
weigh matters on one side and the other so that the public perception can be that things are
being handled fairly.
I
think the bill that is before the House responds to that, that not only should justice be done but
justice ought to be seen to be done as
well. I believe that everything we are
doing comes right under that general
principle.
Mr.
Chomiak: Mr. Speaker, my final supplementary to the
same minister is: Can the minister confirm that he has received
a letter from the City of Winnipeg, and
specifically from the mayor, requesting
that the province put this decision on hold
until they have had consultation with the City of Winnipeg which is most affected, in the person of the City
of Winnipeg Police Department, by this
decision?
* (1350)
Mr.
McCrae: Yes, I have received that letter from His
Worship, the Mayor of the City of
Mr.
Speaker: Order, please.
Mr.
McCrae: Consultations have indeed been had with law enforcement authorities in this
province. I am not sure what it is that is the concern with respect to this
legislation, but as the honourable
member knows, there are changes in the evidentiary rules as well.
In
the past, the perception has been that the evidentiary rules have been weighed against the public in
their approaches to LERA and in the
hearing of matters before LERA. We
believe that the test of the balance of
probabilities is a better test when you
consider that the sanctions that are in that legislation do not include the depriving of a person's
liberty, so that the civil law standard
of proof ought to be the one that is applied
here.
So
that might be what is on the minds of some people, but perhaps police authorities themselves have
concerns about that. On the other hand,
the public's protection is foremost in our
minds, and the perception that this protection is there is also extremely important.
Environmental Concerns
Mr.
Clif Evans (Interlake): Mr. Speaker, the town of
The
residents in a local committee, trying to find solutions to this potable water shortage, are
frustrated and upset with the lack of a
speedy solution to their very serious problem.
I
would like to ask the Minister of Environment:
Can the Minister of Environment
tell the House today why none of his department's
officials attended a very important meeting last Monday in Ashern, as the community had
requested?
Hon.
Glen Cummings (Minister of Environment): Mr. Speaker, the meeting in question was a meeting in which
the residents of the community were to
have an opportunity, as I understand it, to
take a look at what options were available to them.
They
were being allowed to consider that and make their decision in a manner that was consistent with
their own priorities and their own
desires, and I believe that it was appropriate
that there would not be interference from my
department in that respect.
Soil/Water Sampling
Mr.
Clif Evans (Interlake): Mr. Speaker, seeing the fact that the department official in question had
indicated that they did not want to
attend this meeting but wanted to attend on a
one‑to‑one basis at a later date, why did they not consider
this serious on Monday?
Will
the minister and his department address this issue by identifying all of the levels of
contamination affecting the town's water
through further soil and water sampling?
Hon.
Glen Cummings (Minister of Environment): Mr. Speaker, there are two issues at play here‑‑one
is the obvious problem with water
contamination, but the other issue, as well, is what alternatives are there for providing potable
water in the community.
As
far as the identification of the sources of pollution and dealing with that problem, we certainly see
that as an ongoing and continuing
problem and will work with the community to deal with it, but we know, and I am sure that the
member knows, that once an aquifer
becomes polluted, it cannot very readily and
quickly be remedied, so the options to the community immediately become limited.
Alternate Water Source
Mr.
Clif Evans (Interlake): Given the fact that the community has continuously requested assistance on this
issue, will this minister identify
Ashern as a priority site, so his department's
expertise can fully assist the community in obtaining a new drinking water system which is desperately
needed in the community?
Hon.
Glen Cummings (Minister of Environment): Mr. Speaker, the meeting last night is the first step in that
process, and I am sure that the member
knows that. The fact is, the Minister of Rural Development (Mr. Derkach), myself and
all other concerned ministries will work
to deal with this problem.
I
think it should be pointed out, Mr. Speaker, that while there are a number of various sources of
pollution, probably five different
sources that may have and probably did contribute to this pollution, the opportunity for recovery
from most of those sources is nil or
negligible. The identification of
alternative sources is one of the
conditions that the community needs to work
with, and we will work with them, as I am sure the Minister of Rural Development will as well.
* (1355)
Health Care System Reform
Monitoring Process
Mr.
Gulzar Cheema (The Maples): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Premier.
I
would like to table a letter from the chairperson of the board of directors from St. Boniface
Hospital. In this letter, it is clearly indicating how the beds are
going to be cut. The chairman of the St. Boniface Hospital says,
and I quote: The closure of 24 psych beds will require the
expansion of community outpatient and
outreach support and the establishment of a psych day hospital.
Mr.
Speaker, since there is no independent monitor, can the Premier tell this House why they have not set
up an independent monitoring system to
make sure that the stated policy of health
care reform is being met?
Hon.
Gary Filmon (Premier): Mr. Speaker, I will take that question as notice on behalf of the Minister
of Health (Mr. Orchard).
Implementation
Mr.
Gulzar Cheema (The Maples): Mr. Speaker, the letter from the St. Boniface Hospital says that the plans for
the bed cuts are ready, but we have no
plans for community‑based services.
Can
the Premier tell this House why such implementation plans are not being made available, and why they do
not tell the people the time frame for
the implementation of those plans?
Hon.
Gary Filmon (Premier): Mr. Speaker, I will take that question, as well, as notice on behalf of the
Minister of Health.
Mr.
Cheema: Mr. Speaker, the board of the St. Boniface
Hospital has passed statements about the
quarterly report to the board on the
implementation of these bed closures in one hospital.
Can
the Premier make a commitment to make sure that the people of Manitoba will know how health care
reform is being implemented, a
commitment to let us know how the plan is being implemented?
Mr. Filmon:
Yes, Mr. Speaker.
Pesticide Usage
Environmental Licensing
Ms.
Marianne Cerilli (Radisson): My question is for the
Minister of Environment.
The
City of
My
question for the minister is: Has his
department reviewed this report, and
will it consider including some of the recommendations
as conditions for the issuing of the city's
licence to use chemical spraying in the next year?
Hon.
Glen Cummings (Minister of Environment): Mr. Speaker, I am aware of that report. I cannot give a detailed analysis of it, but I can point out that there were also some
concerns that were raised regarding the
cost and efficacy of some of the alternative
methods.
Certainly,
I fully support any alternatives that can be fully developed, but the present regime that is
being followed in the licence‑‑and
I presume the member is referring to mosquito
fogging as one of the issues that she is concerned about‑‑the present regime is a result of discussions
prior to my coming into office but based
on the recommendations of the city entomologist
in conjunction with our licensing personnel.
Biological Alternatives
Ms.
Marianne Cerilli (Radisson): Mr. Speaker, will the
minister offer his department's support
to investigate and develop the system of
biological larvicide which is a safer and more
cost‑effective way of dealing with these pests?
Hon.
Glen Cummings (Minister of Environment): Mr. Speaker, I am not sure that either one of us is qualified
to enter into a debate about the
efficacy or the cost of biological control.
There are certainly varying reports on the cost. I can attest to that.
I
stand by my comment that we are prepared to look at any alternatives in terms of cold, hard research
and licensing of alternatives as has
been done primarily at the national level,
and we follow the licensing recommendations that they attach to various materials.
Malathion
Ms.
Marianne Cerilli (Radisson): My final supplementary
is for the same minister.
Can
the minister confirm that
Hon.
Glen Cummings (Minister of Environment): Mr. Speaker, I am not sure I can confirm or deny that, but I
know that there are a number of
jurisdictions where it does not occur.
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(1400)
Child Day Care
Special Needs Children
Mrs.
Sharon Carstairs (Leader of the Second Opposition): My question is to the Minister of Family
Services.
Mr.
Speaker the daycare office has informed us of a serious development affecting special needs
children. For the first time, it appears that there is a waiting list
of some 66 children, special needs
children who require before‑school and
after‑school child care.
They have placements in schools but no
care prior to the school hours commencing and no care after school hours are over.
Can
the minister tell us what steps he is taking to make it possible for those 66 children, who have
never before had to go on a waiting
list, to get the service they require before and after school?
Hon.
Harold Gilleshammer (Minister of Family Services):
There has been increasing
pressure on the daycare program, particularly
with the subsidies for children in daycares, and I would remind you that our subsidies are volume sensitive
and are available for all parents of
children who qualify for that.
The
one area where we are not able to meet all of the needs is in some of the specialized care that is
required for some of these children so
that we are able to accommodate as many people
as our budget will allow. In some
areas, we do have a waiting list, and we
are looking at the special needs and trying to
accommodate as many children as we can.
Mrs.
Carstairs: These are not children who can be easily
placed in alternative placements. These are children who must be placed in child care spaces that have provisions for
children with special needs. They cannot, for example, go to the
neighbourhood mother. They cannot go to an after‑school child
care centre in many communities because
they do not have the needs equipment available
for these young people.
Will
the minister today respond to the urgency of these 66 children, who in the past have not had to go
on a waiting list and as of today need
to go on a waiting list because there are
not adequate dollars from his department to ensure that they get the spaces they require?
Mr.
Gilleshammer: When the member says that there are not adequate dollars, I would point out to her
that we have made tremendous strides in
improving the amount of resources that are
available, particularly in the daycare system to the point that we probably spend more on daycare than any
other province. Our expenditures for these subsidies have gone up
dramatically.
At
the same time, we have not been able to resolve all of the issues with special needs children. We will work with the various community groups in the daycare
community to try and give the very best
service we can with the resources that are
available.
Mrs.
Carstairs: Mr. Speaker, we have examples of young
people. One in particular who has been
accepted into a program on August 1 will
have to give up that space at Lord Roberts School lunch and after‑school program if the
province cannot fund the staff requirement
at the centre needed to look after this particular child.
Will
the minister undertake to investigate, himself, the situations which are denying access to
schools, for integrated programs,
because these youngsters cannot participate in the after‑school programs?
Mr.
Gilleshammer: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I will make that commitment to the member that we will review the case
and see if there is any way we can
assist not only that child but other children on that waiting list.
Social Assistance
Rent Appeal Intervention
Mr.
Doug Martindale (Burrows): Mr. Speaker, frequently rent increases far above the 4 percent guideline
are approved. Many of these units are renters on provincial
social assistance, the cost of which to
government, in
What
is the policy of the Minister of Family Services regarding rent appeals for apartments for
which Income Security is paying
rent? Does the minister's staff
intervene in rent appeals in order to
hold down their cost?
Hon.
Harold Gilleshammer (Minister of Family Services): I
was having some difficulty hearing the
question, but I would say that our staff
in Social Allowances will make every effort to have the scarce dollars that we have to deal with
increasing numbers in the social
allowance area, to make those dollars stretch as far as possible, and to be sure that appropriate
accommodation is available for the
recipients.
Mr.
Martindale: Will the minister agree to have his staff intervene in every case, since it is my
information that this is not always done
and that if his staff did intervene, there might be a higher success rate for appeals by
tenants and save the government money?
Mr.
Gilleshammer: Mr. Speaker, I can assure the member that the staff will make every effort to provide the
best service that we can to the clients
that we serve.
Heritage Community
Funding Reduction
Ms.
Jean Friesen (Wolseley): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Culture, Heritage and
Citizenship.
Will
the minister explain why, in the current budget year, her Estimates proposed to distribute only
$400,000 to the heritage community when,
in each of the last three years, approximately
$650,000 has reached the community over and above administrative costs?
Over
the last three years, it has been $600,000 a year. This year
it is $400,000. Could the minister
explain why the discrepancy?
Hon.
Bonnie Mitchelson (Minister of Culture, Heritage and Citizenship):
Indeed there is a $400,000 amount printed in the budget.
We were under the impression when we printed the budget that the Heritage Federation had some three
hundred and some thousand dollars
sitting in reserve, and the $400,000 indeed
would make $712,000 for the Heritage Federation to distribute grants to the community.
Mr.
Speaker, we are finding out that the Heritage Federation in fact has the money to pay all of the
grants that they allocated this year
which is $670,000, plus they have another
approximately half‑a‑million dollars sitting in
reserve. We have a legal opinion, indeed, that this money
should be delivered to the community in
the way of grants.
Ms.
Friesen: The minister actually answered a question I had
not asked which is an interesting
one. It is interesting that she has only just found out now that they had
that reserve‑‑
Mr.
Speaker: Order, please.
The honourable member for Wolseley,
kindly put your question, please.
Ms.
Friesen: The question I was asking was about this
year's Estimates which proposes to
deliver to the heritage community $400,000.
Will
the minister explain to the House what the impact will be on the heritage community of the reduction
in their grants that are reaching the
community, particularly when it is coupled
with a loss of $2 million in the Community Places fund which is also used very frequently by the heritage
community?
Mrs.
Mitchelson: Mr. Speaker, there will be no reduction in grants to the heritage community. We are going to be in Estimates this evening, and we can discuss
this in greater detail.
I
will say to you that the Heritage Federation made allocations of $670,000 in grants for the
upcoming year. They have enough money within their reserves
sitting in the bank that in fact all of
those commitments will be lived up to.
Correspondence Request
Ms. Jean Friesen (Wolseley): Mr.
Speaker, finally, I would like to ask
the minister again: Will she table the
letters of support that she claimed in
this House to have received supporting her
destruction of the Heritage Federation?
Hon.
Bonnie Mitchelson (Minister of Culture, Heritage and Citizenship): As
a result of our commitment to put a new structure
in place, I have sent 480 questionnaires out to the community.
We are starting to receive those questionnaires back.
The ones that we have received have all been positive to date on the new structure.
* (1410)
Agricultural Industry
Diversification
Ms.
Rosann Wowchuk (Swan River): Mr. Speaker, my question
is for the Minister of Agriculture.
I
recently attended a rural conference in
I
want to ask the Minister of Agriculture if it is the position of this government to now allow the
raising of elk and deer.
Hon.
Glen Findlay (Minister of Agriculture): Mr. Speaker, my staff at various meetings they go to raise
all kinds of opportunities that farmers
can get involved in, in terms of diversifying
their income, whether it is buffalo or whether it is wild rice or whether it is raising llama,
ostriches. There is no end of opportunities. Some of it is for meat markets. Some of
it is for food markets. Some of
it is for various markets, and my staff
are completely at liberty to make farmers aware of all the opportunities that might exist.
Clearly,
those opportunities do exist in
Ms.
Wowchuk: Mr. Speaker, if it is illegal to raise elk
and deer in
Mr.
Findlay: Mr. Speaker, numerous people have shown
interest in this area. I say my staff are free to talk to them about
it, and the discussions will continue on
for some time.
Everybody
is watching what is happening in
Bill 82
Game Farming
Ms. Rosann Wowchuk (
Is
he now saying that he is going to be including game farming and the raising of elk and deer as a
policy of this government?
Hon.
Glen Findlay (Minister of Agriculture): Raising of pheasants is game. Some people may say buffalo is game, so there are many examples of game farming. It is going on right now.
If
we did not include that in the farm practices, that bill, they would criticize us for not including it,
so I would ask them to get their act
together to decide which way they are going.
Their government raised the issue some years ago and actually were in favour of it.
Mining Operations
Dust Control
Mr.
Jerry Storie (Flin Flon): My question is to the Minister of Environment.
On
Monday of this week, I raised a serious environmental question with the Minister responsible for
Energy and Mines (Mr.
My
question to the Minister of Environment is:
Has he discussed this issue with
the Minister of Energy and Mines, and has
he done anything to begin the process of determining the danger to residents of the community of that
dust blowing around the community?
Hon.
Glen Cummings (Minister of Environment): Mr. Speaker, I have not been in contact with the regional
officers of the Department of
Environment to discuss the issue, but during my
Estimates, I will bring a fuller response to the member.
Mr.
Speaker: Time for Oral Questions has expired.
Committee Changes
Mr.
Neil Gaudry (St. Boniface): Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the member for Osborne (Mr. Alcock), that the
composition of the Standing Committee on
Law Amendments be amended as follows:
The member for The Maples (Mr.
Cheema) for the member for
ORDERS OF THE DAY
House Business
Hon.
Darren Praznik (Deputy Government House Leader): Mr. Speaker, if I may first of all on government
business, I would indicate that
throughout the day there may be a number of
announcements being made as House leaders work together to plan the business of the House. I serve notice there may be announcements and some changes throughout the
day.
I
would ask, Mr. Speaker, if you canvass the House, you may find a will to waive private members' hour
today.
Mr.
Speaker: Is it the will of the House to waive private members' hour today? Is there leave? [Agreed!
Mr.
Praznik: I would ask, Mr. Speaker, then to call bills
in this order, please: Bill 79‑‑for continuation of
debate on second reading‑‑Bills
86, 87, 82, 94, 95, 96. I would then ask if Mr. Speaker could call for introduction
for second reading, Bill 100, and that
then will be followed for continuation of
debate on second reading by Bills 76, 85 and 70.
I
would indicate, Mr. Speaker, I will try to keep
announcements towards the latter part of the day, but we will likely be rising shortly before six o'clock
with an announcement with respect to
Supply tonight. I understand for the
benefit of all members that it is likely
that the Committee of Supply will be
sitting tonight, I believe, beginning at 7 p.m.
I will have the formal motions
available, as I said, prior to six o'clock.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
DEBATE ON SECOND
Bill 79‑The Highways Protection and
Consequential Amendments Act
Mr.
Speaker: On the proposed motion of the honourable
Minister of Highways and Transportation
(Mr. Driedger), Bill 79, The Highways
Protection and Consequential Amendments Act; Loi sur la protection des voies publiques et apportant
des modifications correlatives a
d'autres lois, standing in the name of the
honourable member for Burrows (Mr. Martindale).
An
Honourable Member: Stand.
Mr.
Speaker: Stand.
Is there leave that this bill remain
standing in the name of the honourable member for Burrows? [Agreed!
Mr.
Paul Edwards (St. James): Mr. Speaker, it gives me pleasure to rise to speak today on Bill 79. I do not intend to speak at any great length, and I will be the only
representative from our party speaking
on this bill.
As
has been made clear by the minister and others, this bill replaces the existing Highways Protection Act
and deals specifically with limited
access highways. The main purpose of the bill appears to be to consolidate areas
where there is parallel authority
between the present Highways Protection Act
and The Highways and Transportation Act generally.
It
also serves hopefully to streamline the process of obtaining permits on limited access
highways. As a result of this consolidation, it is estimated by the
minister, I note, that the application
response time for permits is going to be cut from the present 60 days to 25 days, and anytime
we see government being able to respond
more quickly to applications of this nature,
generally, of course, we should be supportive.
The more efficient the
government, the better for the taxpayers.
Mr.
Speaker, it is our assessment that this bill does help to better delineate the responsibilities of both
The Highways Protection Act and The
Highways and Transportation Act, and that
it also cuts out unnecessary and no doubt expensive requirements, such as that which required the Highways
Traffic Board to hold a hearing for each
permit.
Mr.
Speaker, the bill also expands, we note, the power of the minister in that it gives him powers
previously held by the Highway Traffic
Board, such as access and development control and the power to order an owner to remove or
remedy a development in a controlled
area that is unsightly or dangerous.
However, the Highway Traffic
Board can be appealed to on these occasions.
Generally,
of course, our party is not supportive of putting higher levels of discretion into the hands of
the minister. But, in this case, there is a protection in the
sense that the appeal can go to the
Highway Traffic Board, and so there is some
assurance that the discretionary power of the minister is not unlimited.
In fact, it is substantially limited by those appeal rights.
The only decisions which would not be subject to appeal are the on‑premise signs, which is an
area of ministerial jurisdiction, and
off‑premise signs, which are reserved for the Traffic Board.
Mr.
Speaker, clearly, the Highway Traffic Board's mandate is being changed to include the issuing of off‑premise
advertising signs. The issue of compensation has also been dealt
with in this bill in a manner which is
clear.
We
will, no doubt, have some technical questions at the committee hearing. However, to the extent that this bill clarifies the law, makes it more efficient,
and provides for a more expeditious
permit procedure, we are supportive of this
legislation. I do say, however,
that, with respect to the technical
aspects‑‑and, Mr. Speaker, you will appreciate, this is a fairly lengthy bill‑‑that there
may well be some questions at the
committee hearing.
Of
course, we will look forward to hearing any public presentation at that time of interested
parties. To date, Mr. Speaker, I can say that we have not received
indication from the public at large as
to having any problem with this bill.
That does not mean it will not
come forward at the committee stage. Generally,
we are, at this point, prepared to see this matter go to committee expeditiously so that we can
examine, on a clause‑by‑clause
basis and in more detail, this legislation.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr.
Speaker: Order, please.
The House has already granted leave
that this matter could remain standing in the name of the honourable member for Burrows (Mr.
Martindale).
Is
there leave at this time‑‑I guess we have already allowed it, so now we have to dispose of it.
An
Honourable Member: Yes, agreed.
Mr.
Speaker: That is agreed.
It
appears the honourable member for Burrows wants to speak on this bill.
Okay, done.
Mr.
Doug Martindale (Burrows): . . . so we are going to put up one more speaker, and then pass this to committee. Thank you,
Mr. Speaker.
* (1420)
Mr.
Daryl Reid (Transcona): I am pleased to rise on Bill 79, The Highways Protection and Consequential
Amendments Act that the minister has
introduced. I would first like to start
off by thanking the Minister of Highways
and Transportation (Mr. Driedger) for
once again providing a detailed explanation of what is a very lengthy piece of legislation.
The
explanation that the minister has provided for us so that we in this Chamber can better understand the
legislation that he has brought forward
is some 75 pages in length. So there is
a great amount of detail in trying to
explain this legislation.
There
are many areas under this particular piece of
legislation that are bringing about these changes. In the
initial stages of this bill, the definitions, there are certain wordings that are required for the
legislation itself that the minister
supplied interpretations of the wording of the act itself.
It explains the requirements, in particular for the controlled areas along limited‑access
highways in the province.
Now,
when we get to committee I will be asking the minister, because I do not have the background and I am
sure the minister will have some staff
available to explain or interpret for us the
different areas of the province that have limited‑access highways and the definitions for the controlled areas,
even though that is explained in brief
in the notes that the minister has provided.
We will have some questions on that so that I can get a better understanding of what is meant by those.
But
the bill goes on to talk about the controlled areas that are expanded from the minimum of 38 metres or
125 feet to 76 metres or 250 feet. It talks about controlling the controlled areas, in particular the intersections that
are involved in these limited‑access
highways.
A
good portion of the explanatory notes deal with the definitions that pertain to this new act
itself. But there are some areas of the bill itself that I would
like some clarification on. I will raise these for the minister as I go through my debate here this afternoon.
The
limited‑access highways, of course, are part of the minister's departmental functions. Of course, along these highways there are certain traffic control
devices. Then there are certain pieces of property, and on some
of these properties we will see as we
travel about the province‑‑from time to time we will see encroachments that appear to be too
close to the highway itself that may
have been existing structures. I notice
that there is a portion in this bill, in
the latter sections of this bill, that
explain about the grandfathering provisions, how the changes of this legislation will mean to that
particular grandfathering.
We
note, too, that the limited‑access highways will have, as we have in the rural areas, a need for the
landowners or the land users in those
areas to have some access to roadways.
There will be times, I am sure,
where there are changes that are going to be
required in the minister's department that will cause a particular piece of roadway to be determined
as a limited access, that that will
place some of the landowners adjacent to that
roadway in an unfortunate position, and that they could be landlocked by other properties around them
which do not give them access to
roadways except onto that new highway that would be designated as limited access.
I
note in the legislation, too‑‑and before I get onto that, to my next point, I hope that by this
legislation the minister's department is
taking into consideration the potential for
landlocked‑‑[interjection! The minister indicates it will
not allow any property holders to be
landlocked, and I thank the minister for
that explanation because it was a concern of mine that there was a potential for that to
happen. I am glad the minister has cleared that up.
I
also note in the explanations that the Highway Traffic Board, and the minister can correct me on
this if I am wrong, has been responsible
for making the regulations that pertain to the
particular legislation that is under their jurisdiction.
Hon.
Albert Driedger (Minister of Highways and Transportation): Only
on PTHs.
Mr.
Reid: The minister indicates that only occurs on
provincial trunk highways.
By
the proposed changes to the legislation itself, it is indicated now that the Highway Traffic Board
will no longer be required to make the
regulations, if I understand it correctly,
and that the Lieutenant‑Governor‑in‑Council will then
be responsible or may designate another
body to make the regulations on that
person's behalf.
The
minister has indicated that he will provide a
clarification for that when this bill moves to committee. I should
indicate, Mr. Speaker, that I will be the last speaker in our party to speak on this particular piece
of legislation, and that is why we are
putting our concerns on the record here today.
There
are many structures or devices, whether they be trees or pieces of property or buildings, that from
time to time throughout the province may
encroach upon the roadways and the highways
within the province. I believe that the
intent of this is to bring some
standardization into the process. I
think that is probably a good move or a
move in the right direction in that it
will provide for the safety of the motoring public in the
There
are, as I indicated, many changes, and some of them that I note in this legislation are that
there is a designation between the
powers of the Highway Traffic Board to deal with the off‑premise structures, whether they be
signs or trees or buildings, and the
minister who retains the powers or control
over any of those items for on‑premises.
Now,
I take it by that where a provincial trunk highway or provincial road goes through a small
community where the province maintains
some jurisdiction over that roadway, that where, as we see in some of the small communities through
the province, the buildings of the town
may encroach within the restricted distances
of that particular roadway, the minister will retain the discretionary use or erection of any
signs or any buildings within that
limitation where it encroaches upon the right‑of‑way.
I
am not sure whether or not the minister anticipates making any changes to that If that is the reason why he is retaining that discretionary power for him, I am sure
that he will explain that further when
we get to committee because it could have some
impact upon the communities of our province. We have many, and as the highways pass through these small
communities the buildings within these
communities encroach within the 38 metres
of the provincial highways.
It
also indicates that the Lieutenant‑Governor‑in‑Council, I imagine it would be under the Department of
Highways and Transportation, retains the
right to set the fees or permits, and it
will not be the responsibility of the Highway Traffic Board to set any fees for the permits. I am sure the minister can explain that because I do not have any background
knowledge or experience in the fees that
would be charged to anyone who is applying for
permits, or the appeals, or the hearings, or notice of objections that may arise as a result of this new
legislation.
The
bill itself, as I have already indicated, is quite extensive, and many times throughout the
explanatory notes indicates that it is
to streamline the process and to meld the
two acts into one to make it simpler to administer. It is a
consolidation under the protection act, with the Traffic Board acting as an appeal body for all departmental
decisions except for on‑premise
advertising signs. That, as I have
already indicated, will remain within
the minister's discretionary powers.
* (1430)
One
of the areas which I am not familiar with, that I am sure that when this bill goes to committee the
minister will also explain, or his staff
will explain through the minister, is the
current policy. It is made
mention of in the explanatory notes about
the time‑consuming and expensive process under the existing legislation where the board has to enact
specific policies for advertising signs.
I
am unaware of the complete process that takes place and how this would be time‑consuming, but it is
my understanding that if there are any
permits that come forward, the board has to have hearings to render decisions on the
applications. If there are any appeals, then of course they have to have
those hearings as well. Now, I am not sure how this is going to
streamline the process, but possibly the
minister can explain that during the committee
hearings on this.
The
bill also talks about the issuing of permits, and it talks about "may have an expiry
date." Now I am not sure why the legislation indicates that all permits issued
will have that discretionary power of,
may having an expiry date. I am sure that the minister can explain that in
committee. There may be some exceptions to the legislation that I am
unaware of, that the minister can draw
to my attention. It also indicates that
the permits that are issued by the
Highway Traffic Board are nontransferable
once they have been issued.
Well,
I know the member for St. James (Mr. Edwards) only wanted to spend a few moments on this. He had so much concern about this bill and had so many comments that
he took less than five minutes to place
his comments on the record of this one.
He may not have the expertise,
but I am sure that he would not want to
deny other members of the Chamber the opportunity to put their comments on the record.
I
am sure if he wants to have more time to place his comments that he will have that time to do so at committee,
and that he should not impede the
progress of others that want to ask those
questions and put comments on the records in this Chamber. [interjection! Yes, I think he is an instant
Transportation critic.
An
Honourable Member: He is concise.
Mr.
Reid: Very concise in five minutes. Yes.
An
Honourable Member: Trying to save some trees.
Mr.
Reid: Saving trees, I guess, would be in
order. They would all like to be conservationists. I am sure the member is referring to the printing of the Hansard, but
we will have the opportunity, I am sure,
for the member for St. James (Mr. Edwards)
to place his comments on the record when we get to committee.
One
of the areas that would require some further explanation for myself to get an understanding of this‑‑and
I make no secret of it, and I do not
think there is any member in this House that
would have had over his or her years the opportunity to have a complete and full understanding of The
Highway Traffic Act, because it is a very
extensive act. I have questions relating
to the expropriation and compensation
factors that would go along with that.
I
know the Minister of Highways department, as we see by the Orders‑in‑Council that come
before us from time to time, does expropriate
properties from landowners throughout various areas of the province. I would like to have a better understanding
of the process that is in place for the
expropriation and the compensation that
may go along with that, how it is determined,
as well as any appeals of any decisions for compensation that may not be agreed to by the landowners whose land
has been expropriated.
One
section of the bill‑‑and it comes under a particular Part 3, I believe it was‑‑indicates: "The minister may appoint any person as an inspector for the purposes of
this Act." Now, I am not sure what the intent of this particular
section is and whom the minister intends
on appointing to be these inspectors.
Does it mean that the minister
will be able to appoint departmental staff
on a need basis throughout areas of the province to enforce this act, or does that mean the minister will
then be able to appoint other members of
the surrounding communities?
I
would like to have an understanding of what the minister's intent of this section is, because I recall
comments and questions that were in this
House some weeks back, where the member
for Swan River (Ms. Wowchuk) had raised some concerns over the 2,000 kilometres of provincial roadways
that were offloaded on to municipalities
and there was a certain individual that is
familiar to the government who had been appointed to oversee that transferring process.
I
am wondering if this is a similar type of situation that this section will allow for, where the
minister may appoint inspectors. That is why I think it is important for us to understand who these inspectors are going to
be.
Under
the Enforcement section, it talks as well about the right for these inspectors to enter into dwellings,
and this is under proposal. There is no existing legislation for this
from my understanding of the notes that
were provided, except the individuals
that are empowered to be these inspectors require that they can enter into, with a warrant, even
onto private properties with the consent
of the occupier, hopefully in most cases.
It
also talks about these inspectors because they will, from time to time, require the assistance of any
persons that may be found in the
establishments where these inspectors will have to conduct their inspections.
(Mr.
Harold Neufeld, Acting Speaker, in the Chair)
There
is also a section in here talking about the obstruction of inspectors. Now I am not sure where it talks about the obstruction of the inspectors, but I do not
see any section in there that talks
about penalty for obstruction. It is all
right to have some legislation here that
would deal with the obstruction of these
inspectors, but if there are no penalties
that are involved then I do not understand, unless the minister can further clarify that for us in committee,
what will be the deterrent factor from
individuals that would attempt to obstruct
the inspectors that the minister has appointed?
The
minister is empowered under the legislation, and I believe it was under the existing legislation
as well, to make an order requiring a
landowner to take one or more of the following
actions. It indicates the
different actions that would be required,
and it also talks about the time frames that the minister will instruct that these orders have
to followed within. It goes on to indicate that where the orders
are not followed by the particular
landowners, they are then to be undertaken
by the minister's department, and any costs that are incurred as a result of these actions will be
dealt with in one of two ways.
If
there are particular pieces of equipment or property, such as buildings, trees, hedges, shrubs, et
cetera, that have to be removed and
these can be sold, then the revenue that would be generated by this process would go towards
defraying the costs that were
incurred. Where the costs exceed the
revenues that would be received as a
result of any sale of this equipment or this
property were not sufficient to cover the costs, then the costs would then be transferred to the owner
of the land. It would then become a debt, as indicated, due
to the Crown.
I
am sure that when it gets to that point there will be several appeals for these landowners having
to incur the extra costs for something
that they may not want to have removed from
the property.
It
also indicates that, where an affected owner of a property is in disagreement with the Highway Traffic
Board or the minister for removal of his
or her property, the individual can then
proceed through the courts and can have the courts review the decision, but this has to be undertaken
within 60 days from the date of the
making of the order.
* (1440)
The
minister also has the powers to delegate, as he has in the past, I believe, powers to the Highway
Traffic Board. I have had some dealings in the past with the
Highway Traffic Board dealing with other
matters relating to highways up in the Minister
of Labour's (Mr. Praznik) community where residents had contacted me some months back.
In
the new legislation it refers to additional duties of the Highway Traffic Board, and I am not sure what
specific additional duties the
minister's legislation is referring to. I hope that
when we go to committee he can provide some explanation for the additional duties that the Highway Traffic
Board may be undertaking or be required
to undertake.
Another
section that causes me concern for this legislation deals with evidence, and it indicates in the
explanatory notes that this new section
for providing evidence is to give the Highway
Traffic Board some maximum flexibility in dealing with matters that come before it, but the evidence
may be given before the Highway Traffic
Board in a manner that the Highway Traffic
Board considers appropriate. The
Highway Traffic Board is not bound by
the rules of law respecting evidence. I
am not sure, Mr. Acting Speaker, what
the intent of this section is.
I
had some experience a few weeks back in a show‑cause hearing with the Motor Transport Board, and
at that particular hearing the members
of the committee went behind closed doors to
conclude a portion of their hearings, and the members of the public that were in attendance at that
meeting were not privy to those
hearings. When the board came back a
decision was rendered. So it was obvious that all of the parties
that were involved went to the back room
and struck some kind of a deal on this. The Highway Traffic Board being a quasi‑judicial
body, I am not sure how this evidence
section would impact upon them, but I am
not sure that it is totally appropriate for these back‑room deals to be struck in this respect where
members of the public would not be privy
to this information.
The
Highway Traffic Board also has the power to authorize one member to conduct an inquiry into a matter
that has been drawn to its attention and
then to make recommendations back to the board,
and then the board is not necessarily bound by any of the decisions or recommendations that come back
to it and can modify, accept or reject
the reports that come back.
The
legislation itself indicates that the Highway Traffic Board can bring before it people having
special knowledge to assist them in the
fulfillment of their duties. When we
move to the section of penalties, Mr.
Acting Speaker, there is an indication
that the individuals that are found to be in
contravention of this legislation, an individual would be liable for a fine of not more than $200 and/or to
imprisonment of not more than 30 days.
When
we see the example that is placed before us here, in the case of a corporation, a corporation would be
subject to a fine of not more than
$1,000, but there is no designation there of any penalty to any of the directors in the sense
of imprisonment. I am not sure why we would have imprisonment of
individuals‑‑or the potential
to imprison individuals in these cases‑‑and we would not have the potential to imprison the
directors of a corporation who would be
in control of a corporation that would be in
contravention of this legislation.
While
I am not thoroughly experienced in the areas of
legalities of the province, as some of my more learned colleagues are here, it indicates that there is a
limitation on the actions for
prosecution for anyone who is found to be in contravention of this legislation. There is a limitation of one year, and I have always been of the understanding that the
statute of limitations in many legal
regards is two years. Quite possibly, I
will have to do some more work on that
to find out if that is why the discrepancy
is between the two and if, in fact, that is accurate.
In
the latter sections of the legislation, it talks about grandfathering, where there are existing
structures or buildings or trees that
are in place. As I indicated in some of
my earlier comments, there are many
situations in our province and the communities
of the province where these structures exist already, and that, by this legislation, the minister
will then have to issue permits to deal
with these particular structures.
Under
the grandfathering sections, as well, in dealing with the permits, it indicates that where a controlled
area is designated, that permits shall
have been deemed to have been issued
under the act, but it does not indicate what restrictions or time limitations or variance orders are in
place. I am sure the minister will be able to explain that as we
move further through the legislation.
There
are many sections, Mr. Acting Speaker, that are
important in this legislation.
Looking at the extent of this particular
bill, where it is intended to protect the travelling public, in one of the later portions or
sections of the bill, it talks about the
ministerial powers to remove any hazards to the
traffic that cause or obstruct the view of the roadway. In a case
that there will be no compensation payable for any loss or damage that a particular person‑‑in
that sense, a landowner‑‑would
suffer as a result of the actions of the
minister's department. I believe
that the safety of the travelling public
has to be the No. 1 priority.
There
is also a section here‑‑and I know I have had some correspondence from members of my own
community in dealing with off‑road
vehicles. I have had the opportunity to
ask questions of the minister in the
Estimates process relating to off‑roads
vehicles in the last session. By
the explanatory notes that are provided,
it indicates that municipalities have the powers to bring forward by‑laws restricting or
regulating the use of off‑road
vehicles within the municipalities' jurisdictions. But it
also indicates, by the explanatory notes, that the Highway Traffic Board has the power to rule on the
appropriateness of any municipal by‑laws.
I
think that will provide some consistency of regulatory powers throughout the province so that all
municipalities are bound by the same
legislation, and we do not have a patchwork
quilt of regulations through the province.
When
we move to committee we will be raising these questions with the minister as we have put on the
record here today, and hopefully the
minister will have his staff available for us to ask questions of and give some explanation so
that we can have a better understanding
of the full intent of the legislation.
I
am sure, looking at the general principle of the bill, it is a bill, from what we can see to this
point, that is worth supporting and that
we will have those questions for the minister
and look forward to the opportunity to further debate this when we move to committee.
* (1450)
Mr.
Driedger: Mr. Acting Speaker, I just want to put a few comments on the record here. I have taken note of some of the concerns that have been expressed, and we
will try and address them in committee
when we get to committee.
I
want to repeat again the reason why we rewrote this act. We were going to make some amendments to it,
found the act was so convoluted and
difficult to make changes in that it was advised that we rewrite that whole act, and basically
that is what we have done. I tried to give both the critics extensive information regarding exactly what changes
were taking place so there was no
misunderstanding of it. If there are
further questions, I will try and deal
with them.
The
Acting Speaker (Mr. Neufeld): Are you ready for the question?
The question before the House is second reading of Bill 79.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
Some
Honourable Members: Agreed.
The
Acting Speaker (Mr. Neufeld): Agreed and so ordered.
Bill 86‑The Provincial Police
Amendment
and Consequential Amendments Act
The
Acting Speaker (Mr. Neufeld): On the proposed motion
of the honourable Minister of Justice
(Mr. McCrae), The Provincial Police
Amendment and Consequential Amendments Act (Loi modifiant la Loi sur la Surete du
The
honourable member for
Mr.
Kevin Lamoureux (Inkster): Mr. Acting Speaker, I am glad to see you have finally called me honourable,
given the comments that we have had back
and forth, but I had adjourned debate on
behalf of the member for St. James (Mr. Edwards).
Mr.
Paul Edwards (St. James): Mr. Acting Speaker, what a pleasure it is to see you in the Chair. This is a bill which is joined with Bill 87, The Law Enforcement
Review Amendment Act. These pieces of
legislation essentially rethink the way that we
are going to review police activities in this province. The Manitoba
Police Commission and the Law Enforcement Review Agency previously have adjudicated upon concerns
raised about police.
Mr.
Acting Speaker, we have many examples in recent years, since this Minister of Justice (Mr. McCrae)
took over, of how the system has not
worked. We started, or course, with
Ticketgate back in 1988, and this minister
took over from the then‑Minister of
Justice, Mr. Schroeder. We then went
through the Harvey Pollock affair, the
Hughes inquest. We have been through the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry's review of police
activities with respect to J.J. Harper,
the Helen Betty Osborne cases. There was the Billyjoe DeLaronde shooting.
There
have been numerous occasions where police activity, police investigation procedures have come
into question, and there has been a
void. Literally speaking, there has been
no system or process by which a
credible, neutral body has looked at the
police activity and given society an answer.
Was the police activity
appropriate or not?
The
Law Enforcement Review Agency is victim driven.
That is, the victim of police
abuse has to lodge a complaint with the Law
Enforcement Review Agency. That
may or may not happen at all, and if it
does happen, it may happen long after the event has actually occurred.
The
Manitoba Police Commission out of The Provincial Police Act has been hardly used at all by this
province. It, in fact, has been hard up for work for some years
because the fact is, it relies upon a
minister that sees the value of the Police
Commission's work to send it work.
That just has not happened.
So
when we had these occasions where police conduct was called into question, we had no way to step
into the breach and in a neutral,
credible fashion review the police activity, hear the story, hear the evidence and come up with
an answer. What happened, in most of these cases, was that
the police themselves did an internal
investigation, and that is just not good enough.
Of
course, they have to do an internal investigation, but what happens when they come with the
result? If they clear the police officer, no one believes him, because
the investigation has been done by the
police of the police. Secondly, if they
do not clear the officer and they find
fault with the policing activities, in
the case of the Harvey Pollock investigation, they then would not release the results.
So
society at large does not get to see the final report. Why?
Because as the City of
So
it is not good enough to have just the internal
investigation of the police. You
need a body that is going to look at
this, that is going to represent society's interests to find out what happened, whether or not there
was police brutality, whether or not
police acted properly or improperly.
Now,
Mr. Acting Speaker, key to all of this is the timing. When an incident occurs, an improper shooting
such as the case of J.J. Harper, an
improper charging as in the case of Harvey
Pollock, at the outset inevitably there is the initial shock. There is the initial reporting and everybody
hears the story in a sensational fashion
on the front pages of the papers. Then,
as time goes on, in both of those cases,
questions arise, and this is true with
Ticketgate, true with Billyjoe DeLaronde, and it is a pattern that repeats itself every
time. Questions arise; allegations come to the fore that the police
have acted improperly.
What
has this Minister of Justice (Mr. McCrae) done in his pattern in the last four years? Inevitably, it goes on and on; the questions get louder and louder; there
are more and more articles; there are
more and more press reports; and eventually
it comes to the point where he has to act. He goes and retains an outside investigator, in the case of the
Harvey Pollock affair, Mr. Hughes from
British Columbia, who is a very fine man,
but, Mr. Acting Speaker, he had to come in here seven months after the incident to hold some public
hearings which were like a circus for
the media. That is what happened. You could go down there any day of the week and see 10 or 12 lawyers
sitting there all acting for someone
else, and they were doing their job.
They were trying to get to the
facts, but by that time there were so many
rumours, there was so much misinformation, reputations had been injured and hurt, much of the damage was
done, and society, most importantly, the
community had had its faith in the police
shaken, even after the Hughes inquest was done.
It
is my suggestion that the community's faith in the police never recovers from six or seven months of complaints
about their activities without anybody
standing up to defend them, without anybody
coming to a credible conclusion after a credible, neutral investigation. We need a body that can step into the breach
on behalf of society.
Mr.
Acting Speaker, we had that body. We had
in the City of
The
police, interestingly, are the first to want that independent review to be done quickly,
because it is the police who suffer from
six or seven months of allegations coming forward on the front pages of the paper and in the
news. You do not need to think that police do not go home at night
and watch the news and read the
paper. They become demoralized and quite
reasonably so. When they see allegations made again and
again, they get demoralized. They want an independent investigation right
off the hop more than anyone else in
society, and I have spoken to many in
the police force. I have yet to find
someone who disagreed with that need for
a body to, as the Winnipeg Police Commission
did until the mid‑'70s, step into the breach.
* (1500)
Now,
this brings me to the bills we have before us, and the minister's attempts to deal with this
problem. Mr. Acting Speaker, these bills do not specifically
address the timing, but I encourage the
minister to have the new body that he is
creating, which is essentially a provincial court judge, the new body step in quickly, expeditiously to deal
with these matters. If he is going to do
that, he will have done a great service to
this community. I know that the
Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Enns)
and others would support me in that. So
I do not think I want for internal
support in the Conservative caucus on this
issue, because the police need and deserve to be cleared or damned quickly and not have these things
lingering for months and months and
months. If there is a problem and if
there is fault found, then you deal with
it, but what you do not do is let six or
seven months go on with lingering rumours and doubts in the community which shakes their confidence in
the police and also demoralizes the force
itself.
Now,
Mr. Acting Speaker, I do have concerns, and I share the concerns of the member for Kildonan (Mr.
Chomiak) when he spoke on this bill,
about getting rid of the citizen panel which was LERA and the Police Commission. Those were citizens, not judges, not police people or politicians, and of
course all those people are citizens as
well, but what I am talking about is people from the community at large not directly involved
in the justice system, and this minister
is changing that. He is getting rid of that community control and handing it to a
member of the bench, a judge. Now, I am of two minds about that. I think‑‑
Hon.
Harry Enns (Minister of Natural Resources): You are a typical Liberal.
Mr.
Edwards: Well, the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr.
Enns) accuses me of wavering on this one
and of having too much‑‑[interjection!
Well, I like to look at both sides, and I
know that is unique in this House, but I do like to look at both sides before I come to a decision. Yes, that is true, if being a Liberal is looking at both sides, then I am
guilty, Mr. Acting Speaker, and proud to
be so. It has been a long time since
there were people in this House who
looked at both sides. I must say, you are one who has always done that and
stand out in that regard. You have not just looked at both sides, you
have spoken out about both sides and we
have appreciated that.
Now,
Mr. Acting Speaker, these tandem bills, Bills 86 and 87, do put into place, I hope, a more efficient,
more expeditious review process of
police activities in this province, and that is
positive. What I have grave
concerns about is the fact that we are
moving from a community adjudication body to a judge, and that does give me some concern. I wonder if the minister could not include community representation on a
panel with a judge. I see the advantage of having a judge who knows
some of the necessary legalities of
hearings, because there are rights at stake,
there is a duty of fairness, and there are certain legal principles which do come to bear in anybody
coming to these panels. But I wonder if we could not expand this‑‑as
the Law Enforcement Review Agency was,
it was a panel‑‑if we could not
expand this to include two community members, even one community member, to sit with the judge.
Now,
Mr. Acting Speaker, I raise that for the minister at this point and I would like to further
canvass that at committee stage to find
out whether or not he would be willing to amend
this to include that. [interjection! I appreciate the support of the Minister for Natural Resources (Mr. Enns)
on that.
I
might say this morning there was a significant amendment which came forward, by consent, from the
Minister of Justice (Mr. McCrae) at a
hearing on Bill 47. So I am hopeful that
the Minister of Justice is listening to
comments made by opposition members and
responding. He did this morning and I
give him credit for that. I look forward to a similar productive debate on this bill and Bill 87, Mr. Acting Speaker.
Mr.
Acting Speaker, with respect to the Police Commission, specifically the Manitoba Police Commission
and the Law Enforcement Review Agency, I
want to at this point say that we as legislators
owe a great debt of gratitude to those who served on those two bodies. They served with dignity; they did their job; they did it well. They were citizens who came forward and sat for many hours, days on end in certain cases,
and did the work of the people of
I
personally believe that the Police Commission was greatly underutilized, both by this administration
and the past administration. But, Mr. Acting Speaker, I am hopeful that we will be able to move into a new era, and I
would like to see the new adjudication
body be a panel, not just a member of the
There
are other questions I will have with respect to these bills.
I am going to save those for committee.
I look forward to public
presentations at committee, and I hope we have some because, Mr. Acting Speaker, I think these
bills do represent important public
issues worthy of public debate.
We
have tried many things in the last decades with respect to reviewing police activities. It is an evolutionary process. We are
taking another step here. I would like
to hear from the public at those
committees, and I look forward to getting to
those committees to hear public presentations.
We
have concerns about these bills. We see
that something had to be done. Whether or not this is the appropriate way to
go is yet to be debated in its entirety,
and we look forward to the clause‑by‑clause
analysis at the committee stage. Thank
you, Mr. Acting Speaker.
The
Acting Speaker (Mr. Neufeld): Is the House ready for
the question? The question before the House is second
reading of Bill 86. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the
motion?
Some
Honourable Members: Agreed.
The
Acting Speaker (Mr. Neufeld): Agreed and so ordered.
* * *
(Mr.
Speaker in the Chair)
Hon.
Leonard Derkach (Minister of Rural Development): Mr. Speaker, when I tabled Bill 20 for first
reading I did not table the message from
His Honour. I would like to table that
message at this time.
Mr.
Speaker: Does the honourable minister have leave to
table said message? Leave?
That is agreed.
* * *
Bill 87‑The Law Enforcement Review
Amendment Act
Mr.
Speaker: On the proposed motion of the honourable
Minister of Justice (Mr. McCrae), Bill
87, The Law Enforcement Review Amendment
Act; Loi modifiant la Loi sur les enquetes relatives a l'application de la loi, standing in the name
of the honourable member for Inkster
(Mr. Lamoureux).
Mr.
Kevin Lamoureux (Inkster): Mr. Speaker, I move to adjourn debate on behalf of the honourable member for
St. James.
Mr.
Paul Edwards (St. James): Mr. Speaker, I spoke in my comments on Bill 86 to a large extent about
both bills, 86 and 87. They are tandem bills dealing with different
acts, but I simply say at this point
that my comments on Bill 86 are to be taken
as applying also to Bill 87. I do look
forward to public presentations at the
committee stage and a thorough clause‑by‑clause
analysis of this bill, which we are agreeing to
send to committee at this stage, on the basis that we do have concerns about this bill and about the
structure that is being proposed by the
minister and will want to examine more thoroughly at the committee stage the research which he
has done which have led to these bills.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr.
Speaker: Is the House ready for the question? The question
before the House is second reading of Bill 87, The Law Enforcement Review Amendment Act; Loi
modifiant la Loi sur les enquetes
relatives a l'application de la loi. Is
it the pleasure of the House to adopt
the motion?
Some
Honourable Members: Agreed
Mr.
Speaker: Agreed and so ordered.
Bill 82‑The Farm Practices Protection
and Consequential Amendments Act
Mr.
Speaker: On the proposed motion of the honourable
Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Findlay),
Bill 82, The Farm Practices Protection
and Consequential Amendments Act; Loi sur la
protection des pratiques agricoles et apportant des modifications correlatives a d'autres lois, standing in the
name of the honourable member for St.
Boniface (Mr. Gaudry).
Mr.
Neil Gaudry (St. Boniface): Mr. Speaker, I will be the only one from our caucus speaking on this bill,
and we will look forward to sending it
to committee to‑‑[interjection! It is too late.
* (1510)
Mr.
Speaker, The Farm Practices Protection and
Consequential Amendments Act, this bill is designed to give farmers some security in their operations by
limiting the ability of people to bring
nuisance suits against them for normal farm
practices.
Mr.
Speaker, with the recent population shift of the city dwellers moving to bedroom communities, there
is a potential of newcomers protesting
about farm practices. For example,
people who build a new home next to a
livestock farm may complain about odours
and demand changes. This bill will
protect long‑established farm
operations if they are conducting normal
farm practices, and I think these are some of the concerns that will be addressed in committee by groups that
will be making presentations.
We
have seen the impact of how new developments constructed near airports have forced changes to airport
operating plans and this concern was
part of the opposition to The Pines project on
Portage Avenue. Oh, the Minister
of Urban Affairs (Mr. Ernst) is not
there, so it is okay.
This
is the same concern that farmers have.
Mr. Speaker, the complaint
process is twofold. Firstly, a person
applies in writing to the Farm Practice
Protection Board for determination of
whether an operation is being considered as a normal farm practice.
Secondly, a person can commence an action in nuisance if they have followed the first step.
The
board tries to mediate between the two parties, but if mediation fails it can dismiss the claim or
order the operator to adjust the
operation. Decisions can be appealed in
court.
The
Keystone Agricultural Producers are not entirely pleased with the bill, but they say it is better than
nothing. They wanted a more realistic approach taken. They wanted changes to the Planning and Environment Acts'
regulations included in this package. KAP believes that this bill is only a piece
of the puzzle. Planning Act changes are needed to improve an
appeal process. Local planning districts hear the appeals and
there are sometimes problems with these
planning districts.
A
model similar to
I
saw CBC on Monday evening filming the cleanup on the floodway.
An
Honourable Member: Are you picking on me?
Mr.
Gaudry: I would not do that.
A
code of practice must be defined so we will know what is and what is not a normal farm practice. KAP also was concerned about farm representation on the board, and I
think this is something that should be
looked at.
It
was in this case that this bill would help eliminate stubble burning. I know I have been asked what was my stand on stubble burning, but I will wait to put my
comments on stubble burning in
committee, Mr. Speaker.
Some
Honourable Members: Oh, oh.
Mr. Gaudry: I
will explain that in committee for the member.
That is the Voyageur look. Mr.
Speaker, this bill should be supported
while calling for planning and environment
co‑ordination with the creation of a code practice to measure against the other acts.
I
will end my comments and will look forward to seeing this bill into committee and having farmers making
presentations towards this bill.
Mr.
Speaker: Is the House ready for the question? The question
before the House is second reading of Bill 82, The Farm Practices Protection and Consequential Amendments Act;
Loi sur la protection des pratiques
agricoles et apportant des modifications
correlatives a d'autres lois. Is
it the pleasure of the House to adopt
the motion?
Some
Honourable Members: Agreed.
Mr.
Speaker: That is agreed. Agreed and so ordered.
Bill 94‑The Statute Law Amendment
(Taxation) Act, 1992
Mr.
Speaker: On the proposed motion of the honourable
Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness), Bill
94, The Statute Law Amendment (Taxation)
Act, 1992; Loi de 1992 modifiant diverses dispositions legislatives en matiere de fiscalite,
standing in the name of the honourable
member for Brandon East (Mr. Leonard Evans).
Stand? Is there leave?
An
Honourable Member: No.
Mr.
Speaker: No, leave is denied.
Mr.
Jim Maloway (Elmwood): I rise today for a few minutes to speak to Bill 94. Bill 94, as most of you know, is The Statute Law Amendment bill which is traditional in
this House to implement the measures of
the government's budget. In the interests of keeping things brief, I will
make just a very few comments on this
bill. I believe we will be sending the
bill to committee, at which time further
comments will be made by members on this
side of the House and presenters. If
there is any interest in the bill,
presenters will be able to make comments at
that time.
One
of the interesting aspects of this bill is that it includes general anti‑avoidance
provisions under Corporation Capital Tax
and The Health and Post‑Secondary Education Tax Levy and The Retail Sales Tax Act. The bill also sets out procedures for filing appeals to the independent Tax
Appeals Commission which we will be
dealing with next in the next bill that we will
be dealing with today.
So
I conclude comments on this particular bill at this point with the knowledge that the bill will now go
to committee and members of the public
will have time to make comments. Having said that now, I am informed that the member for
Flin Flon would like to make a few
comments on this bill as well.
Mr.
Jerry Storie (Flin Flon): I do not have a great deal to say on this bill as I have read the remarks of
the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness)
when he introduced this bill. I understand that this is, by and large, putting into law
what was announced in the budget. I did, however, want to comment on a couple
of sections in the bill as it relates
to, I guess, more directly the government's
rhetoric about what the budget was intended to
accomplish.
Mr.
Speaker, I, on a number of occasions, have had a chance to debate the issue of the status of the
mining industry in the
One
which is referenced quite often was a measure first announced in the 1991 budget which dealt with
the Mineral Exploration Incentive
Program, which, as it turned out, did not
have any beneficial effect whatsoever for the two largest mining companies in the province, namely, Hudson Bay
Mining and Smelting and Inco. I pointed that out on a number of occasions
to the government.
More
recently, the government, in its latest budgets, announced that there would be a new mine tax
holiday, and have tried to pretend‑‑and
I use that word advisedly‑‑that somehow this was going to create new opportunity in
the mining industry in the immediate
term. The Minister of Energy and Mines,
the minister responsible for Northern
Affairs (Mr. Downey) has suggested this
was somehow a measure that could be looked to from the community of
When
I got Bill 94 and started reading through the
implementation of these tax measures, lo and behold, I find that "new mine" means (a) a mine (i)
that commences production after January
1, 1993.
So
the government is obviously not prepared to put up any money prior to the beginning of next year to
help a community that is
struggling. My questions is: Does this create any incentive for a company that may have had a
prospect of a mine on the horizon,
encourage it to go into production to save the
town? Obviously, there is a very
strong financial incentive at this point
for the company to say, well, we are not going to do anything until at least January 1, 1993. I do not think that is good news for people who are sitting in the
community of
* (1520)
Mr.
Speaker, I raise this simply to, I guess, put the question:
Does this government really have any concern for mining communities and the prospect for
mining communities that are on the brink
of disaster? I think the answer is no.
We
will let this go to committee. I think
there are a number of other questions
that we might want to ask the Minister of
Finance (Mr. Manness) when we get to committee, and I have some questions as well about the manufacturing tax
credit which has a window, a very short
window, from the date of the budget roughly
till the middle of 1993 to take effect.
I
have questions as well about the effectiveness of the exemptions that are introduced in the budget,
as they relate to tax credits, because,
of course, it assumes that there will be a
benefit, where in fact many, many companies, if not most companies in Manitoba are struggling to show
any black in their accounting at
all. So it is not clear that there in
fact will be any incentive in much of
what the government has proposed as being
an incentive to spur the introduction of new manufacturing technology to spur on the research and
development in the
I
think there are some serious questions about whether these tax measures, as modest as they are, are going
to have any significant impact on our
economic circumstances of the moment.
With
those comments, Mr. Speaker, I know that our Finance critic, the member for Brandon East (Mr.
Leonard Evans), is going to want to ask
a series of questions in committee on the
specifics of the legislation, but I think we can do that in committee.
Certainly, we are prepared to let this bill go to committee immediately.
Mr.
Reg Alcock (Osborne): I should serve notice to you, I suspect, that I will be the only speaker on
this bill for our party, and, at the
conclusion of my remarks, we will be prepared
to pass it into committee.
I
note a couple of things. I listened with
interest to the remarks from the
Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) when he
introduced this bill, and he, quite rightly, prefaced his introduction of it by noting that this one
was particularly long and complex. Unlike the Statute Law Amendment (Taxation)
Acts that we have seen in the past few
years, where we have seen a few changes
to tax policy or tax law in this province as a result of commitments made in the budget, this one has
taken a much more thorough‑‑well,
actually it made a much more thorough attempt to change some of the deficiencies in current
tax law that we have noted in this House
in the past couple of years.
I
think the minister is to be commended. I
also want to thank the minister for
providing to us‑‑I imagine both critics have provided the same information which
detailed the intent as well as the
specific reasoning behind the changes that have been introduced.
I think there are some good things in this.
I
think I have commented at length on them when I made my response to the budget speech, because most
of them are following up on the changes
that were introduced in the budget speech.
I think that the minister
introduced in his first heading changes to
enhance economic development in the province, the mining tax changes, some of the small business tax
changes and the tax forgiveness,
particularly in the establishment of the tax credit for 800 numbers and the like. I think these are creative measures, and I think that, while they may
not produce the kind of boom that the
members opposite would like to believe they will produce, they will at least go some small way
to relieving the burden on business in
this province.
The
minister has also done an interesting thing in regard to environmental taxation. The environmental protection tax that they introduced a couple of years ago has
been pretty much window dressing, and
for the first time in this bill we do see an
attempt on the part of the government to move toward making it a more significant program, changing some of
the retail tax, retail sales tax
applications, particularly on tires, and adding a tax to disposable diapers, all of which will go
into the Environmental Protection Fund
and be used to fund projects to promote
environmental awareness and the protection of our environment.
I would presume this will receive the support of all the members in the House.
The
big changes are coming. One is a
significant tightening of tax
avoidance. I think we see that in the
small business tax holiday changes; we
see that also in the corporate capital tax
and the retail sales tax, and the health and post‑secondary educational levy.
I
think it is a good thing. I think we
have had several debates in the House
about the ability of certain corporations to
avoid paying taxes that they might be rightly assessed. The government
has provided a variety of ways in which corporations can legitimately redirect expenditures from
taxation into staff training and the
like, and I think that the tightening up, on the other hand, to prevent abuses is a necessary and
positive step. I am also encouraged by
their enhancement of the tax credit for research
and development.
I
think there are a couple of things in here that need to be looked at, particularly in light of the other
changes that the Finance minister is
bringing forward. He has The Tax Appeals Commission Act coming up, and we are going to
be debating that bill in just a few
minutes.
I
do want to talk in some detail about that because I have‑‑while I think it is a good
measure, I think there are some concerns
that need to be addressed with it. Also,
he is moving to a new form of operating
agency; I think that needs to be examined
with some care. But, on the whole, while
this is a larger and more complex act
than we have had to deal with in the last
few years, it is consistent with the commitments made in the budget, and I believe it brings about some
very necessary tightening of tax law in
this province.
Thank
you very much, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: Is the House ready for the question? The question
before the House is second reading of Bill 94, The Statute Law Amendment (Taxation) Act, 1992; Loi de 1992
modifiant diverses dispositions
legislatives en matiere de fiscalite. Is
it the pleasure of the House to adopt the
motion?
An Honourable Member: Agreed.
Mr. Speaker: Agreed and so ordered.
Bill 95‑The Tax Appeals Commission
Act
Mr.
Speaker: On the proposed motion of the honourable
Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness), Bill
95, The Tax Appeals Commission Act; Loi
sur la Commission d'appel des impots et des taxes, standing in the name of the honourable member
for Brandon East (Mr. Leonard
Evans). Stand? Is there leave?
An
Honourable Member: No.
Mr.
Speaker: Leave is denied.
Mr.
Jim Maloway (Elmwood): Mr. Speaker, I will be spending a few minutes putting some comments on the part of
our caucus on the record regarding Bill
95. I would like to say at the outset
here that the late introduction of this
bill and Bill 96, which we will be
speaking to next, is of great concern to us because when we get bills introduced, such as 96 was just
yesterday and Bill 95 a few days before,
at such a late stage in the House and we
are expected to examine the bills and come up with proper analysis of the bills, it is very, very
difficult to do it with only one or two
days notice, especially when many of the
concerned parties affected by the bills have yet to be contacted and have their views heard. Now, I recognize that is the role of the committee process, and that is the route
that the bill will be following after
the comments made in the House today.
At
the outset, I would say that The Tax Appeals Commission Act, the act of setting up a tax appeals
commission sounds on the surface to be a
fairly simple and a fairly good idea.
What it will do is provide an
independent review of contested corporation
capital tax, retail sales tax, with payroll tax assessments and, of course, that in itself once again sounds
like a good idea, but one would have to
determine why at this particular time this
measure was deemed to be necessary.
There
are several questions that arise out of this measure and, of course, some of those questions can
and will be asked at the committee stage,
but I would be very interested in knowing
what the experience of the government was regarding the previous situation regarding the collection of these
taxes. Were they having a lot of problems with appeals in the
past? What is the event or the series of events that triggered
and prompted the government to bring in
this particular bill particularly at this
stage so late in the session? Was
the government challenged in court on
this matter? We have other questions
such as: What will this add to the bureaucracy of the
government and the cost to the
government? Will it, in fact, encourage
appeals?
* (1530)
I
am sure that the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) has appropriate answers to these questions, but
these are questions, nevertheless, that
up to this point we have not had an opportunity
to ask once again, because the bill itself was only brought in just a few days ago on June 10.
Once
again, on the surface this looks like it is a bill that should not cause a lot of problems. However, until we get answers to these questions, we are passing
the bill to committee with some
reluctance, and in the hopes that at committee we are able to get the answers to these questions.
The
next bill, Bill 96, which I will be addressing in a few minutes, also raises, in fact, more serious
questions about the special operating
agencies that the government is proposing.
I will be dealing with that in a
few minutes on Bill 96.
So
with that I would like to conclude my remarks and allow the bill to pass to committee. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr.
Reg Alcock (Osborne): Mr. Speaker, I once again want to thank the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness)
for providing notes on this bill,
although this is rather less of a bill than the one we have just talked about. The Minister of Finance puts this forward as one step in cutting red tape. In fact, that is one of the comments he makes in his rather brief
remarks on this bill.
I
will be interested in the discussions in committee on that particular point, because it strikes me that
it is difficult to reduce red tape by
creating more complexity in the systems that
one has available to one in order to challenge, question, or ask for intervention in the proceedings that a
government may take against a
person. On the surface, this is intended
to provide an opportunity for people to
have, quote: a less formal review of concerns they may have under a few taxation
statutes. I think the intent of this is good.
I
think the intent of this bill is to allow citizens to access appeal processes without having to go
to the expense of hiring a lawyer or the
formality of approaching, particularly, Court
of Queen's Bench, but it does not deny them the opportunity to do that should they not receive
satisfaction from the commissioner.
I
think, though, there are two concerns that I have with the way it is being structured. One is that we are having a proliferation of ways to appeal and deal with
specific tax statutes instead of trying
to bring them all under one easily understood
process. If you want to reduce red tape,
you do it by collapsing processes and
simplifying processes, not by increasing
the number of them.
The
second thing is the independence of this particular position.
I note here that this does not even have the protection of being vetted by Lieutenant‑Governor‑in‑Council, that these people would be appointed solely
by the minister. I note in the notes that there is the
suggestion that they will be appointed
by people who have a great deal of experience in tax. But we have questioned frequently in this
House the independence of persons
appointed directly by the government and feel that this takes it a step further in the wrong direction
by removing any scrutiny other than that
of the minister when it comes to appointing
the individuals who will undertake these reviews.
With
those few remarks, Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to let this pass into committee, and we will deal with
those questions when the minister is
able to answer them. Thank you.
Mr.
Speaker: Is the House ready for the question? The question
for the House is second reading of Bill 95, The Tax Appeals Commission Act; Loi sur la Commission d'appel
des impots et des taxes. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the
motion?
Some
Honourable Members: Agreed.
Mr.
Speaker: Agreed and so ordered.
Bill 9‑The Special Operating Agencies
Financing Authority Act
Mr.
Speaker: On the proposed motion of the Minister of
Finance (Mr. Manness), Bill 96, The
Special Operating Agencies Financing Authority
Act; Loi sur l'Office de financement des organismes de service special, standing in the name of the
honourable Leader of the Opposition (Mr.
Doer). Is there leave?
An
Honourable Member: Which bill did you say it is?
Mr.
Speaker: Bill 96, standing in the name of the
honourable Leader of the
Opposition. Leave?
Some
Honourable Members: No.
Mr.
Speaker: No, leave is denied.
Mr. Jerry
Storie (Flin Flon): Mr. Speaker, the member for Concordia, the Leader of the official
opposition (Mr. Doer), adjourned the
bill for myself.
Mr.
Speaker, this piece of legislation, I think, reads quite differently when you look at the legislation
than the Minister of Finance's speech on
this particular piece of legislation.
The fact of the matter is that
there are elements of this legislation that,
I think, should cause people a great deal of concern.
Mr.
Speaker, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness), in his opening remarks talked, I think quite glibly,
about the creation of special operating
agencies, or SOAs as he called them later on
in his speech, as being a means of introducing innovation and allowing more financial flexibility within
the department. However, when you read
the legislation you find that what is being
created really, at the whim of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness), and his colleagues, are really mini‑Crown
corporations, small agencies within
departments that can act relatively independently
of government.
Now
all of this, of course, is still within the purview of the Minister of Finance. The financing authority shall be under the direction and control of the Minister of
Finance. So while we have not lost direct responsibility, we
are now creating arm's‑length
agencies to do the work of government.
Now,
Mr. Speaker, I recognize the need for that to happen on occasion.
In fact, I have argued that on occasion arm's‑length agencies are more effective. They can respond more quickly than government departments, and I will give you
one prime example. It is quite ironic
that the Minister of Finance has decided to
bring forward a bill that would allow him to create these special operating agencies when this same government,
not more than a few months ago repealed
legislation which created the Manitoba Energy
Authority.
The
Manitoba Energy Authority was a Crown corporation which operated independently on economic
development initiatives related to
energy in the
They
said we can do this just as efficiently in the
department. All of the planning
functions, all of the operating functions
can be done in the department, and I argued that was not the case.
I said no, it is the independence of these Crown corporations, agencies like the Manitoba
Energy Authority, that allowed it the
flexibility to move quickly, responsively to the needs of the private sector partners that it
was often working with.
* (1540)
The
Manitoba Energy Authority, when it was dealing with Dow Corning or Brown Boveri or G.E., when we
negotiated an agreement for them to supply
the turbines for the Limestone project, operated
very efficiently. It created tremendous
advantage for the
So
Mr. Speaker, I see a tremendous contradiction in what the government is doing now because, what the
government argued only a few months ago,
it is now attempting to do by legislation in
another venue. It is now saying,
oh, the creation of these special
operating agencies is a good idea. It
gives us more flexibility, it gives us
more independence.
There
is one fundamental difference, however, in what this Minister of Finance is proposing and what we
had in place in the case of the Manitoba
Energy Authority, and I will tell the member
for Niakwa (Mr. Reimer) what that is.
In this case, the Minister of
Finance (Mr. Manness) is basically giving the authority without coming to the Legislature, other than
in terms of the principle of
establishing the bill.
The
Manitoba Energy Authority was required as a Crown corporation, as other Crown corporations are,
to be publicly accountable. In fact, we have a piece of legislation
requiring that our Crown corporations be
publicly accountable and hold public
consultation meetings explaining what they are doing. This bill gives the Minister of Finance the
authority to appoint whosoever he
chooses through an Order‑in‑Council to operate these special agencies. The special operating agency is "hereby established as a body corporate consisting of
one or more persons appointed by the
Lieutenant Governor in Council."
So
we are now having a situation where Crown corporations will be appointed by the Minister of Finance‑‑in
effect, many Crown corporations‑‑and
yet there will not be the same kind of accountability
that is deemed to be necessary for our other Crown corporations.
So
we have the contradiction of the government arguing on the one hand that MEA and a number of other Crown
corporations could be disbanded because
the government departments could do these
things, and now we have the government saying, well, the government departments actually cannot do
these things, and we are going to create
these new entities, and these new entities do
not appear to have the same kind of accountability that our Crown corporations have under our Crown
accountability legislation.
It
is not clear, as well, whether the government's agenda in doing this is really the first step to
privatizing operations of government. We know that the government would like to
privatize certain sections of the
Department of Government Services, perhaps
the custodial functions, the security functions, and you have to ask the legitimate question of
whether this is, in fact, not creating
little operating units within the department on an experimental basis to see whether in fact
they can be profit centres. Of course, then you have to become a little
bit suspicious about whether those
centres might not be privatized in some
future incarnation of Bill 96.
Mr.
Speaker, I know that in his speech the Minister of Finance said, no, we have consulted with the
Manitoba Government Employees'
Association. He has indicated that they
have approved or at least co‑operated
in the formation of working groups, particularly
in the Department of Government Services in creating the Fleet Vehicle Agency Advisory Board. I can tell the minister responsible for Government Services (Mr. Ducharme)
and the minister responsible for this
bill that there is some skepticism with
respect to the long‑term purpose of this and whether this is not the thin edge of the wedge in terms of
privatizing parts of government
agencies.
Mr.
Speaker, certainly I am not suggesting that this bill will allow the government to do that. I think it will take some other measures to do that, but the point is
that the government cannot have it both
ways. It cannot argue that it is not necessary to do that with respect to the
Manitoba Energy Authority and other
agencies and yet say now it is necessary
within government departments.
We
still do not know what agencies within government may be created.
What are this legislation's targets?
The Minister of Finance (Mr.
Manness) mentioned one, the Fleet Vehicles in the Department of Government Services. What other sections of government departments are the targets for
this legislation? I do not believe for a minute that the
government has not developed a plan,
that they have not identified a number of potential SOAs, as the minister calls them, and certainly we
would like to know which agencies the
government has in mind before we proceed to
support this legislation.
Mr.
Speaker, I have one other comment with respect to the timing of this legislation. This, in my opinion, could be an extremely contentious piece of
legislation. If we can determine what the government's real intent is, I think
it could be quite contentious. I think it may work to undermine much of what
many governments over the past number of
decades have attempted to create in the
province of Manitoba, government departments with different branches, different services to
meet the needs of Manitoba.
If
we are now through this simple little document beginning the process of privatization, then I have
some concern. We better have the debate. We had better be very careful about proceeding with step one if that is the
government's intention. If it is the
real intention only to streamline the efficiency of the departments, perhaps we can have a look,
we can do a pilot project or two and
examine the results, but I am not sure, and I
am sure there are many people working in government departments across the Civil Service who are not sure
about whether that is the intention.
So,
Mr. Speaker, I want to say that it is unfortunate that this bill, which was introduced by the
Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) on
June 16 for second reading, is not good enough, that we deserve, I think, a greater period of time
to review something which, I think, is a
significant departure for this Legislature
and for government departments and for the people who are employed in those government departments, and
it deserves a period of reflection.
We
have not had that time, Mr. Speaker, because of the agreement to close the session, and I would
rather see the government hold this
legislation. I would rather see the government agree to suspend this until the
fall sitting, until we have had a chance
to examine a little more closely the government's
plans, examine a little more closely the reactions of those who might be affected and consider
the costs and the benefits of moving in
this direction.
So,
Mr. Speaker, we are prepared to let this bill go to committee at this stage, but I put the
government on notice that we may, in
fact, have some further questions and want to further delay consideration of this bill at some
point in the very near future.
Mr.
Reg Alcock (Osborne): Mr. Speaker, I will be the only speaker for our party, and we can let this go
to committee as soon as I am done. However, I am concerned. I share the
concerns of the member for Flin Flon (Mr. Storie), although for different reasons. I am somewhat distressed that the Finance minister (Mr. Manness) has not done two
things. He has not followed the practice that he followed with
his other bills where he provided fairly
extensive notes and details as to his intentions
with this bill. He introduced it and
read it just two days ago. I listened with some care to the remarks put
on the record at that time as I was
intrigued with the intention of this bill.
I
am, in a sense, not concerned for the same reasons as the member for Flin Flon is, because I am not
convinced that this is going to produce
the kind of streamlining and efficiencies that
the minister would wish to produce in any event. I had a lengthy discussion with the Minister for Government
Services (Mr. Ducharme) some time ago
about the intentions with the provincial
garage. While on the surface it
sounds well and good, I think what the
Finance minister is allowing us to do is to give him a fairly sizable blank cheque, so that he can
run around and create a series of
organizations that are only accountable to him, to take on a variety of tasks within government
without much in the way of review by the
Legislature or advance discussion with the
public.
Mr.
Speaker, I share some of the concerns which the Finance minister expresses when he talks about the
size of government and the inability of
government to move quickly or efficiently or in
a cost‑effective manner.
Government has become far too large,
far too expensive, far too intrusive in people's lives, and far less able to provide service. So when the Finance minister comes forward and starts talking about creating
some changes in the name of producing
service, in the name of producing efficiency, I
applaud him for that. However, I
think, as I said on the earlier bill,
that simply providing another layer of government, another type of government, an expansion of
government in the name of producing
efficiency is not going to produce that result.
* (1550)
The
inefficiencies that are inherent in the management of government rest with this Finance minister
and his office, and he has an ability to
tackle that problem. Technology today
gives us a variety of options when it
comes to improving and streamlining the
management of government, options which the Finance minister should be capitalizing on, not running away
from.
It
is just simply that we have seen over and over again attempts by governments in the name of
creating greater efficiency that simply
result in the establishment of a new office,
a new review, a new level of decision making that simply interferes with the ability of an
organization to move forward. The
Finance minister did state‑‑and I would reference it to the member for Flin Flon (Mr. Storie), given his
concern about contracting out and
privatization‑‑that these changes had been discussed extensively with the MGEA. I would ask him to check with his friends at the MGEA to confirm that,
because I suspect on the surface, if the
intention is to do what the Minister of Government
Services (Mr. Ducharme) has talked about with the provincial garage, and it is limited to that
form of operating entity, we could
support it.
However,
I would encourage the Finance minister to take a step back and to look at the overall
management of government and think
through the way in which he can solve the central management problems in government rather than
avoiding them by establishing operating
entities that function essentially outside
of them. If it is good for small
sections and branches of government to
become relieved of the burden of central management control, then perhaps it is good for all of
government. I think the Minister of Finance could do a great deal
to improve the efficiency and cost
effectiveness of government if he had simply
looked a little more creatively at his role in central management in government and did not avoid that debate
by creating a myriad of small operating
entities to relieve him of the burden of
becoming a better manager.
We
will have those debates in committee when the minister is here.
We can try to get a better idea of his real intentions, but I am going to reserve judgment as to
whether or not I will support this
bill. I may in fact want to revisit this
discussion at much greater length in
committee and on third reading.
Thank
you very much.
Mr.
Jim Maloway (Elmwood): I rise to put our final comments on this bill before we send it to
committee. Mr. Speaker, I am very unhappy about the timing of this bill. The fact of the matter is that this bill was only introduced a day ago,
and I am very reluctant to support
it. In fact, I can say at the outset
that I do not like being snookered, and
I think that is potentially what is
going on here.
It
reminds me of the concurrence motion a couple of years ago where the Liberals took a real beating
getting snookered in the FOS
debates. I would hate to think that the
government would be trying to do that to
the opposition at this stage, but on the
surface of it there is a very real possibility here, given the fact that they have held this bill off until
introduction just yesterday and now they
are expecting to pass this to committee,
that that is, in fact, what is happening.
If
this bill is designed for back doorstep to privatization, then we will have much, much more to say
about it. The more I read this bill and the more I look at this
situation, the more suspicious I become
that that, in fact, may be the government's
design here. I do not think that
this kind of strategy by the government
is in their long‑term interest, because if in fact they are up to no good in this situation they
will regret it in the long run.
Having
said that, it is our plan to stick to schedule and send this bill to committee tomorrow. Hopefully, we will have public hearings and allow people who are
directly affected by this bill to come
forward, make presentations, and at that point
we will be in a better position to make up our mind as to where the government is headed at this time. I can tell you that our initial consultations do not look promising
and clearly raise some alarm bells which
I think should be certainly brought to the
attention of the House at the earliest opportunity. We in fact
are doing that at this point.
So,
Mr. Speaker, it is with some great reluctance that we move to send this bill to committee at this
point, and we will be watching this bill
very closely at the committee stage and certainly
at third reading, and it may well be that we have not heard the end of this bill yet in this
session.
Mr.
Speaker: Is the House ready for the question? The question
before the House is second reading of Bill 96, The Special Operating Agencies Financing Authority Act;
Loi sur l'Office de financement des
organismes de service special. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
An
Honourable Member: Agreed.
Mr.
Speaker: Agreed and so ordered.
SECOND
Bill 100‑The Pension Plan Acts
Amendment Act
Hon.
Darren Praznik (Minister of Labour): Mr. Speaker, I would move, seconded by the honourable Minister of
Family Services (Mr. Gilleshammer), that
Bill 100, The Pension Plan Acts Amendment
Act, Loi modifiant les lois sur les regimes de retraite, be now read a second time and be referred to a
committee of this House.
Motion
presented.
Mr.
Praznik: Mr. Speaker, I will try to be very brief in
my remarks. This particular piece of legislation was
primarily necessitated by amendments
that the federal Parliament enacted with
respect to pension plans and that are effective as of January 1 of this year. This piece of legislation will allow three particular plans for which this
Legislature is responsible, the
teachers' pension plan, the Civil Service Superannuation Plan and the MLAs' pension plan to comply with
that legislation.
Mr.
Speaker, the three plans as I have indicated and with respect to the Civil Service Superannuation
Plan cover over 31,000 public servants
and 8,000 pensioners. Approximately one‑half of them are civil
servants. The remainder are employees of Crown corporations, boards, agencies,
including Manitoba Hydro and Manitoba
Telephone System. The fund has assets
currently in excess of $1 billion and is
among the top 30 pension plans in
Mr.
Speaker, the MLA plan, as members may be aware, is created under Part 2 of The Legislative
Assembly Act and it provides pension
benefits for members of this Assembly.
The
teachers' plan covers approximately 15,000 public school teachers and 5,000 pensioners. The fund has assets of over $800 million and is among the top 40 pension
plans. As of January 1, 1990, the valuation determined that the
assets of the fund exceed obligations by
some $60 million.
Mr.
Speaker, the process leading to these amendments involved lengthy discussions with the representatives
of the employees covered by the plans
with respect to teachers and public servants.
* (1600)
The
key amendments deal primarily with income tax compliance that to the extent possible within the tax
rules the members of the plans will be
able to maintain the same value of benefits
that currently exist. Where
benefits have to be reduced to comply a
compensating benefit or allowance, that has the same value as the reduced benefit but that is
permissible under the federal tax rules,
has been included.
For
example, to compensate for required higher early retirement reduction, a bridging benefit
payable from retirement to age 65 has
been included. It will have the same
present value as any benefit lost
because of the income tax requirement.
Other compliant changes include
cost‑of‑living adjustment based on
percentage of CPI instead of a split formula of percent and cents per year of service.
Provisions
to limit the benefits where necessary if tax
limits are exceeded are also included.
Other specific changes, Mr.
Speaker, to the Civil Service Superannuation Plan: a provision
to allow for early retirement after age 55 without penalty, when age plus service equals 80 is
included in this act. This was announced by the government at the
time of our layoffs and staff
reductions, and at the request of the MGEA this
provision was announced to encourage those who were thinking of early retirement to so do and take the
voluntary incentive program with this
benefit to make positions available for other
employees.
A
provision to allow employees to purchase certain types of prior, nonpensionable service during a window
period, November 1, 1992 to July 1, 1994
has also been included. This will be of particular benefit to employees in the
Departments of Natural Resources, and
Highways who have traditionally had seasonal work and so have been laid off seasonally and
recalled and not been eligible to go
into the plan. This will allow them to
buy back those periods of service and so
have the benefit of a pension.
With
respect to the MLA plan, the only changes with respect to this plan, there are no changes to
benefits, certainly no increase to
benefits. The only changes are
provisions to provide protection of
spouses' benefits in the event of marriage
breakdown similar to the provisions in The Pensions Benefits Act. I
believe all members should support the principle that it was time this legislation, our own pension
plan as MLAs, be brought in line with
the requirements for other pension plans
across the province.
With
respect to the teachers' plan, amendments are included to allow the board to refund to some
teachers, from the surplus, excess
contributions arising from special payments they made in 1981 to improve the benefit formula. There are no benefit improvements in this package for this
particular plan.
The
bill contains some housekeeping amendments of an administrative nature recommended by the plan
administrators or required as a result
of changes to The Pension Benefits Act which
are also now before this House.
These amendments clarify the meaning
of sections and/or provide for more streamlined and responsive administration.
With
respect to financial implications, Mr. Speaker,
generally the changes related to income tax compliance are cost neutral.
The Civil Service Superannuation Plan changes are being funded by the existing employee surplus. This was negotiated with the plan sponsors and the employees'
representatives. The actuary has determined that the surplus is
not needed to meet existing obligations
under the act, now or in the future.
There
are no increased costs as well with any of the changes associated to the MLA and the teachers'
plan. There is no adjustment in the contribution rates for any
of the participating employee or
employer groups with respect to this legislation. All of the amendments have been reviewed by
the plan's actuary to ensure that they
are financially sound and comply with relevant
legislation.
The
representatives of employees and employers will continue to meet on an ongoing basis to discuss other
items of concern related to the Civil
Service and teachers' plans which, obviously,
were not appropriate to bring forward in this bill.
I
hope that this bill can be expedited through the House. As I
am sure all members are aware, it is required if it does not pass through the House at this time, it is
likely that these three plans would be
deregistered by the federal government.
So there is some urgency to this
particular matter.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Steve Ashton (Thompson): Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for his opening comments, and I just want to
indicate that we have had an opportunity
to review this legislation. Essentially, as the minister indicated, it appears to
bring existing pension plans, in terms
of the three pension plans that were outlined,
within the parameters set by federal legislation, and also brings them into keeping with other pension plans in
terms of provincial legislation in
respect to spousal benefits.
Mr.
Speaker, essentially it might be called a housekeeping bill in the sense that it does not involve
any substantive changes in it to any of
the pension plans involved. It merely maintains the current benefits, the current
structure, and brings it in line with
additional legislation.
That
being the case, we are suggesting that this matter be moved to committee, in conjunction with a
number of other pension bills, in
particular, with 71 that has already been passed by this House, I believe, 76 which we will be
dealing with a few minutes which does
have a number of rather controversial sections
that we will be debating rather extensively.
But,
in general, we feel it is appropriate to move it through to committee and deal with it on a clause‑by‑clause
basis once we are in committee. Thank you.
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (
So
I understand that this bill amends three acts in different ways.
The amendments are either for the purpose of administration or housekeeping of sorts,
compliance with other acts such as Bill
76, as the member from Thompson (Mr. Ashton)
points out, in The Income Tax Act or improvements of benefits or a combination of these.
Three
parts, the first being the Civil Service Superannuation Act.
This part of the bill is proposed as a result of negotiations with the Civil Service, I
understand. The amendments are those requested by
representatives of the groups that are
affected. The proposed amendments will
bring the Civil Service Superannuation
Act and the pension plans in compliance with
the Income Tax Act of Canada.
If
these changes were not approved, the registered pension plan could fall outside the new federal
regulations, as I pointed out. In order to keep these plans on‑line,
if I can use that terminology, it is
important that we see this bill pass, as I
say, some time this year. Many of
these amendments should properly be in
regulations, but in that this act is structured as it is, we are in the position of regularly
amending the act instead of regulations,
which of course has its pros and cons, Mr.
Speaker.
Another
part of the legislation deals with the MLAs.
This part of the bill for us is
the bottom line in these changes is that
the MLAs will continue to make the same contributions and will receive the same benefits. As the minister points out, there is no increase. In other words, it maintains the status quo from what I understand.
I
have really had the bill just a couple of days ago and so we had to somewhat speed through in reading
it. However, previously there were no provisions for a
split in terms of the MLA portion for
the pension on marriage breakdown. It is
a reality of contemporary society that
we must provide for marriage breakdown
and remarriage and so forth. That these
provisions were not included previously
was probably more an oversight than anything
else. This bill provides for the
splitting of pension benefit credits on
marital breakdown and for opting out of the
splitting, even though, as a caucus therefore we would urge that spouses opting out of splitting of the
pension credits get some sort of
independent legal or at the very least some sort of financial advice.
In
terms of The Teachers' Pensions Act, again, this part of the bill amends The Teachers' Pensions Act in
accordance with their negotiations, from
what we understand. The changes are mostly to ensure compliance with The Income
Tax Act. Other changes are, again, housekeeping in nature,
and having said those very few words,
Mr. Speaker, it would be okay from our point of
view to allow the bill to go into committee.
Mr. Speaker: Is the House ready for the question? The question
before the House is second reading of Bill 100‑‑The Pension
Plan Acts Amendment Act; Loi modifiant
les lois sur les regimes de retraite. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the
motion?
Some
Honourable Members: Agreed.
Mr.
Speaker: That is agreed and so ordered.
* (1610)
DEBATE ON SECOND
Bill 76‑The Pension Benefits
Amendment Act
Mr.
Speaker: On the proposed motion of the honourable
Minister of Labour (Mr. Praznik), Bill
76, The Pension Benefits Amendment Act;
Loi modifiant la Loi sur les prestations de pension, standing in the name of the honourable member
for Flin Flon (Mr. Storie). Stand?
No,
leave is denied.
Ms.
Becky Barrett (
One
is that a marriage is a partnership of equals.
Now this is a very important
principle and one that is oftentimes honoured
more in the breach than in the recognition. As a subsidiary of that principle, any reduction of disposable
income resulting from pension
contributions made during a marriage is a reduction of the family income. Those pension benefits do not belong to one particular part of that marriage unit. They are a reduction of the family income.
The
second principle that we are concerned about with regard to Bill 76, Mr. Speaker, is the whole issue
of what pensions are. The principle that, heretofore, has been
followed, and that we are concerned will
be watered down with this bill is that pensions
are a special type of asset to be set aside for future benefit.
They must be treated as such.
When you are talking about
pensions, you are not talking about an asset that should be treated in the same way as a car or a house or
a cottage at the lake or stocks or any
other kind of asset‑‑furniture, personal property.
All of those assets have a very different principle involved with them, particularly when it
comes to a marriage breakdown.
Mr.
Speaker, historically, this pensions benefit legislation that we have in
They
cited the
Mr.
Speaker, many of the people that we are concerned about in the changes that are being proposed in
Bill 76 are women who are older and
women who are poor. I think that our
legislation should and must, if it is
going to be adequate, reflect the demographical
and age and economic statistics that we are faced with in
In
Not
only are, generally, Canadians and Manitobans getting older, but as has been historically the case,
women are a disproportionate part of the
population that is 65 and over. Of Canadians today, who reach the age of 65, men
are expected to live 79.5 years‑‑so
14 years past the normal retirement age‑‑while
women, who hit 65 this year, are going to live almost 84 years, which is 19 years past the normal
retirement age of 65. That is a long time for our senior citizens
to have to deal with the financial
realities.
Mr.
Speaker, I might suggest that one of the government members just stated‑‑I think I
know who it was, but I am not sure so I
will not specifically make mention of his constituency‑‑from his chair, yes, and that is a time for a lot
of golf. Well, we are talking on behalf of the many, many Manitobans,
particularly women in this province, who
have no resources to play golf. It is a classic:
the idea of the government is that you hit 65 and you have leisure time. You have the resources and the time to take advantage of the recreational activities
and the volunteer activities that are a
part of our ideal culture.
Mr.
Speaker, the vast majority of women in this province and in this country over the age of 65 will live
in poverty. Their income will be half of what the poverty line
is. This
legislation is going to make those statistics even worse. That is
another one of our major concerns, that this legislation does not protect the most vulnerable people in our
society, particularly those who are over
65.
Another
area that is a concern to us in this legislation is that this legislative change presupposes and
it was stated, when Bill 57 came up
before committee hearings, in March of 1990,
reflecting much of the same concerns that are being raised today:
this legislation presupposes equality in marriage.
I
stated earlier that marriage was an equal partnership. All the
statistics state that not only financially but emotionally, psychologically and even physically,
marriages are not equal. In particular, when marriages break down, in
many, many cases the discussion and the
dialogue and the supposedly equal partnership
is shown for what it is, that many marriages are unequal. The power
and the financial differentials make it very difficult for many women to come out of a marriage
breakdown in a legitimate, balanced,
fair way financially, if not even discussing
psychologically or emotionally.
Mr.
Speaker, in hearings before the Legislature in March of 1990, one of the lawyers, who made a
presentation on behalf of the family law
subsection, talked about the discussions that
marriage breakdown was between equal partners, and we know that is not true in many cases.
It
also talked about the fact that the proposed changes which were the same or similar to the changes that
are proposed in Bill 76, saying that it
was demeaning to women of obvious intelligence,
and it was demeaning to a whole raft of well‑educated,
well‑informed women who want to make their own decisions, that there was mandatory pension
splitting. Well, Mr. Speaker, we all know that in many cases, as I
have stated before, when marriages break
down, it does not matter how intelligent,
how well informed you are, that in many cases the man has the ability to use this pension splitting as an
emotional lever. We all know cases where that has been the case.
As
the family law subsection presentation in 1990 stated and agreed, the majority of pensions are probably
held by men. That, of course, means that the decision as to
whether to split pension contributions
or take the payment in some form in lieu of
division will be decisions that would have to generally be made by women.
Mr. Speaker, in those discussions at committee the member for St. James (Mr. Edwards) made what
I consider to be a couple of very good
points, and I would like the member for St.
Boniface (Mr. Gaudry) to let the member for St. James know that I did make that statement in a positive manner.
* (1620)
That
is again, Mr. Speaker, that men have been known to use the pension, the fact that they have the
pension in their name, as a threat,
saying I will give you the pension, I want my
pension and in exchange for my maintaining my pension I will give you the house or if you do not agree to my
maintaining my pension, I will go to
court and drag you through court for years
and years and years for custody of the children. Because there
is a financial differential between the salaries and wages and pensions between most men and women in our
society, we come to a marriage
dissolution in an unequal position.
Mr.
Speaker, it is important that we maintain the mandatory credit‑splitting benefits to protect
the majority of situations where, if
there is a pension, if the woman does have a pension, and many women do not have one because of,
again, the economic inequalities in our
society, or if her pension, if she does have
one, it is likely to be in many instances far smaller in amount than the 20 percent differential that is currently
in the legislation, it is important that
we take that pension out of the arena of
assets that can be split, that can be bartered, that can be used as pressure tactics.
The
reason it is important for that to happen, Mr. Speaker, is because pensions are not the same as other
assets. In no other instance‑‑now I am open to
be proven wrong, but I believe that in
no other instance is a pension allowed to be used in any way other than as a forced retirement
savings. If you have a foreclosure on your home, if your business is
going bankrupt, if you have enormous
other expenses, you are not allowed to touch
your pension benefits.
There
is a very good reason for that, because by definition, pension legislation is paternalistic, it is maternalistic, because it does say society requires that
people who work and who have a pension
plan are obligated to maintain those funds so that society has an expectation that when that
individual leaves the work force or
retires they have an adequate source of income.
Now, that is the principle and often it does not happen in practice because of the inadequacy of pension
income, but nevertheless the principle
is there.
Mr.
Speaker, if it is good enough to keep a pension
untouchable for a business breakdown or an economic breakdown, if the Reichmann brothers cannot access their
pensions in order to help maintain their
ownership of Canary Wharf, why should pensions
be accessed and be seen as just another asset when a marriage breaks down? It goes against the principle of pensions and should not be allowed to happen.
Mr.
Speaker, we understand that there are situations that have been in the media and have been dealt
with in the past, have been talked about
in the past, where both partners to a marital
breakdown want to be able to split their pensions. There is
currently in the legislation an agreement that if there is less than 20 percent differential in the value of
a pension between one partner and the
other in a marriage breakdown they do not
have to mandatorily split their pensions. That says that the legislation understands that within 20
percent that financial basis will be
there for both partners, so you do not have to put them in a pool and then split them. We believe that part of the legislation has not been in effect long
enough to really work out all of the
problems and the kinks of this new kind of
legislation. We also believe that
we should keep it in place, and that
there should be other avenues looked at to deal with the situations where both parties might want to
choose to have their pension split, or
in the cases where our legislation differs from
the federal legislation.
My
understanding is that there is federal legislation going to third reading that would decrease the
number of problems that are currently
being faced by some
A
lawyer has a legal obligation to provide the most accurate and comprehensive legal advice that he or she
can within the knowledge of the
law. The law should not be changed
because lawyers are choosing to ignore
it. Lawyers should be held responsible for upholding the law, and there
should be severe penalties put in place
other than having the onus on the client.
There should be severe penalties in place in this legislation for lawyers who knowingly, or unknowingly,
subvert the spirit as well as the line
of the law.
We
also note that the family law lawyer in the 1990 hearings said that pensions should be treated in
exactly the same way as any other asset,
and we have stated very categorically that we
think that is inaccurate. He also
agrees, as I have stated earlier, that
men generally hold the pensions and women are the ones who have to make the determination as to
whether they want to split it or that
they want to accept other assets in lieu of
that. But the lawyer also says
that under normal circumstances pensions
should not be tampered with.
So
what the lawyer is saying on the one hand is that for normal situations, pensions are inviolate,
but in this one particular situation,
which is marriage breakdown, pensions should
be treated just as any other asset, and we disagree with that.
Another
change we would like to see to the legislation that might help couples come to an understanding
about the pension situation is that
lawyers are not accountants and, they are not
actuaries, and they are not cheap.
We would like to see, in the legislation,
independent actuarial advice as well as independent legal advice so that the partners know
exactly what the value of their pensions
are. If this were mandatory, Mr.
Speaker, a husband could not say to his
wife, oh, my pension will only give me
$100 a month, so let me give you this $150,000 house and that will be even.
No,
what would happen is that the husband and the wife would both have to have information as to what the
actuarial table said were the values of
those pensions at a certain point in time, and
then perhaps many wives would have the kind of knowledge and information that they need in order to make
an informed decision and in order to be
able to say, wait a minute, my house is worth
$150,000 today, your pension is going to give you far more when you retire.
It is going to increase in value far more in the next 25 years than my house is ever going to
increase. Therefore, the more knowledge
that we have, the better able we are to
have fairness and equity in our actions.
We
will be interested to see what happens with the committee hearings that will be undertaken
shortly. We believe that this legislation may have some problems,
particularly in administration. We think there are ways, other than changing
the mandatory credit splitting, to deal
with that.
Finally,
I would like to quote Mona Brown who is a very
well‑respected lawyer in
* (1630)
Mr.
Speaker, I would suggest that the fact that people have difference in pensions and the fact that
people may be open to pressure tactics
from their spouse does not mean that we should
change the legislation to facilitate that inequality, to make that inequality more. We should amend the legislation to make the principles of a mandatory credit
splitting, to maintain the principle of
a pension as a resource to be used upon retirement.
This
legislation does not do that, and I believe that in the long run, the people of
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr.
Steve Ashton (Thompson): Mr. Speaker, I have a number of comments I want to put on the record on this
particular bill. I, first of all, want to thank the member for
The
credit‑splitting issue is obviously part of this bill we are dealing with. There are also other aspects to this bill. Bill 76 essentially starts to move pensions
from a defined pension basis more towards
the model of self‑directed RRSPs.
It has a number of other
provisions related to surpluses that involve
an agreement at the beginning of plans, involving access of employers to surpluses. It allows employers to take contribution holidays, although workers must
continue to put funds in.
M.
Speaker, this is an area that has been the subject of much debate, the whole area of who owns the
pension plans. My debate on this particular matter, my contribution to
this debate, the contribution of our
party is to say on the record, we feel that
pension plans are essentially an employee benefit that accrue to the employees and that by definition they
should be essentially owned by the
employees themselves. I think that is a
vital matter.
We
have seen in many cases attempts by employers to drain pension plans. We have seen a number of recent cases, a
recent case in
Mr.
Speaker, the member for
Mr.
Speaker, I believe very strongly that the employees should have control and direction over those
pension plans. I would suggest that it is important in terms
of maintaining the integrity of the
plans. But it goes beyond that in the
sense that it allows, I think, for a rather
dramatic new vehicle for economic
development.
I
have always felt, in the case of Manitoba, we would all benefit if all the pension funds, for example
in the public sector, were directed, as
is the case for example with the Quebec pension
plans where in Quebec they use it as a vehicle of economic development, toward that purpose.
Just
think of the capital we would be able to access for development of
So
I say, we have a concern. We believe
that surpluses should be the proprietary
right of the employees, not the employers;
that it is a matter of deferred income that is
invested, and if a surplus is realized over and above benefits, that surplus should accrue to the employees
and that should be the legislative
thrust, not what we are seeing in this particular bill.
I
want to say, Mr. Speaker, that we also have concerns about the movement from defined pensions to self‑directed
RRSPs. I
want to say that we have a major problem in
The
Minister of Urban Affairs (Mr. Ernst) emigrated from City Council and has had the same problem with his
pension, I know, Mr. Speaker, but I
digress. The bottom line is it has
happened with many, and not just in
terms of
I
believe we need a stronger public pension plan system that indeed might involve some additional
contributions from individuals during
their working lives that could result in
significantly improved pension benefits for all Canadians, not just those who have the financial resources
to invest in RRSPs and benefit from the
tax write‑offs.
That
is the problem with RRSPs. In a sense
they are unequal because they provide
unequal tax benefits, so we have concerns
about any move. In fact, even
investment analysts have warned of this
particular migration to RRSPs, as it has been called. In fact,
there was an article in the Free Press recently entitled: Migration to RRSP tricky, investment analysts
warn.
We
really believe this is a direction that has very great risks involved. I want to address, just briefly, the issue of pension splitting. I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that I have had personal opportunities to talk to people,
many people with their views in terms of
pension splitting. I can tell you, in
talking to people who have been through
a marriage breakup, there are many
difficult matters to deal with. Second
perhaps only to the issue of custody of
children lies the question of pension splitting
in terms of controversy, in terms of bitterness.
I
have talked to people who have said, why should my ex‑spouse get a split of my pension; it
is my pension. You know we have adopted in family law the concept of
community property. The house, the car,
the possessions of the individuals that are
acquired during the marriage are split evenly. Mr. Speaker, that is the way it should be, because a marriage
is a partnership, and whether one person
is working outside of the home and one is
working in the home, and that one person gets income and the other does not, or whether the two partners
are working outside of the house, and
recognizing that many people, even if they are
in the work force, do not have their own private pension plans, and recognizing there are unequal pension
plans between different jobs at
different wage levels, et cetera.
* (1640)
The
bottom line is, the concept of community property takes the value of all the assets, including the
pension plan, and says, under that
concept, that they should be treated as the
equal acquisition of the partners during that marriage, and so it should be.
The
concern that we have, and I have individually, is the direction this bill is moving. It is a very easy sort of issue for the government to be developing, it can talk
about as being a matter of choice.
Indeed,
one could say that it is a matter of choice, but as the member for
The
question here is as to whether, under the act, the one regulation that there is, Mr. Speaker, which
is that this matter should be dealt with
through the advice of a lawyer, is a sufficient
regulation to protect the interests of those who are vulnerable in the situation involving a
marriage breakup.
Let
us deal with that. Who are the
vulnerable people? In many cases, it is the low‑income or no‑income
spouse. Mostly the woman, but in some cases it can be the
husband as well, because not every
husband makes more money than his wife and has a better pension plan.
That has been changing.
The
question, though, is in terms of the regulations. I will
say that it is not sufficient to have strictly a lawyer, that this is an actuarial matter. It is a financial matter, and that should be the kind of advice that is given to
individuals. I say further that we would be far better off
looking, perhaps, even at a cooling‑off
period, even if the government is going to pursue this course.
I
will say, Mr. Speaker, and predict now that there will be abuse of this new act, the new amendments
involved in this act, and that you will
get people bartering custody of children,
bartering the house for not splitting a pension plan. You will
end up with spouses not getting their fair share of the assets, acquired jointly, because of that
process. I know it is a matter of some bitterness, as is the case of any
marriage breakup. We have a fundamental principle in family law
that is fundamental to the equality of
Manitobans, and equality between the sexes,
largely, and that is the concept of community property and that is one of the reasons we do have concerns
about the splitting.
I
will say, I have no doubt there will be many people before the committee who will say, yes, we should
have the splitting. The question, Mr.
Speaker, as I said, is the degree of regulation,
as the member for
I
hope, as well, that the government will listen to us and some of the suggestions we have made, because
we feel that this is not a step forward,
that this bill if passed as it is, after
committee, will have a number of significant negative developments in terms of pensions, whether it
be in terms of credit splitting, whether
it be in terms of the movement to RRSP, whether
it be in terms of the ownership of pension surpluses.
That
is why we raise these concerns. We want
this bill to go to committee, but we
will be debating this matter further following
committee, Mr. Speaker, and into third reading.
Thank you.
Mr.
Speaker: The question before the House is second
reading of Bill 76, The Pension Benefits
Amendment Act; Loi modifiant la Loi sur
les prestations de pension. Agreed?
An
Honourable Member: Agreed.
Mr.
Speaker: Agreed and so ordered.
Bill 85‑The Labour Relations
Amendment Act
Mr.
Speaker: On the proposed motion of the honourable
Minister of Labour (Mr. Praznik), Bill
85, The Labour Relations Amendment Act;
Loi modifiant la Loi sur les relations du travail, standing in the name of the honourable member for Swan
River (Ms. Wowchuk).
An
Honourable Member: Stand.
Mr.
Speaker: Stand.
Is there leave? [Agreed!
Mr.
Conrad Santos (Broadway): Scattered applause. Make it more
lively.
Mr.
Speaker, if we look at The Labour Relations Act in relation to what this government has done in
the previous session, any objective and
casual observer cannot but fail to observe
and notice and discern the pattern by which this government has been systematically assaulting
organized labour in this province,
forgetting that both labour and capital are
essential ingredients in the economic progress of any society. They are equally important agents for our
societal development and progress and
happiness.
Placed
in harmony, both labour and capital contribute to the stability of industrial relations and
industrial peace in the production of
goods and services. If there is
industrial peace and harmony, there will
be more productive enterprises; there will
be economic development; there will be prosperity among the people in society. However, placed in confrontation against one another, both labour and capital are stifled,
both labour and capital are frustrated,
and there will be antipathy and negative
feelings toward one another, when they should be working in partnership for the progress of human
kind. They are not trying to do that now.
The
best way for any kind of harmonious relationship to continue is for the parties to stay on the
level. If they have to play the industrial game in labour‑employer‑employee relationships, the game must be played
according to the rules. The rules should
be applied when they perform on what they call
the level playing field.
But
life, to some people, is just simple interaction according to certain generally accepted
rules. It is often assumed that something‑‑it is a
basic principle, moral and political
principle, that no one should be permitted to advance self interests at the expense of general
interests. I repeat that.
No one should be permitted to advance particularistic interests at the expense of the general
interests of all.
It
means that no one should be permitted to be so
self‑centred, to be so greedy as to promote particularistic interests at the expense of societal
interests.
An
Honourable Member: Is this for both men and women?
Mr.
Santos: This applies to everybody. This applies to all organizations as well, whether they are
organizations of workers or
organizations of owners of capital.
An
Honourable Member: Young and old?
Mr.
Santos: Young or old.
No one should be allowed to promote
their particularistic interests at the expense of the general interest of everyone. No employer, therefore, and no union should become so overpowerful and overbearing
as to endanger the harmony of interest
in the general society.
(Madam
Deputy Speaker in the Chair)
This
is precisely the design of the industrial Labour Relations Act. It is a delicately balanced structure of
rights and responsibilities on the part
of organized labour and on the part of
management representing the employer.
The industrial Labour Relations
Act in this province, the
* (1650)
Here
the government, in this scheme, acts as the umpire, although the government, by definition,
cannot be politically neutral because,
by definition, those who run the government have their own political beliefs and
ideologies. The umpire, when the umpire is playing that role as umpire, has to
be fair, has to consider the balance, has
to be the guardian of that equilibrium of
rights and duties of the rights and obligations. The umpire
cannot be an umpire unless he plays a fair position in equating the rights of the two parties.
So
when we look at our industrial Labour Relations Act, when we look at the preamble to the Manitoba
Labour Relations Act, which was
originally passed in 1948, we read the following, and I quote from the preamble: Whereas it is in the public interest of the province of Manitoba‑‑what is
in the public interest of the province
of Manitoba?‑‑(1) to further the harmonious relations between employers and employees; (2) to
encourage the practice and procedure of
collective bargaining; and (3) to foster the
unions as the freely designated representatives of the employees.
So
you could see the objective and the purpose of the industrial relations act, primarily to
further the harmonious relationship
between employers and employees. Now,
what does this government attempt to do
in the form of Bill 85? Is it furthering that harmonious relationship
between employer and employee? No, they are changing the rules.
Under
the old rules, the requirement is only 55 percent of all the potential union members to sign the
card and there would be automatic
certification. Now they are increasing
that requirement from 55 percent to 65
percent before there can be automatic
certification of potential members of the union. This is
not a harmonious relationship. This is
altering the level playing field. This is altering it so that it will be an
uphill situation on the part of the
union in order that they can get organized. Whereas the very right to organize is a right
that was granted by the umpire, the
state, acting as the mediator between the
two powerful groups in society. What
happened to the majority rule? The majority rule states 50 percent plus one. Fifty percent plus one is the majority rule
in any system of procedures, in any
system of democratic decision making. [interjection!
Oh,
you got me there. [interjection! Fifty percent plus one is the rule of majority. If this is changed, it means it is more difficult for any group of workers in any
workplace to get organized. It will be more difficult for them to
exercise their right to organize, a
legal right that is recognized by labour
law. That is not fathering the
harmony of the relationship between
employer and employee. It is inciting
the employee to be hostile to management
representing the employer. [interjection! I
am not a businessman, but I understand business. I understand
the principle of management. I
understand the principle of being a
worker.
A
second objective of our industrial relationship, as I have read before, is to encourage the practice and
procedure of collective bargaining. That is the policy of the law, to encourage the practice and policy of
collective bargaining, because that is
conducive to industrial peace and harmony.
That is conducive to the mutual
understanding between labour and capital,
when they themselves agree on the conditions of work, on the conditions of employment, when they
voluntarily agree on such sets of
conditions in the form of a collective bargaining agreement.
That is the intention of the legislation.
Now,
by making it more difficult for unions to get organized, naturally, it will be more difficult for them
to bargain collectively. Why?‑‑because the right to
organize is a pre‑condition in
order that one can bargain collectively.
Without being organized, how can they bargain collectively? Therefore, this very government is attacking
the very policy that was laid down in
the industrial Labour Relations Act.
Instead of encouraging the
practice and the procedure of collective
bargaining, it is discouraging that practice and procedure of collective bargaining, because it is
discouraging a pre‑existing and
prerequisite right to organize.
How
can you bargain collectively if you are not even certified as a union? How can you be certified if you make it more difficult for them to get
certified? How can you encourage then industrial peace? This is a subrogation. It is an attack on the policy of industrial labour relations.
The
third is to foster the union as the freely designated representative of the employee. The certification drive should be free and voluntary. The potential union members, the employees in the workplace, should be
approached and solicited, but they
should be exercising that freedom to make a choice whether they would like themselves to get
organized into a union or not. If that choice is freely given by the
individual and the group had freely
opted for unionization and certification, then
majority vote should be enough; 50 percent plus one should be enough.
To
increase it from already a burdensome requirement of 55 percent to a higher requirement of 65 percent
as a precondition to automatic
certification is to discourage the union as the
freely designated representative of the employees. What can you
infer from such a situation like this?
Well, what you can infer is that
management, the employer, wants the union to be the alter ego of management. They want management to dominate the union, the union of workers in the workplace.
In
a situation like that where management representing the employer had a grip on the union, which is
becoming a company union, it means that
management will be negotiating with itself.
If you are in control of the union, if you are management and you control the union, then the union is
negotiating with management, what do you
see? It is management negotiating with
itself. How can that be conducive to freely arrive at a
collective agreement? Whatever will appear in the provisions of the agreement would be the desire and preferences
of a dominant management.
* (1700)
Now,
I am not saying that it is the duty of the state to make any of the parties dominant. It is the duty of the state, it is the duty of the government, the arbitrator,
the umpire, to make them equal and let
them settle their own differences in a freely
voluntary way, so that they will be happy in whatever agreement they will arrive at.
An
Honourable Member: Conrad, was FOS equal? Did management and labour have identical rights under FOS? Was that equal? Tell me,
was that equal? Did you agree with that
law?
Mr.
Santos: That is another topic.
It
is often assumed by everybody in modern industrial society that labour is merely an appendage of
capital, that capital needs labour and
therefore can buy the worker. That is
not true. If you look at the historical development of
labour and capital, how can you have
capital which is an accumulation of resources
without intervention of labour?
You must first labour before you can
accumulate capital, right? If that is
the case, then labour is the one that
produces the capital, and if labour is the one
that produces the capital, then labour is more important than capital.
An
Honourable Member: No labour, no capital.
Mr.
Santos: No labour, no capital, and labour can only
come and can only be provided by human
beings. If labour is prior to, independent of, and more important than
capital, then labour should be protected
because labour is the basis of industrial
progress. Labour is the basis of
the production of goods and services. Labour is the basis of our prosperity.
Now
before there can be industrial peace, the individual‑‑by the nature of things‑‑even if you
are a worker, if you are alone and
isolated as an individual, you are helpless, because the owners of capital, the manager, the employer,
has the right to hire you, the right to
promote you, the right to get rid of you,
to fire you. So there is, already
at the very beginning, an unequal position. That is the reason why the law accords to all these individual workers their basic right to
organize that will increase their power
relative to the owner of capital, and to
equalize them in the equilibrium of this light.
The
moment you started attacking and eroding the right to organize, you are eroding industrial peace
and industrial harmony in this
province. Because of our unique
industrial relations act, we have had no
strike in this province for many years compared
to other provinces. There have been
peaceful industrial relations in this
province. That was the genius of the
act. Why
are we changing it in order to alter the level playing field into an uphill battle as far as the union is
concerned? You are inciting the union to be militant. You are inciting the union to be very militant and even be militant
politically to your own detriment. That is a wrong policy for this government to
pursue.
No
matter what your attitude towards these labour leaders is, it is important that we, in our society, work
together because only by working
together can we hope to have prosperity in this
province. [interjection!
Madam
Deputy Speaker: The honourable member has 19 minutes remaining.
Mr.
Santos: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
So
this government is pursuing a wrong line of strategy. Instead of fathering harmonious relationships
between labour and capital, instead of
pursuing and fathering and promoting harmonious
relationships between unions and management, instead of doing that, they are trying to promote
disharmony. They are trying to promote confrontation. They are trying to promote industrial war instead of industrial peace.
Instead
of encouraging collective bargaining, instead of promoting this peaceful negotiation between
labour and capital so that they may
voluntarily determine the conditions of work in the workplace to their own mutual satisfaction,
this government is discouraging the
organization of workers. This
government, by definition, is discouraging
the practice and procedure of collective
bargaining. This government, again, is
destroying industrial peace in this
province. Instead of helping foster and promote a freely designated bargaining agent
through voluntary solicitation of union
memberships, this government is making it
much more difficult to do that and therefore inciting rebellion on the part of the workers who are already
organized in the form of unions.
This
they have done by changing the threshold of automatic certification from an already onerous 55
percent, which is already higher than
the majority rule, into a still higher level
of threshold of 65 percent.
What
else does this bill tend to do or hope to do?
It tries to redefine what has
been the concept of employer interference.
In the old rule, during the certification drive, during the time that the workers are trying to organize, if
the employer makes any kind of statement
at all, it is considered as interfering in
the process of organizing. It is
considered as unfair labour practice.
Now
they are changing the definition of that by allowing the employer to make what they call a statement
of facts. Not only that, they are extending the statement of
facts into a statement of reasonable
opinion. Now, of course, what is factual
is a matter of opinion, but when you go
to the extent of making these legal
niceties of reasonable opinion, what are you doing? You are
making what is already clear, vaguer and more difficult to understand.
What is reasonable to me may not be reasonable to you.
What is reasonable to management may not be reasonable to the union.
Who decides what is reasonable?
Well,
you are encouraging legal disputes, and that means you are creating work for the lawyers. When you could have made the criterion very objective and factual, now you
have to make a judgmental decision, and
people will differ in their judgments.
Since
this is now much more ambiguous than before, when will there be interference then as to constitute
an unfair labour practice? When the statement, during the certification
drive, made by the employer is
unreasonable.
Another
change that is being‑‑
Mr.
Neil Gaudry (St. Boniface): Contemplated.
Mr.
Santos: Contemplated‑‑thank you, member
for St. Boniface‑‑is to make
a requirement that the conciliator make a report before they can even institute the first contract.
Another
change is the requirement that the union explain carefully to the potential union member the
dues structure, and if they fail to
explain the structure of fees that they would
pay, it will be within the discretion of the Labour Board to either direct a compulsory vote or to
invalidate the very application for
certification itself.
* (1710)
Therefore,
Bill 85 will make another ground for disallowing the application, and that ground is the
excuse that the one who is soliciting
membership for the union had failed to explain the union structure of dues to the potential
union member that they are recruiting to
become members of the union.
What
does this imply? Well, if any employer
is dissatisfied with the drive for
certification and there are too many of those
employees getting organized, all that the management can do is to find a handful of dissatisfied employees who
would be instrumental in making a
testimony that they had not heard the explanation
or they did not quite understand the explanation of dues, or may even tell a lie and say that it
has not been explained to them. If they can find such witnesses, then management has every right under the proposed
amendment to ask that the Labour Board
disallow the application for certification.
That
makes it more difficult again for the workers to get organized, more difficult for them to bargain
collectively‑‑
An
Honourable Member: Do you believe in replacement workers, in fairness, if the employee has the right to
strike?
Mr.
Santos: I leave the answer to the member to infer.
Another
change that Bill 85 tried to do is to remove the clause that the employee should act
reasonably, fairly, and in good
faith. There is a requirement under the
present legislation that the employer
has a duty to act fairly, reasonably and in
good faith. They are removing
that clause.
If,
with respect to the items‑‑that is a requirement even to items in matters that are not covered by the
collective agreement. Right now, there is a duty on the part of the employer to be fair, to be reasonable and to
act bona fide even with respect to those
matters that are not comprehended by the
collective agreement. That is a
duty. They are removing that duty now.
If
you take the converse of that, the opposite of that requirement, it now means that with respect
to those matters that are outside the
scope of the collective bargaining agreement, the employer has the privilege to act
unreasonably, unfairly and even in bad
faith. That is the meaning of removing
that duty to be fair, duty to be
reasonable and duty to act bona fide. [interjection!
That is one of the amendments here. [interjection! The only man I know who is from
An
Honourable Member: Ed Connery never changed the act, Conrad.
Mr.
Santos: Ed Connery, the member for
Another
change that this amendment is trying to do is to permit the parties to agree that an
arbitrator write the first contract. The implication of this has to be understood
in terms of the practice. It has been the practice, to this day, that a vice‑chairperson of the Labour Board
can also act as a grievance arbitrator. This means that if the arbitrator now can
write the contract, he cannot sit as a
vice‑chairperson. That would be conflict of interest. That means it deprives the labour side of an expert.
He cannot now sit to be the vice‑chairperson of the Labour Board representing the side of labour
if he is to write the collective
agreement. He could no longer be a
grievance arbitrator. [interjection! We
do not believe in personality cults.
This
phenomenon of organizing the worker is perhaps one of the strongest bonds in human relationships
aside from the bond of the family. The uniting of the worker is a very strong
bond of human sympathy other than the
family relationship. When the union, when the workers, who are individuals,
isolated individuals, get organized and
they improve their own collective lot
through collective bargaining which is voluntary and mutual, and that can only happen with the consent of
management.
An
Honourable Member: Voluntary, on whose side? Just on the
labour side, or voluntary on the management side.
Mr.
Santos: Voluntary on all sides. It is intended by the statute that this is primarily determined by
the parties themselves, not dictated by
any outside third party. That was the intention of The Labour Relations
Act. When you enter into an arrangement which is pure and voluntary,
you try to live with it, right? The same thing as in marriage, the same thing
as in friendship, the same thing as in
any other kind of relationship. If it is
free and voluntary, you are bound by the agreement and you try to live by that agreement.
That
is what you are trying to destroy by amending this legislation.
You are making it a lot more difficult for the workers to give their consent freely. You are making it more difficult by imposing and requiring that it
be a higher percentage of consent beyond
the traditional majority rule of 50 percent
plus one.
* (1720)
Let
us not try to destroy one another. If we
try to destroy one another in that
delicate partnership, then we are destroying
ourselves. We are destroying
industrial peace in this province by
destroying a party to the collective bargaining agreement. [interjection!
Let
us be concerned with what is the situation in
It
is better to have a regime of free collective agreement than a system where the state will be
compelled to impose the terms of
industrial peace and industrial relationships between the worker and management. It is much more better to have a regime of a free collective bargaining
agreement. [interjection! I say it is
redundant. What we should try to avoid
is the creation of what has been known
as the company union. That is what you are targeting. You want to create a union like a robot, that will agree to whatever is the desire of
management, whatever is the desire of
the employer. That is no good.
There
are various models of trying to describe this
relationship between labour and management. Sometimes you try to achieve what they call distributed
bargaining, where one party's gain is
the other party's loss. That can happen
too. But there could be what is known as integrated
bargaining. Integrated bargaining means that both the parties gain
when they arrive at a peaceful and
mutually agreed upon settlement. That is
what The Labour Relations Act is trying
to promote.
An
Honourable Member: But if labour had the right to strike, which I agree totally, then management should
have the right to hire other workers.
Mr.
Santos: No, the corresponding right on the part of management is the right to lock out. That is what is granted. Every right has a correlative duty. If you have a right to strike on one side, there is a right to lock
out on the part of the other side, and
that is also a stoppage of work. When
the workers stop working, the work is
stopped, production is stopped. When you are locked out, naturally production
stops also. But that is detrimental to both, because
there is nothing produced, no services
produced, no goods produced. Society itself would suffer. The consumer will suffer. [interjection!
They
do not want that. That is a weapon of
last resort. They do not want to
strike. They do not want to live on handouts.
They want to give their labour; they want to contribute.
They want to work, but they want to work under tolerable human conditions. Tolerable human conditions implies that the collective bargaining provisions are
acceptable to both.
An
Honourable Member: But do you believe in secret ballots in taking the ballots for strikes, Conrad?
Mr.
Santos: A secret ballot is the traditional democratic
way to exercise your free will, when you
are not under pressure from any outsider
or any third party. Even in our election
system, even in our electoral choice‑‑
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Order, please.
The honourable member's time has
expired.
Ms.
Marianne Cerilli (Radisson): Madam Deputy Speaker, I
am interested in joining the debate on
Bill 85 and putting some thoughts on the
record.
It
has been enjoyable for me to listen to the member for Broadway (Mr. Santos) and to address another
piece of classic Tory legislation. We would not be experiencing a Tory
government until we saw yet another
piece of labour legislation that is trying
to decrease workers' rights to organize, trying to decrease the effectiveness of the labour
movement.
It
just amazes me over and over again how we see Tory governments try to claim that they are the
ones who are democratic, they are the
ones who want to ensure that people have
rights to protect themselves.
Mr.
Edward Connery (
Ms.
Cerilli: Yes, Mr. Connery, I would have to say that I
would agree that it is democratic for
people to have the right to organize, to
not be intimidated and show employers to have people seeing which way they are voting so that
after that they can be intimidated or
worse, that they can actually eventually be pushed into a situation where they lose their job or
be transferred or use all the other
techniques that management uses so that people
eventually are put into an intolerable situation and end up being forced to quit or resign or move.
We
still have entire sectors in our economy that are not able to organize unions, and this kind of
legislation is going to make it even
more difficult. We already had more than
50 percent; 50 percent, even 51 percent,
would have been giving some edge to management,
but that was not enough. They had to go
to 65 percent for a compulsory vote to
make it even more difficult and putting
even more pressure on employees who are trying to organize a union.
They
are also trying to make it easier, through the various insidious means that we know have been used,
for employers to intimidate workers by
eliminating the blanket prohibition on employees
not making statements against organizing unions. [interjection! The Minister of Urban Affairs
(Mr. Ernst) makes the comment: What would Al Cerilli have to say about
this? I am sure he would say, as all members on this
side of the House have said, this is
again a piece of undemocratic legislation that
attacks workers' right to organize, and he would not be impressed.
It
is interesting‑‑and I cannot resist, because this is one of the things that Al has made comments on
and he has been appalled by, as members
on our side of the House have been‑‑that the Finance minister has actually said in
this Legislature that poverty is good
because it makes us more competitive. It
fits right in. That kind of statement fits right in with
this kind of legislation, that we have
to have low wages and unorganized workers
so that we can allow corporations to make as much profit and treat workers as if they were a
commodity.
This
kind of legislation fits in with the whole approach of the Tory agenda as directed by their
corporate backers. It is so clear, when we see the communique from the
Chamber of Commerce, who the real designers
are in the party across the way, but it fits
right in with their attack on Government Services, the tax breaks for corporations, the fanaticism with
the deficit and, as I said, the other
cornerstone of Tory policy, to attack labour
and to attack workers' rights to ensure that they have fair wages, decent working conditions and decent
pensions. Those are the kinds of things that organized unions are
there for. They, I do not think, have ever been shown to put
undue pressure on any corporations. Some of the best organized unions in our
country, and in our province, are in
industries that are certainly still making
large amounts of profit. They are not
hurting the corporate interest at all.
It
always amazes me how this government continues to show its true colours, how they devalue workers, how
they devalue the work that workers do
and try to treat workers as a commodity, thinking that they can push them around and set up
legislation that is going to do that,
set up legislation that is going to infringe on
their democratic right to organize and to sign up to join a union.
* (1730)
The
communique from the Chamber of Commerce talks about its mandate to bring about changes in labour
legislation that will improve the
climate for business and investment in
It
was interesting, we had a New Democrat M.P. visiting yesterday.
Dave Barrett was in town yesterday, and I very much enjoyed his presentation in the evening at
the Winnipeg Transcona annual meeting
for the M.P. Bill Blaikie. He gave such
a tremendous, impassioned speech about
the free trade agreements. He talked
about how the labour legislation in Mexico, or the lack of labour legislation in Mexico, the lack of
decent working conditions and wages in
Mexico is what people are very clearly going
to understand, not only in Canada, in the U.S.
They are going to start seeing
this kind of legislation and these kinds of
governments for what they really are, and how they have destroyed this country over the last few decades.
To
think that in Mexico people are paid 80 cents an hour, and we are going to try and bring a level playing
field in this country with these trade
agreements to‑‑[interjection! 80‑85 cents an hour, to think that we can compete
with that. It really appalls me how whenever we talk about
competitiveness, the right‑wing
element, the Conservatives and many Liberals will try to make it sound like you are somehow not
patriotic, that you are not believing in
the capabilities of Canadians if you do not
think that we can compete.
It
has nothing to do with that. It has to
do with the standard of living that we
enjoy in this country. It has to do with the fact that we do have organized
labour which has worked to ensure that
we have decent wages in this country and we are
not working for 80 cents an hour.
The issue is not our patriotism
and belief in our country. It has to do
with the pure economics that we cannot
deal with 80 cents an hour as the level playing
field that we are trying to work toward.
The
other thing that needs to be addressed when we are talking about legislation like this and how
it fits in with the trade agreements and
working toward that level playing field, as
I mentioned, even the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) here said, where low wages are good for
competitiveness. We cannot talk about the Free Trade Agreement without
dispelling that idea that the kind of
agreement that we are working towards in
One
of the other interesting things that Mr. Barrett said last night had to do with‑‑I
think he called it the accident that is
happening in the
The
interesting thing about Mr. Perot is that he is also opposed to the Americans signing the North
American Free Trade Agreement for much
the same reason that we have been opposed‑‑[interjection!
They should listen to him, and I think what
is happening is the American people are listening to him. What is happening is the Free Trade Agreement
is becoming part of the political
discussions in the
I
would suggest this kind of labour legislation that the government is bringing in is part and parcel
of the trade agreements that are being
negotiated currently in the country, because
they do that fundamental thing that Tories always set out to do, which is that they weaken labour. It is interesting, over the last years, that the traditional attacks
and policies by the Tories have not been
enough, but they have also been moving into
these trade agreements and creating this recession.
One
of the frustrating things about this, another spin‑off of this that is much a concern to me, is how the
recession has slowed our progress to
dealing with environmental problems and developing
environmental strategies that will deal with the problems that we have. One of those strategies that I will be interested in dealing with a little later on‑‑and
this government should take a very
serious look at, because it would help them
raise some revenue. As I read
through a variety of material that points
to how this is already being done in Europe, it is being done in many cities in the
* (1740)
There
are a variety of creative things that have been done to harness the labour market and economic forces
so that we start accounting for the
pollution that industry is causing, and we
start having programs that will, in a radiated way, collect revenue based on emissions. All of these things, I would suggest, are being held back in this country,
in this province with governments like
we have, because of their narrow view that
the corporate interest must prevail and that is the sole thing that is going to drive our economy.
There
are a number of other materials here that I could draw from, but I think I have made the major
points that I wanted to make about this
legislation. It is clearly driven by‑‑
Mr.
John Plohman (Dauphin): Greed.
Ms.
Cerilli: ‑‑greed, as the member for
Dauphin says, but also by the dictates
of the Chamber of Commerce. It is
undemocratic. It is another attempt to
weaken the labour movement, to weaken that
balance that is so needed in our economy to have a strong labour movement.
Madam
Deputy Speaker, I am sure that this side of the
House‑‑and I understand both parties are going to be opposed
to this bill‑‑will look
forward to hearing more comments on it in
committee and voting against it.
Madam
Deputy Speaker: As previously agreed, this bill will remain standing in the name of the honourable
member for
Bill 70‑The Social Allowances
Amendment
and Consequential Amendments Act
Madam
Deputy Speaker: To resume debate on second reading of Bill 70 (The Social Allowances Amendment and
Consequential Amendments Act; Loi
modifiant la Loi sur l'aide sociale et apportant des modifications correlatives a d'autres lois),
on the proposed motion of the honourable
Minister of Family Services (Mr. Gilleshammer),
standing in the name of the honourable member for Brandon East (Mr. Leonard Evans).
Is
there leave to permit the bill to remain standing in the name of the honourable member for Brandon
East, and also in the name of the
honourable member for Elmwood (Mr. Maloway) who has 26 minutes remaining?
An
Honourable Member: Stand.
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Stand.
Is there leave to permit it to remain
standing in the name of the honourable member for Elmwood as well? [Agreed!
Mr.
Clif Evans (Interlake): I would like to make a few comments on Bill 70‑‑
An
Honourable Member: You could do like Maloway did yesterday and start on one bill and then turn it around‑‑
Mr.
Clif Evans: Yes, well that is the honourable member for Elmwood (Mr. Maloway).
Madam
Deputy Speaker, this bill, and I would just like to begin by taking a quote from the honourable
Minister of Family Services (Mr.
Gilleshammer) in response to a question saying that this bill has two purposes, and that is to
standardize the rates that are offered
to social allowance recipients across the
province and also to make access equal to that service for those vulnerable Manitobans who require social
assistance.
We
here feel that this bill and what the government is indicating that now with Bill 70 there will
be some sort of an equal standing in
social assistance, social services across this
province and within the city of Winnipeg. Madam Deputy Speaker, in the last few years we have seen the social
assistance rise; the percentage of
people unemployed on social assistance rise,
not only in the city of Winnipeg but in rural Manitoba. For the
province to implement a standardization of the rate throughout the province could have, in fact, a great
amount of difficulties put on the city
of
I
feel that the whole problem of poverty and the whole problem of social assistance must be dealt
with and have a beginning to the rate
where we see poverty amongst people, people
who are on social assistance, increase over the last couple of years.
People who have lost jobs‑‑companies have shut down‑‑find themselves now, after many years of working,
of being able to support their families,
having to go and seek social assistance.
Well,
where is the real reasoning and where is the fault, and who should be to blame for this suffering
that we do now have in the
Now
we have a government that wants to implement a bill that they say will improve the social assistance
and make it equal across this
province. Well, when you look at the
fact that the young children in our
society now who are living in poverty, or
who are being taken care of by single parents, we find a sense that there is really no hope,
regardless. We see a fact that in society now poverty creates ill health,
poverty creates people having to revert
to crime.
But
getting back to the younger people, one in five in this province under the age of six are living in
poverty. Some weeks ago, I had a call from a constituent in the
northeast part of my constituency, Madam
Deputy Speaker, a young single parent, a
young father called me to ask where can he get help. He has been
looking for a job for six months.
He has a five‑year‑old
daughter. He has had to lose his
home that he was staying in with his
daughter, move in with his parents so that his child could eat, have something, have some
shelter. I referred him to the social assistance people. The social assistance people referred him to the local municipality, and
here again we have a problem.
When
I discussed this with him, he said it is so hard for me to go before the municipality and ask for social
assistance. It is demeaning.
He said, when I did finally go, he said the municipality was unable to deal with his
problem and referred him back to the
provincial social assistance.
Well,
Madam Deputy Speaker‑‑[interjection! The minister may have heard it three times, but not this
way. I find that very difficult to deal with the matter when you
have people throughout this province who
are in need of social assistance, people who,
when they go to the municipalities, find it very difficult. They find
it difficult to deal with the local councillor, the local administrator. Nine times out of 10, these people are
neighbours and/or friends. In some situations, some instances, the fact that you or I would have to go before a
friend to get social assistance, it
becomes public knowledge.
It
is something that we should not have to bear with, Madam Deputy Speaker. The local municipalities, even though they
are more than qualified to do the
necessary work, I know that it is difficult
for them to have to deal with social assistance. So we see
a twofold system where, on one hand, it is difficult for someone to approach the local municipality,
and on the other hand, it is difficult
for the local municipality to deal with it
also.
* (1750)
Madam
Deputy Speaker, it costs. Now whatever
the province decides to set the rate at,
what you are going to see again is another
form perhaps of offloading onto the local municipalities that we have seen in this province and this
government for the last couple of years
in the offloading of the different costs to
the municipalities that they have had to bear.
Madam
Deputy Speaker, when we are talking social assistance, we are also talking when we want to go into
the larger centre, when we want to go
into the city of Winnipeg, we are talking
about 80 percent of the people.
Eighty percent of the people who are
on social assistance are from the city of
They
are going to have to keep these people within a level of maintaining and retaining enough money, or
having enough money to feed their
children, to clothe their children, to shelter their children.
Are they going to bring the rates down?
Are they going to tax the people
who are working to be able to bear this cost
of some five‑odd million dollars?
I notice in some of the government
responses that they do not believe necessarily that is the right amount. Well, Madam Deputy Speaker, if it is $5 million, $2 million, or $10 million, it is
still a cost burdened upon the people,
the city, the municipalities, and the
Madam
Deputy Speaker, when we look at how and why, again, people are suffering, are not working, I look
and see at a point of some 54,000 people
unemployed in this province‑‑54,000. The cost
that this province is incurring, the cost that I feel they brought upon themselves with the actions that
this government has put forth in the last
couple of years.
Madam
Deputy Speaker, instead of people being on social assistance, instead of people being in
poverty, why are we not looking for ways
to get these people back to work, to become a
part of society again, to be able to exist at a level that their children and their families can have the
things that are required, that are
needed, so that they may exist and live under
conditions that are healthy?
Where are the job training creations
that this government has so adamantly said that they are performing?
When
on one hand you have 54,000 unemployed, 80 to 90 percent of the people on social assistance in the
city of Winnipeg, some 11 percent in
rural Manitoba, some 70 or 80 percent of people
unemployed in rural and northern Manitoba, Madam Deputy Speaker, where is the incentive of this government to
not only adjust the rates and make
social assistance a one‑tier system where
everybody can benefit from it?
Where is the job creation? Where are the jobs that this province so adamantly
says they are going to produce for the
people?
Madam
Deputy Speaker, we feel and‑‑the costs, too‑‑the costs for rural Manitobans and municipalities, just
referring back to what the minister said
through consultation with the different municipalities
and the different organizations that all of this has been done and everybody is pleased, well,
I find that I cannot understand who this
minister has consulted with and who he has
talked with. The people I talk to say if
the rates are set and are going to be
set at a rate that is now going to be higher
than what they can afford to pay, then these municipalities are going to incur a cost 50 percent of an
increase that they do not have the money
for. Where are they going to have to go
for that? They are going to have to go to the people
with their taxes.
Well,
Madam Deputy Speaker, there are other comments that we can make on this. I just wanted to be on record to put my few comments down, and would like to continue
with House business, and thank you very
much for the opportunity.
House Business
Hon.
Darren Praznik (Deputy Government House Leader):
Madam Deputy Speaker, first of
all, I would ask if there is leave of the
House just for Madam Deputy Speaker to not see the clock until all of our business is completed.
Secondly,
I would ask‑‑
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Is there leave?
Some
Honourable Members: Leave.
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Leave has been granted.
Mr.
Praznik: Yes, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would ask if you
could please call Bill 97, which I
believe is a private member's private
bill. I understand that members of the
opposition parties would like to address
it and move it on to committee, and then
I will have some House business announcements before we recess.
* * *
DEBATE ON SECOND READINGS‑‑PRIVATE
BILLS
Bill 97‑The
and
Theological Seminary Incorporation Amendment Act
Madam
Deputy Speaker: To resume debate on second reading of private Bill 97 (The Winnipeg Bible College
and Theological Seminary Incorporation
Amendment Act; Loi modifiant la Loi constituant
en corporation le "Winnipeg Bible College and Theological Seminary"), on the proposed
motion of the honourable member for
Emerson (Mr. Penner), standing in the name of the honourable member for Thompson (Mr. Ashton).
Mr.
Steve Ashton (Opposition House Leader): Madam Deputy Speaker, this is a good bill. It is ready to go to committee, and we are prepared to pass it today.
Mr.
Kevin Lamoureux (Second Opposition House Leader):
Yes, Madam Deputy Speaker, not
wanting to be outdone by the member for Thompson,
we will allow the bill to go to committee.
Madam
Deputy Speaker: The question before the House is second reading of private Bill 97. Is it the will of the House to adopt the motion?
Agreed?
Some
Honourable Members: Agreed.
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Agreed and so ordered.
House Business
Hon.
Darren Praznik (Deputy Government House Leader):
Yes, Madam Deputy Speaker, on
House Business. I would first of all
like to announce that the Standing
Committee on Industrial Relations will meet
at 1 p.m. tomorrow in Room 254 to consider bills referred, namely, Bills 76 and 100. I believe they will deal with Bill 100 first and then Bill 76.
I
believe if you canvassed the House, you will find there is unanimous consent for the following: One, for the House to recess at 6 p.m. today and to reconvene at 7
p.m. today in Committee of Supply, and I
will be moving the appropriate resolution
following my remarks.
Two,
if you could canvass the House to see if there is unanimous consent to waive subrule 65.(9)(c)
and (d) to permit the Estimates of a new
department to be introduced after 10 p.m.
I
would ask, as well, if you could canvass the House to see if there is unanimous consent to transfer the
Estimates of the Department of Justice
and of the Aboriginal Justice Initiatives
from the Chamber to the committee room to be considered immediately after the Legislative Assembly
Estimates.
I
would ask, as well, if there is unanimous consent to transfer the Estimates of the Department of
Government Services from the Chamber to
the committee room to be considered immediately
after Internal Reform, Workforce Adjustment and
General Salary Increases.
I
believe, as well, Madam Deputy Speaker, you will find unanimous consent to consider Estimates in
the Chamber in the following
sequence: Environmental Innovations Fund
at 7 p.m., temporarily setting aside
Natural Resources, followed by the Department
of Natural Resources and then I believe returning to the Department of Environment. So that would be the Environmental Innovations, followed by a
return to the Department of Natural
Resources, followed by the Department of Environment.
I
would ask, as well, for you to canvass the House, Madam Deputy Speaker, for unanimous approval for
the existing rules permitting each
section to rise at its own discretion.
Pardon me, I understand, as well,
that the existing rules permitting each
section to rise at its own discretion and respecting votes after 10 p.m. will continue to apply.
* (1800)
I
would ask, as well, Madam Deputy Speaker, for you to canvass the House. I believe there will be unanimous consent for the House to sit beyond the normal Friday
adjournment hour tomorrow to, I believe,
around four o'clock p.m., and that there
will also be unanimous consent for the Standing Committees on Law Amendments, and Industrial Relations to sit
while the House is also sitting tomorrow
afternoon.
Madam
Deputy Speaker: I will proceed through the unanimous consent one by one. I do have a point of clarification from the honourable deputy government House leader
with relation to his text and the order
for the Estimates in the Chamber this evening.
Is
there unanimous consent for the House to recess at 6 p.m. this evening and to reconvene at 7 p.m. in
the Committee of Supply?
Some
Honourable Members: Agreed.
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Agreed and so ordered.
Secondly,
is there unanimous consent to waive subrule
65.(9)(c) and (d) to permit the Estimates of a new department to be introduced after 10 p.m.?
Some
Honourable Members: Agreed.
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Agreed and so ordered.
Thirdly,
is there unanimous consent to transfer the Estimates of the Departments of Justice and Aboriginal
Justice Initiatives from the Chamber to
the committee room to be considered immediately
after the Legislative Assembly Estimates?
Some
Honourable Members: Agreed.
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Agreed and so ordered.
Fourthly,
to transfer the Estimates of the Department of
Government Services from the Chamber to the committee room to be considered immediately after Internal Reform,
Workforce Adjustment and General Salary
Increases?
Some
Honourable Members: Agreed.
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Agreed and so ordered.
Fifthly,
to consider Estimates in the Chamber in the
following sequence: Environmental
Innovations Fund at 7 p.m., temporarily
setting aside Natural Resources, followed by
Environment, then reverting to Natural Resources and then returning to Environment?
Some
Honourable Members: Agreed.
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Agreed and so ordered.
With
respect to House Business tomorrow, is there unanimous consent for the House to sit beyond the
normal Friday adjournment hour until
approximately 4 p.m.?
Some
Honourable Members: Agreed.
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Agreed and so ordered.
Is
there unanimous consent for the Standing Committees on Law Amendments, and Industrial Relations to sit
while the House is sitting?
Some
Honourable Members: Agreed.
Madam
Deputy Speaker: The hour being after 6 p.m., this‑‑oh, excuse me.
Committee Changes
Mr.
Edward Helwer (Gimli): Madam Deputy Speaker, I move, seconded by the member for Niakwa (Mr.
Reimer), that the composition of the
Standing Committee on Law Amendments be amended
as follows: the member for Pembina (Mr.
Orchard) for the member for Sturgeon
Creek (Mr. McAlpine); the member for Rossmere
(Mr. Neufeld) for the member for La Verendrye (Mr. Sveinson).
* * *
Mr.
Praznik: Madam Deputy Speaker, I would move, seconded
by the honourable Deputy Premier (Mr.
Downey), that Mr. Speaker do now leave
the Chair and the House resolve itself into a committee to consider of the Supply to be granted to Her
Majesty.
Motion
agreed to, and the House resolved itself into a committee to consider of the Supply to be granted to
Her Majesty with the honourable member
for Emerson (Mr. Penner) in the chair for the
Department of Culture, Heritage and Citizenship; Legislative Assembly; Justice; Aboriginal Justice
Initiatives; Canada‑Manitoba
Enabling Vote; Allowance for Losses and Expenditures
Incurred by Crown Corporations and Other Provincial Entities; Emergency Expenditures; Community
Support Programs; Internal Reform,
Workforce Adjustment and General Salary Increases;
and Government Services; and the honourable member for Seine River (Mrs. Dacquay) in the chair for
the Department of Environmental
Innovations Fund, and Natural Resources.
* * *
Madam
Deputy Speaker: I need agreement on the committee changes proposed by the honourable member for Gimli,
for the Standing Committee on Law
Amendments be amended as follows: the honourable member for Pembina (Mr. Orchard)
for the honourable member for Sturgeon
Creek (Mr. McAlpine); and the honourable
member for Rossmere (Mr. Neufeld) for the honourable member for La Verendrye (Mr. Sveinson). [Agreed!
The
hour being after 6 p.m., I am leaving the Chair and the House will reconvene at 7 p.m. in Committee
of Supply.