LEGISLATIVE
ASSEMBLY OF
Thursday,
April 8, 1993
The House met at 1:30
p.m.
PRAYERS
ROUTINE
PROCEEDINGS
PRESENTING
PETITIONS
Mr. Gregory Dewar
(Selkirk): Mr. Speaker, I beg to present the petition of
Peter Unik, Tom Partridge, Allan Smith and others requesting the Family
Services minister (Mr. Gilleshammer) to consider restoring funding for the
friendship centres in
Mr. Leonard Evans
(Brandon East): Mr. Speaker, I beg to present the petition of
Val Shorting, Gerry Cadman, Rod Freeman and others requesting the Family
Services minister (Mr. Gilleshammer) to consider restoring funding for the
friendship centres in
* * *
Mr. Doug Martindale
(Burrows): Mr. Speaker, I beg to present the petition of
Darryl Livingstone, Tanya Johnson, Danielle Fournier and others requesting the
Minister of Family Services (Mr. Gilleshammer) to consider restoring funding
for what was an excellent program, the student social allowances program.
Mr. Conrad Santos
(Broadway): Mr. Speaker, I beg to present the petition of
Wally Stewart, R. Bjornsson, Jean Jacques and others requesting the Minister of
Family Services (Mr. Gilleshammer) to consider restoring funding of the student
social allowances program.
* * *
Ms. Rosann Wowchuk (
Mr. Speaker: I have reviewed the petition of the
honourable member (Mr. Martindale). It
complies with the privileges and practices of the House and complies with the
rules. Is it the will of the House to
have the petition read? [agreed]
Mr. Clerk (William
Remnant): The petition of the undersigned citizens of
the
WHEREAS
WHEREAS over 1,000 young adults are currently
attempting to get off welfare and upgrade their education through the student
social allowances program; and
WHEREAS
WHEREAS the provincial government has already
changed social assistance rules, resulting in increased welfare costs for the
City of
WHEREAS the provincial government is now
proposing to eliminate the student social allowances program; and
WHEREAS eliminating the student social allowances
program will result in more than a thousand young people being forced onto city
welfare with no means of getting further full‑time education, resulting
in more long‑term costs for city taxpayers.
WHEREFORE your petitioners humbly pray that
the Legislative Assembly of
ORAL
QUESTION PERIOD
Budget
Property
Tax Credit
Mr. Gary Doer (Leader of
the Opposition): Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Premier
some questions dealing with the budget and the budget statements released in
the House.
It
has been reported that the $114 million that represents the revenue increases
through a reduction in property tax credits and the tax measures introduced by
the government would have been equivalent to a rise in the provincial income
tax of 5.7 points or an increase of 1.4 percent in the provincial sales
tax. In light of this report, I wonder
whether the Premier would tell Manitobans, does he feel the way he has applied
these revenue increases in property tax credits‑‑does he feel these
have been applied in a fair way to Manitobans?
Hon. Gary Filmon
(Premier): Yes, Mr. Speaker.
* (1335)
Mr. Doer: I am glad the Premier has confirmed the 5.7
percentage increase in the rise in the tax equivalent, or the 1.4 percent.
Budget
Property
Tax Credit
Mr. Gary Doer (Leader of
the Opposition): My question to the Premier is: How much of the $53 million in property tax
reductions comes from the minimum provision for property tax, and how does that
fit with the Premier's description of a fair and compassionate budget?
Hon. Clayton Manness
(Minister of Finance): Mr. Speaker, it is
difficult to say with accuracy‑‑I asked the same question of the
officials in Taxation. They said it
depends which measure you want to look‑‑[interjection] Well, for
the member for Thompson (Mr. Ashton), of course, who is such an expert at
filling out the T1C‑1 Manitoba form, he would not recognize that all of
these credit benefits and indeed the property tax, they are all woven together
on that form. So it depends which area
he wants to look at first.
I
can say roughly the impact, the $53 million, in rough terms, half of it is as a
result of the reduction in the property tax credit, and the other half of it is
a result of the new definitions associated with the application of income that
now has to be taken into account for tax credit purposes, not for income tax
purposes but for tax credit purposes.
Budget
Property
Tax Credit
Mr. Gary Doer (Leader of
the Opposition): Our calculations are, and that is why we asked
the government, that some $23 million of the changes in the property tax credit
system arise from a change in a provision, a new introduction of a minimum tax
for property taxpayers in
Mr.
Speaker, we have looked through a number of examples across the province, and
we are getting a number of phone calls from people, from seniors, from others, who
cite the fact that this $250 minimum will represent a tremendous burden on low‑income
people. Some 25,000 people making under
$20,000 a year will actually now have their property taxes going up by two or
three times because of the minimum property tax provision from the government.
I
would like to know from the government:
Does it still consider it fair for a person in Transcona who paid $75 in
taxes last year because of their $400 property tax now, with the minimum, will
pay 230 percent more under the minimum tax provisions of the provincial
government?
Hon. Gary Filmon
(Premier): Mr. Speaker, what is really interesting is
that this individual, who so loudly condemns every individual item that he can
pick out of the budget, will not give an alternative as to what he would have
done, lacks the courage or lacks the ability to come up with an
alternative. When asked pointblank by
reporters, repeatedly, he says he does not have any alternatives. But he has lots of criticism. What we can, of course, assume is that the
shadow mouthpiece for the New Democratic Party, the Choices people, are the
alternative that really is the Gary Doer New Democratic alternative. That would be an $800‑million deficit
instead of this deficit, as well as an additional increase of a couple of
hundred million dollars in taxation.
That is the alternative that the New Democrats
offer through their shadow group, Choices, because they do not have the courage
or the understanding to provide the answers themselves.
Mr. Doer: Mr. Speaker, the Premier did not answer the
question of fairness. A person like
Terry Stratton gets a $75 increase in their property taxes. A senior in Transcona, somebody in Burrows,
somebody in Broadway, many people in rural
Budget
Property
Tax Credit
Mr. Gary Doer (Leader of
the Opposition): You know, most people in this country are
calling for a minimum corporate tax.
What we see by the Tories opposite is a minimum tax on people. Those are the policies of this Premier.
I
would like to ask the Premier (Mr. Filmon), how many people making under
$20,000 a year will now see their taxes go to $250 as a minimum tax? How many people making under $20,000 a year
will see that?
* (1340)
Hon. Clayton Manness
(Minister of Finance): Mr. Speaker, the
member was wrong in his facts. He said
there would be a $23‑million global impact on those who now would have
applied against them, a $250 threshold before property tax credits take effect.
An Honourable
Member: You did not know a few
minutes ago.
Mr. Manness: No, I did not say that, to the member for
Dauphin (Mr. Plohman). He did not ask
about the minimum; he asked about the impact of the property tax credit, and I
gave him the global. As far as the
minimum application, that will have a $9‑million impact.
Mr.
Speaker, obviously the members are again, in their research, either just
shooting at numbers on walls or indeed they are doing no research at all. The member wants to know how many people will
be impacted. I say to him that by our
analysis, about 6,000 homeowners who previously paid no property taxes, who
made no contribution whatsoever to services provided to municipalities, will
now pay.
The
member talks about unfair tax. Let Manitobans
recall in 1987, the greatest attack on those who are so‑called, the poor,
was the 2 percent tax on income without reference to the ownership. Individuals earning $10,000 a year were
forced after that tax to pay $200. That
was the ultimate in poll taxes ever applied in this province, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Doer: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance nor the
Premier (Mr. Filmon) did not answer the question of how many people under
$20,000 a year will have to pay the minimum tax and what will the impact
be. The minister answered in a very
selective way about how many homeowners.
This tax also‑‑[interjection]
I
asked the question. That is the purpose
of Question Period. You know, the
Premier is only off a quarter of a billion dollars in his deficit, Mr. Speaker.
The
Premier has only been off on four election promises on taxation. Read my lips, Mr. Speaker.
The
question is: How many people under
$20,000 a year had this new minimum tax introduced, because the government
selectively answered the question? This
also impacts on low‑income renters who will also have to pay this tax.
I
would like to ask the Premier: Is it
fair for these low‑income renters, many of whom are senior citizens, now
to have this radical increase, in essence, of their taxes through the measures
introduced by the Filmon government in their budget two days ago?
Mr. Manness: Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition
shows his total ignorance in the understanding of the 6,000 people to whom I
have referred. He makes the assumption
that, if you live in a lowly assessed home, you have no income. That is an erroneous, false decision because
there is no way we have of knowing‑‑when an assessment comes down
and we provide a credit against a tax bill, we have no way of knowing what the
income of that individual is because we do not cross‑reference.
I
do not think members opposite would want us to cross‑reference the
assessment, the value of the home, and the income tax. Surely the members opposite do not want big
government to step in and to have that on the files.
So
I cannot answer that question, and he could not answer that question if he were
in our position. The reality is, it
cannot be answered.
Let
me say, Mr. Speaker, if the member wants to know the impact, as I said
yesterday, on an individual who is earning $27,500 or less, I am saying to him,
there will be a reduced impact under that level on the $75 aspect of the
property tax credit.
Mr. Doer: Mr. Speaker, I asked about how many people are
impacted under $20,000. The Department
of Finance used to keep track of that. I
guess the Tories have ordered them not to keep track of it now because they do
not care about the impact. I asked how
many total‑‑
Some Honourable Members:
Oh, oh.
Mr. Speaker: Order, please.
* (1345)
Mr. Doer: Mr. Speaker, I have asked a number of
questions which the government did not answer today about fairness. They cannot answer the question of fairness
because the introduction of a $250 minimum that is not tied back to the income
tax form‑‑as answered by the Minister of Finance to a question I
did not ask, it is not tied to the $27,000‑‑will be a much more
regressive tax for poor people, for senior people, for people across
We
are getting calls and calls into our office from people about the Filmon poll
tax and the minimum tax in the province.
I would like to know how many renters will be impacted. The minister has indicated 6,000
homeowners. How many low‑income
renters will be impacted by the introduction of a minimum tax? Is it consistent
to have some of these people who are actually in tough financial circumstances
have their taxes go from zero to $250 or from $75 to $250 or from $100 to $250,
massive percentage increases in their taxation, whereas other people, for
example in Tuxedo, have very little increase in their percentage increase in
taxes?
Mr. Manness: Mr. Speaker, $13 million represents the total
saving in reducing from $325, the minimum, to $250. Thirteen million dollars is the total saving. I would guess that roughly two‑thirds
of that would be with respect to those of us who receive the benefit right away
at the time that we pay our property tax, and the remaining portion would be
those renters who apply through the tax form.
School Divisions
Restructuring
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (
The
government admits it cannot find new revenues except through new taxes. It has failed to address the need for
restructuring the government functions.
On the one hand, we have a government that is cutting the educational
budget, which will have a negative impact on the quality of education to the
students of the province, while on the other hand, restructuring of the number
of school divisions would save the taxpayers money and improve the overall
quality of education. What is this
government doing about restructuring of the school divisions? Nothing.
My
question to the Minister of Education is:
Why is this government doing nothing to deal with the restructuring of
the number of school divisions?
Hon. Rosemary Vodrey
(Minister of Education and Training): Mr.
Speaker, first of all, the member does I believe make an error by suggesting
that the number of dollars put into Education is strictly what maintains the
quality of education or dictates the quality of education, because we know that
that is not necessarily true.
In
addition, the member asked about restructuring of school divisions. He obviously has not been paying attention to
the number of major initiatives that Education has been a part of, including
the reform of The Public Schools Act and the introduction of Francophone
governance, all of which have to take place in an orderly way for the next
stage to be considered.
Mr. Lamoureux: Mr. Speaker, it is interesting. If she does not believe money has anything to
do with education, why is she spending $7,000 to have children go to
Ravenscourt?
Point of
Order
Hon. Clayton Manness
(Government House Leader): Mr. Speaker, that is
a colossal cheap shot. The member had
better reflect on his approach to the way he throws these slurs, these comments
across the floor, because two and three and 56 can play that game, and if he
wants to continue that‑‑and he has been abusing the rules and
playing dangerously around the edges now for three weeks with respect to
that. So I stand to call him, and I
demand he retract and withdraw that comment to the Minister of Education. He has personalized it. He does not treat the member like an honourable
member, like indeed the rules dictate, and I say to him, he has to withdraw and
apologize to this House.
Mr. Lamoureux: On the same point of order, Mr. Speaker,
absolutely no way will I withdraw those comments. They were legitimate. It was coming from‑‑
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The honourable member for
Mr. Steve Ashton
(Opposition House Leader): On the same point of
order, Mr. Speaker, I think it is unfortunate, first of all, that when the
government House leader rose on the point of order, he also used language which
has been ruled by this House as being unparliamentary, suggesting that the
member for
Mr.
Speaker, we often take shots on issues, but we should not take shots on a
personal basis.
* (1350)
Mr. Speaker: On the point of order raised by the
honourable government House leader, I would like to remind the House of
Beauchesne's 481(f), that a member would not make a personal charge against
another member.
The
member for
School
Divisions
Restructuring
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (
To
the Minister of Finance or to the Minister of Education: Is this the sharing of
the tax burden equally? Does the
minister support the inequities that exist‑‑
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The honourable member has put his question.
Hon. Clayton Manness
(Minister of Finance): Mr. Speaker, I am
glad I asked my colleague the MLA for Emerson, to the extent that the Liberals
supported the reassessment changes‑‑[interjection] the member for
Inkster‑‑because we acknowledge that there has been tremendous
assessment differential throughout not only the city of
We
have done what we could with the support of the Liberal Party, with the support
of that member opposite to address those shortcomings. I say we are to be given some tribute, all of
us in this House, who have tried to deal‑‑to try to deal with those
problems, and within a few years, those differences will be taken care of.
Mr. Lamoureux: Mr. Speaker, I am talking about the school
divisions. The Minister of Finance
should be‑‑
Mr. Speaker: Order, please.
It is not a time for debate.
School
Divisions
Restructuring
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (
Hon. Rosemary Vodrey
(Minister of Education and Training): Mr.
Speaker, as I said to the member, we have a number of issues that are ongoing
in the Department of Education, and I let him know what some of those are, the
implementation of Francophone governance, looking at The Public Schools Act and
any changes that we will be making in that area‑‑a number of
issues. We would like to proceed in a
very orderly way because we understand that school divisions have a great deal
of work to do, and we said at the time that that would simply be deferred until
the other issues were completed and were well organized.
Budget
Impact on
Seniors
Mr. Leonard Evans
(Brandon East): Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the
Minister of Finance.
Senior citizens in this province have paid
towards education all of their lives, and even Sterling Lyon, a former Premier
of this province, recognized and wanted to offset school taxes. Now we have this government hitting senior
citizens by effectively adding $175 to their property tax statements through
elimination of the Pensioners' School Tax Assistance Program. Indeed, thousands and thousands of seniors
are being hit in this way.
Why
does this government, Mr. Speaker, single out seniors and others who are
vulnerable to bear the burden of tax increases and expenditure cuts in this
province?
Hon. Clayton Manness
(Minister of Finance): Mr. Speaker, what Sterling
Lyon realized was that you could not pay tomorrow on the basis of all the bills
and all the debt you amounted today.
When the member talks about the property tax
credit‑‑and I can go through the history if he wants. Indeed, when he was part of the Schreyer
government and there was an increase in some of the levels, that was done on
the basis of borrowed money for the most part.
I am here to tell you today that if indeed we were able to borrow money
still at the rate that the former member of that government, indeed that the
Pawley government had, maybe we would not have had to make a reduction in the
credit also.
* (1355)
I
say to the member opposite, whereas his government made its contribution on the
basis of borrowed money, Manitobans today realize the folly of that, want today
to see this deficit reduced and are in strong measure supporting this budget
and, I say to him, basically realize that it is leading the land in the
approach it has taken and are supportive.
Mr. Leonard Evans: I remind this minister, in '88 he had an
opportunity to even eliminate some of the public debt, but he did not do
so. He chose to ignore that opportunity.
Mr.
Speaker, I would ask the minister: How
can this minister be so callous by adding a burden of up to $175 for seniors in
addition to a loss of the property tax credit?
Seniors who remember the acute protracted restraint program of the
Mr. Manness: Mr. Speaker, we are not picking on the senior
citizen of this province. We are doing
nothing different than the NDP did, between the ages of 55 and 65, when they
means tested that group in society. Now
we are means testing everybody from 55 and older. So when the member talks upon the senior
citizen, why did he allow Mr. Kostyra to bring down a 2 percent tax on a senior
citizen earning $12,000, flat tax? Why
did he allow Eugene Kostyra to bring forward a 2 percent flat tax on the single
person who was earning $10,000? Why did
he allow him to do it?
So
I say to him, he cannot be pious in this whole area. No government since the beginning of time in
the
Mr. Leonard Evans: Mr. Speaker, we had all kinds of offsets to
help and protect those people on low income, and the minister knows that.
My
final supplementary. I want to ask this
minister: Just how many dollars in total
is he going to take away from the seniors of this province because of the
changes in the property tax credit system and the Pensioners' School Tax
Assistance Program? Just how many
dollars are you taking away in total‑‑
Mr. Speaker: Order, please.
The honourable member has put his question.
Mr. Manness: Mr. Speaker, this measure, for the most part,
is based on the ability to pay. So if
the member can tell me what percent of the seniors are earning incomes above $25,000
and which are under, I can answer his question.
But, I am telling him, we make the decision on the basis of income
ranges. We do not make the decision on
the basis of age. We have introduced the
ability‑to‑pay concept with respect to our tax credit system.
Health
Care System
Equipment/Supply
Costs
Mr. Dave Chomiak
(Kildonan): Mr. Speaker, quote: The government will not introduce user
fees. User fees do nothing to encourage
effective utilization of health services, and they may serve as a barrier to
needed services for some people‑‑Minister of Health, May 1992.
Why
has this government broken its promise by introducing user fees, or
contributions, as the minister calls them, on health services and an on health
supplies such as colostomy bags, walkers, other equipment? Is this not totally contrary to the
minister's so‑called health care reform?
Hon. Donald Orchard
(Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, we have introduced contributions
by users in the health care system for the very simple and underpinning reason
that the dollars could be reinvested to further enhance community‑based
care initiatives.
Mr. Chomiak: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is to the
Premier (Mr. Filmon).
What will the Premier tell the sick, the
disabled and the elderly, why he has broken his government's promise and
introduced user fees for such things as crutches and assistance for the
disabled? What would the Premier tell
these people who are phoning our offices every single day?
* (1400)
Mr. Orchard: Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate my
honourable friend's concerns for the citizens of
Mr.
Speaker, discussions with
Mr.
Speaker, I simply say there are no easy decisions in government today unless,
of course, you have the luxury of being in opposition saying one thing from
opposition and changing your mind whenever you get to government.
Mr. Chomiak: Mr. Speaker, the minister did not deal with
the question of breaking his word. It is
in this document, and Manitobans know it.
Mr.
Speaker, will the government reconsider the income threshold levels for the 74 percent
increase that they have levied on nursing home fees because of the hardship
this sudden increase will have on some pensioners? In fact, we had an individual phone this
morning; because he will be paying the maximum, he will no longer be able to afford
such luxuries as haircuts, glasses, clothing, housecoat, slippers and the odd
ice cream cone whenever he gets to go out of the nursing home.
Mr. Orchard: Mr. Speaker, I would be very pleased if my
honourable friend‑‑if he is at liberty to do so‑‑would
share the individual's name with me in confidence, and I will have people from
the ministry contact him, because I simply want to say that from time to time
the information my honourable friend the member for Kildonan and his cohorts
have put out in the public venue has not exactly been accurate.
I
would like to deal with this individual's complaint if he has the ability to
provide that individual's name, because, Sir, there is no pensioner who does
not have the ability to pay who will be impacted whatsoever by that decision to
raise the maximum contribution. It is
based on ability to pay. It does not
compromise, as my honourable friend alleged yesterday, an independent living
spouse in the community, because those are considerations that we took fully
into care when we made the decision to raise the maximum per diem on the
ability to pay by seniors in personal care homes receiving all of their care
needs at the taxpayers' expense.
Department
of Health
Administrative
Salaries
Ms. Avis Gray
(Crescentwood): Mr. Speaker, perhaps this government should
go back to the classroom and learn about the three Rs, reform, restructure and
revenue generation, because they have failed miserably in all three of these.
The
budget document that this government has presented really has not dealt with
any real reform towards community‑based services. When we look at the budget amounts for '93‑94,
as an example in the Department of Health, we see that senior managers in
administration and directorates have increases in the budgets, but when you
look at the budget lines where there are actually services to real people in
the community, we have seen a decrease.
Can
the Minister of Health explain why he has allowed for an increase in salaries
of administration and directorates when in fact the budget lines related to
services to the people in the community have seen a decrease?
Hon. Donald Orchard
(Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, I would be more than pleased to
share those sorts of details at Estimates, because I think my honourable friend
would find, with exploration of the budget which is presented in the Ministry
of Health in a somewhat more informative way, that her allegation does not have
substance.
Home Care
Program Budget
Ms. Avis Gray
(Crescentwood): Mr. Speaker, I am wondering if the Minister
of Health could practise the government's philosophy that they like to talk
about‑‑about open, honest government.
I
would ask the Minister of Health if he could tell us why we see an actual
decrease in the Home Care Assistance budget and this minister had promised that
we would see an increase in home care services.
Why is there a decrease?
Hon. Donald Orchard
(Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, I just
so happen to have the budget in front of me.
Page 80, Section (b) Home Care: (3) Home Care Assistance, this year's budget
$63,187,500; last year's budget $62,081,000, an increase, not a decrease as my
honourable friend alleges.
Ms. Gray: Mr. Speaker, with a third supplementary to the
Minister of Health.
The
minister indicates that the budget line says there is a $1.7 increase, but the
minister also knows full well that Home Care overspent their budget last year
over $2 million so that in fact, when you look at the money spent last year‑‑
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The question is?
Ms. Gray: Can the minister explain to this House why
Home Care Assistance budgets and grants to External Agencies and Gerontology,
which are services to seniors, why we have seen a decrease?
An Honourable Member: I think she has you this time, Don.
Mr. Orchard: Thank you for the message. Mr. Speaker, my honourable friend's
presumption under Home Care, as I have indicated in the budget, is not a
factual assessment. In addition to that,
my honourable friend failed to take into consideration an answer I believe I
gave yesterday or the day before in terms of the changes in service provision
which we estimate will be approximately $3 million compared to last year. We
did not remove that budget of $3 million.
We left it, in fact, in the Home Care budget to provide a higher level
of more sophisticated services in the Home Care budget to provide more needed
care rather than less, Sir.
Now, Mr. Speaker, in terms of some of the
funded agencies which are a part of this budget, they were subject, as were all
funded agencies, to a minus 2 percent in their grant level, and that accounts
for the reductions in some of the areas of my department. That is similar to the approximate reduction
in hospitals and other institutions.
That is not inconsistent with the rest of government.
Children's
Dental Program
Alternative
Services
Mr. Steve Ashton
(Thompson): Mr. Speaker, the Conservative budget indicates
there is a new oxymoron. We have seen industrial
park, military intelligence, Progressive Conservative. Now it is Tory fairness. They call a budget fair that targets seniors,
working people, aboriginal people and the poor, and they are also targeting
rural children.
An Honourable Member: Is there a question?
Mr. Ashton: Indeed, there is a question. It is to the Premier (Mr. Filmon), and I hope
he will answer.
I
would like to ask him where rural children are going to go to get the more than
120,000 services that have been performed by the previous child dental program,
now that this government has cut the program.
Where are they going to go for dental treatment?
Hon. Donald Orchard
(Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, my honourable friend will be
well aware that the education prevention portion of the Children's Dental
Program is being maintained.
Unfortunately, and I say this sincerely, we made the decision to
eliminate the treatment program which involved extractions and the completion
of fillings. Now that was a difficult
decision, and we are expecting that children who had access to that program in
rural and northern
It
is the same difficult decision that
Mr. Ashton: Mr. Speaker, the minister knows and the
Premier (Mr. Filmon) knows, there just are not dentists in a lot of small rural
communities, and it is going to create a major hardship.
I
would like to ask the Premier, the government talks about sharing the burden
here, it talks about pulling together.
When they talk about contributions, are they now expecting that the
people of rural
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The honourable member has put his question.
* (1410)
Mr. Orchard: I know my honourable friend will make that accusation
in
Mr.
Speaker, since I have been a Minister of Health‑‑and this program
was ongoing beforehand‑‑many more communities in rural
Sir, it is not uncoincidental that that also
occurred in
Budget
Property
Tax Credit
Ms. Rosann Wowchuk (
People across my constituency are calling with
their concerns. I would like to share
one example. A resident who last year
paid $134 will now pay $250, an 85 percent increase in taxes.
How
can the Minister of Finance justify increases to people on the lowest income
and also people who have the lowest services in this province?
Hon. Clayton Manness
(Minister of Finance): Mr. Speaker, I am
sure it was a very important question, and the member would want a full
answer. I would ask her to rephrase it,
if she could.
Mr. Speaker: The honourable member for
Ms. Wowchuk: The tax increases that this government has
introduced are some of the cruelest in the country. Rural Manitobans are being hit extremely hard
even though they have the lowest incomes and some of the fewest services,
reduced education, reduced health care by this government.
People across the constituency are calling,
and I would like to share one example. A
resident who is typical of many of the ratepayers in my constituency paid $134
and now will pay $250 in taxes, an 85 percent increase.
How
can the Minister of Finance justify such an increase in taxes from low‑income
people who are getting very little service or reduced service from this
government?
Mr. Manness: Mr. Speaker, I justify the action because the
debt of the province on a per capita basis is $11,500. That is the indebtedness of every one of us,
regardless of where we live, regardless of the type of conditions in which we
live, regardless of our occupation, regardless of our age. That is the per capita indebtedness.
Most of that debt accrued, if the member
opposite wants to see this chart afterward, during the years '81‑82 to
1987‑88, Mr. Speaker. Most of that
debt accrued during those six years, so all I have asked in this budget is that
everybody pay some contribution towards that, acknowledging that those
individuals who are now receiving $325 credit, they will have that reduced to
$250 and lesser amounts, under an income of $27,000.
Ms. Wowchuk: Mr. Speaker, the minister is admitting,
because of his mismanagement, he is going to correct his mistakes on the backs
of the poor.
How
can he justify senior citizens who are on low income, on fixed income, paying
$47 in property tax‑‑that is all they were paying‑‑and
now they are going to pay $250, again, correcting his mistakes on the backs of
the senior citizens? How can he justify‑‑
Mr. Speaker: Order, please.
The honourable member has put her question.
Mr. Manness: I do not know if the member opposite has seen
the tax form of her constituent or not.
If she has, Mr. Speaker‑‑[interjection] The income tax.
If
she has and it is as low as she reports, that constituent of hers is receiving
a tax credit of several hundreds and hundreds of dollars under the richest tax
credit system in the land which is not included in that tax form. So, Mr. Speaker, that constituent of hers now
will receive a lesser amount but still hundreds and hundreds of dollars of tax
credit relief under still the richest tax credit system in the land.
Budget
Social
Assistance Recipients
Mrs. Sharon Carstairs
(Leader of the Second Opposition): Mr. Speaker,
there is no question that this budget has had its greatest impact on those who
have the least amount of revenue. There is no question about that. I would like to know what kind of analysis
that the Department of Finance did with respect to measuring it.
For
example, can the Finance minister tell the House today, what has been the
impact on the disposable income of a social welfare recipient who will now have
to pay optical, dental and pharmaceutical benefits that were previously paid
for, will no longer get tax credit changes, will pay an increase in the sales
tax?
Not
called a tax by the Minister of Finance, what is the impact of the disposable
income?
Hon. Clayton Manness
(Minister of Finance): Mr. Speaker, the member
in her question assumes that the needs‑‑in her case, to use her
example, this particular welfare recipient‑‑are all in the areas of
glasses and of other requirements.
I
would say to her that in the detail that we have under a number of breakouts,
that specific example has not been provided to me. I would sense that on balance there is not an
individual in this province, who is receiving welfare or amounts more, who is
not being impacted to the tune of $125 by the results or indeed by the
announcements made in this‑‑in other words, as a minimum, $125 for
every Manitoban.
Mr. Speaker: The time for Oral Questions has expired.
ORDERS OF
THE DAY
BUDGET
DEBATE
(Third Day
of Debate)
Mr. Speaker: On the adjourned debate, the third day of
debate, on the proposed motion of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) and the
proposed motion of the honourable Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Doer) in
amendment thereto, standing in the name of the honourable Leader of the Second
Opposition (Mrs. Carstairs).
Mrs. Sharon Carstairs (Leader
of the Second Opposition): Mr. Speaker, as all
members know, there are two major debates in this House each year. One is the Speech from the Throne and the
other is the speech that those of us in this Chamber give in reply to the
budget speech.
I
had thought when I gave my speech in reply to the Speech from the Throne last
November that that would probably be my last speech as a Leader on one of these
two major addresses because I thought the party would have by this time chosen
a new Leader, but that is not to take place until the 5th of June. So I rise today, Mr. Speaker, to speak on
this budget as a Leader for my party.
I
wanted to spend some time in reflecting about what kind of speech I wanted to
make. I wanted to know whether I should
do what is typical of all Leaders of the Opposition, whether official or third
party, and do the usual everything‑is‑bad‑and‑nothing‑is‑good
type of speech, and I have given those speeches. I make no apologies for having given those
speeches. But I was filled with such
sadness at this particular budget speech that I chose to not do that kind of
haranguing type of speech, which I have done in the past‑‑and easy
to do, particularly on this speech presented by the Finance minister.
* (1420)
I
decided that I would do my best to show the government that they indeed had
choices and to examine as clearly as I could some of the choice options I
thought that they had, and to ask them why they made the choices that they did,
instead of some alternative choices which I hope to lay out for them today,
because in fact I think there are some choices they could have made and they
chose not to make those choices.
Mr.
Speaker, you know, we go outside of this Chamber and we see that the snow has
melted and pothole season has arrived.
It is spring. Maybe that is why
most budgets are presented in the spring, because it is supposed to be a time
of hope. Governments usually, in this
moment and spirit of hope, try to put together a package that will make people
feel better about themselves.
They sometimes list in those statements
forecasts of increased revenue and forecasts of new jobs. They quote from‑‑last year, the
Conference Board of Canada which said, this was going to be the best province
in the country in terms of growth.
Well, it was quite interesting, but this
speech did not have any of those forecasts.
It is the only speech, in going back a number of years, that I found
that did not have those forecasts. It would appear that perhaps the reason they
did not have any forecasts was because the forecasts are not very good. The forecasts are all negative.
So
although spring is a time for renewal and spring is a time for rebirth, there
did not seem to be that message of hope and renewal and rebirth in the speech
of the Finance minister.
You
know, this is also the gardening season, Mr. Speaker. It is a time when those of us who like to
garden start looking over the seed catalogues and start examining the plants
that we would like to plant in our garden.
We also do some looking at what did well last year and what did not do
so well, and we make decisions about, well, I will not plant that in that
particular spot, because it did not really come up very well. To some degree‑‑
(Mr. Jack Penner, Acting Speaker, in the
Chair)
An Honourable Member: You planted the seeds upside down.
Mrs. Carstairs: No, I did not plant the seeds upside
down. It just happened to be too,
unfortunately, shady and because I was planting in a new area, I did not
realize the foliage would spread quite so much as it did. The sense that we want to do this is I think
almost part and parcel of our sense of ourselves.
I
was reading a book not too long ago by Germaine Greer in which she talks about
the menopausal woman looking to plant flowers, that she cannot have babies
anymore so she looks to plant flowers.
Well, I am a menopausal woman, and I think, wow, you know, is this why
all of a sudden I am getting interested in gardening? Is this the thrust that is getting me
going? I do not know whether that is it.
I
have, I have to say to you, taken more interest in the garden in recent years,
and I really do take more pleasure as I see those plants come to life. So I, in examining this budget, decided I
would also examine what kind of growth was I seeing in this government, what
kind of growth opportunities was I seeing for citizens. I think there are a lot of parallels, quite
frankly, between gardening and a government, because if one wants to use the metaphor
to its extreme, the seeds for
The
Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) talked about that. He talked about the need to give our children
a future that was less debt‑ridden than perhaps the future of the
past. But that is not all our children
require. Our children require
nurturing. Our children require
care. We want our children to remain in
this province. We want them to be able
to maximize their potential. We want them to be able to contribute. We want them to be able to invest in
I
did not see a plan, because the plan had to include a fundamental restructuring
of how our government operates. I do not
mean tinkering, and I do not mean hack and slash. I really mean a thorough re‑examination
of the scale of government. We were
hopeful that the government would do this, that they would be bold and that
they would really be brazen, that they would take a brazen new look at the way
a government must operate.
We
know that the government has looked at some ideas that we have made in the past
and so we hope to offer them some alternatives this time as well. Not everything in the budget is bad. We support the government's initiative to
reduce aviation and diesel fuel taxes, because we think that is forward
looking. Those industries are essential to the future growth of
(Mrs. Louise Dacquay, Deputy Speaker, in
the Chair)
We
have to ask ourselves some very fundamental questions about what role a
government is to play in the economic climate of scarce fiscal resources. The Finance minister is absolutely
correct. There is a scarcity, a paucity
of fiscal resources for every single government in this country, no matter what
their political stripe. That is a truth
nobody can deny.
The
phenomenal wealth creation that we saw in the '70s and '80s in land development
is passe. The Reichmanns, the Campeaus
and the Trumps and all of those who invested in that kind of land development‑‑and
that did stimulate the market‑‑are not going to be able to do that
kind of thing in the '90s.
Just yesterday, for example, the Minister of
Health (Mr. Orchard), in his reply, talked about the boom of
Neither is it enough to just tinker with the
way governments do business. We know
that governments cannot be all things to all people, but we do believe that
government has to provide leadership and on occasion intervention and on
occasion incentive.
We
are at a crossroads, and the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) has had the
opportunity to make a difference. We
just do not think, unfortunately, that he has.
We believe that we must re‑examine how government departments
operate and are structured. We have to
consider combining departments, programs, boards, commissions, agencies and
councils. The government made a step in
that direction with the consolidation of 18 administrative and personnel
branches, but they could have gone further.
They chose not to.
Why
have they not moved to eliminate some of those departments? For example, the government has made a
mockery of‑‑and I cannot call it without putting a prefix before it‑‑the
so‑called Seniors Directorate. We
called for this initiative. We thought it was really a way for the Seniors
Directorate to quite frankly make contact with health, to make contact with
social assistance, to be kind of a guiding light, if you will, for the needs of
seniors in our community. That has not
happened. Nothing has happened in the
Seniors Directorate that has changed the day‑to‑day lives of
seniors.
Why
has the Minister of Finance not admitted that it is a farce and eliminate it,
if that is all it is going to be, an in‑name‑only department? Why does this government continue to fund
garden parties for mobile seniors when seniors are asked to pay for
walkers? I simply do not understand a
government that can do one and not deal with the other. Why has this minister failed to develop a
bold new policy for the future when so many of us are prepared to work
together, if only they will give us some hope for the future?
The
member for St. James (Mr. Edwards), yesterday, talked about the issue of
prairie integration. You know, the
Canada West Foundation has come out with a bold concept that there is a
possibility we could save $5 billion. I
do not know whether it is $5 billion.
That seems like an awful lot of money.
It is the amount of money basically in this provincial budget.
* (1430)
But
even if it could save many millions of dollars, it is monies that could be
reallocated to direct services for people who live in the provinces of
Why, for example, is there still no merger
between city and provincial public health?
Why are we running two bureaucracies when one could do? Can it be that preserving turf is more
important to those running City Hall and running this government than the
provision of service?‑‑because we have to get money out of
administration and we have to get money down to the service level.
I
have heard the Premier say many times, and I agree with him, these are difficult
times, and we have to make difficult choices, but we also have to make the
right choices. It is the responsibility
of all elected officials, not just the government, but of all elected
officials, to make these difficult choices within the context of our economic
circumstances and to always be careful of those who are most vulnerable.
You
know, we are going to have a deficit of $367 million, according to the Minister
of Finance (Mr. Manness). That is higher
than the projected deficit when he introduced his budget last year. Everybody talks about how he is getting the
deficit down. Well, that is hard, quite
frankly, to provide some explanation for.
I am not talking about the fact that the deficit for this year was $762
million. I am saying that he budgeted
last year for $330 million in deficit.
He is budgeting this year at $367 million, and he says I am getting the
deficit down.
It
does not make any sense, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The reality is that the public are becoming so cynical of all of us that
they simply do not believe any of us.
We
have to curb government spending. There
is no question about that, but we have to look at brand new ways of running the
government. That means we have to go
back to the planning table and ask which programs can government provide and
which programs must it provide, which can be self‑sustaining and which
must be eliminated.
The
government had choices, but the choices it chose were always to hurt the most
vulnerable. For example, the government
decided that grants could be cut to advocacy groups, but part of their
definition of advocacy group includes, it seems, whether you are a friend or a
foe of the government. How else do you
justify funding for the Consumers Association, a valid, valuable organization,
where you cannot find money for the Manitoba Anti‑Poverty Organization,
you cannot find money for the Manitoba Foster Family Association, you cannot
find money for the Indian and Metis Friendship Centres? Surely this government recognizes that these
groups represent the most vulnerable in our society.
If
this Finance minister were bold, he would have taken $5 million out of
Industry, Trade and Tourism, where there is duplication of services and, in
some cases, triplication, and he could have applied $2.5 million to the deficit
if that is what he had wanted to do and $2.5 million to the friendship centres,
the Manitoba Anti‑Poverty Organization and to the
Where were the priorities? Were they with his political cronies in the
Economic Secretariat where salaries actually increased with no benefits
directly or indirectly to Manitobans.
They certainly do not lie with the working
poor who will now have to pay sales tax on baby supplies or nonprescription
drugs, which increase daily as more drugs are delisted, and school supplies, or
with the sick who will have to pay more for their prescription drugs.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I find it just a little
ironic that the Finance minister recognized that a tax on books was a tax on
literacy so he refused to impose it, but he did not recognize that for most
children literacy training takes place in schools, and he taxed their school
supplies. Now, is it any worse to tax
the book than to tax the math set, or are they both bad? They are both bad. You do not tax the books, but you do not tax
the school supplies either.
Does the government's priority lie with the
Sport Directorate which has an increased budget? It does not lie with those who are trying to
get off social assistance to go to school.
Does it make sense for the government, just yesterday, to spend
thousands of dollars on newspaper ads for training programs when you have cut
training, and cut 1,200 young people off student social allowance? Does it make any sense?
If
I go back to the garden, it is like they threw up a handful of seeds into the
air with the hope they would all land on fertile ground and multiply, but you
know not all land has the same quality and not all people have the same
advantages.
Perhaps the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness)
does not understand that when the rich get the same reduction in a tax credit
as the poor, then the impact on the poor is so many times greater.
I
just took a look at the property tax credit.
I took the income of $27,500. I took
off the $75, and I said, all right, what is the percentage of $75 on
$27,500? It is .2 of 1 percent, not a
huge percentage, it is .2 of 1 percent, but do you know what it is on an income
of $150,000? It is .0005. It is 400 times greater at $27,500 than it is
at $150,000. [interjection] It is. Take
.2 and .0005. Well, you take $75 out of
$150,000,
An Honourable Member: One is just six times the other, so all it can
be is one‑sixth.
Mrs. Carstairs: Six times, 600 times.
An Honourable Member: It cannot be that way. Well, I am glad you do not teach math.
Mrs. Carstairs: No, $75.
It is not the same percentage. It
is a dollar amount.
Madam Deputy Speaker, the reality is that the
impact on the person of a large income of paying another $75 is minimal. It is very minimal, but is not minimal when
you are budgeted to the point where you are counting your pennies and your dollars.
People with a family of four earning $27,500 in this province are barely above
the poverty line. I do not understand,
if they were going to look at the property tax credit‑‑and they
did, they decided to do that‑‑why did you not differentiate
according to income? Why did you not say
that those of us with upper incomes had to pay more? Why do I have a tax credit of $325 reduced to
$250 when lots of people have much lower incomes than I have and are not going
to get the same benefit that I am going to get?
I do not understand that. [interjection]
* (1440)
Well, you know there is quite a bit of
difference of $75,000 than $27,500. All
I said was that somebody at $75,000 in income could afford to pay the actual
cost of child care. I think somebody at
$75,000 a year can pay the actual cost of child care, but I do not think, quite
frankly, that somebody at $27,500 should pay exactly the same as somebody who
earns $75,000 or somebody who earns $150,000.
It is very simple.
Madam Deputy Speaker, there is no question
that a plan for
We
have to work together to attract new business to
The
government has said, for example, that it is committed to making
This is where the minister should have been
honest and honourable in terms of his goals and recognized that there was a
real folly in setting up the Economic Secretariat where the commitment to
research and development has just not played out.
In
the last Speech from the Throne this government used the word
"innovative" nine times. Nine
times they talked about innovation, but we have not seen anything innovative. Manitobans want jobs. Manitobans want to work. Putting Manitobans to work in competitive and
sustaining industries will reduce the deficit, but we see nothing in the budget
to do that.
Madam Deputy Speaker, the Minister of Finance
(Mr. Manness) told us in his budget speech that because of public debt costs
money was simply not available for priority health and education services for
Manitobans. On this side of the House we
were wondering how this government decides on its priorities. For example, why is there a 2.5 percent
increase in the salaries of the executive administration of Culture and
Heritage? Why is there still $2 million
allocated for Community Places grants‑‑$2 million?
Let
us examine for a moment, Mr. Finance minister, just what these Community Places
grants have been allocated for. You
know, last year it was $50,000 given to the Winkler Golf Club; $50,000 was
given to the Virden playground; $50,000 was given to Binscarth to build a new
pool.
Now, we too are concerned about the quality of
life in rural
We
do not understand their choice. It was a
choice. [interjection] Well, I know, but I‑‑you have to make tough
choices. You are the one who is saying
you have to make tough choices, Mr. Finance Minister. I know they put $10 million into that
program. I am well aware what the NDP
did, but why do we still have it when we have tough times?
Madam Deputy Speaker, a tennis court is not
going to help a family who cannot afford to buy basic necessities, and there
are very few aboriginal children who were provided with services at friendship
centres who own tennis rackets and are out there playing tennis on tennis
courts‑‑very few of them.
Ask an abused woman in Flin Flon whether she needs a shelter or a
recreation facility. You know, that is
the kind of tough choice that has to be made, and it is not the tough choices
that were made.
A
quality education system is essential to ensure that
We
have been calling as a party for reform for
I
mean, last November in the Speech from the Throne they said education is the
key to a healthy economic future. What
do they do? [interjection] Well, they did not knock the door, they locked the
door, unfortunately, and some are pounding at it trying to get in.
The
budget does not introduce any reform initiative to fundamental problems with
the system. It does not help our schools
cope with new technology. The public
schools of this province have taken a funding cut of 2 percent, but they have
also taken a cut of 66 speech pathologists and hearing clinicians in rural
Fundamental education reform is long overdue,
and it is time the government paid more than lip service to it. Why have we not started that boundaries
review? Restructuring and amalgamating
school divisions could ensure that nearly every dollar in education is spent on
delivering programs to
An Honourable Member: Who has No. 1?
Mrs. Carstairs:
The
picture looks as bleak for post‑secondary education and training. Unfortunately, the government clearly does
not understand that a well‑trained, knowledgeable workforce is essential
in improving the economic situation of the province. The sad part about it is,
again, those of us who are better off, our children, we'll make sure they get
their education. We will help them. We will give them that boost. We will give them that support. It is always those who are from disadvantaged
homes and disadvantaged families, they are the ones who are going to suffer. They are the ones that saw their student
assistance grants cut.
* (1450)
You
know, the financial assistance program under student loans has been cut by 7.8
percent. Who do you think those children
are that were applying for those student financial assistance loans and
bursaries? Do you think they were
children of upper middle‑class families?
Of course not, unless that family has kicked them out, and that is not a
frequent occurrence. These are young
people who have come from homes where there has not been the same value in
education, often because they simply could not afford it. And summer jobs have become for some
youngsters almost an impossibility to get.
It is not that they do not want to work or they will not work, it is
they cannot find employment.
You
know, we thought there was a glimmer of hope just a few days before the
budget. We saw that the Minister of
Education (Mrs. Vodrey) announced that there was going to be a consolidation of
the skills training program. We were
going to get rid of some of the administrative hierarchy, and we thought, good,
sounds positive.
What do we find in the budget? Well, we found, unfortunately, that the new
advanced education and skills training division has taken a reduction of almost
10 percent. The cut includes significant decreases for programs such as
employment enhancement and youth programs and apprenticeship programs, not
administrative cuts, the program cuts.
Madam Deputy Speaker, this province has the
lowest rate of young people enrolling in full‑time community colleges of
any province in the nation. We know that. We have an underdeveloped community college
system, and it is becoming more and more underdeveloped as the years go
by. Eight percent of our high school
students enroll in community colleges.
In some provinces that is as high as 27 percent.
As
a result,
Young people are realizing that a lack of
education almost guarantees them a life of unemployment or of marginal
employment. I do not know how they think
young people are going to make it in this province without a little bit of
help.
Support for child care has been eroded, but
who has been eroded? Did they increase
the overall fee? No, they could not do
that, because when they did that last time without a sliding scale people took
their children out of child care. So
they knew they could not increase the upper limit again, so what did they
do? They went and attacked the people at
the very bottom. Those who were not even
paying the $1 a day subsidy are now going to be asked to pay $2.40 in
subsidy. Where do they think they are
going to get it from? They were not
paying the dollar in many cases because they could not come up with the money,
so where are they going to get $2.40 a day?
It
simply defies imagination, and yet the only conclusion that I can come to is
that they want these people to stop working.
They want them to quit their jobs and stay home, because they are not
going to be able to afford the child care. If they cannot afford the child
care, they have to quit their jobs. Is
this the drive behind this? Is this the
incentive? Is this what they want to do?
Well, you know, we heard about the need to
share the pain. Madam Deputy Speaker, who has really been asked to share the
pain? Does this minister really think
that those with upper incomes are going to share the pain? Does he really think that, if property tax
bills go up for families whose income is six figures, they are really going to
feel that pain? No, they are not. They are simply not going to feel that
pain. People in lower incomes will, they
will feel the pain. That is what I do
not understand. I do not understand how
a government cannot recognize that some feel the pain more than others and
adjust their policies accordingly.
I asked
the minister today if he knew just what the impact would be on a social
assistance recipient who had lost their dental, their optical, pharmaceutical
benefits and some of their tax credits and now would be asked to pay provincial
sales tax. I do not want to misquote him, but I think what he said was that he
figures the minimum might be about $125.
Well, $125 for some families is a lot of money. It is not a lot of money for me.
[interjection]
Well, it is a lot of money for someone at half
of your income, too, or a third of your income or a tenth of your income. I do not know the Minister of Finance's
income, and it is none of my business.
The
reality is‑‑if we just take an MLA's salary in this House, with the
nontaxable portion, make it $48,000 a year.
If it is $48,000 a year, the impact is going to be far less than the mom
with a couple of kids living on social assistance who is getting $14,000 a
year. That is what I find difficult to
understand.
I
find it difficult to understand why foster families are being asked to take $2
less a day. If the government did not
think that money was too much a couple of years ago when they gave it to them,
why do they think it is too much now?
That is what they are really saying:
We think you are getting too much, so we are going to take it from you.
More than that, I do not understand why they
took the money away from their association.
To me that was the far more dangerous cut, because what they did was
they removed their support system. They
took from them a sense of their own ability to talk with others who were
suffering from the same difficulties that they were. I do not understand why they would feel that
a cut like that, which might really jeopardize the opportunity for an individual
to take a foster child, why they do not understand that the cost of that will
be far greater. If
I
think the government almost sees that as a threat. They should not consider it a threat. It is not a threat. Foster families, the ones I have spoken to,
have said, we will no longer feel secure taking those children. We had almost our own kind of safety net, and
they have taken that safety net away from us.
So we do not feel as secure to take on new foster children, and that is
why they are going to choose not to do that.
That is a tragedy, both for the children, but also for the Minister of
Finance (Mr. Manness), because it is going to cost him more to look after those
children in alternative facilities.
It
is time that we looked‑‑and I have said this before in this House,
and I will say it again‑‑at a guaranteed annual income. I would prefer it to be a federal program,
but if we cannot, then let us re‑examine what we have done in the past in
this province and let us lead the way in
I
want to speak just briefly about the health care initiative, because we have
supported it. We have supported the
Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard). We
have watched the same initiative basically picked up by the New Democratic
Party in
But
we did call on the minister to put into place a health monitor, so we could be
upfront with the public, so that he could report to the people so that they
could in turn‑‑the monitor group‑‑report to government,
that they could identify the problems out there and that corrections could be
put into place quickly. I think many of
the difficulties that the Minister of Health is encountering, quite frankly, is
because of misinformation or lack of information. I think that if he had been more upfront,
some of this would not have occurred, but we are finding that in this budget,
the action plan that he said he was going to put into place does not show
itself in the budget.
If
we are really going to move to community‑based services, why has there
been a cut of 15.8 in Healthy Public Policy?
Why has there been a cut of 29.6 in Health and Wellness? Surely, part of health reform is wellness,
and a theory and a concept of wellness which means prevention programs. Why has Acute and Ambulatory Care taken a
12.5 percent cut? Why has home care, if
one compares not budget to budget but expenditure to budget, gone down?
* (1500)
Only
a week ago, the Minister of Health seconded a Pharmacare card system, but we
are told by the Minister of Finance that people have to pay more for their
Pharmacare. I hope the government, if it
is going to look at additional premiums for Pharmacare and, unfortunately, that
is the only solution I can see as to how you can have increases according to
his budget, is that he is looking at another one. Well, if he is going to do it, then would he
look at the possibility of putting in a sliding scale, because that Pharmacare
deductible is getting so high for people on low and fixed incomes that they
simply cannot pay it. Some of them are denying themselves drugs, and we know
that.
This government has eliminated the dental care
program under the Children's Dental plan.
We were pleased to see that the prevention component of the plan was
still in place, but I have spoken with the head of the northern dental plan,
who was the head of the northern dental plan for a number of years. She talks about the requirement to remove
rotten teeth of children in the North for prevention so that the second teeth
can come in, in satisfactory form. Is
that prevention or is it treatment? According to this budget, it is treatment,
and yet if that treatment is not provided, Madam Deputy Speaker, there will be
no prevention. There will be no healthy
second teeth.
What provision is there going to be for those
who need that kind of dental work and whose family simply cannot provide
it? I have some understanding of a
willingness to not provide dental care for those whose incomes are sufficient
that they can pay for their own children's care but what about the poor? What about those who do not have that
money? What protection have we put in
for those families? I see nothing in this
budget.
We
heard this government talk about compassion but, you know, I do not see any
compassion. I certainly do not see any
compassion for the epidemic of violence against women in our society. We have a Pedlar report. We know what must be done. We know what the
social costs are of ignoring it and yet there is nothing in this budget that
would suggest that there is going to be any more resources. Indeed, there will be fewer resources because
courts will not even be open to hear some of those cases on Fridays in the
summertime. It is a little ironic, it is
almost as if you are saying do not abuse on Thursday night or perhaps you
should abuse on Thursday night because you cannot go to court on Friday. The whole concept leaves me terribly befuddled
in terms of what the program is and what the real direction is.
You
know there has been some restructuring in the government. We cannot object, for example, to the
consolidation of the Information Technology Branch with the Industrial Technology
Branch. It sounds reasonable. We cannot be too concerned about the
disappearance of the Sectoral Development Branch. Those are changes which obviously can be
made. It makes sense, indeed, for them
to be made, but we have noticed that the government's knife cuts very
selectively. Nowhere is this more
important and more apparent than in I, T and T.
It was spared from the consolidation of the Economic Development Board
of Cabinet.
Remember the Economic Development Board of
Cabinet? Remember that? We have not heard very much from it. We have not been overwhelmed with activity,
Madam Deputy Speaker, and we criticized it last year because we said that it
was just another layer of economic management bureaucracy. We were worried that nothing would come of it
and we were right because nothing has come of it.
We
do not understand why, if we are supposed to share the pain, you share it,
unless of course you are a close advisor to the Premier (Mr. Filmon). The Premier should end his charade and be
honest with the people of
We
have also noticed that the government has spared its overpaid and much flaunted
Economic Innovation and Technology Council.
Here, too, we criticize the needless duplication of activity, and here,
too, we do not see any activity. We see
staffing. We do not see anything in the
way of new programs. Here, too, the government seems to have chosen to protect
the salaries and per diems of its friends on the council.
There is not a single activity that this
council performs that is not mandated and could not be handled by the
department. The government has chosen to protect the salaries of the part‑time
council members at the expense of line administration staff in that department.
While we are looking at restructuring, we have
to look at the commitment to serve our province to give something back to one's
province. I wonder if the Minister of
Finance (Mr. Manness) actually went to all of the people who sit on boards and
commissions, some of whom are paid, you know, $130 for a half day and $210 for
a full day. One chair is paid $310 for a
full day. Did they ask them to donate their service to the province?
I
mean, that is what they are asking the Manitoba Foster Family Association. They were paid people. They are asking them now to become
volunteers. Why do you not ask those who
are getting these per diems? [interjection] Get rid of them entirely. That is what you did to the Manitoba Foster
Family Association. You eliminated
it. Eliminate the per diems. Say, do it in honour of service to this
province. Do it because you feel that
volunteerism is important.
We
have heard the Premier talk about volunteerism.
Well, let him get out there and all of his patronage cronies. Let us have a little volunteerism. Let us eliminate the per diems. I mean, you want the volunteers for the
friendship centres and the crisis centres and the Manitoba Anti‑Poverty
Organization. You want all those people
to become full‑time volunteers. So
how about a few of the per diems?
So
we come back again to the choices that the government has had the chance to
make for six budgets now. It has had a
chance to develop an economic plan for
We
will continue to watch how the government handles economic development in rural
You
know, we were cautiously optimistic when the REDI Program was first
announced. We were concerned that
standards be established and guidelines be set in place. But we have not seen the money flow as it was
promised to us when REDI was formulated, and we have been particularly
concerned to note some of the questionable uses of the REDI Program.
I
mean, we want to know, for example, what a parking garage does in stimulating
economic development in Altona. Is that
really what the purpose of it is? Yet
that is where the REDI money came from.
We
were hopeful that the Minister of Finance would take this opportunity of a
lifetime, because I think he did have some public support. I think he did have some public understanding
that economic times were tough and that tough decisions had to be made, but I
think he failed to be fair and he failed to be equitable. He has lost a great deal of that good will,
and that has been truly unfortunate, because they recognize that we have seen a
budget carved out on the backs of the poor.
They recognize that golf courses and snowmobile trails will still be
supported, unfortunately, by this government for their affluent friends, that
services to the vulnerable have been cut or eliminated.
I
want to end with this. I am particularly
concerned about our greater and greater dependence upon lottery revenues. You know, if one sits and watches television
just occasionally, one cannot help but get an ad which encourages people to buy
lottery tickets, encourages people to go to gambling casinos, encourages people
to spend on the VLTs. I do not think we
fully understand, first of all, that it tends to be those who have the least
who spend money in these areas, but we also fail to understand the long‑term
social impact of the encouragement of people to spend their money this way.
* (1510)
I
will be honest. I have never been in the
Hon. Harry Enns
(Minister of Natural Resources): And
outside of this province.
Mrs. Carstairs: Well, you know, the Minister of Natural
Resources (Mr. Enns) says, outside of this province as well. [interjection]
Yes, it is big time, but I would suggest to the minister that there are many
more millions that are being spent in this province by Manitobans on gambling
than they ever took out of this province to gamble‑‑many more
millions.
The
problem is that it is destroying the fabric of society. I mean you have to be
concerned, all of us, when you hear from the RCMP that people have left suicide
notes and attributed their suicide to playing VLTs.
Hon. Albert Driedger
(Minister of Highways and Transportation): How many cases?
Mrs. Carstairs: I do not care how many it is, to the Minister of
Highways (Mr. Driedger). One is enough
for me. Two is too many for me. I mean surely, as people, and I do not blame
the Tories for this because all kinds of governments are getting into it, but
surely as a society we have to examine why it is we are doing this, why it is
that we are encouraging people to take money from often their children, food
and clothing needs of their children, to play VLTs and to gamble in casinos.
I
have to wonder whether we as a government should be encouraging it, whether we
as a government‑‑I say we, meaning all of us, all 57 of us together‑‑should
be doing this and whether we should not really seriously be looking at the long‑term
implications and not just the short‑term money. We are becoming more and more dependent, and
the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) know this, on those revenues, that it is
going to be almost impossible to reduce them.
We
think that, unfortunately, this government has chosen to be remembered as dream
weavers because that is what those ads represent to me‑‑dream
weaving, freedom. Freedom. If you win a lottery‑‑freedom. That is not where freedom comes from. Freedom comes from within.
Therefore, I move, seconded by the member for
Crescentwood (Ms. Gray), that the amendment be amended by adding thereto the
following words:
And
further regrets that
(a)
this government has failed to adequately invest in the education and training of Manitobans as
witnessed by the cuts to student social
allowances, to university funding, to
the advanced education and skills training
division;
(b)
this government has failed to address the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable members of our
society by cutting speech pathologists
and hearing clinicians for children with
special needs, by requiring parents who
require subsidized daycare to pay more than they can afford, by raising nursing home resident
fees, by reducing payments to foster
families, by reducing dental, optical
and pharmaceutical benefits to social
assistance recipients, by cutting funding to friendship centres;
(c)
this government has failed to ensure the universality of the medicare system by introducing user fees
for clients under the home care plan, by
placing a cap on medical fees and by
discontinuing the treatment portion of
Children's Dental services; and
(d)
this government continues to obfuscate the government's financial statements with its continued use
of the Fiscal Stabilization plan.
Motion presented.
Hon. Glen Cummings
(Minister of Environment): Madam Deputy Speaker,
sitting here for the last day and a half and listening to the addresses of the
two Leaders of the opposition‑‑
An Honourable
Member: How you have suffered.
Mr. Cummings: ‑‑and how I suffered, that is
right, how I suffered.
I
have to say that again it has been reconfirmed that neither of the opposition
parties has the faintest idea of what some alternatives might be as to how to
deal with the financial situation of this province.
We
have seen a long litany of complaints not only from the leader of the official
opposition but, just listening through the speech of the Leader of the Second
Opposition, she presented a very compassionate and caring point of view and was
worried about the future and the sensitivity of government decisions, but she
should not assume, nor should the official opposition assume, that there is any
less compassion on these benches or that there is any less concern about those
who are vulnerable in society or that there is any less willingness on this
side to take care of those individuals in our society and make sure that they
are looked after when they cannot fend for themselves.
Madam
Deputy Speaker, when the community of Manitoba points the finger, looks
somewhere to point the finger as to why these decisions have to be made, the
decision is going to have to be to point the finger to those members opposite
who have contributed massively to the amassing of a deficit in this province
that now drives us to making these kinds of decisions.
Now
I am sure that if they had thought that the economy of the country, the economy
of the world, as a matter of fact, was going to be impacted by some of the
things that happened on a global basis, they would have started making some
changes when they had the opportunity to do so, but they did not see that
coming. They continued to borrow, as did
federal governments, as did all sorts of other governments across the country,
as a matter of fact, across the world.
Madam Deputy Speaker, when we look at the debt
that we have amassed over the last 10 years in this province, governments have
been doing very much what society itself was doing, which was to borrow against
inflation. I would think there are a
good number of us in this room who at one time or another have made a few
dollars on inflation when there was consistently a growth year over year in the
values of items for sale for items of our‑‑[interjection] Well,
yes, I am sure the member for St. Boniface (Mr. Gaudry) wants to hear
this. I better get a little closer to my
mike.
* (1520)
In
amassing the kind of debt that we did, inflation was driving it and it was
driving inflation. We have all heard
lots of discussion in this House about where that has led us. But, when we talk about protecting the future
of the young people of this country then I think we have to really put it into
perspective, because I agree that there are decisions that we made that we
would rather not have had to have made.
Frankly, whether it was when the years when the members opposite and
their party were governing this province or even in the first years of our
mandate, if we had been able to deal with the debt more aggressively we would
not have been faced today with as dramatic decisions as we are being faced
with.
We
should never suggest that dealing aggressively with the financial problems that
face this province, that face this country, are not important or that they do
not need to be dealt with sensitively.
Then we are simply burying our heads in the sand. [interjection] Well,
the member for Dauphin (Mr. Plohman) says, sensibly and fairly. I challenge him. I challenge him to present the alternatives,
Madam Deputy Speaker. What idea has he
got, the bereft of ideas from the time they were thrown out of government. In this House, they cannot credibly present
an alternative to the type of decisions that are being made.
Madam Deputy Speaker, a number of people point
to our great neighbour to the South, and they will say, look at the economic
situation there. Look at what President
Clinton is going to do. The fact is that the Americans have not yet faced the
kind of tax load that we have in this province.
Those who would suggest that following the route they are going to have
to follow over the next short while as an example to governments here forget
that they have all sorts of taxation room that the people in this country have
already been subjected to. We only need
to look at gasoline prices as a shining example of the difference in the
pressures that are on their economies and their taxation system as opposed to
this country. [interjection]
The
member opposite, inadvertently, has pointed to one of the most important and
crucial decisions that we have made in this budget. That is to make sure the very fabric of this
province that the Leader of the Second Opposition (Mrs. Carstairs) wanted to
talk about is protected in terms of our health care, is protected in terms of
the basic responsibilities that we have to the less fortunate in this society.
His
idea of protecting that is to use a phrase that my colleague from Portage la
Prairie coined not very long ago, and that is a fiscal child abuse, because
what we are doing is imposing on the future generations of this province the
lack of access to programs that we have been privileged to enjoy for the last
25 years in this province. [interjection]
Madam Deputy Speaker, I am not sure what the
member for Crescentwood (Ms. Gray) was saying.
It seems to me that her Leader just spent a fair bit of time expressing
her concern, pointing to areas that she felt should have been handled
differently. She expressed her concerns
in terms of her priorities.
I invite
the opposition to challenge us on what they see as the priorities. If they are so bold as to do that, let them
lay out some alternatives. There has not
been one reasonable alternative come from that side of the House, not one. I listened carefully. There was not one reasonable alternative that
was presented by the second opposition, not one. I am a little hard of hearing on one side but
I heard every word almost that the member for‑‑
An Honourable Member: Almost.
Mr. Cummings: Well, yes.
One occasionally lets his mind drift during the middle of a 40‑minute
presentation.
Madam Deputy Speaker, we have seen some rather
interesting turns of events in this House since the budget has been
presented. Over the last number of
weeks, when some of the rather difficult decisions we have had to make have
been presented to the public, we have seen the spectacle of members opposite
standing up. In one particular case, the
member representing Flin Flon talking about wanting to bring forth concerns
about protecting the basic infrastructure and the economy of this province at a
time when literally millions are being spent and being supported by this
government to make sure that the mining industry in northern Manitoba has an
infrastructure of which to ship to for their smelting activities and, at the
same time, saying that we are not protecting the economic infrastructure.
At
the same time, ever since we came into government‑‑and the member
for Dauphin (Mr. Plohman) will want to praise us for this. If he looks back over all of the previous
budgets to this one, we have protected the rate of growth and cost for
education, health and social services.
Every one of them have grown at a rate that far exceeds inflation. Every one of them have been protected for the
people of this province. He is unwilling
or unable‑‑and that is more likely the case‑‑to
recognize that the reality is that we now have to deal with the real
responsibility of what continuing and burgeoning deficits can do.
A
very simple analogy, Madam Deputy Speaker, is that every time there is a half‑a‑million‑dollar
deficit in this province‑‑
An Honourable Member: Half a billion.
Mr. Cummings: ‑‑half a billion, another $50
million worth of expenditures is added annually to the bottom line of the budget
of this province. Fifty million is five
times the cost of running the Department of Environment, Madam Deputy
Speaker. I am really disappointed. I thought maybe the Environment critic for
the official opposition or for the Liberal Party would want to discuss in some
portion of this debate what is happening in terms of dealing with environmental
issues in this province. They are afraid to realize that this government has
struck a balance and they will have to explain to their electorate what it is that
they would do differently. Certainly
their Leaders have not yet shown what that route is other than to increase the
deficit.
Madam Deputy Speaker, what would they do? Would they completely eliminate the
Department of Natural Resources? I doubt
it. Would they completely eliminate the
Department of Justice? Of course they
would not. They have to start making
some important choices, and as we see some economic strength return to the
province of Manitoba and to other provinces across this country, then we can
begin to deal with what is the ongoing cost of carrying the debt.
I
look around and I have one piece of information that I have garnered over the
last couple of years, what I think demonstrates rather dramatically what
happens to a province such as ours when we allow the debt to grow, when we
borrow indiscriminately and when we do not recognize what the worldwide impacts
are on the cost of the bottom line of this province.
You
know, the member for Dauphin (Mr. Plohman) was in cabinet‑‑I am not
sure if he was a member of the Treasury Board‑‑when some of the
loans were floated in Japanese yen. The
member for Dauphin, I am sure‑‑I know he was part of the government
and I suspect he was part of the decision‑‑when at one time the
Province of Manitoba borrowed money in Japanese yen. When we came into
government and subsequently began to face the real costs of paying some of
these loans, we realized that all of a sudden that someone over there had not
contemplated what would happen when the value of the Canadian dollar changes or
the value of the foreign currency begins to increase. [interjection] Well, he
may be proud of the fact that he was spreading it around, but does he know what
he was spreading around? I think not
because by the time we were able to pay off that loan, we were paying the
equivalent of 28 percent interest, and he is proud of that record?
* (1530)
An Honourable Member: That is spreading it around?
Mr. Cummings: He may have been spreading it around, but in
that spreading were the blood, sweat and tears of the people of this
province. Madam Deputy Speaker, the
member for Dauphin is getting a little uneasy about having this type of
information put on the record, but if he was half as smart as he would like to
portray himself, he would have realized that they should be more conscientious
about recognizing what they did to this province during those inflationary
years leaving us with a debt that is now driving us to these decisions.
[interjection]
The
member for Dauphin (Mr. Plohman) says add it all up and average it. What he does not recognize is exactly the
point that I have been trying to make and that is that he will not contemplate
the fact that Manitoba is part of a worldwide economy and the decisions we are
being driven to make today are as a result of occurrences in financial markets
here and around the world, not only financial markets but the real markets of
the trading of goods and the growth of societies around the world.
Madam Deputy Speaker, it is very well and good
to talk about that general picture and where do we go, but we have to here, day
to day, make the decisions that will put this province in the best position to
deal with those problems and to put us in a proper footing for going forward in
the future. In dealing with that, there
are very few options that go beyond reasonable levels of intelligence. Now I am not so sure how that reflects on the
previous administration but, if they wish to listen for a sec, let us talk
about alternate forms of income.
We
have the members opposite violently opposed to VLTs and, in many respects,
putting forward arguments that they expect members of society want them to put
forward but, when we have that money now to put against the deficit, all of a
sudden they are saying, well, that is not the priority of where it should be
put. It should be put into other
decisions.
Every one of the decisions‑‑[interjection]
Well, I cannot put on record what is being said around here, Madam Deputy
Speaker, but I guess I have managed to either bore or drive out a number of
members who are not of the party of the government.
As
a representative of a rural riding, Madam Deputy Speaker, I hear a lot of
people saying that rural
Madam Deputy Speaker, when I talk to my
friends, my colleagues in rural
The
$50 million that that costs the government annually was the cost of being able
to make sure that industry was stabilized, not the cattle industry
specifically, not the hog industry specifically, but the rural agricultural
cultivated acreage that we have in this province. The people who are the tenants and the owners
of those lands were able to look with some confidence to their banker and re‑establish
themselves in a changed world situation.
That is the kind of discussion that there has
not been one member of the opposition who has been willing to enter into
discussion on‑‑not one. They
may criticize whether or not the payment is sufficient on a particular class of
land. They may criticize whether or not
the payment is sufficient north of a certain line in the province, but not one
of them wants to enter into the debate about whether or not this has meant
anything to the stability of the economy of this province.
It
is only an example of how rural
Madam Deputy Speaker, we look at the
initiatives. The members opposite are
quite anxious to point to the Economic Development Board, point to the Economic
Committee of Cabinet, and they say, what are we accomplishing? Where are we going? I suggest they have the blinders on about the
things that are occurring in this province, just the same as they had about the
implementation of GRIP in this province.
Madam Deputy Speaker, again, I ask, where are
the alternatives that the opposition is prepared to present? Where are the alternatives? The member for Dauphin (Mr. Plohman) says he
is going to go out to McCreary next week and use my name in vain and point to
the things that I should be doing on behalf of that part of the province. I would challenge him to provide the whole
list of what we are doing for this province, not a selective reading, as he is
prone to do.
I
digress, but I have to acknowledge that we had a little fun at his expense in
Madam Deputy Speaker, broadly viewed, I am
very concerned about the type of criticism and publicity that the members
opposite would like to levy against what I believe has been a budget that is
characterized by fairness and equity. [interjection] The member for Dauphin
says, well, you have 20 minutes left.
Perhaps he would like me to point out a number of the other
discretionary areas that he has been unwilling to deal with.
When government is faced with decision making
that has reached the point of where the income that government can expect to
receive is not growing at the rate which we, in this society, have been used to
finding in our wallets, if you will, at the end of the day, finding in the
coffers of the province, then the setting of priorities and the choosing of
particular approaches to delivery of service is more than a challenge in terms
of what programs will be delivered and what programs cannot be delivered. It is also a challenge of how you fairly
manage the programs that do continue. [interjection]
Madam Deputy Speaker, the constant twitting of
the member for Dauphin does not provide much enlightenment for the people of
* (1540)
When I compare what has happened in this
province to what is happening in the province to the west, which is presently
being administered by the NDP party, and the decisions that they are making as
a result of the agricultural catastrophe that has come down around their ears,
they are being compounded beyond belief. The members of this province who are
involved in the industry that I am talking about are in far better position to
deal with the problems that they are facing with their bankers than the members
to the west will be under what is presumably a caring and sharing NDP
administration.
Madam Deputy Speaker, when the people in the
That was the comment of the lady who works in
the daycare program. She said there is
nothing but despair. Nothing but
despair. That is what happens when the
budget does get out of control. [interjection] The member opposite says that is
the legacy of the previous government.
Of course, it is. I did not just
fall off a turnip truck. I am talking
about the debt of these provinces and what happens when you do not deal with
it.
Madam Deputy Speaker, before I step on my
notes here‑‑[interjection] When he fell off the truck, he got run
over. Is that what happened?
This government, this province has put a lot
of money, more money on a percentage basis than any other government in
All
they have to do is look at the larger picture and they will see. They will clearly see that the much needed
basis of infrastructure is being maintained in this province, and it will be to
their chagrin, Madam Deputy Speaker, their chagrin in the long run that this
government has done a better job of protecting those services than any
government in the recent history of this province. I stand by that comment.
Again, Madam Deputy Speaker, I have spent some
considerable amount of time working with people in the services to the mentally
handicapped, community service groups, and they all acknowledge that if the
dollars have to be saved, if the dollars have to be put to priority use, they
will acknowledge that they have to go into the area of service. They need not go into the service of
lobbying; they need not go into the service of broad structure to support a
lobbying group across the province. The
dollars have to be prioritized for the service of those who need it the most.
They will question and they will argue and
they will yell and they will shout and they will complain about whether or not
we chose those priorities correctly or whether we added enough or whether we
subtracted too much, but at the end of the day the people of this province will
acknowledge that the services that are in place in this province, the ones that
the people of this province truly value and want protected, will be protected
for the future generation.
I
take some considerable umbrage at the comments that came from the second
opposition today during Question Period about equating of dollars with
educational opportunity. Having spent a
number of years working with the educational community as a trustee, I believe
that people of this province do not necessarily equate, nor should any of us
necessarily equate, the quality of education with the volume of dollars that is
attached to it. There is not one teacher
in my acquaintance that would not acknowledge that the job they do is more
directly related to the support they get in terms of the backing of decisions
that they make, in terms of the support that they get from the community, in
terms of the support they get from the administration on the decisions they
make‑‑there is not one teacher of my acquaintance that would not
acknowledge that this is what makes the most difference in how effective they
are in teaching the children in today's schools. The efficacy of today's schools is‑‑
An Honourable Member: How about if they put 40 kids per
classroom? Does that have an effect?
Mr. Cummings: The member opposite says, what happens when
you have 40 kids in the classroom? Madam
Deputy Speaker, the support systems through the schools need to be in
place. The teachers need to know that
they are important to society. They need
to know that they are important to the parents whose children they are
teaching. They need to know that they
are important to the community in which they are working, but they do not
equate that with the bottom line that they get in their pay cheque every
day. They equate that with their
dedication to their job.
Not
for one moment would I suggest that they should work for free, but I would
never accept the argument that the member opposite puts forward, that if the
teachers do not receive an increase in pay every year that they will not
continue to provide the services to the children in the classroom. I have far too much respect for the teachers
of this province to even entertain that type of an argument. [interjection]
The
member for Dauphin (Mr. Plohman) says, cut their wages and see how their morale
is. That may be the way in which he
wants to portray it to the public. I have
talked to a number of people in the educational community. I have talked to friends and acquaintances
who are totally dedicated to the service of the educational people of this
community, and they will indicate that we all have to be part of the solution
on how we deal with the problems of this province.
If
the educational community are not the leaders in how we deal with those
problems, then we will have even more problems in our society in dealing with
it in the long run. Their thinking,
their advice, their leadership is needed and cherished every bit as much as
anyone else in this society, and the reflection that the member opposite puts
forward on how teachers view some of the decisions that have been made is a
total misrepresentation of the value and the quality of the people we have out
there in the trenches and the job that they are doing. The messenger is over there. The message that I am getting coming directly
from the teachers is the opposite to the one that he is trying to portray.
Madam Deputy Speaker, the same thing is true
in the Civil Service. The same thing is
true in the health care field. The same
thing is true in all levels of responsibility in our community.
I
continue to meet people day after day after day who are saying, we want to be
part of the solution. Contrary to the
vision of the people opposite who are busy portraying everyone out there as
being opposed to having some solutions to the direction of this province and
how we will manage affairs in this province, day after day, I hear people
saying, what can I do in order to make this work better?
It
is very interesting that I have, on a continuing and ongoing basis, members of
the staff in my own particular department saying that they believe that this
has been a fair and equitable way to deal with some cost containment in the
department, and they are prepared‑‑[interjection] Well, if the
members opposite are referring to these people as looking for promotions, I
think that was the implication of one of the comments over there‑‑a
complete misrepresentation of the attitude of the public, and they are the ones
who will pay the price. They will pay the price because they do not understand
the depth of understanding and knowledge that is in the public.
* (1550)
The
public recognizes with a greater sense of reality and urgency what needs to be
done in this province as opposed to those who sit over there with their heads
under their desk.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I heard the word
"scapegoat" being thrown out over there. Obviously, the selective thinking of the
members opposite is not going to be receptive to the idea that there are a
large percentage of people in this society who recognize that the protection of
what is good in this society is more important every day when we see what is
happening around the world. If we do not
protect what is good in this society against the ravages of interest and the
ongoing cost of the debt that we have had, then I will not be able to look my
grandchildren in the eye when they come back to me and say, you had an
opportunity to do something about it, old man.
Why did you not take the opportunity?
The
members opposite had the opportunity and they squandered it. They threw it away. They ignored the reality of the world they
were living in. They have buried their
heads in the sand and refused to accept reality.
When we look at the concerns of people across
the province, they are parallel to the concerns of the people across the
country.
Madam Deputy Speaker, the member opposite says
we have done worse. Well, I think the
one thing he has forgotten is if you look at the tax levels in a number of
other countries, you see the results of not dealing with the issue, and you can
point very simply to the GST. You may
not like the GST. You may resent
it. You may not like the administration,
but there are a number of countries out there where the GST equivalent is 20
percent, 21 percent, 23 percent. Do they
not read? Do they not look at the larger
picture? Do they not know that this is
what has had to occur in other countries?
They only believe that we can continue selling
our raw materials and our natural resources until they are gone. Well, we cannot continue on that route any
longer. We need to be able to develop a
society that is not just dependent on our raw materials and our natural
resources, but is dependent on the intelligence, the ingenuity and the
resourcefulness of the people who live there.
That is what we need to do when we look at the budgets of this
country. We have to have confidence in
the people that are resident in this country and what they will do with an
opportunity. We have to create those
opportunities by not strangling them with more taxes.
More taxes will simply put them in a position
where they will, as they began to do under the increasing taxation regime that
they see in some parts of this country, they begin to say, why should I
care? Why should they care?
Madam Deputy Speaker, looking at the economic
opportunities that our young people are going to be faced with, and I know it
is hard to talk even to my own children about the fact that they have to manage
their affairs and husband their resources for future requirements, but,
nevertheless, they are ready to accept the challenge to deal with that.
The
educational opportunities in this province are enormous. When the members
opposite talk about what is happening in terms of educational opportunities,
particularly in our community colleges, and they point to statistics that seem
to indicate something other than what is really happening‑‑they
point to statistics that say something different than what is really happening,
and they say, look, you have gutted the community colleges. That is what the member for Dauphin (Mr.
Plohman) just said.
That is what the member for Dauphin says, and
if he believes that, then he is going to be the laughing stock of the
constituency of Dauphin, because that is the exact opposite of what is
happening. The people who are looking at
the community colleges for challenges and for opportunities for their young
people are finding that the courses that are available now are the courses they
need, the courses that are relevant to the future of this province, relevant to
the future of the young people who want to go forward and earn a living and be
contributors to this society, and they are now having an opportunity to get the
type of education that is relevant.
After all, Madam Deputy Speaker, we were
faced, believe it or not, with a situation where there were welding instructors
on staff who did not have classes. There
were hairdressing instructors on staff who did not have classes, so we were out
selling the fact that we needed more people in particular classes because we
had room there. That was being driven by
the availability of staff more than it was by the demand for the job. That is the balance that needs to be
struck. That is the difference that the
people of
I
pointed to the agricultural industry and the fact that they now are pointing to
some strength. I can sleep soundly at
night because I know that the decisions that we put into this budget, every one
of them was canvassed carefully. It was
canvassed with a view of making sure that the basic and needed infrastructure
was protected, and I believe the people in this province will accept this
budget.
Thank you.
Mr. Doug Martindale
(Burrows): Madam Deputy Speaker, as I rise to speak today
I would like to begin with the Bible and then move on to the budget and apply
some of the insights from the Biblical passages to this budget. I am doing so in response to a quotation that
the member for
It
is interesting that they chose the revised standard version that was translated
initially in 1881. I would prefer to use
the Jerusalem Bible of 1966 which says:
"The wise man's heart leads him aright, the fool's heart leads him
astray," or the new translation of the Bible by James Moffat of 1926 which
says: "A wise man's sense will keep
him right: a fool's mind leads him
wrong," or today's English version which is much more recent: "It is natural for a wise man to do the
right thing and for a fool to do the wrong thing."
I
just happen to have the King James version with me as well: "A wise man's heart is at his right
hand; but a fool's heart is at his left."
What we really need here is some exegesis so
that the members opposite can understand the true meaning of this passage, not
the surface meaning that they would like to convey to us. The author of Ecclesiastes observes that the
sage's understanding tends to a favourable outcome in contrast to the fool
whose inner disposition brings ruin.
This chapter praises wisdom over folly, and there are many more proverbs
in this passage which recognize the superiority of wisdom. The author does not intend to teach that
there is a physiological difference in the body of fools and wise people,
rather he refers to their conduct.
* (1600)
The
fool believes that everyone he meets on the road is a fool. That is another proverb from
Ecclesiastes. Verse 12 says: "The words of a wise man's mouth win him
favour, but the lips of a fool consume him." Ecclesiastes 9, verses 17 and 18: "The
words of the wise heard in quiet are better than the shouting of a ruler among
fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of
war, but one sinner destroys much good."
Socrates who lived from approximately 470 to
399 B.C. said: "The beginning of wisdom is the definition of
terms." Well, how do we define
wisdom and how did Ecclesiastes define wisdom? Well, wisdom to the Hebrews is
superior to mere knowledge for it includes also knowledge in conduct, ethical
and religious. Wisdom in Ecclesiastes means the need for wisdom in social and
religious affairs. Wisdom is defined as
that faculty of common sense that enables one to distinguish between what is to
one's advantage and what is harmful.
Well, let us apply this to the budget and ask
ourselves, what is it about this budget that is to one's advantage and what is
it that is harmful? What is good about
this budget and what is harmful? I would
like to do that in the context of my constituents in Burrows and apply it to
the people whom I represent here. I
would like to do that in a number of categories. [interjection] The member for
Emerson (Mr. Penner) is encouraging me to do this honestly and I will. I would like to talk about how this budget
applies to taxpayers, to the unemployed, to seniors, to children and students,
and then wind up with some conclusions.
First of all, the vast majority of my
constituents in Burrows are certainly taxpayers. In spite of the fact that there are large
numbers of poor people, and poor people are over‑represented in the
constituency of Burrows, I am sure that the vast majority pay taxes. In fact, as a result of the Minister of
Finance's (Mr. Manness) budget, more people are going to be taxed rather then
fewer, in spite of the fact that many of them are low‑income people.
Why
is that? Well, the reason is that we
have numerous tax increases, and all one has to do is to look at the minister's
Estimates of Revenue of the
Speaking of wisdom and folly, I think there is
great folly in depending on revenue from lotteries for the government, because
we know that, although now it is increasing, it is not dependable, that if the
recession gets worse, if the economy gets worse and people do not have money,
the revenue the minister is counting on could easily decline.
We
also know that it is folly for a number of other reasons. We know that the
Minister of Family Services (Mr. Gilleshammer) and the Minister of Finance (Mr.
Manness) are aware of the fact that families are spending money on lotteries
and on gambling of different kinds and, as a result, having to come back to
social assistance workers for a second issue or for emergency monies, because
they have spent their money on gambling.
In
spite of that, this government is encouraging it by building two bingo palaces,
for example, in the city of Winnipeg, which is surely going to make playing
bingo even more attractive than it is now and more attractive to people who
cannot afford it. I think in the long
run that is folly.
This government has said many, many things
about taxation, and I would just like to quote some of them. For example, on April 8, 1988: Eventually the Tories would be able to
eliminate other punitive provincial taxes, Mr. Filmon told the business group.
August 22, 1988: During the most recent election campaign, we
promised Manitobans that we would not increase their personal income taxes for
at least four years‑‑Premier Filmon.
June 9, 1989:
Because we have shown our confidence in the private sector, they are
responding with the kinds of full‑time jobs that we must have‑‑Premier
Filmon.
Election campaign, Leaders' debate, August
'90: Our commitment is to not raise
taxes‑‑Premier Filmon, another promise broken.
September 3, 1990, rainy day fund: We are ensuring that revenue shortfalls are
not made up at the expense of health care or through increased taxes to
Manitobans‑‑Premier Filmon, two more promises broken.
In
fact this government is raising revenue through health care fees, direct fees
and through increasing taxes to Manitobans.
Two promises broken in one sentence.
Throne speech response after majority, October
23, 1990, quote: We have had growth
levels in both investment and in actual growth that are amongst the highest in
the country. That has happened as a
result of changes that we have been making.
We will continue to make changes to keep taxes down to ensure that our
deficit is no higher than it needs to be‑‑Premier Filmon, another
promise broken.
Promise on taxes and budget response, November
1, 1990, quote: I am particularly proud
that once again we were able to avoid any increase in personal income taxes
this year in the budget. I am committed
to fulfill our pledge to keep taxes down throughout our term in
government. We intend to keep that
promise‑‑Premier Filmon, another promise broken.
March 8, 1991:
The long term is that we have got to keep the deficit down and keep
taxes down so the economy can recover and grow strong again‑‑Premier
Filmon.
An Honourable Member: Did they go down?
Mr. Martindale: Did the deficit go down? No, the deficit went up every year. Did they keep taxes down? No. Revenue
is increasing from taxes, and the number and the variety of taxes are
increasing, and the number of people they apply to are being broadened, and
that the economy can recover. Is the
economy recovering? No.
March 11, 1991: We will work with the opposition parties to
keep taxes down and to keep the deficit down so that we can indeed be an
attractive climate in which to have investment and job creation in the future‑‑Premier
Filmon.
Have they kept the deficit down? No. Is
this an attractive climate for investment and job creation? Well, it might be an attractive climate, but
they are not doing anything about the governmental role and responsibility in
job creation or investment.
March 19, 1991: Mr. Speaker, we are going to do everything in
our power to keep taxes down in this province, because we believe that is the
way this province will grow, and over the past three years we have made steady
progress in improving our province's finances.
Who said that? Premier
Filmon. Have they kept taxes down? No.
April 25, 1991: This province cannot bear any more taxes. Who
said that? Premier Filmon. Did they keep that promise? No. We recognize that the first thing government
wants to do to encourage economic growth is to step aside, get out of the way
and let the people who really take risks and make investments do their thing‑‑Premier
Filmon. Are they stepping aside? Yes.
Are they doing nothing? Yes. Are people taking risks and investing in
December
17, 1991: We decided at that time, 1988,
that the best thing we could do was to make the economy more competitive by
getting us out as much as possible of these deficits and, as well, starting to
work on the taxation side‑‑Premier Filmon. Well, is the economy
more competitive and are deficits going down?
No, the deficits are going up.
Filmon's last budget speech, March 20,
1992: Manitobans know that what we are
doing by consistent, by relevant policy matters, by keeping the taxes down, the
deficit down, and building a stronger foundation, will position us better for
the economic recovery and the growth that we know will happen. Well, I guess it was not short‑term
growth from '92 to '93. Did they keep
taxes down? No, they raised taxes. Did they decrease the deficit? No, the deficit went up. Gee, the same day we have got three or four
quotes here.
At
the Conservative convention Premier Filmon said: And despite the short‑term pain, all
Manitobans are better off.
The
Filmon government strategy has been simple.
By keeping taxes down and controlling the deficit, the investment would
grow and growth would be created. That
is their strategy. Has it worked? No.
I
found a wonderful quotation in the Parliamentarian about budget debate in
* (1610)
I
regret that the member at
The
member says that his expenditure forecasts are right on. Well, we are glad to
hear that. In fact, one of the things
that this minister has been projecting is great increases in social assistance,
and every year those projections come pretty close to the mark because every
year more and more people are on provincial social assistance and, indeed, the
costs do go up and up and up.
So
what is happening to taxpayers in Burrows constituency and, indeed, to all
taxpayers? Almost everything that I am
talking about here in terms of taxpayers, the unemployed, seniors, children,
students, applies to those people, regardless of where they live in
Secondly, I would like to talk about the
unemployed and the lack of job creation on the part of this government. Recently, there was a church and community
inquiry into unemployment. One of my
constituents presented a brief to this inquiry on February 25, 1993. This was a very interesting person, because
this is someone who was gainfully employed, someone who worked for a major
grain company in
She
went back to school. She was
unsuccessful in getting the career position she wanted and ended up in 1991 on
social assistance. One of the programs
that she took part in which I think this Minister of Family Services (Mr.
Gilleshammer) should force the City of
People are doing things like cleaning
houses. I am told by the people who have
been working in this community home services program that there is no training,
that they are sent out to an address and told this is what you are going to be
doing. I think that is really exploiting
the poor and in this case people who want to work, people who are on city
social assistance who would rather be out cleaning houses than sitting at home
feeling sorry for themselves.
I
would like to raise this in Family Services Estimates and ask the minister what
he thinks of this program which I think is taking advantage of social
assistance recipients and see if there is anything that this minister can do
about it. After all, he has the ability
to standardize social assistance rates and cut off benefits for people on city
social assistance; thereby, perhaps he can have some influence in making
improvement to a program instead of passing regressive legislation. Well, the very least that they should do is
raise it to the minimum wage.
My
constituent who presented this brief, Donna Ansell, says, "I have gone
through a gamut of emotions in the past couple of years." I wanted to use her brief to point out how
people feel when they are unemployed.
She
says of her emotions, "They have been disbelief, envy, anger and
frustration just to name a few. Right
now the biggest problem that I am having is realizing that there is nothing
wrong with me and that I am not stupid, uneducated et cetera.
"I am not going to apologize for sounding
cynical, because I am."
We
have a large number of people in Burrows constituency and across
In
fact, I have had people call me about some of their attempts to find
employment. Someone phoned me and said
they were applying to be a lineman. I
cannot remember if this was with MTS or Manitoba Hydro, but they found out that
150 people applied for six positions.
Thirty of them were interviewed. This individual was not hired because
he already had an electrician's certificate so he felt that he was
overqualified and therefore turned down.
I was told that the Lotteries commission advertised for part‑time
evening and weekend jobs at the new bingo palaces and had 5,000 applicants‑‑5,000
applicants for positions at a bingo palace, probably unskilled jobs.
There are many, many people out there who want
to work and do not have the opportunity and, yet, what do we see in this
budget? We see almost no references to
jobs, no references to job creation and no initiatives by this government in
terms of direct job creation. That is
one of the reasons why the Leader of the official opposition has said in his
amendment that we regret that this government's inaction on job creation means
more hardship for many thousands of
I
believe that this government is undertaking regressive measures which are
actually going to increase the number of people who are unemployed and make
them less employable in the future.
The
best example of that is the elimination of the student social allowance
program. I understand that the students,
when they enroll in this program, who are on social assistance and then have
been part of the student social allowance program, their income is $30 less
when they are going to school than on social assistance. Why would this government eliminate a program
which is actually cheaper than having people on social assistance?‑‑unless
of course it is to offload it to the City of Winnipeg, because what is going to
happen is that if they cannot somehow afford to continue going to school they
will apply for city social assistance.
The rules are that if you are on city social assistance, you cannot be going
to school. The reason for that is that
on city social assistance, you must be available for work and looking for work,
and you cannot go to school and be looking for work at the same time.
It
is a very regressive measure, and why are they doing it when this program is
cheaper in terms of the amount of money given to individuals than it would be
if they were getting social assistance?
I think the only reason could be that they are offloading it to the City
of
Well, we heard this same kind of argument from
the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Mrs. McIntosh) yesterday or the
day before. I think that argument does
not hold water, because it is next to impossible to either get three jobs to
put oneself through school or to earn enough money from part‑time jobs to
put yourself through school if you are a full‑time student, because (a)
the jobs are not there, and (b) they do not pay well enough to put yourself
through. As my colleague from Radisson
(Ms. Cerilli) points out, the tuition fees were much cheaper when some of us
were in university.
* (1620)
Next, I would like to talk about the
implication on seniors in Burrows constituency and elsewhere. I believe this is the biggest single hit in
this budget and probably the most regressive facet of this budget, and that is
the changes to the property tax credit.
There is a change of $75, but there is also a change so that the
minimum, instead of being $100, is $250. Now there are many people in my
constituency who are only paying $100 in property taxes, and they are
immediately going to be paying $250.
(Mr. Speaker in the Chair)
This is not something that is income
tested. This is something that is going
to hit them regardless of their income. We are really talking about people on
fixed incomes, many of whom are people who have paid off their mortgages and,
for some of them, their only source of income is old age security and the
guaranteed income supplement, especially when it comes to widows who may not be
getting any other kind of pension income.
We believe this is going to hit thousands of people, and it is going to
affect them adversely.
The
second program that is adversely going to affect seniors are the changes to
home care and the new health care fees that are a result of this budget. People may not realize that this is happening
to them today or it is happening to their neighbours today, but when they get
sick and when they receive the services of home care, then they will find out
about these new user fees.
Some of them are hidden. Some of them, for example, will be the cost
of installing equipment. For example, if
you install bars beside a bathtub or a toilet, you are going to have to hire
somebody. It might cost you $150 to
install those bars. That is not the kind
of thing that this government is talking about, but that is the kind of charge,
that is the kind of heath care user fee that our constituents are going to be
faced with, and many of them cannot afford this. This is going to be a hardship for them.
Next, I would like to talk about the effects
on children, because I believe there are many, many effects on children. Of course, we are already aware of some of
these because many of those regressive measures were already announced in the
Family Services Estimates. So, for
example, we see increases in child care fees, an additional fee levied on
children.
This government talks a lot about sharing the
pain and about tough decisions, but they do not consider anyone's ability to
pay. Many of these increases apply
across the board to everyone. If someone
is on social allowance, where are they going to get the money? If they are a student going to university, where
are they going to get the money? We know
what is going to happen. They are going
to drop out.
Now, maybe that is this government's
goal. I do not think that many of the
members in this cabinet believe in child care, so they probably do not care if
children are forced to drop out. I think there is a total lack of analysis in
these budget decisions. I do not think
they studied the effects on children. I do not think they studied the effects
on parents who are employed. I do not
think they studied the effects on parents who are in university, to see what
the effect would be of increasing a fee, because if they did, they would find
out that the effect is certainly going to be that parents are going to withdraw
their children. Some of them, therefore,
will not be able to continue being employed, and some of them will not continue
going to university.
So
this government would rather pay people to stay home and collect social
assistance than pay them to be in the workforce or pay them to be in
university. That is what they are saying
to these people. We do not care if you
stay home and collect welfare. We would
rather have you do that, because maybe it is cheaper, I do not know.
The
parents are saying, we realize that education is the key to our future. We want to stay in university or community
college or a private business college, because we know that is our key to
getting a better job and being self‑supporting and getting off these
subsidies. This government does not
really believe in that, so they increased the fees. People will take their kids out, and they
will drop out of university or out of community college or out of a private
college.
I
have been getting phone calls from parents in all three. Instead, they will sit
at home and many of them will not be able to get jobs, and they will be on
social assistance. The people who are
working part time, which is a growing segment of our population, putting their
children in child care part time, if they have to withdraw, if they lose that
subsidized space, if they get a full‑time job or they get another job,
they are not going to get back in.
In
fact, this government has been quite deceitful because in‑‑[interjection]
Well, I do not find it in the book, Mr. Speaker. However, if the members opposite are offended
by my use of the word "deceitful", then I will withdraw it as a
courtesy, but I still believe it is true, because what they did in their press
release‑‑
Mr. Speaker: Order, please.
I would like to remind the honourable member for Burrows, and I indeed
did thank him for withdrawing that comment of his, of being deceitful, but
generally when we withdraw a comment, we do it unqualified. Now, at this point in time, I will ask the
honourable member to withdraw said comment, unqualified.
Mr. Martindale: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will make an unqualified withdrawal.
Mr. Speaker: I would like to thank the honourable member
for Burrows.
Mr. Martindale: The point I was trying to make, Mr. Speaker,
is if you look at the press release of this government, of this Minister of Finance
(Mr. Manness) and Minister of Family Services (Mr. Gilleshammer), it says, we
are going to reduce the number of subsidized child care spaces from 10,000 to
9,600, and they used the word "spaces."
Now, a few weeks later, the policy is being
implemented. We have letters going out
to child care directors. It is not
saying "spaces." It is saying
"cases." The way it is being
explained to me is, these spaces are sometimes not filled up with one child,
but two or three children who are sharing part time, and that there is a big
difference between the number of spaces and the number of cases. Well, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness)
shrugs his shoulders. Maybe the Minister
of Finance is not aware of it, but I am sure that the Minister of Family Services
(Mr. Gilleshammer) is aware of it because the letters are going out over his
name, and we will find out the details to this in Question Period or Family
Services Estimates.
So
what the government is doing is they are saying one thing in their press
release and doing another thing when they put it into action. What this government is doing is they are
giving the impression, oh, this is not so bad, but when we see the effect when
it is actually applied in child care centres there are many, many more people
who are losing their place in child care, many women who are employed part
time, and if they do not have child care they are not going to stay in the
labour force.
That is the last thing that this Minister of
Finance wants is to have more people unemployed, more people ending up on
social assistance, either in the city or the province, and making his labour
statistics look worse, and that is the effect of this policy. I believe it is wrong, it is stupid. What they should be doing is continuing to
ensure that people can stay in the workforce so that they can pay taxes so that
the revenue of this government goes up, not down.
But
this government is thick. They do not
understand that. They do not realize that if people are not working and they are
on social assistance they are not paying taxes.
That does not make any sense to me.
That does not make any sense to us on this side.
What else has this government done? Well, they have decreased the rates they are
paying to foster parents and the foster parents have reacted, and they have
said, we are not going to take any new children; and the government says, oh,
we will find foster parents, presumably through Child and Family Services. But what have they done to the Child and
Family Services budget? In the City of
So
I asked the minister in Question Period, who speaks for the Department of
Family Services, the Minister of Family Services, or the CEO from
What other effect will this budget have on
children? Well, another effect will be
for children whose parents are on social assistance because this government is
broadening the base of their tax system.
They are saying that the sources of income that used to be exempt, like
social allowance, will now be included as income. They have also reduced funding for social
assistance by 2 percent. So these people
are going to be worse off, and the situation is already bad.
* (1630)
I mean,
where are these parents going to save the money? Are they going to take it out of the food
budget? Are they going to go to food
banks more often? Are they going to take
it out of a clothing budget? Are they
going to take it out of the rent budget?
I am quite sure they will not be taking it out of the rent budget,
because many people are using their only discretionary money, money for food,
personal needs and household needs to top up their rents so that they can get
better accommodation. This is the reason
that we have moved an amendment.
There are many, many reasons, but these are
amongst them. For example, in Clause (c) our Leader said, we regret that as a
result of this government's callous and unfair cuts in government services for
education, health care, social programs, such as the reduction in the
Children's Dental Program in rural and northern Manitoba, home care cuts and
reductions for schools and universities, Manitobans are losing their hope for
the future.
The
last category I would like to look at is students. We believe that students, probably all
students, are being negatively affected by this budget. For example, we have the elimination of the
student social allowance program, a very regressive measure. We have clawbacks and cuts to university
budgets. We have clawbacks and cuts to
the public school system, therefore all students are being affected by
this. We have seen‑‑
An Honourable Member: It is a contribution.
Mr. Martindale: This government does not want to be honest.
They do not want to say, this is a tax increase. They called it a contribution. I believe that is a direct quote from the
Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard): This
is your contribution to‑‑I presume a contribution to reducing the
deficit. They will not admit that it is
a tax to help reduce the deficit, a user fee on health care. So we believe that all students are being
asked to sacrifice for this government's ideology.
Now
the members opposite, the government members, are always saying to us, well what
would you do? How would you increase
revenue? What would you do
differently? So I have some suggestions.
[interjection] The government members are cheering, but they will not like my
examples. They will not do anything
about them.
From time to time, this Premier (Mr. Filmon)
and this government criticizes the federal government, and it usually has to do
with jobs that are not coming to Manitoba or something that they disagree with
because it is more popular in Manitoba to criticize the federal government than
to not criticize them. We know that from
time to time they are willing to criticize, but let us see if they are willing
to ask for something, see if they are willing to put in a request to get the
federal government to change the way they collect revenue so that
One
example is the lifetime capital gains exemption. For example, it is down to $100,000. That is a change. It used to be $500,000. But the cost to the federal government in
1988 was $855 million and $985 million in 1989.
That is lost revenue. So if this
government thinks that they are not getting enough money under federal‑provincial
equalization payments, why do you not ask the federal government to change and
get rid of the capital gains exemption?
We
know that the total cost of this, since the Conservative government brought it
in, is billions of dollars. Now, some of
that goes into job creation, but there is really no requirement that people
create jobs in order to get the benefit.
Much of it has gone into purchasing art and yachts and other things that
appreciate in value that people do not have to pay tax on, and I do not think
there is any justification for that whatsoever.
Another example would be the 21‑year
extension to private family trusts. We
do not even know how much money that is.
The federal government estimates that billions of dollars are in private
family trusts. We know that the Bronfman
family trust alone is $70 million and it has not been taxed for the last 21
years. That was a Liberal policy, by the
way, of the last Liberal government in
I
have another suggestion. This one has to
do with
And
why is this? Well, it is because
businesses are collecting money and not passing it on to the government. It is not coming out of the businesses'
pocket; it is coming from their customers' pocket, but they are not passing it
on. And where is the money owed? For example, "Retail sales tax: More than $9 million is owed by businesses
that collect sales tax from customers but have not forwarded the money to the
province. That figure has grown from
nearly $8 million a year ago." So
the amount of money is going up. The tax
arrears are going up. Where else is the money coming from? "Payroll tax: $1.65 million was owed by companies as of the
end of February." That is actually
down. Maybe they are getting tougher
with the payroll tax. The corporate
capital tax, $1.8 million is owed, up from $1.58 million.
When you suggest to the Minister of Finance
that he hire more staff to collect it, he will not.
In
conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I believe that this budget is going to perpetuate a
trend in our society to have haves and have‑nots, that there are going to
be more people who are going to be have‑nots at the bottom, and fewer
people at the top who are haves and fewer people in the middle who are less
well off than before this budget. I
think this is detrimental to my constituents in Burrows and to many, many other
people. I would like to conclude with a
quote from the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg, on their report, Profile on
Poverty: On the Impact on Children: "If none of this is enough to influence
policy makers to get serious about the problems of poverty, perhaps the anger
of the poor, which can quickly turn to violence, should be taken into
account"‑‑
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The honourable member's time has expired.
Mr. Harold Neufeld
(Rossmere): Mr. Speaker, in 18 days it will be exactly
five years since I entered this august Chamber.
Of those years I spent four years in cabinet and on Treasury Board.
Anybody with reasonable intelligence should be able to pick up something that
he might think or she might think will improve the credibility of the
politicians and the government. I do
believe I am reasonably intelligent, although that may be open to some debate,
as will some of the suggestions I might have for you this afternoon.
Mr.
Speaker, over the years I have probably, and my family will probably in the
future, my children and my grandchildren will probably contribute more than
most to the government coffers.
Unemployment insurance, to which I contributed for some 35 years, I will
never collect. The old age security,
which I have contributed to, and there was a time when there was a separate
line on the income tax return for that, I will never collect. I expect by the time my children get to
collect their Canada Pension Plan there will be nothing available for them. So I do believe we have to do something in
order to make
I
would like to think we should be less concerned about casting blame on how we
got here and more concerned about how we are going to get out of here. We should learn from the past and not dwell
on it.
Mr.
Speaker, let me give you a few points that I think are important to improve the
credibility of politicians, and I do believe they need improvement. First of all, I would like to see an eight‑year
term maximum for all politicians. I
would like to see the conflict‑of‑interest guidelines
strengthened. The guidelines that we
have today mean absolutely nothing. I
have filled out guidelines for five years now and it does not mean a thing. Placing one's asset in a blind trust is a
joke. It seems to me that you show me
someone that leaves his life's savings in a blind trust to be run by another, I
will show you someone who is soon to lose his life's savings.
* (1640)
Mr.
Speaker, I do not believe that we should have a pension plan. I can see no reason to have a pension plan
whose benefits are twice the amount of the best pension plan otherwise
available to Canadians. I would like to
see a salary level equal to the salaries received by the member of this House
prior to coming into this Chamber.
Otherwise, what greater conflict of interest can one have than to know
one must be re‑elected in order to maintain a lifestyle? I will grant you there should be a minimum
and there should be a maximum.
Mr.
Speaker, I have already said there should be a maximum and there should be a
minimum, but I do believe you can have no greater conflict in interest than to
have to vote in a way that is going to get you re‑elected.
Let
me speak a little bit about this budget that we have presented. Mr. Speaker, deficits are not a product of
this year's Estimates. Deficits are a
product of many previous years' budgets and Estimates. The reason for that, of course, is that
programs with a cost base have to be maintained at that base, at least, it
seems to me, by most departments, and it is in order to reduce that base, we
must get into the departments and make sure that the programs are being
delivered as efficiently as possible. We
do not have that today.
I
would like to see a maximum borrowing authority by government, and I would like
to see that maximum borrowing authority in terms of the amount of interest that
may be charged in the budget in any one year.
In other words, the interest could never exceed a percentage of the tax
revenues collected. It is through increased borrowings that in the end we will
be put into a position of not being able to carry out the programs that we wish
to carry out.
Mr.
Speaker, I became involved because I thought I might improve the conditions
that might otherwise exist for my children and for my grandchildren. I was naive when I came into this
Chamber. I believed that politics would
be left at the campaign office. Sadly,
that is not the case. I do not believe I
have become a polished politician. I do
not consider myself a politician; I hope I am not a politician. I believe I was elected to represent all the
residents of
All
too often when I have been approached I have been told that the individual has
been a Tory all his life, and for some reason then expects a decision or for me
to work for him or her in a way that I might otherwise not work if they were
not Tories. I have run into some
difficulties, within the last week as a matter of fact, by telling people that
I would work for them regardless of their political affiliation, and do not
ever come to me and tell me to work for them because they are Tories. I do not carry a Tory card, so I am not a
politician. I will work for those for
whom I think have a cause and those who deserve that cause to be worked on.
Some Honourable Members: Hear, hear.
Mr. Neufeld: Being naive, Mr. Speaker, when you come into
this Chamber, it can give you some grief, and I did bleed. At one time I said I am going to get out of
here before my grandchildren can read because they think I am a nice guy.
[interjection] They are very bright, and it is possible that they are now
learning to read, but we are keeping the papers away from them.
I
have not always agreed with members of my caucus, and I think my caucus members
will agree that I have not always agreed, but I think we have a respect for one
another. I mentioned to a couple of colleagues
yesterday that I would be speaking, and they said, have you got something good
to say? I said, well, everything I say
will not be something you agree with.
They said, well, we will be surprised if it did. That is all.
Let
us talk a little about the budget.
Before we do let us talk a little bit about last year's, I guess we call
it, a projection, do we? First of all,
the Stabilization Fund is not a revenue amount that I would like to see in the
Estimates. I am in full agreement with
levelling out. I am in full agreement
with taking monies from the good years and applying them against the years that
will not be as good, but I do not believe that it should be an item that is
used to reduce a deficit in any year.
Have a separate schedule to show what we are
doing, but the deficit should show up so that‑‑because as I said
earlier, deficits are a product of the previous year's Estimates. If that is our base point and if we start
with that point, we have to be in a position to not increase‑‑if we
increase those expenditures, we have to increase the revenues even more than
the amount of the Stabilization Fund transfer has been, so we require new
revenues. So I would like to see a
separate statement prepared. I am in full agreement with long‑term
budgeting, as you might expect I would be with my background as an accountant.
I
would like to point out, Mr. Speaker, that the Finance minister has indicated
in his budget that, and I will read:
"In the medium term, this situation is not expected to change. In fact, total program expenditure will
continue to decline 1% in 1994/95, and remain flat through 1996/97." That is good news.
I
look at the forecast for '92‑93, and I see at the bottom $562 million,
$200 million of which is a transfer from the Stabilization Fund. Much has been said about that, and I agree
that it is not an item to be considered as having reduced our budget because
budget deficits are expenditures. Over
and above that, we have an extraordinary liability shown here as $67 million.
Then I read Note 2 on that same page, and it
says, in 1992‑93, the federal government changed the methodology for
determining population numbers used for calculating transfer payments. This change has resulted in the province
owing the federal government $167 million, of which $100 million pertains to
prior years, which tells me that while the $100 million may not be this year's
deficit, there is another $100 million in debt that was not there in 1992,
March 31. You might say that the deficit
this year was not 562, but indeed it was 862.
That is the difference between last year's debt and this year's debt.
The
good news is that expenditures for 1993‑94 have not risen above the 1992‑93
forecast expenditures, and that is, I do believe, good news because that sends
a signal that we are going to make certain that we are going to control the
expenditures for next year and years to come.
* (1650)
Next year's budget stands in here at $367
million, of which $30 million is a transfer from the Stabilization Fund, which
I have already indicated I will not accept as a reduction of the deficit, so
our deficit is in fact $397 million, $60 million of which is a reduction from
the lottery fund, and I do believe that lottery and VLT monies should come into
general revenues and be treated by government as general revenues and
distributed as they see fit. I think
that transferring money or a percentage of certain revenues to other
jurisdictions or other committees abdicates by government the responsibility it
has to spend the money it receives.
I
think that when we talk about deficits we should never forget that deficits are
future taxes. I heard one gentleman on
television the other day, the day after the budget came out, and he said, the
past generations have benefited from the taxes that I am going to pay, and that
is absolutely right.
I
think that is a sad indictment upon our generation to confer such a debt on the
future. If you look at the additional
debt that will be carried by
I
have to ask: How long can we keep this
up? When do we say no? It is true there are many programs deserving
of funding, but how long can we keep it up?
Once broke, we cannot provide any of the programs or any of the services
that we are now providing. Once we cannot borrow any longer, the game is over.
I
refer you to page 5 of the budget, and even though we have held or are holding
expenditures down for next year, we have since 1988 increased the Health budget
by $504 million. That is 38
percent. That is five years, 38 percent,
$504 million. Since 1988, we have
increased the Education budget by $259 million, or 34 percent. Since 1988 we have increased the Family
Services budget by $247 million, or 60 percent.
Fast figuring tells me, that is about a
billion dollars, and I ask you, if we are going to increase it by a billion
dollars every five years, as the opposition would have us do, how long will it
be before we are broke? How long will it
be before we can no longer borrow? Not
very long, I suggest to you.
I
believe the overall expenditure increase of $1 billion represents roughly a 20
percent increase in spending in five years, and that means that in 20 years or
so or less, we will double our budget.
Can we double our revenue? We
know we cannot, so we have to start making choices. We have to take priorities.
We
cannot continue to tax because we want industry to settle in
I
have done some research on the taxation regime in other areas. It will not take much to allow someone to
take up residence in
Keep on taxing and you are going to lose the
people you most want to keep, the ones that are contributing towards the tax
regime, the ones that are contributing to the welfare of the province.
I
know that from the opposition benches we will not get too much credit for the
budget. I also know that from the
government benches you will not get too much criticism. I do believe that I am adding a more balanced
approach to this. I hope I am.
If
we take the advice of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Doer), we will never
spend enough. If we take the advice of a
number of the‑‑[interjection] Well, if that is not the case, I am
sorry because that is the impression that has been left with me, and my hearing
is still pretty good.
I
have seen so often, in answer to questions in this House, a minister standing
at his seat and talking about how much more money we are spending on that
particular‑‑as justification for the question that has been asked,
and I do not think we will ever spend enough so that is to me not an answer
that should be given. The answer should
be what we are doing and not how much we are spending.
All
too often, the opposition, and the media pick that up, equates spending to
program either reduction or improvement.
If we spend less, we must have cut our programs. That is not necessarily so. Efficiency, good management can lead to
reduced cost of delivering programs.
I
do believe, Mr. Speaker, that we cannot do this alone. I have mentioned earlier that we should work
together and not dwell on the past. I
think we have to work together. I do not
think that government on its own can right the financial position we are in.
Government must, in the area of health, have
the co‑operation of not only doctors in hospitals but also patients. Patients must understand the cost, and
patients must understand that, when it is not absolutely necessarily, they
should not take the time and the money of medical services. Doctors should understand that they need not
use every piece of equipment at their disposal in order to examine somebody if
it is not necessary. It is unfortunate,
I think, that all too often they are doing this out of fear of the judicial
system. If they do not use every piece
of equipment that is at their disposal they could end up in court, and they are
concerned.
* (1700)
I
think in terms of education there is no reason that I can see that we cannot
earn our own way through college. When I
was of that age there was no help from government. We paid our own way. We found ways to make the money. We had to.
Mr. Speaker, I worked. Anybody
can. They have to want to.
I
will tell you a story. In our family
there were five children. My father's
highest income year was $5,800. We all
worked. We worked together. My mother did housekeeping for others. She did sewing for one reason only. My father took second jobs for one reason
only. To help their kids get an
education.
I
worked as unskilled labour at the minimum wage in a machine shop. I worked on a section gang of the CPR. I worked as a molder at Anthes Foundry, now
Ancast, and I worked as an assistant shipping clerk in a school supply house.
[interjection]
The
member for Dauphin (Mr. Plohman) asks, what were the tuition fees? Tuition fees cannot be related to the tuition
fees of that day. Tuition fees have to be
related to the monies you earn now as opposed to the monies we earned
then. I earned 25 cents an hour, and my
tuition at that time was $265 a year. So
relative to the cost of education the wages were probably less than they are
today.
Mr.
Speaker, I have something here that I would like to read to you: I have been a student. I worked summers on the railway. I paid my way through university and
college. I am proud of the education
that I got, but I paid for it. I went
out and found my own job, and I paid for my education. I felt very privileged to be able to have
that education, to have the taxpayers pick up 85 percent of the cost of the
education.
That was spoken by Premier Mike Harcourt. So it is not just the hard‑hearted
Tories who think that way.
I
get a little tired when I hear about hard‑hearted Tories, noncaring,
heartless. I have to say, and I will say
it here, I have probably given more of my time and money to help people who are
less fortunate than I am than anybody else in this Chamber. So I am tired when
I am told continually that we are hard‑hearted.
I
heard the Leader of the Liberal Party talk about restructuring, and I knew I
had seen that term used before, and it was.
I found a special report, President Clinton outlines principle for
revolution in government: Today the
President has asked Vice‑President Gore to lead a revolution in
It
goes on to say: There is time to
demonstrate that government can be as frugal as any household in
Indeed, Mr. Speaker, we have many layers in
government that could be eliminated.
I
said before, I will say again, the
I
do believe we have started in the right direction. I think the Finance minister has sent a
signal to the bureaucracy that he is about to take more drastic action. I am happy, too, that we now have a secretary
to the Treasury Board who understands government financing. I am only hopeful that his political masters
will allow him to take the steps necessary to put us in a better position.
If
you do not think there is too much staff in government, take a look at the
paperwork that comes out. As
backbenchers, we get an awful lot of paperwork.
Nobody has ever, to my knowledge, thought about following the paper trail. What happens to the pieces of paper that are
generated? [interjection]
I
am glad the member for Ellice asked that.
Ms.
Avis Gray (Crescentwood): I am
Crescentwood.
Mr. Neufeld: I am glad she asked that. Crescentwood, pardon me.
An Honourable Member: What did she ask?
Mr. Neufeld: She asked where the ideas come from.
Those ideas build empires. That is where empires are built. All they
have to do is convince management one level up that whatever they are going to
do, whatever paper they are going to generate is important. All that manager has to do is convince the
person one layer ahead of him that it is important and both of them get raises
because they move into higher categories.
So there is absolutely no brake on increasing staff. Indeed, if you are going to get ahead in the
Civil Service, you have to make certain that you increase your staff, because
that is the only way you are going to get promotions.
An Honourable Member: Where does the buck stop?
Mr. Neufeld: Well, that is the way it works. I am sorry.
Let
me talk briefly about Education. Let me
talk briefly about the costs of some of our education. I am amazed that we will spend millions of
dollars transporting children to school and then spend additional millions to
build them a gym so that they can get some exercise. I think that is incredible.
Mr.
Speaker, I will talk a bit about Family Services. When I was in Treasury Board, I asked what
the cost of group homes was. From the bureaucracy you will get only a total number
of so many million dollars to maintain a group home. I say, I do not know from millions.
There is a group home across the street from
my mother's house. My mother takes them
baking. There are six boys living there. There are house guests. I said, tell me what that group home costs
us, that one group home. It is run by
the Children's Home of Winnipeg.
I
should mention that we used to have a home in
* (1710)
Now, I will tell you what the group home‑‑six
boys, across the street from my mother on
There has been much talk today about foster
parents. A foster parent gets, without
special needs, approximately $600 per month per child and that is after taxes. That is spendable income. In order for anybody to get $600 a month
after taxes they have to earn about minimum $840, $850. If they have two children that is $1,700 a
month for keeping those children. We had
two children and‑‑I think I am as well off as most people‑‑we
could not afford to spend $1,700 a month on the children, so explain to me why
we must pay that much money for foster homes.
Volunteerism‑‑we have killed
volunteerism through a proliferation of government projects. Service clubs used to do an awful lot of work
for the needy in the community. I know I
was a member of several service clubs. I
was a member of a community club. We
raised our own money; in various ways we raised money, but now what
happened? Government says we have to
look after it and government says we have to look after these clubs for one
reason only. They want votes. It is all for votes. I suggest to you volunteerism has been killed
by a proliferation of government grants to various organizations.
I
do not believe in grants of any kind. I
have said this before. I do not agree
with grants to industry. I do not agree
with grants to organizations who for one reason or another feel they need the
money. I certainly do not agree with
grants to golf clubs. When I ran in 1988‑‑I
am a past president of Rossmere golf club‑‑and Vic Schroeder who
was then the member for Rossmere gave them $60,000, they had not been paid out
and they asked me whether I could increase that if I were elected. I said, if I am elected you better have your
money in advance, because I am going to vote against it. I do not believe that is what the grants were
intended for, and I take nothing away from those of which I am a member.
The
member for Crescentwood (Ms. Gray) asked:
Will you vote against the budget?
I said earlier that I think that I am here to criticize where I think
criticism is necessary, and I am here to credit where I think credit is
necessary. I have said, Mr. Speaker,
that I agree with the direction we are taking in trying to hold down expenditures. I vote with the budget, because it came down
under my threshold, which I had set for myself by some $3,000.
An Honourable Member: What was your threshold?
Mr. Neufeld: $400,000.
I
cannot hear the member for Crescentwood.
I would appreciate if she would speak up. [interjection] Revenue
generation. Mr. Speaker, the member for
Crescentwood asks very good questions.
She asked: What would I do for
revenue generation? My view is that
until you have your expenditures under control, no amount of new revenue will
ever be enough.
It
is the same in my family. It is the same
in the businesses I was in. It is the
same in government. We do not raise new
revenue until such a time as we have our expenditures under control and that
includes the expenditures I mentioned earlier.
That is, we have to be as efficient as we can.
I
will say another thing, Mr. Speaker.
Before we start cutting programs, we must ensure that every one of our
programs are delivered as efficiently as possible. We do not cut programs for the sake of saving
money. We cut programs when we have got
to the point where they are delivered efficiently, and then if we do not have
enough money we may have to cut, but first things first.
There are a few more items that I would like
to bring up. I want to mention a few
items that are on the revenue budget:
No. 1, and I have mentioned this to my colleagues in cabinet when I was
in cabinet when I was Minister responsible for Manitoba Hydro, the budget calls
for $45 million in water rentals. Mr.
Speaker, $45 million on water rentals is taxes.
It taxes users of Manitoba Hydro.
Under what justification can we charge water rentals? The water comes from
The
other thing is, again, something dear to my heart. The Manitoba Mineral Resources has been
stripped of $16 million this year and the Manitoba Mineral Resources have a
mandate. The Manitoba Mineral Resources
has monies and $16 million has been stripped out of their surplus and that will
interfere with the mandate that Manitoba Mineral Resources has, I believe. Unless we are prepared‑‑[interjection]
No, it is not illegal. The member for
Concordia (Mr. Doer) says it is illegal, and Mr. Speaker, it is not illegal.
Mr. Gary Doer (Leader of
the Opposition): No, I was asking. I do not know that.
Mr. Neufeld: No, I do not think it is illegal, but it
interferes with the mandate that Manitoba Mineral Resources may have‑‑that
I know they have‑‑which is to do exploration work in the North,
which is to leverage more monies out of corporations for exploration work,
which is to operate mines if they find one.
So,
Mr. Speaker, I do believe that I disagree with that, but on balance, I think
that the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) has done something. I know that he has agonized over it, and he
has done something that I did not think he could do, and I will support it.
Ms. Becky Barrett (
There are some ideas he shared with us that
have a certain ring of truth to us on this side of the House, but I certainly
disagree with much of his analysis of where we are going and how we got here
and what we should do.
Mr.
Speaker, we are now speaking on the sixth budget of this government, but what
the government is saying in its comments, in its answers to questions, in its
press releases and all its discussions about this budget sounds like we are
talking about the first budget of this government, because what the government
is saying is we cannot live beyond our means, we have to tighten our belts, we
have spent too much, we cannot tax anymore, and those are all, No. 1, very
traditional Conservative statements that have been made by Conservative
governments in Manitoba, throughout Canada and throughout North America and
Europe.
But
they are not statements, I believe, that should be made after five budgets of
this Conservative government. This
Conservative government is now into its sixth budget where they have gone from‑‑when
they took office almost exactly five years ago, when the Minister of Finance
(Mr. Manness) opened the books, he discovered a $58.7 million operating
surplus.
* (1720)
(Mr. Jack Penner, Acting Speaker, in the
Chair)
Mr.
Acting Speaker, the Minister of Finance talks about figures in this House, and
excuse me, after six years and the inability of this government to come up with
accurate figures up to and including just today, I do not think we need to
listen very carefully to what the Minister of Finance is saying.
The
current budget, the sixth in this government's long history of disastrous
budgets, projects‑‑I use the word "projects" carefully
because a budget is a plan and it never can be a certainty. As we know, Mr. Acting Speaker, from the
history of the past five budgets of this government, these figures, it is lucky
that it is not carved in stone because there will be changes and most likely in
the wrong direction. This budget
projects a deficit, or the understanding at the end of this fiscal year, of
somewhere over three‑quarters of a billion dollars. We are not sure whether it is $762 million or
$862 million, but well over three‑quarters of a billion dollars. This is from a government that says, we must
live on a budget. I find it very, very
interesting.
Where are we at the beginning of the Budget
Debate on the sixth budget of this provincial government? Well, I can tell you where we are in
For
another example, the increase in average weekly wages lags significantly behind
the Canadian increase. This is from
1988, when the government was first elected, to 1992. One of the important things about average
weekly wages is that the average weekly wages paid to the workers in the
province of Manitoba have a direct bearing on the amount of tax, both income
and sales, generated to the Province of Manitoba in revenue. When you have an average weekly wage that is
significantly lower than the Canadian average, of course, you are going to have
a decrease in taxation revenue.
We
had an enormous population out‑migration.
If you do not have people working, they leave. They go where they will have opportunities
not only for jobs, but where they will have opportunities for training for
jobs, where they will have an opportunity for upgrading. [interjection]
The
member for Niakwa (Mr. Reimer) states that we have an aging population. Yes, Mr. Acting Speaker, we have an aging
population, but the population of the country as a whole is aging, and still we
are lagging behind the rest of
Our
share of gross domestic product was smaller in 1992 than 1988 and smaller than
the Canadian average. Total employment,
labour force, retail sales, housing starts, manufacturing employment, farm cash
receipts, investment, building permits and total construction all were lower
than the Canadian average.
We
do have, however, a couple of records that we cannot be proud of. Our child poverty rate is the highest in the
country; our unemployment rate is one of the highest in the country. So we are at the top of the list in several
items.
What I would like to do is go through the five
headings that the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) used in speaking about his
sixth budget. Those headings are: Living on a Budget; Preserving Priorities;
Creating Conditions for Growth; A Shared Solution; and Toward a Stronger
Manitoba. [interjection]
The Acting Speaker (Mr.
Penner): Order, please. I am having very great difficulty hearing
this speaker. I would ask all members,
if they want to debate, please do so outside of the Chamber.
Ms. Barrett: Mr. Acting Speaker, the first heading is Living
on a Budget.
I
have discussed a little bit in my earlier remarks, my opening remarks about the
inability of this government, over five budgets and again in their sixth
budget, to live up to that very nice homily, one which has been honoured in the
breach rather than the observance by this government and one which, when the
New Democrats were in power, was honoured far more closely than this government
has been able to do.
The
first paragraph in Living on a Budget talks about the parallel between families
and governments and saying: When, in
families, spending overtakes income and there is no way to earn more, habits
must be changed and family members asked to do more with less. Governments are not immune to this reality.
Mr.
Acting Speaker, governments may not be immune to this reality, but it certainly
is not true that like in a family all members of the
The
member for Rossmere (Mr. Neufeld) shared something that I was going to talk
about too. He said this was a positive
thing. I am saying it is a negative thing.
Again, in the Living on a Budget section, the Minister of Finance (Mr.
Manness) says that in the medium term, this financial situation is not likely
to change and for the next fiscal year he is projecting program expenditures to
continue to decline by a further 1 percent.
Mr.
Acting Speaker, when I heard this on Tuesday in the Budget Address, I was not
sure if I had heard correctly. I am
sorry to say that I did hear correctly.
This government has decreased program expenditures by 2 percent, year
over year, for this budget and is saying that they are going to do it again by
1 percent next year. That is going to
mean again further program cuts to the people who are least able to deal with
those program cuts.
How
do I know that, Mr. Acting Speaker?
Because I have six budgets behind me to prove that. There has not been a change in the corporate
tax except an increase for small businesses.
There has not been any additional monies taken from the most profitable
corporations in this province. Nor has
there been a change in the income tax structure that would ask those who are
most able to afford it to give more. No,
we have seen tax changes that are regressive not progressive and expect to get
more bad news in next year's budget.
The
second area that the Minister of Finance talked about was Preserving
Priorities. He identified the priorities
as health care, education and family services.
* (1730)
Mr.
Acting Speaker, the Minister of Finance has not preserved the priorities. There have been massive program cuts in those
areas of priorities and in other areas.
I will not go through the entire list, but in health care alone,
Pharmacare cuts equal 14 percent. We
have talked about the home care cuts.
We
have talked about the "contributions" that the Minister of Health
(Mr. Orchard) is asking those least able to afford to give to the government
for such extraneous items as colostomy bags, crutches, bars to enable people to
live more safely in their own homes.
This is not a contribution; it is a regressive tax grab from the people
who are least able to afford it. The
concept of a contribution is something that is donated voluntarily. This government talks about the decline in
volunteerism, and then they use the word that is connected so closely with a
voluntary act, a contribution, to describe a tax grab against the least able to
afford it in this province.
The
health administration overall in the Department of Health has increased by 3
percent, well above the inflation rate, when the Women's Health division has
been decreased by 9 percent. I will be
very interested to find out, in this area and in others, what impact or what
input the Minister responsible for the Status of Women (Mrs. Mitchelson) had in
these kinds of program changes.
The
entire health program has shown a major decrease in programming with one
glaring exception, and that is the $3.9 million contract being given to an
American health care consultant to come up to Manitoba and tell Manitobans how
they should spend their health care dollars‑‑$3.9 million plus
$800,000 that the two teaching hospitals in Manitoba, Health Sciences Centre
and St. Boniface, will be forced to give to Connie Curran and her associates
for air fares, living expenses and per diems while she is here.
There is no question that changes need to be
addressed in our health care system.
There is, however, a series of questions about the American consultant‑‑[interjection]
Mr.
Acting Speaker, if the Minister of Health has such wonderful things to say, why
does he not get up and put them on the record?
Hon. Donald Orchard
(Minister of Health): I did yesterday.
Where were you yesterday when I put them on the record?
Ms. Barrett: Well, then, Mr. Acting Speaker, would you
please ask the Minister of Health to be quiet and listen to what I have to say?
Mr.
Acting Speaker, the unconscionable contract awarded without tender to Connie
Curran and her associates from Chicago to come here to Manitoba to put into
place a concept called Total Quality Management which, by the way, is more and
more being called into question by the very organizations that once espoused
it, including hospitals in the United States, but the idea that this non‑Canadian
corporation was asked to come in and do an analysis of the health care needs of
the province of Manitoba in Canada just does not make any sense.
There are groups, individuals and
organizations in this country which have grown up and which understand and
believe in the five concepts of universality in our medicare system, that could
have been, and should have been, consulted, instead of going to the United
States for a contract, for a person who has no understanding about the ideals
and the principles behind our medicare system, and whose basic goal, we
believe, is not to strengthen the medicare system as we know it, but to further
Americanize it so that we can‑‑[interjection] Mr. Acting Speaker, I
would like to suggest that it is not the opposition benches that are making
fools of the Legislature, the legislative process or of the government process,
but this budget and the five that preceded it by this Conservative government,
each one of which budgets have devastated more and more the quality of life for
Manitobans in this province.
The
third area that the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) talks about is creating
conditions for growth. Well, to use, I
guess, a farm analogy, our fields, if you want to talk about conditions for
growth in the
I
have to take a little bit of exception to one of the comments that my Leader
made in his remarks yesterday. He said
that this government had no vision, it had no strategy and it had no plan. Well, I will agree with two of those
statements. This government has no
strategy and no plan, but, Mr. Acting Speaker, this government does have a
vision, a vision that has been stated more and more clearly through the last
five budgets and is crystal clear in this one.
That is the traditional, old‑fashioned, outdated, trickle‑down
economic theory of the neo‑Conservatives.
The
vision that this government has is a vision that is as outdated as its plans,
has virtually no relevance to the society that we are dealing with. It shows that this government says, we do not
believe that government has a role in this economy. We do not believe government has a role in
our society. We believe that government
should do as little as possible, and, Mr. Acting Speaker, this government has
followed through on that vision for six budgets now. The men, women and children of
* (1740)
Mr.
Acting Speaker, it is not a vision, it is a nightmare, something De Quincey
would have seen in one of his opium dreams. The fourth category, the fourth
section of the Minister of Finance's (Mr. Manness) budget is a shared
solution. Well, I mean, really, this is
the height of hypocrisy. This is not a
budget that shares the solutions.
Members of my caucus have put on record and will continue to put on
record the kinds of things that this budget does, the kinds of people who are
being asked to share among themselves the entire burden of this budget.
There are an enormous number of cuts, and I
will not go into all of them. I will say
that we started off with 56 organizations whose entire provincial funding was
cut. Now the Minister of Finance said at
the time that this was because they were advocacy groups that were not
providing services, that were not duplicated by the provincial government or
other organizations.
The
Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) knows better.
If he did not know better, then his ministers, such as the Minister of
Northern and Native Affairs (Mr. Downey), the Minister of Urban Affairs (Mr.
Ernst), particularly the Minister responsible for the Status of Women and the
Minister of Culture (Mrs. Mitchelson), and most particularly the Minister of
Family Services (Mr. Gilleshammer), and the Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard)
were derelict in their duties in not bringing to the attention of the Minister
of Finance the fact that these agencies were providing services that are not
duplicated elsewhere and will lead to further problems for the people of
Manitoba, and, frankly, will have an immediate effect as the Minister of Family
Services' budget already shows an immediate effect of an enormous increase in
the social welfare rolls.
This is not a successful budget. I have already talked a little bit about the
changes in the home care. I think that
as the budget unfolds and as the impacts of this budget are felt by more and
more Manitobans, this area is going to be one that is going to come back to
haunt this government.
The
$3.9 million contract to Connie Curran for "health care reform," the
56 agencies, the disgraceful actions in dealing with child care in this
province, the changes, the absolute unfairness of asking parents who are fully
subsidized by this province's child care subsidy system to pay an additional
$1.40 a day or over $700 a year per child for child care is unconscionable.
These are, by definition, a family who is
fully subsidized is recognized or should be recognized by the government as not
being able to, out of their own financial resources, pay for the child care
fees. So what does this government
do? It does not make a sliding scale or
based on ability to pay, it just issues a flat tax of $1.40 a day on each
subsidized family.
Not
only that, Mr. Acting Speaker, but the child care centres themselves have no
discretion as to whether they are going to collect this money or not. They have no discretion. If they do not choose to collect this money
because they know their subsidized families cannot afford it, their grant from
the government will be reduced by that same amount.
This is not a budget of a caring
government. It is a budget of a petty,
vindictive, mean‑spirited government, and it is one in a long line of
budgets like that.
The
Child and Family Services agencies, not only did this government two years ago,
in the middle of the night, over a weekend, unilaterally make a major change to
the whole concept of how child and family services will be delivered in this
city, they did it after they had said just a week earlier that they were
continuing to negotiate with those Child and Family Services agencies and that
they anticipated being able to work out arrangements. Then they unilaterally destroyed the six
independent, individual, locally controlled Child and Family Services agencies,
one of which, Child and Family Services of eastern, had been an independent
agency for over 60 years.
They did this, they said, because this one
unified Child and Family Services agency could provide better service. Well, Mr. Acting Speaker, the CEO‑‑a
very corporate‑sounding title, I might add‑‑of the new Child
and Family Services agency now says something that we told him he would say two
years ago. I wish we did not have to say
we told you so, but we did, that with an almost 5‑percent decrease to
Child and Family Services agencies and 27 percent of Manitoba's children living
below the poverty line, the Child and Family Services agencies in this
province, and particularly Winnipeg Child and Family Services, is faced with a
13‑percent jump in the number of children who needed service over the
last 18 months.
Mr.
Acting Speaker, the Manitoba Coalition on Children's Rights is looking at the
possibility of suing this government for noncompliance with the U.N.
declaration on the rights of the child that they signed with a great deal of
fanfare. I certainly hope that the
Manitoba coalition goes ahead with that because it is imperative that the
people of Manitoba are made aware and this government is called to task for
that ridiculous fight against children.
It is a battle. We are in a war,
and you know who the victims are? They
are the women and children of this province, and they are the poor people of
this province.
(Mr. Speaker in the Chair)
This is not only an arrogant and mean‑spirited
budget, but I tell you, Mr. Speaker, that it is a misogynistic budget as well.
I will explain for the honourable members opposite what the term misogynistic
means. A person who is a misogynist is a
person who is against women. This budget
in many, many areas impacts very negatively on all the women of the province of
Manitoba, but most particularly, the women of the province of Manitoba who are
least able to cope with the problems that have been largely a result of
consecutive federal and provincial Conservative budgets.
I
could talk about the fact that the standardization of social assistance rates
affect women more strongly than they do men.
I could talk about the fact that those 27 percent of children in the
Child poverty is not a difficult concept to
understand. Children are poor because their parents are poor and, in
I
think my own personal anger is focused most severely on the elimination of the
Flin Flon/Creighton Crisis Centre and the 10 percent reduction in the grants
and other supports to the rest of the shelters in second stage in transition
housing programs in this province.
This is a government that two years ago said,
trumpeted loudly by the Minister of Justice (Mr. McCrae):
I
would like to ask the members opposite, particularly the Minister of Family
Services (Mr. Gilleshammer), the Minister of Justice and again, most particularly,
the Minister responsible for the Status of Women (Mrs. Mitchelson) where they
get off thinking that an organization that has provided service to the women of
Flin Flon for 10 years can be eliminated?
Well, in the 1993 version of let them eat cake, the minister says, let
them go 140 miles to The Pas. We are
regionalizing the services.
Mr.
Speaker, anybody who knows, and I happen to know that the staffperson directly
responsible for the Division Family Dispute Services in this Department of
Family Services is very knowledgeable about the whole issue of shelters and
resources for women, and I cannot believe that she recommended to the
government this action. I am convinced
that this is an action that has its roots in two causes: No. 1 is again the bottom line‑‑three
causes: No. 1 is the slavish devotion to
the bottom line; No. 2 is, again, the misogynistic tendencies of not only this
budget but the previous five budgets of this government; and No. 3, the fact
that the people in Flin Flon and The Pas do not vote right, do they, Minister
of Native and Northern Affairs?
An Honourable Member: Well, if that is your view.
Ms. Barrett: No, it is not my view, in response to the
question from the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness). It is not my view that the people of Flin
Flon did not vote right. Nor is it my
view that the people of Pembina did not vote right, or the people of Lac du
Bonnet did not vote right, or the people of Steinbach or
* (1750)
You
take a look at the organizations that were cut back, the 56 community groups
that were cut back, and you look at the program cuts. You look at the contribution of the Northern
Transportation Allowance that the Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard) implemented
last year. You look at the cutbacks in
the Department of Family Dispute Services.
You look at all of those things and they impact most negatively on
people who are not only least able to pay for it but in many cases people who
reside in constituencies that are represented by non‑Conservatives. I am just raising that as a possible
connection. It sounds pretty good to me.
One
other area before I give the government some suggestions as to other changes
that might have been able to take place is in my new critic area of
Multiculturalism. One of the
organizations whose support was eliminated was the Manitoba Intercultural
Council. The minister and I will have
several opportunities in this session, I am sure, to go over in more detail her
reasoning for, No. 1, the elimination of the support for that organization, and
No. 2, her promise to bring in legislation repealing that organization.
This organization provided a venue for the
multicultural and ethnocultural groups in this province to have an arm's‑length
relationship with the government. It
allowed for them to advocate and advise the government on issues of
multiculturalism and issues that were important to their community. With the elimination of the Manitoba
Intercultural Council, all that is left for the people of Manitoba to deal with
issues such as immigration and racism, and English as a second language at all
is the completely politically appointed Manitoba Multicultural Secretariat and
the Manitoba‑‑[interjection] Excuse me, but would the Minister
responsible for the Status of Women and the Minister of Multiculturalism (Mrs.
Mitchelson) like to tell me that there is a single staff person in the Manitoba
Multicultural Secretariat that is not an Order‑in‑Council
appointment? They are not appointed from
the community.
Mr.
Speaker, last weekend the minister attended a portion of a conference, an
Immigrant Women's Association of Manitoba conference, that was a remarkable
conference that had two remarkable women as guest speakers. Glenda Simms is the chair of the Canadian
Advisory Council on the Status of Women, and Rosemary Brown is a well‑known
social activist and political activist and former member of the British
Columbia Legislature as a member of the New Democratic Party.
They provided a remarkable framework for the
discussions of that workshop over the weekend, as did the workshops, et cetera.
The Minister responsible for Multiculturalism (Mrs. Mitchelson) came to the
Saturday luncheon and said, and I quote:
We need a strong and united community voice against racism.
I would
suggest to the Minister responsible for Multiculturalism that the way to have a
strong, united community voice against racism is not to eliminate the one
independent organization that could provide that for the entire multicultural
community in the
I
know that my time is growing short. I am
going to end my remarks by quoting from a columnist that this government really
does not like very much, and that is Frances Russell in the Winnipeg Free
Press. These are some suggestions, some
choices that Frances Russell had that this government could have followed in
order to eliminate some of the abominable cuts that they made: Mr. Manness did not have to include a number
of social assistance calculations of tax credits for low‑income individuals. He could instead have collected the $1.8
million in outstanding taxes owed the province by corporations. Those are not new taxes. Those are taxes that this government has
legitimately and legally the right and responsibility to collect from corporations‑‑$1.8
million. It is still sitting in those
corporation coffers earning interest for those corporations, not being used by
the
He
did not have to eliminate the student social allowance program. He could have collected the $1.65 million in
payroll tax owed by companies. Now,
these payroll taxes are owed by nonsmall businesses‑‑$1.65
million. Again, those are legitimate,
legally owed monies to this government which have not been collected.
Instead of taking the home care cuts, he could
have eliminated the payroll tax exemption for businesses with three‑quarters
of a million dollar payroll. Three‑quarters
of a million dollar payroll in these days is not a small business. He could have not eliminated the children's
dental service. You know what he could
have done instead? He could have
collected the $9 million in retail sales tax revenue owed by business‑‑again,
a legitimate, legal tax owed by corporations to the government.
In the
case of the retail sales tax, as the member for Osborne (Mr. Alcock) has so
accurately pointed out, this is money that should have only flowed through to
the
With that, Mr. Speaker, I end my comments on
this budget.
Hon. Clayton Manness
(Government House Leader): Mr. Speaker, before
we call it six o'clock, I would like to indicate that I will be moving a motion
adjourning the House until Tuesday, April 13, 1993, if I have the support of
the House, which is Tuesday, and also indicate that Tuesday's sitting will be
Monday hours, so that we will then have an evening sitting.
Mr.
Speaker, I move, seconded by the Minister of Energy and Mines (Mr. Downey),
that when the House adjourns today, it shall stand adjourned until Tuesday,
April 13, 1993, at 1:30 p.m.
Mr. Speaker: Is there leave of the House to change Tuesday
to a Monday for sitting hours? Is that
agreed? [agreed]
Motion agreed to.
Mr. Speaker: Is it the will of the House to call it six
o'clock? [agreed]
The
hour being 6 p.m., this House now adjourns and stands adjourned until Tuesday,
1:30 p.m.