Mr. Chairperson (Ben Sveinson): Order, please. Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This afternoon this section of the Committee of Supply meeting in Room 255 will resume consideration of the Estimates of the Department of Industry, Trade and Tourism.

When the committee last sat, it had been considering item 10.2. Business Services (c) Manitoba Trade (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits on page 88 of the Estimates book.

Mr. Tim Sale (Crescentwood): Mr. Chairperson, I believe the minister was going to provide some remarks or give him a chance to blow his--or to extol the virtues of the trade initiatives that the government has taken, basically to brief us on the current initiatives underway, and I trust that will not take all afternoon, but I am prepared for it to be a fulsome briefing. I am sure that it will be interesting.

Hon. James Downey (Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism): Mr. Chairman, if I may, maybe I could get an indication as to the length of time in which I speak as to how much time he wants to take to get to the end of my Estimates. I can shorten it up if it will help him. If not, I can take as much time as would be--

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, I cannot answer that question. I think that the minister should provide whatever information he wishes to provide, and I hope he will not go on too terribly long, but I have offered the opportunity to give us some information, and I am sure he will do it appropriately.

Mr. Chairperson: Maybe I could just cap it in the sense that there is a maximum of 30 minutes that the minister could take, and maybe we can work from there.

Mr. Downey: I want to, at the outset, again say that we are pleased to be able to demonstrate the successes of the many trips that we have taken as they relate to Manitoba Trade and at the outset introduce Mr. Rod Sprange who is the president of Manitoba Trade, who has also joined us at the table, and has been working very actively and aggressively to carry out the role which has been designated for that activity.

I think it is important to point out, and I can go back to a couple of areas, one which I will touch on briefly, and that is the activities that we have developed between Mexico as it relates to the development of trade with the state of Jalisco and also with a city in the state of Nuevo Leon. Both the city of Guadalajara which is in Jalisco and Monterrey in the state of Nuevo Leon are the two main contact areas.

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I can tell the member just to set the stage as it relates to Mexico, in 1979, I was there as the Minister of Agriculture working to develop further trade relationships with Manitoba and Mexico. At that particular time there was not a lot of knowledge about Canada. There was not a very open feeling that I got towards Manitoba. We did do a little bit of business in the breeding stock business, particularly in beef cattle and in the hog business there was some taking place. At that particular time, there was not any major trade as it relates to particularly canola. It was obvious that it was a protein source that could be of extreme importance to them but, at that time, nothing had really taken place in any major way.

Since returning to the office of Industry, Trade and Tourism and the associations that we have been able to develop, including an agreement with the State of Jalisco to further broaden and deepen trade with them, there is a tremendous openness. I put it down, Mr. Chairman, to the fact that the NAFTA agreement has given the people of Mexico a greater understanding of what is taking place within Canada and the United States, and there is a totally different awareness. The discussions and negotiations that we have had recently between companies of Manitoba and companies which we represent have, in fact, turned a complete 360 degrees--I should not say that--180 degrees, because we are now seeing extremely positive activities. As well, I may say, and particularly compliment the grain industry and the grain companies who have gone forward and developed a market for Canadian canola in Mexico, where a tremendous percentage of their vegetable oils are now being used by Mexico.

The reason I tell this story, Mr. Chairman, is because I was in Egypt and in the United Arab Emirates earlier this year, and when I was in Egypt, I found pretty much the same situation, that they currently do not use any canola oil or canola oil products or canola products. I had a meeting with the Minister of Agriculture, who is also the Deputy Premier of Egypt, and he and the Minister of Supply, who buys a lot of the grain and grain products for Egypt, are determined to introduce canola and canola oil products to the market in Egypt. Some 60 million people live in Egypt, and I see it basically as the same as what we saw in Mexico in 1979, that there is a tremendous opportunity. So subsequent to that discussion in Egypt, we have and are developing a task force of industry people. I should also add that his interests are to use canola possibly in Egypt as a winter crop, which would add to their overall economic development, as well, never with the ambition of totally producing enough canola for their own consumption, but as a base industry for their farm people and a new industry.

I have to say, Mr. Chairman, I found that some of the experience I have been able to achieve in my travels in Mexico and my observations have benefitted me when I have participated in other trade missions throughout the world.

Now we were going to talk a little bit about the South American trade mission which I was also involved in last year, in which the objective was to improve our relationships and develop some trade activities with Brazil, with Argentina and with Chile. Again, I will make reference, and I will go back through the trip to some degree.

Chile was on the verge, at that particular time, of negotiating, or in the process of negotiating, a final agreement with Canada on a bilateral trade agreement of which some of the major concerns were coming from the agricultural community. I spent considerable time with the Minister of Agriculture. I spent considerable time with the head of the largest farm organization in Chile, at that particular time, and used some of the examples from our experience here in Manitoba with the farm community entering into an agreement with the United States and with Mexico, to try and give them some comfort that because we are a bigger agricultural country than they are that it would not necessarily be a loss for them. In fact, using some examples in Manitoba and Canada, compared to what has happened in the United States with us and with Mexico, our producers actually have benefited in a tremendous way, and I could use the potato example where we are seeing a tremendous number of potato products going into the United States from Manitoba.

We use the hog export situation as an example where, I think, three times Canada has been taken to the NAFTA panel or the free trade panel, the Americans accusing us of having in some way subsidized our hogs in an unfair way as it relates to trade. Three times we have gone to the panel. Three times we have won, and we are now receiving, the hog producers are receiving back the monies which they have paid into trust. So I was able to give some real examples of doing business in a trading relationship as it relates to agriculture, and it actually, I found--it may have given some comfort; I am not saying that it did. But it actually was reported in the press in Chile, and my argument was not totally blown away.

Subsequent to that, I was pleased to see that the Government of Canada did sign when the president of Chile came to Canada a few weeks later--that there was a signed agreement. I can also tell the member that there is a tremendous interest in all of these countries, whether it is Mexico, South America, and I could go all over the map, but I am dealing now more particularly with the South American trip, dealing with the educational capabilities that Canada has and that Manitoba has. Chile has a tremendous investment there--in fact the largest investment of any foreign country in Chile comes from Canada. A lot of it is in the mining sector. The member knows that we have very strong mining capabilities here. We also have a company that makes diamond drilling bits which last night got an award in the entrepreneurial recognition of the year from the Manitoba Business Magazine. Dimatec got an award for their top quality, and they market internationally. Again, that is an area where they I am sure are doing business.

The point being made is that when Canadian companies are doing business there, they want to buy Canadian product as it relates to housing, as it relates to trained technicians, and I think I referred to this the other day. They want Canadian content, and of course, we are very welcome in Chile as it relates to that. We also have tremendous opportunity in the breeding business in livestock. There was considerable work being done there. We have some medical equipment being produced in Manitoba for their livestock industry, which was part of the overall activities that we were involved in. We also have the high-tech business and telecommunications which were involved with us as well, and had some successes on that particular trip. Again, they are importers of grain and grain products. We believe that there will be some outcome come from that. Again, I know that there was a report in the Free Press, which not a whole lot of people read, following that, because they were more interested in other issues that related to that, but I can say that there were some announcements made following that trip which indicated successes that were developed as we went.

Argentina, another tremendous area of opportunity for us, particularly in agricultural machinery and agricultural machinery-related product. Environmental industries, again, identified areas there where there is some environmental work that can be done. We have capabilities here which can be exported and excellent relationships and meetings with both the state governments or provincial governments wanting to further develop a relationship because of our similarities.

Brazil, I can tell you again there were some tremendous opportunities. We had a chance to participate directly with some of the provincial or state leaders. We also have an investment, a group of people who invest in the Manitoba Rolling Mills, the Gerdau family out of Brazil whom we spent some time with, and they are very pleased with their investment in Manitoba. We are encouraging them, of course, and there are some further developments taking place as it relates to that company here in the province.

We are expecting the visit of the governor. So, as a result of this, we have the governor, who we spent some time with in Rio Grande do Sul, will be visiting Manitoba. It is his desire and our desire to further develop an agreement of greater understanding and trade development and economic co-operation between the two jurisdictions. Again, I believe that was a direct result of the visit which we paid, and he is a very aggressive governor and wants to open up activities as it relates to Brazil.

The member should be well aware of the fact that Brazil has about 160 million people in their country, of which they need a lot of product that we have. I should also say, and I am just going over it quickly, not to take up all the time that is available for the member, I think it is important to note that we had a company who supplied logging equipment who also have made some arrangements in Chile, I believe, made a contractual arrangement to sell some equipment, again, as part of it.

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Other successes that I can report: We had representation there from people who were agents for trucking and the aerospace industry and the ostrich industry for Manitoba. Manitoba has developed a unique marketing and production activity from the ostrich business. They not only sell breeding stock, but they sell the expertise that goes with developing and looking after breeding stock. There were some successful sales negotiated, as we were there, as part of that trip.

Again, because some of the companies are doing this on their own and it is private, it is not for me to disclose them, but I can give you the names of the companies that were with us. Winpak, which just made a major announcement in Manitoba of some projected $35 million in expansion; some of that flows from arrangements that have been made, contracts they have signed in Mexico and work that they are looking at in South America. The food industry is continuing to grow, particularly the specialized food where product has to be put out in small containers or packages or put into preservative packaging, which they produce here, and this is now the flagship company out of eight plants in North America. This is going to be their flagship plant, and part of it flows from work that we have done with them and what they have developed in South America.

Ramfor, which is a company that sells heavy equipment for the forestry industry, was successful. Sunshine Ridge Ostrich company, that was the one that--and I will put this on the record because I do not think there is a reason why not. They have confirmed sales since the mission in the range of $500,000 U.S., which is directly coming back to the province of Manitoba. Vansco, again, I know had some successes in the satellite business. They build a receiver component which they are marketing into--I think it is Argentina that they are marketing some product in. Westeel, which develops the silo business, the grain handling business, is continually going back and forth and developing arrangements to sell product into South America. Cosmo Trade has further been developing activities. I cannot report of any successes there, but I know that they are part of the ostrich activity. Behlen Industries was part of the trip. Red River Community College signed an agreement while they were there and, again, is very important to Manitoba.

InfoMagnetics--I am mixed up--is the company that has developed in the communications business. I will put this on the record. It does not say that I should not. They are continuing confidential negotiations, but they have signed a contract for some $160,000 as part of the work that was done. Prairie Farm and Ranch, they are in the process of setting up people to handle what they call their stock doctor. That is the product that I talked about. It is manufactured here in Manitoba. It is a mechanism to treat livestock with. International Beef Genetics are continuing to do a considerable amount of work, and we look forward to seeing them being involved more and more directly as it relates to contractual arrangements in the near future.

Now the other one which I want to speak about briefly was the involvement that we had when we were there dealing with the Pan American Games, which seemed to cause so many people so much concern that my wife was there promoting and working on that particular project. As to how it was instigated seemed to be a big issue. There was no intention on my part or anybody's part not to fully disclose why she was there. She was there to promote it. Yes, if the department or if I had asked whether there was a role she could play, not a big problem. There was indication that there was a role she could play and she did. She played a very effective role. In fact, I will speak to this a little more in-depth at this particular time.

I do not think we, as a province, should make any apology for demonstrating to the world that to people in Manitoba family is important to them, and that when people are travelling, if you can make a combination and get benefit for it--I can also tell the member there was a time when she paid a very expensive trip or two on her own that there was not an opportunity for her to further advance the province. That was paid for by us personally. It is not a matter of trying to fool anybody or try and take advantage. I can tell you, Mr. Chairman, myself and my wife have put 20 years in this business, not to try, in any way, to take money from the taxpayers that we should not have. If there is a legitimate reason or purpose to do it, we will do it. If there is not, we will not. We do not play games, and if the member wants to further debate it, I am prepared to do so. But I wanted to put that on the record--never any intention to try, in any way, to do anything that was not proper.

But I will say--and I hear the odd gibe about whether or not there is a group of tourism operators coming to Manitoba. I believe there will be. I believe that there will be a group of tourism operators come to Manitoba. When they do come, I would hope that the member would accept an invitation to go and meet them, so he can directly question them as to whether or not there was meaningful participation when we were on that mission.

I want to go back. I have talked on Mexico; I will talk a little bit more about it. Again, as a result of some of the missions and some of the work of our representative in Monterrey, Daniel Elizondo, who is a representative for us in Monterrey, has been working with the federal government, and they just set up a mission that was here this week. We had two major food-processing companies represented here in the province of Manitoba which we spent some time with. We believe there are potential activities. In fact, again, Winpak is directly marketing some product to one of the companies, and there looks like there can be an expansion of that business. It is the kind of situation that when you demonstrate to them what we have here--not only clean air and environment--we do have a tremendous industrial base where there can be either joint ventures or that type of activity. We had companies that, as I said, represented the food industry. One company was Sigma Alimentos, and it is probably the second-largest company in Mexico. Another one is the Agroinsa which is another company dealing in grains and livestock feeds, and again looking for joint ventures. They met with the Wheat Board, they met with the grain companies, they met with the grain commission and saw some opportunities where there can be some relationships developed.

Again, the word "Canada" to them today means a lot. I will go back to a little bit of the talk about Egypt, because, again, we just had a group from Egypt in today, just the last few days looking at small business, co-operative development, and some of the areas that they see that might be able to be developed. There are four: Agrifood is one of them that they are looking for development in; the garment industry is another one that they are interested in; another one is in the machinery and the mechanical and equipment side of things and also wood and woodworking. That is another area in which we have got tremendous strength. I should say this--the members have probably seen the export home across from the Convention Centre--that has played a very important role in demonstrating what Manitoba, the windows, the construction industry, the doors and all of the component parts, plus the prefabbed housing, and Manitoba has now advanced substantially in the prefabbed homes to Japan and see an opportunity to expand into other parts of the world because of our capabilities. Whether it is hot or whether it is cold, the heavy insulations here work wherever they are going.

The other thing that is being--

An Honourable Member: Unless it is wet.

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Mr. Downey: Well, we have got good shingles, but there is a good capability here in housing and housing parts, and we are demonstrating, the housing industry, the construction industry are demonstrating they can compete with anybody in the world. I talked recently with an individual who has shipped over 30 homes to Japan in the last 18 months. That is only one company.

Again, for some of the underdeveloped countries where they are looking for employment for their people, to send a prefab home over, a training program can be developed here so that those people know and learn how to assemble them when they get to their homeland. Again, it is a tremendous strength that we have. I think Manitoba Trade and all those people that have been working on it have been very important.

I will just recap a little bit the trip that I recently took to the United Arab Emirates which is a very interesting part of the world where there is a considerable amount of investment dollars. They want to try to change their economy from basically based on oil to further diversify it. There are major grain milling companies being set up there. There are major distribution centres being set up for food to go into some of the other Middle East countries.

We had Arrow Corporation, which is a seed cleaning company, with us, build equipment; Brett Young Seeds who I believe since we were there have sent at least one container if not more of pulses. Central Canadian Structures are very much involved in that area and have done some work. McCain Foods also participated in one of the food shows that we were with. We jointly participated. This is McCain Foods first entry into that part of the world, and there is a tremendous opportunity in those large populations for frozen food products such as french fries. It is time to be there, and we were pleased to be there working with and supporting McCain Foods, and they actually are acquiring a considerable number of orders out of that area.

We also had Prairieland Grain Company who are in the pea and the pulse business. I am not aware of any contacts or any sales that they have made, but they have certainly identified to me that they have made a considerable number of contacts and there could well be some potential flowing from that.

So looking at the grain and grain products, we see the pulses are a tremendous opportunity. We see what McCain Foods is doing with their products in those markets. We see the opportunity for processing plants, for feed mill type operations to satisfy their livestock trade, building materials, I have talked on that, supply of furniture is a tremendous potential, supply of beef and/or beef products is extremely important as well, and, again, we have got good strengths there. The member is aware of the fact that there is not a lot of demand for pork there, but the beef industry certainly has a lot of potential, and the canola initiative is very exciting for not only Manitoba, but western Canada. The federal government is, as well, invited, and it is being part of it.

We are expecting a visit from Mr. Michael Bell, who is the Canadian ambassador to Cairo, who I believe does an excellent job there. We are expecting him to visit Manitoba in June. I can tell the member that one of the areas that I think we should look at closer because of the fact that Egypt buys approximately $4-million worth of food a day is we should consider developing a bilateral trade agreement between Canada and Egypt. I think there is a good potential opportunity there for us. Again, Canada is a very key word to them.

One of the concerns that they had, and this came right from the ministers of Supply to a lot of the private sector, was that for 10 years now the Canadian Wheat Board had not been offering them any wheat, and they were desperately wanting us, the country, to provide them with an offer of wheat. I wrote the Canadian Wheat Board. I have met with the Canadian Wheat Board, and it is my understanding they are putting more emphasis in that area. I know they had some payment difficulty some 10 years ago, but that has been cleared up, and now what they are doing is they are paying cash to the United States, they are paying cash to France and they are paying cash to Australia. I believe we should have our wheat there, at least on the market, and we may get some cash for it as well. Since that trip, I understand the Canadian Wheat Board actually has sold a barley sale to--probably nothing to do with my trip, but at least they were there following it--the United Arab Emirates. So there is a tremendous potential there. The other good news is that they have resources to buy product with.

So when you look at the trade numbers, and I guess there is another good reason--I have just been informed that the Wheat Board has agreed to do a sales mission into Egypt this year, so my contact and the information I provided hopefully was helpful.

I want to tell the member, as well, that we are extremely pleased with our market with the United States and continue to develop that. That is extremely important and we want to do that. It is also important that we do some diversification of our marketing into other markets, whether it is the Middle East, South America is a natural for us, Asia, again, extremely important, that we do not just have total reliance on one export market. That is what we are doing.

Manitoba Trade is, I think, doing an excellent job and will continue to do so. We are not where we want to be yet, but we are certainly advancing, I think, in a very positive way. The key is to get manufactured product as much as we can out of our province because it is value-added; it is important to us. That is why Winnport is so extremely important to us. The development of Winnport means just a whole lot to the future growth and expansion of the exporting activities of our province.

So, again, Mr. Chairman, I know that I am just about out of time, but once the member speaks, I understand I have that much time again so I can get wound up. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; open for questions.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, first of all, I want to thank the minister for that canvassing of the issues that he has been involved in.

I would like to suggest to him something which may sound horribly nonpartisan. It is probably quite out of character for both he and I, but, nevertheless, he might consider having his officials from time to time do a briefing for members of the Legislature, instead of treating this always as something that has to be cast in political terms, which I understand why governments do that. I do not think any government is immune from wanting to be helpful to its people and, therefore, when something helpful happens, wanting to be seen as having been part of it. That is pretty natural, but I wonder if the minister would consider, say, a semi-annual or so briefing from officials about opportunities.

The reason that I say that is that while the minister--and I say this sincerely; he is an incredibly energetic, active salesperson for Manitoba. He believes in the province, just as we all do, and he is an active ambassador and a very good ambassador, I think. I say that in a nonpartisan way. But he is only one person, and those of us, for whatever reason--well, there are reasons, historic reasons. Manitoba is polarized politically, and he knows the agriculture world in the south part of Manitoba very well, but some of our members know other parts of the province very well.

Some of us who are very interested in trade have contacts that sometimes come to us with opportunities, and we try to pass them on and that sort of thing, or steer them in the right direction.

I think it might just turn out to be quite useful for Manitoba Trade to consider, as other departments, I think, are considering--for instance, the Provincial Auditor is considering doing this on a regular basis--to do a briefing that is not focused on partisan point scoring but is focused on information, opportunities that are before us and also education.

I would say, just for example, it is still a prevailing myth that Manitoba is an agricultural province. Manitoba has agricultural production, but agribusiness, the agricultural support industries and research and development are increasingly merging in a way that it gets to be almost impossible to distinguish between research and development related to health issues and research and development related to the whole biochemistry and genetic engineering issues. These are all so closely related now. I think we would all benefit from that, and I think Manitoba Trade would, perhaps, benefit from it. I wonder how he would respond to that.

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Mr. Downey: First of all, Mr. Chairman, I thank the member for his compliments. I do not think this is an area where a lot of partisan politics can or cannot be, or should or should not, be played. There is no point. I am prepared to do my partisan politics wherever I can. I do not reject the member's recommendation. In fact, one of my objectives, and this is one of the things that--and he has to appreciate we are just really getting into this as Manitoba Trade. We are getting a little more mature; we certainly do not have all the answers. One of the frustrations that I have is when I come back, or I return, is to make sure I fully assimilate the information that I have received, because I am so pumped with the opportunities that I see. How do I make sure that the majority of Manitobans get a read and a feel for the opportunities that I have seen? So that is probably a good way of doing that, that we could probably do, not only just with members of the opposition--we have tried to talk to Chambers--is to put on a full and complete briefing on the return from a mission, so that members of the opposition, the media and Manitobans can fully get a read for what is out there. There may be people sitting there that have capabilities who would want to be on a trade mission that we do not have any idea have capabilities.

So it is a legitimate question, and, as I say, there are a lot of other partisan things that we will get into in a little more serious way as it relates to the partisan part. But there is really need, I do not disagree, to further disseminate information. There is nothing to hide from a trade trip. It is a matter of fully disclosing what we have seen, what we have heard, what we have spent. There is nothing about it that is wrong.

I know one of the media people thought there was, that we should not be having a reception in some of these centres for some of the business people. My goodness, they were some of the best connections made. What I do, just so the member knows, when I am in a setting--I can tell you Canadian embassies are very helpful, but we do not take enough advantage of them as provinces. They sit there, and provinces that go and do business with them or talk through them get a lot of attention. We have been getting a lot of attention.

What I do when I go to these events and these receptions, it just is not Jim Downey talking about Manitoba. What I ask to happen is that all of our trade delegation introduce themselves, what they do, what they sell, what they stand for and a little bit of background. It is extremely helpful. They feel a little more part of it, so it is just not me leading a delegation and government to government. Every business that I have with me gets the opportunity at every chance that I can give them to fully explain what they do and what they have for sale. The networking that takes place is tremendous. So the small investment that we make in a reception or a get-together is very, very productive in terms of people getting an understanding.

So I do not reject the member's recommendation. In fact, I have been working with the Manitoba Trade to decide how we can better do it. I also say this to the member: What I am also looking at is how can we better screen--screening is not the right word--how can we better canvass Manitoba businesses that have capabilities, that want to introduce themselves into the international marketplace so that we are not seen to say, well, these people are particular, either they are a friend or just because Manitoba Trade knows this--that we are legitimately canvassing Manitobans who truly are interested in international marketing.

There is one caution, though, that I would put on the table for the member, and that is that some people may think it is just a trip to go on and it is nice to be there, but I think people have to demonstrate to some degree that they have export capabilities or can move to an export capability position. They do not know that maybe up front, and I am not negative on it, but I think there is just a caution, because there is a lot of people's time and effort.

Again I take my hat off to the people who are involved in Manitoba Trade and all the travelling they do. There is a lot of work, particularly when you are meeting with delegations of people. You have to put your best position forward all the time, and the last thing in the world anybody would want to be is an international embarrassment, I am sure, as it relates to doing business in some of these areas.

So a long answer to a short question, but I am not rejecting what the member said, seeing he was so kind to me and gave me all those compliments. I do think it is a worthwhile exercise to consider, and I will.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, I try to confuse the minister with, you know, compliments when he is expecting criticism and vice versa--it keeps him off balance.

I want to be clear what I was suggesting. I was not suggesting, necessarily, public briefings with press and Chambers; those are important things to do. I was suggesting that those of us in the Legislature, who are responsible in some ways for making laws and understanding opportunities, could learn something, could learn quite a lot, I suspect, from Manitoba Trade and Manitoba Trade's understanding of our economy and the opportunities our economy has.

So I really was suggesting something quite specific which was focusing on MLAs once or twice a year to provide a kind of detailed, factual, forward-looking briefing from Manitoba Trade on a kind of, well, as the minister said, nonpartisan basis. I understand coming back from a trade mission, there are things to be shared and that is fine. If he wants to share those in an other than the normal press release way, I think there would be people interested.

I was talking more about the longer-term strategic advances, opportunities, challenges, so that the members might understand from senior bureaucrat's, senior official's perspectives what the structure of that opportunity is over the next, you know, whatever the time horizon is.

Mr. Downey: I will consider that. I have no difficulty--that was part of my answer--I have no difficulty with considering that and see how it best could be arranged.

Mr. Sale: In the context of the whole trade issue, I wanted to put on the record and I will table, although I only have one copy of it so I want to read from it before I table it, a communiqué from labour organizations in the Americas, in the continents of the Americas, including Central America.

I think it is, first of all, really important to understand that labour is not opposed to trade, far from it. Labour has always taken a position that worldwide linkages among peoples are beneficial and to be desired. What labour is really concerned about are things like this: In 1960 the wealthiest 20 percent of countries owned the equivalent of 30 times what the poorest of 20 percent of countries owned. Unfortunately today that difference is doubled; it is 61 times today. So we live in a world in which 15 percent of the world's population owns 80 percent of the world's GDP. United Nations and other organizations have been very clear that this disparity is increasing.

Mr. Chairperson: The honourable minister, on a point of order.

Mr. Downey: I maybe missed it, but did the member identify what document he is reading from?

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, I said I would table the document. It is a communique from the Canadian Labour Congress, Congrès du travail du Canada, and it is the result of the meeting in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, which took place in the early part of May of this year; in other words, in the last week or so. I said I would table the document. It is a communique from the Canadian Labour Congress, Congres du travail du Canada, and it is the result of a meeting in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, which took place in the early part of May of this year. In other words, in the last week or so. I said I would table the document.

Mr. Chairperson: The honourable minister does not have a point of order. It is clearly a dispute over the facts.

Mr. Chairperson: If the honourable member would like to table the papers that he does have there when he is finished, that would be nice.

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Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, I had already indicated that is what I was going to do, so now we have gone around the circle twice I think.

The concern that we will be raising through questions on a multilateral agreement on investment, MAI, which we have referred to in the House and which the minister acknowledged receipt of in draft in January--actually, I think he will acknowledge there have been two drafts and that he has both of them probably, or at least his staff do. The concern is that business and trade are growing rapidly. When you measure that in terms of economies it is very impressive, but when you look at working conditions, incomes, and sharing of wealth, all of the indices that I know of suggest that, for many nations, particularly the poorer nations of the world--and that would include most Central American nations--certainly Mexico has experienced rapid polarization of a very wealthy, very successful entrepreneurial elite and a very impoverished rural peasantry, an urban migration rate that makes Mexico City--I think now it is either the second or the largest urban agglomeration in the world--horribly, badly polluted because it is in a bowl. It suffers from inversions all the time; polluted, because it simply has grown far beyond its capacity in a developing nation to meet the needs of the roughly 12 million people that live within the urban area, and then a whole lot more that live immediately adjacent to it.

The kinds of things that those of us who would identify with, international workers groups would say are these: International trade, quoting from the document, is not an end in itself. It must benefit all peoples. We oppose free trade without social safeguards, without appropriate guarantees for conditions of labour and social rights, and without protection of the environment. Comparative advantage must not be founded on the violation of basic human rights.

We know from just too many years I guess, that workers in the Andean area of Chile have paid a very high price in terms of their living conditions and their human rights for lax environmental standards, and for labour conditions which are pretty punitive. We know that the federal Liberal government, for reasons that are completely inexplicable to me, refuse to ratify the ILO agreement on child labour and the exploitation of child labour.

There are many, many concerns that I think the minister in his remarks about Bill 3, for example, the other day, in which he indicated that Bill 3 would give us the right to challenge standards in other countries if we were in a trade arrangement with them and we perceived their standards to be allowing them to compete in an unfair way, I hope he was serious in that. I hope he was serious that we would, in fact, use that kind of capability in Bill 3. I tell him under the multilateral agreement on investment, he could not do that. The MAI outlaws any of those kinds of actions on the part of governments, in fact is so uneven in its powers that it gives to corporations the ability to sue governments but removes from governments the ability to sue corporations. So I hope that, given that it has now been raised and put on the table as a concern, he will recognize that the issues we are raising are not just sort of boogeymen in the dark.

The MAI is an attempt on the part of multinational corporations to gain complete advantage over sovereign states, to outlaw any kinds of actions that states might take to protect their environmental needs over and above what might be some lowest common-denominator standard. It removes the ability of states to sue corporations and gives corporations the ability to sue states, puts the whole framework in place for a minimum of 20 years and guarantees companies that, once investments are made under one set of rules, there cannot be any rule changes for whatever reason. It does not matter what they are.

There are, in the draft document, in my understanding, literally hundreds of clauses which would substantially lessen the power of sovereign states to organize their labour and environmental codes and to require that companies locating within their boundaries, have any concern for the local labour force, local labour supply, require that companies be allowed to bring in people to do whatever work they want to bring them in to do, regardless of immigration issues or regardless of unemployment. A company wishing to locate here under MAI would have the right to bring in their entire labour force if they wanted to, whether or not our unemployment rate was 2 percent or 20 percent.

So we have got an opportunity, I guess. The minister has taken time to share with us his optimism about Manitoba's economy and Manitoba's ability to compete in the world, in the developing and changing world that we are in. I say to the minister that there are many workers in that world whose abilities to even live are seriously compromised by the way in which companies function, and these are not just Third World companies. I think the minister may well have seen the article in The Globe and Mail which pointed out that only one company out of quite a number surveyed in Canada had a code of rights, a code of human rights, for workers in its Third World plants. So the stories that international labour has videotaped about environmental and labour conditions are not mythical stories. The videotapes are not filled with actors. They are filled with real people who are suffering to produce wealth on behalf of a very small minority of their countries' populations in order to increase the standards of living and wealth of a small, small proportion of the world's people.

I believe, as a matter of just basic fundamental belief, that you cannot have a stable and peaceful world, you cannot have a sustainable world in which the divisions between rich and poor are so extreme that the rich live in incredible luxury by any kind of historical standards and the poor live in the same kinds of levels of poverty that we knew in biblical times. That is just not a sustainable, stable world order. So, insofar as we do trade, I hope that we are asking questions about the companies that we are doing business with in terms of their records of labour and human rights.

(Mr. Peter Dyck, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)

I hope that, when we buy or sell into countries which have some serious questions in their records, we at least ask those questions in passing and that we do not take the view that the only thing that matters is business because the business of business is business and the business of business does not include human rights and the sustainability and survivability of the kind of planet that we live in.

So I appreciate the minister's briefing, but I want to put on the record that there are really serious concerns about what trade is doing particularly in developing nations. For example, nations are putting valuable and very fragile land into flower production to supply flowers for the tables of the wealthy in North America and Europe and are shipping those flowers all over the world. That is very nice. I like flowers too, but the notion that this is what we ought to do with--I am sure that one was probably grown in a Third World country, Mr. Minister. The question of what we do with the kinds of valuable resources that allow us to enjoy fresh strawberries in the middle of the winter, where those strawberries came from, what conditions they were produced under and what proportion of their value on our table actually found their way to the workers who harvested them I think is a very important long-term question for the stability of our social relationships on an increasingly small planet.

Mr. Downey: I appreciate the member's comments in that regard because it is always a situation where one has to be concerned about who is taken advantage of, if that is, in fact, what is taking place to better the position of any economy, that it is a matter of trying to make sure there is a balance in a society. Again, we signed the side agreement on labour within NAFTA to try and accomplish that. That was one of the indications by this province.

I should just go back to the multilateral agreement on investment, and if there is an apology required, I would. I guess it was a misunderstanding between my departmental staff in our discussions the other day. Because of the fact that the multilateral agreement on investment basically is still some distance, I am told by the department, from a consolidated text or from being finalized--that is why I said earlier in Question Period today that it was very early, as far as I was concerned, the information that had been provided to my department since the other day, and it is the interpretation that it does not bind the provinces, that we were not actively--I should not put it that way--that we were not directly as involved in negotiating a new agreement as the member may have thought we maybe should have indicated we were.

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So I can assure the member that there would have to be a tremendous amount of negotiations, discussions and work done before we would ever be part of it and at a clear understanding as to what implications it would have. I do not consider us being very far down the road, if at all, as it relates to being part of a multilateral agreement on investment. I take the warnings the member has given seriously, that those would be things that would have to be considered, but I think it would be a little presumptuous to say that we are, in fact, well into an agreement as it relates to a multilateral agreement on investment as far as Manitoba is concerned.

Mr. Sale: I thank the minister for the comments, but that is surely exactly the point, that the only time you are likely to be able to get changes in something as substantive as an OECD-based agreement is at the early stages. The longer it goes, the harder the cement sets and the more difficult it is to get any changes.

My information that has come to me is that, in fact, there are provisions binding subnational states in the agreement, and that is a very specific component of the agreement as currently in draft form. The difficulty, of course, is that all states are not federations. Unitary states, such as France, for example, or Great Britain, negotiate, and they are the only level that has to negotiate, whereas if you are a federation where there is a division of powers, it is a different issue. Germany and the United States, Canada and Australia, for example, are all federations with varying degrees of centralization, but they are all federations, and they have different needs in regard to international treaties that have implications for subfederal levels.

I think it is important that this government, first of all, take some steps to educate Manitobans about what is at stake here, if they are concerned about things that are at stake and, secondly, develop and share a strategy and a policy, so that it is very plain whether or not this government, for example, agrees with the very broad definitions of investment that are in the MAI, very, very broad definitions, whether, for example, they would have impact, as some provinces fear they might, on the ability to manage our own health care system.

In spite of the NAFTA reservations, some provinces are suggesting that MAI would override those provisions. I think this is a very important issue to have discussion about during the national election, because if this government, provincially, has the view that there is no threat here, we are at an early stage and we do not have to worry about this, I think it should say so.

That is not my view. My view is that if we were even slightly concerned about NAFTA, we ought to be bloody terrified about the MAI, because it essentially threatens to enshrine the rule of corporations and to severely diminish the role and rule of sovereign states. I acknowledge there are limitations that sovereign states always enter into when they sign treaties, but the MAI forbids any kinds of local standards or local requirements on any investment decisions. Absolutely removes any ability of countries to stop companies from inappropriately transferring capital through transfer pricing agreements. Basically it is open season for the world's multinationals and severe limitations on the world's sovereign states.

So I hope, Mr. Minister, Mr. Chairperson through you to the minister, that the government of Manitoba will say where it stands on the MAI, as it now exists, because this is a treaty that began its negotiations about three years ago, perhaps a little longer. I am certain the business community has had it in mind much longer than that, but it began after a meeting in Seville. It really took off after that meeting in 1995, and the drafts have started to appear since that particular meeting.

What is the minister's view? Is this just something that we can worry about later because it is at an early stage and, besides, we do not really know what it means anyway, or is it something that is actively before the cabinet, taking some positions, giving some instruction to trade officials, to Mr. Sprange or to Mr. Barber, or whomever, Mr. Eldridge, perhaps, and suggesting that Manitoba has some concerns here? Or does Manitoba have no concerns and is quite supportive of MAI, as currently drafted. Let us get on with it. What is the government's position?

Mr. Downey: I think, again, the member is taking it down the road a lot further than what it actually is, or trying to indicate that it is down the road a lot further than it is. I believe there is a considerable amount of work that would have to be done. I have no difficulty in indicating to the member, that it is my opinion, my belief, that an extension or a marrying of NAFTA as it relates to this, that we have the protection we need under the NAFTA agreement. If that were to be the principles of which we were to negotiate and discuss it, I think could be acceptable, because it has been demonstrated under NAFTA, we have supported the NAFTA agreement, we have added the sidebar agreements on environment and labour; that those are the kinds of principles that we support. I am saying that as it relates to any agreements that one were to enter into.

The NAFTA agreement is one which, yes, it had some changes for political reasons, by the current Prime Minister, because he did not like the one that was signed, but the bottom line is that, I think we have the protections that we need under the NAFTA agreement. He may disagree and that is his prerogative. Again, I can assure the member that would be my position in going forward and I can assure him, as well, that his concerns that he has raised at this committee will certainly be taken into consideration.

I am not, in any way, trying to lessen the importance of any trade agreement. There is always importance to be involved if it is going to impact on us. I make two points: One is that it is, I am informed by the department, that we would not automatically be tied in if the federal government were to do it. I understand that the federal government still have not advanced to any final stages of a text, and that if there were to be the advancement that would be important to--be similar to the NAFTA agreement as it relates to this particular agreement.

I do not have a whole lot more to add. If the member wants to raise it as part of the national election campaign, he may want to do so. I am not so sure who he will get to pay attention to his debate.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, have senior officials of the department provided the minister or other members of the government with a briefing, with materials, with recommendations? Has a position been taken?

Mr. Downey: Mr. Chairman, there has been some material available but not any extensive discussions at this particular time as it relates to my department.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, when did the minister have this material? When was it available?

Mr. Downey: Because, Mr. Chairman, I was not taking it quite as, I guess, at the point of being on the threshold as the member is pressing it, I cannot give him the exact time. I imagine the department probably was in receipt of it sometime in January, as it relates to the federal government.

Again, as part of the briefing notes, they are available. They came through to my department but, again, it was not highlighted and/or identified as something that was of an immediate urgent situation because of the fact that we as a province were not seen to be bound by the federal government's actions on it. In fact, the federal government had not seemed to be moving very aggressively on it because a lot of things had to be done as it related to them advancing to concluding any agreement.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, my impression from other sources, I guess, is quite the contrary, that the federal government was quite aggressively pursuing this and that, in fact, Canada was one of the promoters, one of the active promoters of this development, that it took part in some of the early meetings and was quite significantly involved in this.

So I hope the minister's information is better than mine. It probably is, but my information is that Canada, in fact, is quite aggressively pursuing this, obviously not at the time of a federal election for public consumption because it would be devastating to the position of the Government of Canada, I think, if citizens knew what was in the draft agreement on investment. This would not be a positive development for them, so I am sure they are not talking about that publicly, but my understanding is they are quite aggressive about it.

I ask the minister, Mr. Chairperson: The other day it seemed to me I went around the block several times and said are there any other treaties, are there any other discussions in which your officials are involved or of which you are aware, and he said, no, no, not aware. Yet now we learn that in January he got the material and, indeed, he did; every province did. There were two drafts circulated and he got them both, I am sure. I am sure his officials, as competent bureaucrats, would have immediately moved to prepare a briefing material, a note, and would have met with the minister and informed him.

So I just wonder how that slipped his mind when I asked that question about as carefully as I could to see whether he would be willing to share with the committee what was going on in regard to the MAI.

Mr. Downey: Mr. Chairman, I did not say that I got the document in January. I said that the department got it in January, and it was forwarded to my office some time later than that. I am not sure specifically when it was, and as I said, again because of the discussions that we had the other day, if he had been more specific at that time, I am sure we could have dealt directly with it. At that particular time, I did not see it as one in which we were so directly involved.

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I just want to make another comment, that the information that I have is that from Canada's perspective, there are still a number of issues which are outstanding, which indicated to me that when you have a series of issues that are outstanding, then it is not one which would have them advance it the next day.

So if there was a misunderstanding, there was certainly no intention on my part to not fully discuss or debate or disclose it. When I, in fact, had the staff here, if he had specifically raised that issue, then we could have dealt with it. So I do apologize to the member. It certainly was not any intentional way of not wanting to debate. I will debate him on any subject at any time and any place.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, it is not my job to do the minister's job. The minister's job, I think, was, first of all, to be forthright about the fact that this was a very important issue. I do not understand how he could think that a treaty being negotiated among OECD nations that has consumed at least some time of staff in Manitoba--and surely, surely, knowing who they are, I am confident they read it very carefully and raised concerns--I just think it is difficult to believe the minister would not be concerned about that issue.

But more than that, Mr. Chairperson, when a treaty is in the draft stages is exactly the time when potentially affected parties have to become knowledgeable about the implications, have solid opinion from trade experts--and I am sure we consult trade experts; I am sure we do not just rely entirely on our staff--and they have to take a position, and it has to be a pretty forthright position because you are seeking to presumably--well, unless you are accepting it as it is drafted--make changes in something in which there are some 24 partners involved in negotiating at the senior level and goodness knows how many at the lower level involved in negotiating components if you count all the members of the federated states that are involved in this.

I can tell the minister that the governors of the western United States are very concerned about the MAI, and they have written a letter to their government saying, what does this do to our ability as states in the United States to deal with investment within our borders? What does it do in relation to our ability to set environmental sustainability standards that appear now to be able to be challenged by a company that feels like they are now going to lose some profit because they cannot log up the side of every mountain in the state?

These are western governors. These are not socialists, that the minister may think that we are only concerned about the poor and trees. I think we are concerned about the poor and trees, but so are many, many others, and I ask him to be concerned on behalf of Manitobans and to take this draft treaty seriously, to bring himself up to speed on it and bring his colleagues and cabinet up to speed on it, take some positions and let the public of Manitoba know what those positions are, so that the public can be informed about how its government is acting to protect our long-term interests and future.

There will be very little need for governments if MAI is implemented in the way in which it is currently conceived. Governments will simply be caretakers that have very little initiative available to them in terms of their economy to make any differences. Those that go into it rich will get very rich, and those that go into it relatively poorer will stay that way and get worse, because the power moves from your hands as government to the hands of multinational corporations through this kind of agreement.

So I am appalled that the minister, first of all, did not share the information with the committee. I am appalled that he is not up to speed on it. I am appalled that the government does not have a policy, or if it does, that it is not prepared to share it. I urge him to get up to speed on this and to take a stand because around the world organizations are raising serious concerns about the loss of sovereignty, the loss of the rights, for example, of small and locally based businesses to be able to compete effectively in that kind of environment that is dominated by global players.

I do not have any other comments about that, but we will sure continue to raise the issue, and I sure hope the minister takes the time to get fully briefed on what is in the draft document and what the implications for sovereignty are and whether, in fact, the draft contains the provisions that bind subfederal authorities that I believe are in there.

Mr. Downey: Mr. Chairman, he may be appalled if he likes. I think I have explained quite clearly what the issue was as it relates to the discussion at committee and as to why it may not have been brought forward, the fact that we were not and have not been in the status of which he is trying to put us in the position of; secondly, that I am somewhat up to speed on it, and I am not going to say that I am overly knowledgeable of it. It is a matter of taking a considerable amount of time to get all the detail. Again, taking it down the road further than it is, the federal government may well, because of the information we have from them, not proceed to be part of it. If that is the case, then the additional work and effort that would be put into it--we will have a comment, and it will be made public in a position as the need arises.

He is pushing on the issue; fine, that is his responsibility. He has raised his concerns; they have been noted. Again, I want to assure the member, though, it is taking it a little further than it actually is. I will take his comments as they have been presented here.

Mr. Sale: Will the minister table the draft agreement as currently in the second draft that was received in January?

Mr. Downey: I am informed that we are unable to do so because of the discussions that have taken place with the federal and the provincial departments, that it is not available to be tabled at this point. As soon as anything is available to me, then I can assure the member he would get copies.

Mr. Sale: One other issue in the area of Trade. The minister referred to it, and I wanted to wait until Trade was up before I raised it, and that is the whole issue of co-ops. We have a tiny little department of Cooperative Developments still attached to one of our units. I think it is small business that it is attached to.

Co-ops are not actually small business. The credit union movement in Manitoba has assets in the billions of dollars, and the Red River Co-op and others are not really small businesses. They are pretty medium-sized or, in some cases, in the form of credit unions, at least as a movement, I would class them as large businesses. Certainly in terms of total employment they are.

I think, more important, the minister probably knows and certainly his trade officials know that in many parts of the world co-ops are a dominant form of economic organization. In the northwestern part of Spain, virtually the whole region of Mondragone is a co-op. Northern Italy and central Italy are dominated by very, very aggressive entrepreneurial high-tech co-ops. Co-ops are a form of doing business in many parts of the eastern United States, the co-op movement in the United States, as a whole, in the farm and electrical utility area. The whole notion of co-operatives is a very, very large element of the world's economy. There are world organizations dedicated entirely to the development of co-ops.

It seems to me that we lag far behind here in Manitoba in making use of the opportunities that co-op frameworks provide for employee ownership, employee sense of participation and commitment. I wonder whether Manitoba Trade, in its experiences, sees opportunities for how things are organized in other countries that might become useful to Manitoba, in other words, to import some of our experience rather than just to be always focused on exporting.

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The co-op movement in the United States, in fact, is a bigger movement--although it is interesting in the context of that country--in proportion to its economy by a fair amount than it is in Canada. I wonder why, as a department, we are not more actively promoting co-operative forms of enterprise at all levels. The minister probably knows that in some European settings and many American settings, utilities, water supply, sewage treatment operations, transit, many different forms of service are co-operatively owned and managed. There are some real advantages to that approach. Yet we have, I think, only two staff in the whole province, with one administrative position, devoted to a sector of our economy that deserves, I think, a much better form of support. Could the minister comment?

Mr. Downey: I guess what I should state clearly is that, any time we run across or Manitoba Trade become involved in any ideas, expertise or systems, their activities within travel are brought back and disseminated through the department as it relates to opportunities. Particularly in the co-op development area, there are probably three areas within government, maybe more, four areas of which the whole area of co-operative development takes place: Consumer and Corporate Affairs, with their involvement of consumer co-ops; Department of Agriculture certainly, and my honourable colleague the Honourable Harry Enns is no stranger to co-ops, and there is a tremendous amount of co-operative development that takes places throughout the agricultural community; Rural Development is also an area in which we see some participation in co-ops; and the Department of Industry Trade and Tourism. We continue to see a considerable amount of co-operative organizations set up.

Again, I could make an example that a lot of people think totally of maybe an elevator company or the elevator systems. We have had co-op programs in the feeder cattle co-operative business, where it has encouraged people to get into the whole area of further adding value to their livestock. We have participated in the last year with the rural gas co-op, which, by the way, I am pleased to see is up and running and doing quite well. We have seen a considerable number of water co-ops that have been developed throughout the province, which, again, are very important tools to provide neighbours the ability to organize and provide a service for themselves.

So we have not, in any way, downplayed or not made use of the co-operative movement. We have been strongly supportive of it. I think we have had something like 23 co-ops set up in the last period of time, 23 co-operatives in the last year of which there are several numbers of members.

Again, one change that I would like to see considered and will be looking into is what they refer to in the United States as a closed co-op, so that there may be a group of 10 or 20 individuals who form a co-op and that is the limit. It is somewhat like a limited partnership corporation, but it, I think, has some advantages to it, and I think that is a basic principle that should be further considered. There are a considerable number of them setting up in North Dakota, I understand, and I think it would be worthy of consideration to look at here in the province of Manitoba. I am getting the positive head shake from my colleague the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Enns), and once he nods in the affirmative, nothing will stop it.

The member for Turtle Mountain (Mr. Tweed), also, is certainly giving the affirmative. The member for Pembina (Mr. Dyck), I know, is unable to speak because of his position in the chair, but when you get that kind of a power base moving behind you, I am sure that it will happen, Mr. Chairman.

The Acting Chairperson (Mr. Dyck): Would there be leave for the honourable Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Enns) to make a comment.

An Honourable Member: You do not need leave; just recognize him.

Hon. Harry Enns (Minister of Agriculture): Just to support what the minister has been saying, particularly in the direction that agriculture and value-added agriculture is taking--has pointed the finger very directly at the co-operative type of structure to put together the necessary pools of capital. The rural task force spent considerable time looking at that, and I believe, quite frankly, it has real opportunities for doing two things, that we can provide opportunities for local people, local money, rather than total reliance on offshore or big companies, you know, handling all this processing. It is interestingly enough to note, something that I am not happy about at all, that it is essentially the sugar co-ops in North Dakota that are continuing to process sugar very successfully, and that model is under review right now as to whether or not--if we were to be successful to provide some fresh opportunities in sugar processing in Manitoba. We have the expertise, we have the farmers, we have traditionally seeded upwards to 30,000 acres in sugar. Regrettably, a great deal of international trade politics, sugar politics, have dealt us unkindly in that aspect, but the opportunity, in my opinion, of bringing back the sugar industry, for instance, to Manitoba most likely would be that route, through the formation of a co-operative.

Mr. Sale: In other words, sugar has been used as a sweetener in international trade deals that Canada has made.

An Honourable Member: Not for Canadians.

Mr. Sale: Well, that is unfortunately what has been done. It has been used to trade off against other agricultural products, and so Alberta and Manitoba have gotten the sour end of the deal.

The minister has spoken strongly about co-ops. The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Enns) has added his comments. Am I simply not remembering history, but it seems to me that there was a Conservative government that took a co-operative education curriculum and shredded it and sold it finally to the Co-op College in Saskatoon and to York University, I think, were the final recipients of that. This probably dates me--I am not nearly as old as the minister, but I guess I am old enough to remember that.

An Honourable Member: Aging quickly with these questions.

Mr. Sale: Actually, he may be surprised; I may be closer to him in age than he thinks. Perhaps there has been enough time passed since that unfortunate episode in which a number of civil servants lost their jobs simply because they were involved in the development of an education curriculum, some of whom were people that I subsequently got to know as fine educators.

Would the minister not think it important, given the scale of co-op enterprise in the United States, in Third World countries and in developed nations in Europe and in our own province, to have some more resources available in that whole area and to provide at least some level of education in co-op models of entrepreneurial activity so that Manitobans are not without some understanding of just what a powerful engine for local and regional development co-operatives are?

Mr. Downey: I happen to remember that material he was referring to that hit the shredders. That would have even turned the communists off as it relates to how involved the state should be involved in business, and so, with the greatest of respect, it was scary material. As it relates to education--

An Honourable Member: Were you the minister that paid them off?

Mr. Downey: No, I was not. It was scary, very, very scary. That was in the time when we had the state farm program under the New Democratic Party, as well, so that really added to it. Anybody that was associated with free enterprise was running--

An Honourable Member: Oh, you are older. I take back my comment. You are a lot older.

Mr. Downey: I am a lot older and, hopefully, a little bit wiser, but that is to be judged.

So the question is to the further advancing in the development of co-ops. We have the Co-op Promotion Board which is a very useful tool. I know you, Mr. Chairman, from your background and your community, that you have been very directly involved in the co-ops and the co-operative movement, and they have been very successful. We look across the province as it relates to the credit union movement which also falls under the cooperative development act. Again, they are promoters and I take my hat off to them--a credit to them. A lot of places where the private banking industry is leaving communities, where there are small banks, single bank towns, where basically without the credit union movement and the co-operative movement they would not have a financial facility or capability.

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So, I am not sure whether there is more education needed; it seems that there is a balance out there. If I felt that there were an opportunity for a co-op anywhere, I would certainly advance the idea. I would do so very aggressively because the word co-op does not bother me. Co-operative is a different structure or a different combination of people working together under a structure to accomplish a goal. That goal is to develop a business. It is to develop, in some places, on a consumer side, whether it is the credit union, whether it is the co-op housing. It is a system of development.

(Mr. Chairperson in the Chair)

So I do not think we are in any way starving the co-ops when you look at the record that has taken place, when you look at the fact that we have seen some pretty aggressive development in co-ops in the last while, and I, quite frankly, think that the community is very much aware of the availability of co-ops. After all, Manitoba Pool Elevators which is a co-op that goes back many, many, many years, it is not only involved in rural Manitoba, but its head office has been involved here.

Some of the things that are interesting, as we see what is happening within the co-operative movement, of course, has been the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool which was one of probably the oldest and the strongest co-operatives in western Canada. It has now changed its strategy and has gone to the public market for funds through the stock market. It appears like it is an alternative way for them to grow and expand their company and that they are doing both within western Canada and internationally with their combination of joining Cargill and an export terminal--I do not want the member to get too excited, but reality has to be told to him once in a while--the grain terminal at the West Coast and investments in the U.S., investments in other provinces.

So there are changes within the co-operative movement. The old, traditional co-operative system that we have seen is changing and I think will continue to change as the demands of the public change. I am satisfied that we have a very capable person in charge of the co-operative section with Small Business, and that if there is anything lacking, I am sure I would have heard from the general public and, quite frankly, I have not. Most of the calls I get are generally of support, and they set their co-ops up and do their development.

Probably one of the co-ops I am most proud of is the natural gas co-op called Gladco, which is an alternative for those communities where, in fact, they could not get the traditional private sector gas company to set up a system. They have done it, and now, of course, the private natural gas company is very interested in getting into some of these rural communities. There is finally an alternative that is out there that is demonstrating its worth.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, in the additional information, there is a heading, Access To Capital. Manitoba Trade provides counselling and assistance on accessing export financing and acts as a liaison between Manitoba firms and export-financing institutions.

Is it the experience of Manitoba Trade that export-financing arrangements are adequate, that they work well, that there are not blockages here, or are we running into problems about access to capital in this particular area?

Mr. Downey: Mr. Chairman, it is always a challenge, particularly for smaller companies.

There are two or three points I would like to make. One is that I think we are seeing a different attitude toward banks dealing in the international marketplace because in our visit, again, to South America, we have met many of the Canadian banking companies that are, in fact, setting up branches or associations with banking organizations in those countries which makes it easier for companies to do business, because you have to have a banking system that supports the commerce between two jurisdictions unless you are awfully well-heeled, and if you are that well-heeled, most people would say, then, have a nice day because you are on your own.

The member mentions Russia, and I feel pretty pleased that we were able to encourage the Moscow Narodny Bank to come to Manitoba, to set up their head office here for North America, so they could be the bridge between trade here and Russia. They are a Russian-directed bank, but they are basically owned and chartered in the U.K.

Again, we are pleased that they came, and it came again from one of our trade trips that we had. The agent that we have in London set up the meeting, and it turned out to be successful. The question was asked by the media--when the Moscow Narodny Bank was asked, why would you set up in Winnipeg, the answer from the chairman of the board was, why not? I thought it was an excellent response.

Again, as it relates, there are some federal programs in place like the Export Development Corporation. We are looking at, through out department in the next while, how we can better enhance the financial supports for companies that are looking to trade internationally, what some of the shortfalls are and what can be done to improve them. So we will be putting some resources forward in the next while to try and identify how we can improve that, because there is a difficulty there at certain times.

Mr. Sale: Do any other provinces and does Manitoba have any programs that essentially are export guarantee programs? Do any provinces underwrite exports?

Mr. Downey: Not as directly as the member would ask. I think there maybe is a combination working with banks as to--the head of Manitoba Trade indicates that probably in B.C. there is a combination with the government and the bank. Again, I identify it as a problem because, for example, some of the smaller companies that have travelled with us, if they were to accomplish a contract, a good sale of a product and they were to ship that product, and for some reason the company at the other end was not able to pay for the product or there was not advance payment or the proper letters of credit, one shipment could well cripple the company that was trying to get into the international marketplace.

So it is that kind of security that we believe has to be put in place to make sure that the people, when they enter into it and venture into the international marketing, do not get put in a vulnerable position right off the hop.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, is Manitoba considering getting into some combination of guaranteeing or partially guaranteeing in collaboration with a bank, or, in any way, becoming a partner in export finance, either directly or indirectly?

Mr. Downey: At this particular time, I think we have to do a little bit more work in this area. Again, we would certainly prefer the banks to do it. The banks should be the ones that do it. If there is still a shortfall, I guess, following the work that we are going to do in the next short while, if we were to consider it, then I would have to advance it through to Treasury Board and to my colleagues to get support on it.

At this particular time, I would not be able to give that as an affirmative answer because there has to be a little bit of work done. Is there going to be need to do so? I would like the banks to step in and do it without us having to be a part of it. There may be some options that flow from the work that we do in the next while as to how involved we get, but we certainly have not got any authority at this particular time to put the province in the position of any guarantees.

We believe there is some support from the federal government through the Export Development Corporation. That should be the one that has the first call.

Mr. Sale: I think we could pass this area down to the subtotal (c).

Mr. Chairperson: Item 10.2.(c) Manitoba Trade (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $1,080,800--pass. (2) Other Expenditures $1,934,300--pass; (3) Grants $250,000. Shall the item pass?

Mr. Sale: Just briefly, could the minister outline the grants that are made here.

Mr. Downey: Basically there are two areas, Mr. Chairman, and that is to support companies for trade show promotion activities and also for materials and development of promotional activities as it relates to--I can table a couple of documents here which would clearly explain what they are. That is basically what they are, for trade shows and for the designing of material and website participation. I will table those for the member.

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Mr. Sale: In the annual report structure, pages 51 and following, there are a whole list of little grants, Trade Assistance Program, for example. Could the minister indicate which of the headings, one, two, three, four, five--for example, five is Trade Assistance--which ones of these would come out of this appropriation?

Mr. Downey: If you would go to pages 52 and 53, they would be the grants that would flow from this particular grant program.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, that total is about $153,000. Is it just that expenditures have increased, or is there another subsection of this appropriation that is spent somewhere else?

Mr. Downey: Mr. Chairman, it has been increased because of increased demand and the projected increase in the use of this program. As we grow our export activities and more companies get involved, then there are more resources required to do it.

Mr. Sale: Pass.

Mr. Chairperson: Item 10.2.(c)(3) Grants $250,000--pass; (4) Less: Recoverable from Rural and Urban Economic Development Initiatives ($1,000,000).

Mr. Sale: Could the minister just outline what it is that is being recovered here? What services are being provided in return for this?

Mr. Downey: Mr. Chairman, it is an internal allocation, and it is a recognition that some funds that would come into the department would be used for the rural and urban activities as it relates to some of these programs.

Mr. Sale: Are these staff services or actual staff who are actually in the Department of Rural Development, or are these services provided to that department, that that department is, in effect, transferring funds for?

Mr. Downey: This is a financial transfer.

Mr. Sale: Then, for the record, these are services provided by this department to Rural Development which, because they are under Trade, I assume that the purpose here is to enhance the trade opportunities of rural agribusiness, rural producers, and this department provides those services and recovers a fee for service, in effect.

Mr. Downey: Basically that is it, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Sale: Is this is simply a kind of pro forma million dollars, or is there actually an accounting that goes back and forth for services?

Mr. Downey: It is a pro forma.

Mr. Sale: So in other words, Mr. Chairperson, the minister won the arm-wrestling contest and got some pay for some services that he had been providing, and the Minister of Rural Development (Mr. Derkach) gave up something.

Mr. Downey: I would not put it that way. I would not put it in that context, Mr. Chairman. I would not put it quite that way. There was a willing giving and a willing taking.

Mr. Chairperson: 10.2. Business Services (c) Manitoba Trade (4) Less: Recoverable from Rural and Urban Economic Development Initiatives ($1,000,000)--pass. 2.(d) Telecommunications Marketing (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $$299,500.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, the former director of this team was Mr. Swain I think, or at least at one point it was. Who is now the overall director of this team?

Mr. Downey: Steve Demmings, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, how many people are involved in the team at this point?

Mr. Downey: If the member gives me a minute, I will introduce Mr. Steve Demmings.

Mr. Sale: All right.

Mr. Downey: How about that? Co-operation. This is Mr. Steve Demmings, who is in charge of the Telecommunications Marketing branch.

Mr. Chairman, the question is, I understand, how many people are employed in this section? I will get that information. The answer would be six.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, could the minister indicate whether any consideration is being given to developing some standards or expectations of companies that come to Manitoba under this initiative? The minister, and we have talked about this before, has told us that there are some 5,000 jobs.

I have raised, on behalf of the opposition, some concerns about working conditions and quality of those jobs, the standards. Is there any consideration given to expectations of companies that come here in terms of the quality of the work setting that they will offer to their employees?

Mr. Downey: Mr. Chairman, I guess the question is where we are involved directly in any financial programs we have a little more opportunity to have some say or direction. There are those who would come within the system, setting up a business that, if they meet the labour standards and they meet the conditions of environmental standards and all of those things, there would not be a lot of room for the government to regulate them to be out of business as long as they met the different criteria and standards that fall within the different acts of the Legislature.

As it relates directly to the operations, we are targeting companies that would be more in the specialized fields, whether it is health care, medicine, information, financial information, value-added calling, I guess one could call it, to this industry. As far as drawing up certain guidelines, thou shalt or shall not do certain things, again, one has to be considerate of the employees and the labour standards that are met, the work conditions, the environment and all those things that I have referred to. So, as far as setting up rules and regulations as thou shalt or shall not do, I do not know whether we would have the ability to do so or whether we would want to as long as they met the, I said, the workplace health and safety conditions in all of those traditional areas in which we would want to make sure that the people were protected.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, increasingly in industry there are ISO9000, ISO901, 902--I do not know how far it goes now, but 903 or 904 I think I have seen. There are probably higher numbers. The whole concept of best practices is certainly part of many industry groupings, and the minister has talked about that and seen that in the Price Waterhouse study of his own department.

It seems to me that it would be in everybody's interest. Manitoba is now a centre of telemarketing expertise. We must have some track record that shows us what works and what does not work. What is more profitable, what is less profitable. We have had some in this industry, some smaller call centres have closed. Others have grown very, very rapidly and seem to have a good book of business that they pursue. I think there is general agreement that inbound calling, where the caller is asking for something, is generally easier to make a rewarding occupation than widget selling. Outbound telemarketing, it takes a particular kind of person I think to thrive doing that. But would it not make some sense to begin to compile some information about best practices, what seems to work, what seems not to work, about training standards, about the kinds of industry approaches that will make a new entrant have the highest likelihood of success? I do not want to be entirely critical of the industry. I am certainly critical of some of the standards in it, but is it not time that as a department we began to take an approach that looks very clearly for quality and not just for quantity?

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Mr. Downey: Mr. Chairman, I can inform the member that the industry itself is setting up an organization which is going to deal with the kinds of concerns that are brought forward by the member, and I compliment them on doing that. It is better if the industry self-disciplines than if there is forced regulatory activities that force it to happen. They see it, and it is certainly in their interests to do that. Again, I think it is a reflection as to an industry if there are certain bad apples that are not, in some way, shown to be carrying out an activity. Again, my preference is to see the actions and the activities within the industry self-disciplinary, and I am sure that their standards will be established and set which probably would be more effective than if we were to do it as a government.

Again, I guess if the fact that there was a period of time in which there were continued complaints, concerns, and the general individual or public interest were suffering because actions were or were not being carried out on behalf of this industry, then we would have to take some action. But I am confident that we are seeing some action in this area, and I compliment them in doing it.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, first of all, I was aware that association was being set up, and I am glad it is being set up. Is the government an active promoter, supporter of that association and its establishment? Is the government a participant, observer, whatever?

Mr. Downey: Mr. Chairman, the initial development of it was encouraged by the department. Secondly, the department feels that it is now the opportunity now that they have established themselves to carry out the work of the association and organization, and it is my understanding that they are working and are targeting the education and training of the individuals who are working within that industry. It is in the initial stages. The department was very much involved and instrumental in getting the organization established. It is now underway.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, I thank the minister for that. The minister and I yesterday had some exchange around also the issue of evaluation in the whole area of employee retention, turnover, and those issues that I raised yesterday with the minister--and he may have had a chance or may not have had a chance to talk with staff about that--but is the industry in and through that association interested in developing some overall awareness of what average retention rates are, average cost of turnovers of new hirers, all those sorts of issues that I think affect the long-term viability and profitability of these enterprises. Obviously, the lower you can have turnover, the better, the higher skill you can produce among your staff and all those things are for the benefit.

So is the minister interested in the proposal to have such an evaluation with the assistance perhaps of the Manitoba Bureau of Statistics, who have some expertise in doing those kinds of surveys and undertakings?

Mr. Downey: Mr. Chairman, as I recall yesterday's discussion, it was the question as to whether we could do an analysis of the turnover of people and if people were being taken advantage of as it relates to this and companies were using the programs as a subsidy for the company, a little clear analysis of the industry. As I said yesterday, I would be prepared to look at it. In discussion with staff, we could discuss that with the association to see how best it could be done. I think there would be--I cannot speak for the association, but I would hope there would be a willingness to put in place the kind of mechanism to gather the information on the telephone. I think it would be in their interest and for the fact that they are setting up. Their targeting on training and personal development in the initial stages probably would go without saying that if they are going to set it up, they would want to measure how effective it is. So I would be prepared to have staff promote with the organization the recommendations that they had and see how best it could be handled. I have no problem with that, and I think it is a worthy idea.

Mr. Sale: The member for Dauphin has asked questions about a reservation system which currently we are calling Toronto to get a California firm's answering service for reserving sites, and the minister indicated, the minister responding, Natural Resources responding, indicated that this company was going to come to Manitoba and locate itself here. I do not know whether it would come here under the name of Destinet or whether it would come under some other name, but can the minister tell the committee--presumably the company is coming--when is he expecting it to be located here and what is the scale of its operation?

Mr. Downey: I think that better would be answered by the Department of Natural Resources because he is the minister that is directly involved in dealing with it. We will further follow up on it as it relates to the call centre activity, so I will take that as notice and refer it to the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Cummings).

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, am I right in understanding that the department responsible has no knowledge of this company at the present time coming to Manitoba?

Mr. Downey: I would not necessarily say that. That could be the case.

Mr. Sale: What would the minister say?

Mr. Downey: The minister would say that we should talk to the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Cummings) to see what the status of it is and get that information.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, I think, then, the minister is saying that he does not know the status of that company's plans in terms of it coming to Manitoba at the present time and his staff is not aware of it, so we will ask the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Cummings) that question.

Mr. Downey: I can tell the member that I have talked to the minister as well, and he has indicated that is the case, that the company plans to move to Manitoba, so that is basically the information that I have available to me, to the member.

Mr. Sale: Does the minister know whether a condition of the contract was the company moving to Manitoba?

Mr. Downey: Mr. Chairman, I am sure the member would get that information from the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Cummings). It is my understanding the plan is to have the company move to Manitoba.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, in the area of TeleSpectrum, I raised a number of concerns about TeleSpectrum yesterday. In terms of basic standards, I mean very basic standards, this is a situation where 250 staff at any one time are competing for four tables in a lunch room. The lunch room is tiny. There are two washrooms on the floor for 250 staff. I mean, not two separate washrooms but two stalls, two toilets. The cleanliness standard of them is reputed to be horrible.

People are treated as though they were children. For example, if you make an error, you have to wear a silly hat. At least, that was the practice a few weeks ago. I have a hard time seeing that as dignified work or work that takes seriously the rights of workers to work in a setting that respects their humanity.

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I do not know whether the minister gets any complaints. He said yesterday he did not, but I would like to ask him: Do his staff, do his department people get any complaints from workers who find their working conditions unsatisfactory?

Mr. Downey: No, I can tell the member that the head, who we are dealing with here, of the Telecommunications Branch has not had that brought to his attention, although I would ask that a further review of those concerns be looked at, because I think that is important, that the information that has been provided, if that is the case, then somebody should be looking at it. I will find out specifically even though it has not been brought to his attention.

Secondly, I can tell the member that there was a visit to Red River Community College, I believe, yesterday of which the participants are in the seventh week of an eight-week course of which some are from the social services support system. Basically, there is a good confidence level. They are very optimistic about their training there taking place and look forward to becoming involved in the industry. So I will see if there is any merit or any substance to what the member has brought to this committee.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, thank you for the minister's answer. The training program at Red River, I am sure, is a good program. When I was making remarks about training in regard to going to work in a telemarketing centre, I was referring not to people who are coming through the social assistance referral route but people who were brought in more or less off the street that were given little or no training. In the cases that have been brought to our attention again in regard to TeleSpectrum, it was the reading of a manual and very quickly being put on the boards, on the computer, which to me sounds like a silly way to waste human energy and staff dollars, because I find it hard to believe that people would be able to do that without some training. Nevertheless, that is what we were told.

I am also wondering about basic deceptive trade practices. One of the reasons, though not by any means, I guess, the only reason, for locating a telemarketing centre in Canada to market exclusively into the United States is that it is relatively hard for consumers in another country to have any comeback against something that originated outside that country. For the most part, it is just going to be too expensive to try and undo something that took place in Winnipeg, in a conversation with Winnipeg, and so you write it off to whatever.

The people in at least two centres that have come to us have said, in the case of TeleSpectrum, for example, they were instructed to say they were calling from Delaware, not from Winnipeg. Others have been instructed to say that they were calling from north of Minneapolis. I guess that is one way to get to Manitoba, to go north from Minneapolis, but perhaps a little less than forthright to suggest that they were calling from north of Minneapolis, geographically accurate, but perhaps not forthright.

Are there any requirements when a call centre receives funding from the province, AT&T, Transtech, Faneuil, TeleSpectrum and others, that they make a commitment to adhere to fair trade practice and not to deceive those whom they are calling in terms of where they are calling from?

Mr. Downey: I am not aware of the situation and/or any enforcement activity that would be in place, although I am sure the association, which is being developed, will have the same kind of application and discipline as it comes to that particular area. I would not know why anybody would want to misrepresent where the calls were coming from. The member is referring to some kind of liability, I guess, or some kind of a comeback. Again, I would think the company would not get along very well if that was in fact the word that was going out, that they were misrepresenting their location of the call. Again, I think it will be a disciplinary question within the industry and the organization, if there is a complaints department or a complaints committee set up, that that would be the place to refer it. Again, I ask the member, if he has hard evidence of what he is bringing to this table, I would ask him to produce it.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, it is the same problem that I referred to yesterday, the hard evidence is in the heads of workers who--some of whom still work for the company and some of whom do not. I suppose the problem is that if they go public, then there are the problems of reprisal. So I can only ask the minister to have his staff make inquiries of people as to whether they were instructed to identify where they were calling from. There may have been a change since I received this information, which was about three weeks ago now. So if there has been, that is an improvement.

I ask the minister to consider not so much what it does to the company. It is very hard for some caller and goodness knows where in the United States to know where they called or did not call from and to be concerned or not concerned about that. How that would ever come back, I do not know, except in lack of success in a program, I suppose.

What does it do to a former welfare recipient who has been trained, that the first job they have tells them to lie about where they are calling from or tells them to represent benefits of a product as free benefits as opposed to services for which they pay? This is in the case of American Express and Platinum cards that were being marketed. They were told on the board to represent 23 free benefits. In fact, there are 23 services, all right, but you pay for them. They are not free benefits. What does it do to the morality of young people and of welfare recipients who are first--their first serious job requires them to misrepresent the products they are selling? Not much of a first job, in my view.

Mr. Downey: Mr. Chairman, I have sat here, and I have tried to be as co-operative as can be, but, again, if the member is prepared to produce some hard evidence, put it in writing that there are people being told to lie by a call centre, then he should produce that. He wants me to--he is saying what kind of training is that, what kind of example is that. Well, it is not a good example, but it is equally not good if he comes to this committee with a lot of innuendo and accusations that cannot be backed up.

If he wants me to have staff go out and chase wild stories which he is bringing to this table, I would ask him to put some more concrete evidence on the table. Is he prepared to do that, and, if he is, then I will prepare to advance it. But I think he is spending a considerable amount of time trying to berate or to in some way tear down this industry that is growing and developing and creating jobs and taking people off of welfare and putting them into a meaningful job.

I have just given him a report of how successful the training programs are working. I told him yesterday that people were involved from Education, which is a department he is familiar with, from Family Services and, Mr. Chairman, I quite frankly think the civil service have integrity that if that were taking place and it was knowledgeable within the civil service that it would be corrected. I do not know what problem he has with the call centre people.

He has really, for some reason, gotten himself upset about this and is going to any way, shape or form try to malign them. I think he is being somewhat unfair, and I will challenge the member to put on this table or to give us a written statement of somebody or himself that he knows where people have been told to lie or told to misrepresent where they are calling from. All of these accusations are no better than what he is trying to tell somebody else that they are doing. So I would challenge the member to come forward with his clear background and clear information that he is putting on this record in dealing with the call centre people. I, quite frankly, am getting a little disturbed at the approach he is taking.

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Mr. Sale: I think the minister has reason to be disturbed, but not about the approach I am taking. I do not expect the civil service to know about this. It is not their job to go and talk to individual employees. I think if they did know about it, they would be concerned, just as I am.

Let me ask the minister: Is the minister prepared absolutely to guarantee the anonymity of any complaints that are received and any evidence that is provided by staff so that they will not be exposed to reprisals from their employer and to make absolutely sure that there is no way the employer can connect the concern with a particular complainant?

Mr. Downey: I will do my best, because he is quite often criticizing me for not providing information as it relates to third-party information, as it relates to loans that are made by, whether it is Vision or whether it is anywhere else. I will do my best. I cannot give an absolute guarantee that somebody may not get the name of an individual. I think that can be done in confidence with myself, if a name comes forward, that it would be certainly--I do not even need a name. If he can give me an example of a situation that I could follow up on in writing with his signature on it, it would be certainly helpful.

I will look into it. I will ask the association. I will tell them. They will get a copy of Hansard as to what has been said at this committee so that they can follow-up on what he has said. I have asked him for hard evidence. If he does not want to--and I do not want to put any individual in a position of reprisal, of retribution of any kind that is not fair. I appreciate what he is saying; I cannot offer that guarantee.

I will endeavour to try and find out if the accusations are accurate. If I cannot find anything and may need more information, is he prepared to do it? I would hope that--you know, again, we are sitting here listening to these accusations and these comments that there is somebody being told to lie, that they are told to tell them that they are from a different jurisdiction. I do not accept that as good business practice. I do not accept it at all, and I will ask the department if they have any way of getting that information without in any way endangering the job of an individual. That is not our intent. If I have to proceed further to get a specific name or individual and have to take an undertaking not to disclose that, I would do so. Let us take a first look at it. I would hope though the member could give us a little more--narrow down a little bit more as to what we are looking for, and it is for sure I will make sure a copy of this Hansard goes to the call centre association and individuals whose names have been brought to this table to get their responses as it relates to what he has said.

Mr. Sale: I appreciate the minister's response. Then we can pass this area.

Mr. Chairperson: Item 10.2.(d) Telecommunications Marketing (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $$299,500--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $409,700--pass; (3) Less: Recoverable from Rural Economic Development Initiatives ($177,300)--pass.

Mr. Sale: Just in terms of process, I want to make a suggestion that we leave (e) until the end, just before the Minister's Salary, and that we proceed through to finish as much as we can. I believe we probably can finish the remainder of the Estimates. I believe we come back on Tuesday I think with standard hours. I do not think we have Monday hours on Tuesday, do we? Regular hours? [interjection]

It has not been decided, but if that is agreeable.

Mr. Chairperson: Is it the will of the committee to leave (e) till last, just before we are going to be considering the Minister's Salary? [agreed] We can proceed then with 2.(f) Industrial Technology Centre $905,000--pass.

10.3. Tourism and Small Business (a) Tourism Services and Special Projects (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $557,400.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, I think what we would do is, just when I have had a few questions, comments about this, we would pass this whole thing at once before we rise at five o'clock.

We have had considerable discussion about tourism in which we have traded statistical questions. [interjection] The minister probably wants to introduce Ms. Clarke.

Mr. Chairperson: The honourable minister, to introduce his staff present.

Mr. Downey: Mr. Chairman, I would like to introduce Loretta Clarke who heads up the Manitoba Tourism Division, also a Small Business Division, and now if the member wants to finish this by five o'clock, we can do that.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, as I said, we have had lots of discussion about the situation, but I think it is fairly well accepted that Manitoba has to sharpen its tourism image and that maybe that is the purpose for the contract that was let most recently to Barbara Biggar and the Brown company.

Could the minister tell the committee what the plans are in this area to focus the image, improve the marketing?

Mr. Downey: Yes, Mr. Chairman, we will be focusing on the product that we have in the province, the people we have in the province to deliver it and be involved in it, the places we have in the province all the way across the province supporting one another, rural, north, urban, and also the packages that are put together within those areas. So it is product, people, place and package.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, is the government looking at what I guess we have talked about before as niche marketing, I suppose is the way it has been talked about? My favourite example, because I am a train buff and we have talked about this before--me and Magnus Eliason we are the train buffs--I keep seeing this historic train that we have and it is sitting idle this year because the CNR or the CPR withdrew their running rights, or at least it is withdrawing that subdivision so they do not have a subdivision to run on.

I keep seeing that as an incredible resource, given that at least one magazine I read said there are over a million members of rail organizations in North America, rail-promoting organizations, steam fans, whatever, and when you look at that train, you look at the Union Station, you look at The Forks, you look at the Lower Fort, you look at our fairs all across Manitoba, and you look at the history and the themes involved in that, it seems to me that this is just an incredible marketing tool that we could be using if we simply had a couple of railways that cared enough to make that feasible without making it so exorbitantly expensive to run on their tracks that it is not feasible.

That means you have to find all of those associations, and you have to market to them a package, not just the fact that there is a train here but that it actually goes to interesting places and that if you come this week it will go to the Morden Corn and Apple Festival, and if you go this week it will go to the Islendingadagurinn in Gimli and on other days where there is not something special, it will run back and forth to the Lower Fort with people going the other way by river, so you have a package, an interpretive package with experiences. That seems to me what families are seeking in touring, to meet people, to understand history and to experience. That is what families seem to want now. How are we reaching out to that audience?

Mr. Downey: Mr. Chairman, I would like to take a considerable amount of time and really go after the federal government because if one were to lay blame--

An Honourable Member: Any Liberals here?

Mr. Downey: It does not matter. If one were to lay blame as to why we are losing some of these opportunities, it is because of the federal government's policy to allow, quite frankly, the disbanding of our rail system in western Canada, and I can name several examples. In southwestern Manitoba we have lost the line from Deloraine to Waskada because there was nobody--but the line is going to be maintained by local people, but almost was lost. That could be and they are working on a tourism promotion for rail line running of tourism. The CN line that goes out to Steep Rock of which the Prairie Dog Central, we asked for an extension of the closing of that line to save it for this year. We lost on that, but at least we requested it. Unfortunately, again the line is being abandoned. I am not blaming the railroad in particular, but again it is policy within the federal government that is allowing this to take place, and they should be held accountable.

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Yes, we are working to try and find some niche market activities whether it relates to native entertainment, whether it relates to replacing the Prairie Dog Central on other potential lines. I do not disagree with the member. All of those things add to a total tourism package when people come. So I do not disagree with him in any way, shape or form, but I do think we should hold responsible why we are dealing with these kinds of shutdowns that we are. It is because the federal government, quite frankly, I think, has been a little negligent in just saying, they are gone. I get a little emotional on this because quite frankly I think decisions are being made.

For example, I know one line is being closed down that would cost $30 million to $40 million to replace it and probably should be operated and sold for $2 million or $3 million. It should not be let go. It is an infrastructure that is going to be lost. I say thank goodness they were able to do something with the Churchill line which has been productive, and we need the Churchill line for a tourism attraction, that is for darn sure. If we were to have lost that, then it would have been really difficult. I am a little disappointed a Manitoba company did not get to buy it. It did not have the best proposal apparently for CN. CN sold it to OmniTRAX . That is their business. Again, it is going to operate, and we are pleased with that. Again, native tourism, the whole business of ecotourism, niche marketing is one which we are very strong on, and again I am as disappointed as the member opposite at it relates to the Prairie Dog Central not running this year.

Mr. Sale: I do not sense that that is an answer to the question I asked. I understand the frustration of the minister, I share it, with the federal government's rail abandonment. I have listened to the minister talk about the world as changing, and we have to adjust and all the opportunities that come from that. Well, I am glad to hear him now taking the view that rail line abandonment is not a great thing when it takes place in the way that it is taking place now. What concrete things are we doing to put together a package? Why is that train not running out of Union Station? Why does it run outside of St. James Station on Sundays instead of where---I think if you look at the stats, Mr. Minister, you will find that there were some six million visits to The Forks last year, an incredible success story. They have a museum there; they have a children's museum with a locomotive in it, and we have the rail museum upstairs in the station. Why is the engine not running out of there? Why are we not packaging and aggressively going after CN and CP for the rails that are left. There are still rails to Selkirk. There are still rails to southern Manitoba. There are not as many as there were, but there are still some. So what are we doing to package these opportunities, and I am just using the Prairie Dog as an example. It is not the only thing.

Mr. Downey: On this specific thing we have a committee developed between the province, the city, CN, and the vintage rail people to try and come up with some alternative options. One of the reasons it is not running out of the other station is because of the outside storage of the machine. That is not in the interests of those people who are responsible for it.

Again, we are working aggressively, the head of Tourism is, but we are also working on regional forums to try and come up with alternative opportunities. It is a major initiative that the department is carrying out. It is coming forward with some excellent ideas which can bring to the table some other opportunities, so it is not that we are not doing anything. There is an active committee as it relates particularly to the loss of the Prairie Dog, and what are some of the alternatives.

It is not that we are sitting back. We have a committee established which is looking for alternatives.

Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, last year we talked about snowmobiling as well. Is the department actively seeking out lists of clubs, lists of organizations in the United States and Canada that use this kind of tourism and linking them with the local communities that have extensive trail systems, for example, in the Parklands area, in the Eastman area and so forth?

Mr. Downey: We are working with the snowmobile organizations and those people who are responsible for trails. They are basically encouraged to take the lead, because they have expertise at it, and we are going to be putting some further resources toward the further development of that. It is a winter sport development because when one looks outside, we have a considerable amount of winter in this province and have to take full opportunity to maximize the weather that we have. There is a considerable amount of work being done with the snowmobile people.

Mr. Sale: My final question in this area, well, two final questions. The short one: When does the minister expect to begin to see materials, promotional packages that are resulting from these new initiatives? When are we going to start seeing the hard results?

Mr. Downey: The new campaign will be introduced the 1st of January, 1998.

Mr. Sale: I am sure, with everybody else, we will look forward to that, and I hope it goes well for all of our sakes.

The last question in this area: What specific measures are being taken to combat what might be a negative image resulting from the flood? On the other hand, maybe there are some opportunities in that negative image, too. I would just be interested in seeing how the department has thought about that.

Mr. Downey: There has been considerable work done in the last few days, headed up by Loretta, Ms. Clarke and the different government agencies. There is aggressive work being done to try to--because we have the international recognition that we have received, turn that international recognition into a positive. [interjection] Again, I think there is--come see Duff's Ditch, but no there is certainly an opportunity to turn--we believe--that into a positive so people can come and visit whether it is the Z-dike and Duff's Ditch, and the way in which the people have responded. There are a lot of things being done, and would encourage input from the member opposite.

Mr. Chairperson: 10.3. Tourism and Small Business (a) Tourism Services and Special Projects (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $557,400.

Mr. Sale: Very briefly, has consideration been given to producing a video, because there is wonderful footage? I would think that there are some real possibilities of both education and a kind of tourism opportunities here, because there are some amazing achievements by people in the last four weeks.

Mr. Downey: The answer is yes.

Mr. Chairperson: 10.3. Tourism and Small Business (a) Tourism Services and Special Projects (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $557,400--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $978,700--pass.

10.3.(b) Tourism Marketing and Promotions (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $614,400--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $3,979,900--pass; (3) Grants $75,000--pass.

10.3.(c) Tourism Development (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $311,000--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $386,200--pass; (3) Grants $336,200--pass; (4) Less: Recoverable from Rural and Urban Economic Development Initiatives ($161,000)--pass.

10.3.(d) Canada-Manitoba Partnership Agreement in Tourism (1) Capital $70,000; (2) Grants, blank--pass.

10.3.(e) Small Business and Entrepreneurial Development (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $1,174,900.

Mr. Sale: We are okay here, Mr. Chairperson, we have a minute and a half. I just want to underline that we did have some comments about this in the opening discussion, and I am sure that the staff and the minister will have a chance to talk about this. I express my concern again that this section is attached under tourism. It just seems to me to be something that might be better served elsewhere and get the focus on the tourism which is really the big item here.

Mr. Chairperson: Item 10.3.(e) (1) $1,174,900--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $897,900--pass; (3) Grants $30,000--pass.

Resolution 10.3: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $9,250,600 for Industry Trade and Tourism, Tourism and Small Business, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March 1998.

Mr. Chairperson: The hour being five o'clock, committee rise.