Hon. James McCrae (Minister of Education and Training): Madam Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Minister of Family Services (Mrs. Mitchelson), that Bill 7, The Public Schools Amendment Act (Loi modifiant la Loi sur les écoles publiques), be now read a second time and be referred to a committee of this House.

Mr. McCrae: Madam Speaker, I am honoured to rise in the House on this, my first occasion as Minister of Education and Training, to present legislation to my colleagues in the Legislature for their consideration and hopefully for their support.

With respect to Bill 7, The Public Schools Amendment Act, our government is committed to enhancing a shared responsibility for and a unified approach to education amongst the various partners. Legislative amendments to The Public Schools Act have been developed and prepared to clarify and improve the partnership of those working together in strengthening the accountability of Manitoba's education system and to ensure that current administrative requirements reflect what is practised and implemented in our public schools today.

The bill before honourable members focuses upon two areas of interest: enhancing the accountability requirements of school boards through approval to rent buildings; and secondly, repealing the monitoring of measles vaccination vis-a-vis the certificate of immunization requirement for first-time admission form.

We have enjoyed the co-operation and assistance of school boards throughout our province in delivering high-quality education and providing safe learning environments for our students. I am confident that school boards will continue to provide and maintain this level of education excellence into the next millennium. Nevertheless, in order to ensure the prospect of good, safe, and affordable environments for all, the bill proposes that school boards seek approval to rent buildings which will house school classrooms or be used as division or district facilities.

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Presently, school boards in Manitoba are required to consult with and obtain the approval of the minister or the Public Schools Finance Board prior to the purchasing, constructing or renovating of school buildings and other facilities. However, under the current legislation, school boards do not have to obtain prior approval in order to rent buildings to be used as school facilities or for school division and district purposes. The purpose of this amendment is not unduly to restrict school divisions who wish to obtain additional facilities for new program purposes or other uses. However, I believe that the greater public interest can best be served if school boards are required to obtain prior approval for the renting of buildings.

Departmental approval assures that the safety and building codes requirements are being met and that appropriate levels of utilization of existing facilities and pedagogical quality would be maintained in addition to having parity between owned and rented buildings vis-a-vis Public Schools Finance Board standards. All situations involving capital facilities would be known to the Finance Board, so it could make the best decisions possible respecting its budget and potential requests for renovations and improvements. Increased accountability for school boards compels both greater responsiveness to concerns of parents, educators and local communities, as well as greater responsibility to Manitoba's taxpayers.

With respect to the second area of interest, the immunization requirement, I am pleased to announce that since 1996 all children entering Grade 1 in Manitoba schools have received two doses of measles vaccine. Since the receipt of two doses, outbreak of measles has virtually disappeared in Manitoba. In fact, last year, Canada had only 12 cases of measles down from about 2,500 in 1995. Monitoring of measles vaccination among school-age children was previously conducted by schools via the Certificate of Immunization Requirements for First Time Admission form, which parents were required to complete in order for their children to obtain entry into school.

The Public Health unit of Manitoba Health is currently monitoring the receipt of appropriate measles immunization via the Manitoba Immunization Monitoring System or MIMS. Given the situation that the Certificate of Immunization Requirements form is no longer serving a necessary purpose vis-a-vis public health, and in view of the fact that the immunization requirement will still be covered in The Public Health Act, the bill before honourable members recommends repealing Section 261(1) of The Public Schools Act.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to bring this bill forward and to commend it to the thoughtful consideration and support of all honourable members.

Ms. Diane McGifford (Osborne): I move, seconded by the member for Flin Flon (Mr. Jennissen), that debate be adjourned.

Hon. Vic Toews (Minister of Justice and Attorney General): I move, seconded by the Minister of Family Services (Mrs. Mitchelson), that Bill 3, The Fatality Inquiries Amendment Act (Loi modifiant la Loi sur les enquètes médico–légales), be now read a second time and be referred to a committee of this House.

Mr. Toews: Madam Speaker, this is a very short bill, and yet it is a very, very important bill. It has been a bill that has been the subject of some debate in this House, and indeed it was a subject of question and answer period involving the Minister of Family Services, my colleague the MLA from River East or, should I say, for River East.

An Honourable Member: Both.

Mr. Toews: All right. The Minister of Family Services (Mrs. Mitchelson) indicates she is both from and for–

An Honourable Member: And in.

Mr. Toews: –and in River East.

I guess the issue that this bill addresses quite head on and squarely is the issue of the role of the Minister of Family Services relating to information that had been prepared by the Chief Medical Examiner and then, in fact, forwarded to the Minister of Family Services for summary and release then by the Minister of Family Services. The perception of the independent Chief Medical Examiner sending this information over to the Minister of Family Services, a member of the Executive Council, for her and her department to summarize was twofold in terms of a problem. Number one, there was an appearance of compromising the independence of the Chief Medical Examiner. The Chief Medical Examiner, of course, conducts his or her duties separately from the Executive Council so that when the Minister of Family Services and her department summarize that information there could always be an accusation that the information so provided was somehow tainted by the process.

So what this bill, in fact, does is to authorize the Chief Medical Examiner to prepare a summary for the annual report and that this would be done despite the confidentiality sections of The Child and Family Services Act. He or she would summarize the relevant information about the examination and prepare it for his or her annual report not later than December 31 of each year. This report, in fact, would be a summary of the recommendations contained in the reports in the previous years without disclosing the name of an individual or agency or any information that might identify a child or a parent or guardian of the child. So the bill itself then is an important step to further strengthen the independence of the office of the Chief Medical Examiner and ensure that the Minister of Family Services, in fact, can carry out her responsibility.

If I could just simply summarize then, the amendments to this bill are necessary to authorize the Chief Medical Examiner to produce an annual summary of the recommendations made in the previous year arising from reportable child deaths for public release. Under the authority of The Fatality Inquiries Act, the Chief Medical Examiner reviews all child deaths involving Child and Family Services agencies, and its confidential report and recommendations are submitted to the Minister of Family Services, pursuant to Subsections 10(3) and 10(4). The proposed amendments to Section 10 of The Fatality Inquiries Act would then provide the legislative authority for an annual summary of the recommendations made in the previous year arising from reportable child deaths to be publicly released as an exception to the confidentiality provisions contained in Section 10(4).

The summary of the report will be included in the annual report made by the Chief Medical Examiner under the act. It is important to note that the summary of the recommendations will not, as I stated earlier, disclose the name of an individual or agency or any information that might identify a child or the parent or guardian of the child. It is felt that the release of the summary of recommendations is in the public interest in that the public should be aware of the general nature of the recommendations. It would also ensure that the government and its mandated agencies can be held accountable for advising on the status of implementing recommendations made by the Chief Medical Examiner for the safety and well-being of the Manitoba children.

I think that concludes my remarks on this rather brief act, Madam Speaker. Thank you for your kind attention.

Ms. Diane McGifford (Osborne): I move, seconded by the member for Flin Flon (Mr. Jennissen), that debate be now adjourned.

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Hon. Linda McIntosh (Minister of Environment): I move, seconded by the Minister of Family Services (Mrs. Mitchelson), that Bill 8, The Ozone Depleting Substances Amendment Act; Loi modifiant la Loi sur les substances appauvrissant la couche d'ozone, be now read a second time and be referred to a committee of this House.

Mrs. McIntosh: Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to introduce Bill 8, an act to amend The Ozone Depleting Substances Act, for second reading. This bill broadens the scope of The Ozone Depleting Substances Act by providing the capability to regulate substances which are used as replacements for ozone depleting substances. Under the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, a worldwide phase-out of ozone depleting substances is taking place. It is a worldwide effort, and Manitoba is, of course, part of the activity in this arena. One result of this phase-out has been the development of numerous replacement substances which could be used in place of the ozone depleting substances. While many of these replacement substances appear to be quite benign environmentally, and certainly an improvement over the chemicals that they replaced, others appear to have the potential of causing harm to human health and/or to the environment.

In other words, Madam Speaker, sometimes the cure that is considered is almost as harmful if not as harmful as the disease that is sought to be cured. It is these potentially harmful replacement substances that this bill addresses. Turning to the actual wording of Bill 8, you will see in Section 2 that the bill adds an additional clause to the preamble of the act, and this reflects the expanded scope of the act to include replacement substances. The description of the type of replacement substances which may be regulated is intentionally broad. Some replacement substances may cause environmental harm, such as contributing to global warming, for example, while others may raise safety concerns if they happen to be inflammable or have some other characteristic of that nature.

Section 3 of the bill then expands the objects of the act in a similar fashion. The remaining provisions of Bill 8, Sections 4, 5 and 6, contain the detailed provisions necessary to allow for the regulation of specific harmful replacement substances. A new subsection 2(2) is added to allow for the prescribing by regulation of specific replacement substances or products. Amendments to Section 9 provide the specific regulation-making powers. Bill 8 is essentially an enabling bill in the sense that subsequent regulatory amendments will be undertaken to allow for controls to be placed on any specific replacement product.

However, as the scope of The Ozone Depleting Substances Act is presently restricted to substances which deplete the ozone layer, the amendments to the act contained in Bill 8 are necessary before regulatory steps can be taken with regard to harmful replacement substances which do not deplete the ozone layer but may be harmful in other ways.

Following the enactment of Bill 8, the government will be embarking on a period of public consultation to determine which replacement substances should be regulated and what the nature of those regulatory controls ought to be. A major part of this consultation will involve discussions with the Manitoba Ozone Protection Industry Association, commonly referred to MOPIA, the industry and stakeholder association with which the government partners in delivering Manitoba's stratospheric ozone reduction programs.

MOPIA has expressed its support for the type of amendments contained in Bill 8. We look forward to that organization's continuing support as we work out the details of regulating harmful replacement substances. I would like to further add in closing, Madam Speaker, that Bill 8 will allow Manitoba to fulfil one of the recommendations contained in the 1998 National Action Plan for the Environmental Control of Ozone Depleting Substances and Their Alternatives, which has been endorsed by the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment, CCME. Bill 8 will help to keep Manitoba at the forefront of Canadian jurisdictions in addressing the environmental concerns associated with ozone depleting substances and their alternatives.

So I thank you very much, Madam Speaker, for the time to put these few comments on the record, and I recommend these amendments to the House. Thank you.

Mr. Gregory Dewar (Selkirk): Madam Speaker, I move, seconded by the member for The Pas (Mr. Lathlin), that debate be adjourned.

Hon. James McCrae (Minister of Education and Training): Madam Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Minister of Family Services (Mrs. Mitchelson), that Bill 13, The University of Manitoba Amendment Act (Loi modifiant la Loi sur l'UniversitJ du Manitoba), be now read a second time and be referred to a committee of this House.

Mr. McCrae: Madam Speaker, I rise to introduce Bill 13, The University of Manitoba Amendment Act, as it enters second reading. This bill is designed to help update The University of Manitoba Act and to be sure that the university has the appropriate tools to continue to operate and provide high quality services to Manitobans. There are three separate changes that this bill proposes to make to The University of Manitoba Act.

First the bill proposes to change the provisions related to the ability of the university to invest. Currently the act provides some restrictions on the types of investments that the university can make. While the intention was to ensure responsible investment on the part of the university, the reality of the changing nature of investment over the past number of decades has meant that the university could safely invest its resources in a number of different vehicles and earn a higher rate of return. The bill proposes to allow the University of Manitoba to invest as a prudent person would. This provision is in line with the investment powers granted to Brandon University and the University of Winnipeg and is becoming a more common tool governments in Canada are giving post-secondary institutions.

A second provision of Bill 13 is to ensure that the three senate members elected to the board of governors will face re-election or replacement at a rate of one per year. This measure is simply to ensure that there is consistency in the membership of the board among the senate members.

The third provision gives the University of Manitoba explicit powers over parking on property controlled by the university. Honourable members may recall media stories of law students ripping up parking tickets, claiming that the university did not have the power to issue tickets in the first place. Madam Speaker, I am fortunate to have a law student for a daughter, and I can say that those tickets were not being ripped up by her. I thought I would put that on the record. My daughter was a student at the University of Manitoba, probably at the time that happened, but at that point she was not a law student. [interjection]

I would not like to make too much light of this, Madam Speaker, because I know that the majority of students at the University of Manitoba, if they got a parking ticket, would pay their ticket. It also should be added rather hastily that the majority of the students at the University of Manitoba would not be parking illegally in the first place. That needs to be said about the responsible people that we have attending our universities everywhere in Manitoba. However, there is a requirement to manage these matters and to allow the university to have sufficient authority to govern things like parking on its property.

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I am very pleased to be part of a province that has institutions of higher learning like the University of Manitoba, the University of Winnipeg, Brandon University and other post-secondary institutions. I know that the children in our family have certainly made use of these various facilities to prepare themselves for the kind of future that they hope for, for themselves and hopefully their future families. I have made reference to this before that at this point there are still no grandchildren, and I keep referring to this, but nothing has happened yet. I know that something has happened in your family, Madam Speaker, and what a joyful event that is. Well, I just hope that some of the members of the family read Hansard from time to time and so get the message, one way or another. In any event, I digress.

While the University of Manitoba maintains that it has sufficient powers under the act, it is questionable whether the powers granted to the university in Section 16 of the act would be supported in a legal challenge. So, maybe, Madam Speaker, those students who were ripping up their parking tickets were onto something. Law students though they are, it may be because of some of the things they were learning in law school that they came across these things. That is how our laws change. It is a very living democracy we are honoured to be part of because the law is a living thing, and, from time to time, adjustments get made in our laws to reflect the realities of modern society.

There is an old expression–and my colleague the venerable and honourable member for Lakeside and Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Enns) is placing some of his views before honourable members with respect to some of the body of our law, and I will leave it for him to enlarge on the sentiments that he so eloquently expresses today. I look forward to that discussion. In any event, whatever the state of the law or its description, Madam Speaker, government is acting today to ensure that the University of Manitoba can control parking on its campus.

The Department of Education and Training continues to work with the Department of Justice and the University of Manitoba to ensure that the University of Manitoba has appropriate powers in the area of parking and general security services. One can only imagine what it would be like if the University of Manitoba were to go on lacking the authority and the power to take care of security measures, including parking, on its campus. It is, after all, in many ways, operating in an autonomous way in providing fantastic education opportunities to Manitobans and has done so for generations.

Certainly, we know that the agriculture faculty has produced some paragons of agricultural excellence for this province for the benefit of all Manitobans, some of whom sit very near my place in this Chamber. For that I am extremely grateful and proud, and Manitobans are far better off for it. I speak immediately of a former Minister of Highways and Transportation, a former Minister of Agriculture, a former member for Virden, a present member for Springfield, and one whose presence I know all honourable members will greatly miss as we approach the results of the next election, which will no doubt return the Filmon administration to a record fourth term in office, unfortunately, without the services at that time of the honourable member for Springfield. I just say again, we will miss him in our councils; we will miss him in our cabinet; we will miss him in our caucus; we will miss him in our caucus committees; we will miss him in our cabinet committees. What I am trying to say is, we are going to miss Glen Findlay.

Again, I digress. We were talking about the University of Manitoba. As I did so, I was making reference to the excellence of certain of the faculties there, one of them being the Faculty of Agriculture and one of the products of that faculty, the honourable member for Springfield. When you get on to talking about the honourable member for Springfield, one could be forgiven if one digressed from the topic of parking at the University of Manitoba just slightly.

We are told that parking at the University of Manitoba in the '70s was somewhat of an easier thing to accomplish than it is in the '90s and the coming millennium. That is probably true, and the fact that it is not so easy today reflects progress, reflects the fact that there would be many more students, many of them arriving by car, and visitors to the university and faculty and others, who, at various times, would require spaces for parking. For all of those reasons, these matters do come up on the floor of the Legislature from time to time. I think members will appreciate that with a daytime population–and this is getting to the point of what I was discussing–of approximately 30,000 people, the University of Manitoba can be a busy place, placing demands on limited parking space and on a small security service.

I mean, do honourable members realize how many people 30,000 are? It was not that many years again the population of Brandon, the entire population of Brandon, including every man, woman and child, was approximately 30,000. If things continue to succeed in The Pas as they have been and at Opasquia First Nation, that number will characterize their population in a few years from now if they continue with the kinds of success that they have been seeing in recent years. I just mention that figure to give a perspective on the kind of activity that is going on at the University of Manitoba. It is a very busy place, which suggests that there be some reasonable level of supervision and security and parking arrangements. In order for the university to have that authority, we need to have Bill 13 to provide the authority for the smooth functioning of a university campus community in a modern campus community like the University of Manitoba with all of the attendant hustle and bustle.

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So what this bill does, without going into a lot of detail about it, Madam Speaker–I know that some honourable members will want to examine this in tremendous detail, take it to their lawyers to get legal opinions because, after all, it was a legal opinion that gives rise to this bill in the first place. As I pointed out, there were some law students at the University of Manitoba who tore up a traffic ticket and--

An Honourable Member: Mr. Forest, when he challenged a traffic ticket.

Mr. McCrae: Do not get me started. The fact is, Madam Speaker, that those law students claimed that the university did not have the power to issue the tickets in the first place. Later on, the Department of Education and Training, working with the Department of Justice and the university, are now working together to ensure that there are appropriate powers in place for the university.

Madam Speaker: Order, please. It has been drawn to my attention that some of the honourable members are having difficulty hearing the honourable Minister of Education because he keeps turning away from the microphone and therefore his comments are not being picked up. I wonder if I might ask if the honourable Minister of Education could speak into the microphone.

Mr. McCrae: I do apologize to honourable members who would have been hanging on every word, Madam Speaker. I guess I seek a little more direction. Which parts was it honourable members missed? I do apologize for turning my back, but we have a circular Chamber here, which is one of the wonderful features of our building. I note that when the tour people come by, there is quite a fascination as people look around the room and look up and down and see all the beautiful things about this building. But you know, for every positive feature, there is a negative, and if one turns one's back to address one's own colleagues seated behind, then you tend to do a disservice to those members opposite who I know are very interested in hearing every word of my presentation this afternoon.

An Honourable Member: Bill number what?

Mr. McCrae: Speaking of Bill, earlier today, I was joined by Bill Bumstead, who is the principal of the Sanford Collegiate. At Anokiiwin School we announced today–[interjection]–Elaine Cowan, Ron Buzahora. The Buzz and Boomer show they called it, rather than bummer, I think, Madam Speaker, because Dr. Buzahora and Bill Bumstead were there and Elaine Cowan and Ray Starr of Anokiiwin School. We announced a partnership between the Morris-MacDonald School Division, and the–I have a little trouble, because I have not pronounced this one a lot–but Anokiiwin School. The government and the Assembly of Chiefs were represented there today to announce a wonderful partnership to assist adult aboriginal, Metis, and Inuit students to complete their high school education to help prepare them for further education, for example, at the University of Manitoba.

Now, Madam Speaker, if those students from Anokiiwin School who graduate as a result of this partnership mentioned today should arrive at the University of Manitoba in their cars, they may need a place to park.

An Honourable Member: What if they do not have cars?

Mr. McCrae: If they do not have cars, they could possibly consider the option of commuting with other people. That would serve my colleague's interest and all those interested in the environment, if they were to engage in carpooling. They could save fossil fuels, help contribute to the solution, to the global warming issue that we keep hearing about. The other thing they could do–[interjection] The only reason I get into this is because honourable members opposite asked what if they do not have a car, which is a very good question. Students simply do not all have the wherewithal to be able to get behind the wheels of a car and get themselves any—I was a student at one time, and I know how true this is.

I was very poor in those days. I do not know if I was as poor as John Turner or Brian Mulroney in those days. I remember the debate that those two fellows had about who was the poorest when they were kids. I do not know if I was as poor as either one of them, but probably poorer. I do know the difficulties of students nowadays and students, not only nowadays, but traditionally, and the honourable member for Flin Flon (Mr. Jennissen) can probably back me up on this. Students are not generally known as your higher income people in our society. There is a time of some penury and sacrifice as we get through that part of our lives where obviously we are looking forward to better times. One of the reasons we are looking forward to better times is because we are carpooling to get to the University of Manitoba or we are taking public transportation, which, when you do that, takes the pressure off the parking situation at the university, reduces the requirement for Bill 13. However, there are students who arrive at university in their vehicles and others, too, who get there for various reasons, some of them visiting lecturers or whatever; but, when you have 30,000 people in and about university property, it comes as no big surprise to me that you might need some rules about parking. Therein is the background and the need for Bill 13.

But, speaking of Bill, again, Mr. Bumstead earlier today has shown the pioneering spirit that exists at Morris-MacDonald School Division which is partnering with Anokiiwin school here in downtown Winnipeg. I had the opportunity earlier today to visit the classroom there and to rub shoulders with some of the teachers and students there. I was touched, frankly, to hear one of the aboriginal students there come to me and say this is very good what is happening here today. This is historic. It kind of hit me fairly hard when I heard that because, while I agree it is historic and it is important, I think we sometimes tend not to understand ourselves the importance of some of the things that we are engaged in as members of the Legislature. I try to remind myself every day, but to see it in the face of a young aboriginal person who is about to embark on a better life because of a decent educational opportunity provided because people are willing to be innovative. Elaine Cowan, whom honourable members opposite will likely have heard of, is one of the managers or owners of this school, which is educating aboriginal students; she is part of that partnership. I think it is innovative. It is leading the way. It is showing us the way, and I say all this because I know that some of these students are going to find their way to the University of Manitoba, which is the subject of Bill 13 here today.

It is a pretty wonderful experience to be part of that, but I was able to listen to the other speakers today and it was very nice to hear the representative from the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs who said: we are breaking through a different kind of barricade here today. The different kind of barricade is exactly the kind of barricade we want to break through and that is the barricade of regulation, the barricade of–what is another word for stovepipeism?

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An Honourable Member: Silo.

Mr. McCrae: The barricade that living in silos creates for us in our society.

I was able to point out in my remarks that–well, as usual I was plagiarizing, quoting somebody else and I referred to Bill Gates. I do not know how many here have heard of Bill Gates but Bill Gates is Mr. Microsoft. I am told that he has a personal fortune in excess of $50 billion, which just to contemplate could take you the better part of an afternoon in this House. Bill Gates did not get to be a multibillionaire for not having vision. Mr. Gates says that technology is going to change more the next decade than it has in the last five. [interjection] Well, maybe some who disagree. Anyway, we need to be ready for that. That kind of technological change requires us to use the best we have, the best that our teachers gave us and do some thinking and open our minds. Let us have growing minds, which was the subject of–the name of a conference put on by the Manitoba Teachers' Society on the weekend. Growing Minds was the name of that conference. If our minds are going to grow enough just to keep up, never mind keeping ahead, we better enter into more partnerships like the one that was entered into and announced today.

But I digress, Madam Speaker. There are some moments in your work that you just know why you are here and I know why I am here, because I am so extremely positive about where people in this province are prepared to go, where they are prepared to take us, where they are prepared to lead us. Mr. Bumstead, Mr. Buzahora and the good folks at Anokiiwin college–[interjection] Yes, all of those people, good old Buzz and Boomer are leading. They are showing by example that partnerships are where it is at, partnerships are what has built this province to the excellence that we have today. People like that are going to be the ones to let us realize our potential as a province, which is in my estimation, limitless. I do not know of any limit we should be placing on the potential of those people who are attending that school and the other schools that we have in this province. Manitoba is a wonderful place to be, and if I had to park my car anywhere I would like to park it at the University of Manitoba, knowing full well that it is going to be properly policed as a result of Bill 13 which we have before us today.

Ms. Diane McGifford (Osborne): Madam Speaker, we thank the minister for his exposé on parking and parking lots.

I move, seconded by the member for Flin Flon (Mr. Jennissen), that debate be now adjourned.

Hon. Vic Toews (Minister of Justice and Attorney General): I move, seconded by the Minister of Northern and Native Affairs (Mr. Newman), that Bill 16, The Court of Queen's Bench Small Claims Practices Amendment and Parental Responsibility Amendment Act (Loi modifiant la Loi sur le recouvrement des petites créances à la Cour du Banc de la Reine et la Loi sur la responsabilité parentale), be now read a second time and be referred to a committee of this House.

Mr. Toews: It certainly gives me great pleasure to introduce this particular bill into the House. The bill may look like a relatively simple legislative document, and yet it is indeed very, very complex from a constitutional law point of view. As we know, in our federal system of courts and the jurisdiction assigned to each Legislature and the House of Parliament, the superior courts and the jurisdiction assigned to those superior courts is a matter of federal responsibility.

The appointment, I should say, of judges to those superior courts is a matter of a federal responsibility. The province also has certain jurisdiction to create courts, but the province is not entitled to confer jurisdiction onto a provincial tribunal or court that would in effect give superior court powers to the provincial court.

This has long been a matter of debate and discussion. The Supreme Court of Canada, as recently as about 10 years ago, came out with what is considered by most the definitive judgment in respect of this particular issue and indicated that is not simply the jurisdiction of provincial tribunals and courts that can be looked at across Canada in a generic fashion. Indeed, one needs to look at the jurisdiction of the court when the province entered Confederation. So that means that when one looks at the jurisdiction of a particular court in a province when it entered Confederation, there may well be differences in the jurisdiction that each province has when it comes to assigning responsibilities to the court.

The Court of Queen's Bench Small Claims Practices Act indeed is no exception to this very complex constitutional rule. It has always been a matter of, or shall I say less a matter, of science than one of art in trying to determine what is the maximum jurisdiction that the province can confer upon the Small Claims Practices court. It is not enough simply to point at British Columbia and say, well, in that jurisdiction they allow claims up to a certain number of dollars, or to point to Saskatchewan which entered Confederation in 1905 and simply say, the jurisdiction there is a certain amount of dollars, so let us simply duplicate it. It is a much thought about and controversial area.

Frankly, I think that this is an area that we need to rationalize right across Canada and make it much simpler not only for legislators to determine what the appropriate level should be, but, in fact, allow policy decisions to be made on needs that the community identifies rather than the allowances that our constitution makes, given the different histories of each of the provinces. Each province has a different history. Indeed, that different history, that different legal history may result in a different constitutional status being granted to each of those provinces in respect of the allowable limit.

I note that in the Manitoba Civil Justice Review Task Force report of September 1996, which my colleague the Minister of Northern and Native Affairs (Mr. Newman) has some detailed knowledge about and indeed involvement with, they, too, looked at this particular issue. In bringing the bill forward, I rely on their recommendations in respect of the jurisdiction of the court. The recommendation made was set out in the task force recommendation where they state that they support raising the limit to $7,500 at this time. They state this is slightly in excess of the current limit, taking into account inflation since the limitation was enacted.

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They also deal with the issue of raising the level for general damages from the allowable $1,000 to $1,500, and that we have done in this particular bill. This increased limit will now allow a greater access to a summary mechanism to ensure that justice is, in fact, done. The Small Claims Court, as many of us know, provides the public with a simple, relatively low-cost mechanism for resolving certain civil disputes. By increasing the amount of the claim allowable to $7,500, we will provide more members of the public with access to the small claims process.

As you may well know, Madam Speaker, there are cases where, because the limit is presently at $5,000 and someone would have a claim for, let us say, $6,000, they would rather abandon the claim in excess of a thousand dollars or in excess of the $5,000, and forgo the claim for the thousand dollars, because it would be simply too cost prohibitive to appear in the regular Court of Queen's Bench.

So what this then does is further this government's commitment to a more accessible, efficient justice system where a broader judgment can be obtained on a summary basis. As actions under The Parental Responsibility Act are intended to be taken in Small Claims Court, the claim amount under that act has also been increased to $7,500 to reflect the increased jurisdiction of the court.

I would certainly indicate that if there is a broader constitutional jurisdiction than what we have suggested here, I would be in favour of indeed increasing the small claims limit to that constitutionally allowable limit, but I think at this time prudence and legal advice advise that the constitutional limit for the province of Manitoba would be an all-inclusive limit of $7,500. That would include the general damages of $1,500 as well.

So then, Madam Speaker, with those few words, I am prepared to leave my comments at this time and turn the floor over to somebody else.

Ms. Becky Barrett (Wellington): I move, seconded by the member for Selkirk (Mr. Dewar), that debate be now adjourned.

Hon. David Newman (Deputy Government House Leader): Madam Speaker, it is my understanding it is the will of the House to call it five o'clock.

Madam Speaker: Is it the will of the House to call it five o'clock? [agreed]

The hour being 5 p.m., time for Private Members' Business.