Mr. Chairperson (Gerry McAlpine): Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This section of the Committee of Supply will be considering the Estimates of the Department of Natural Resources. Does the honourable Minister of Natural Resources have an opening statement to make to the committee?

Hon. Glen Cummings (Minister of Natural Resources): I am not prone to long statements, but I could make it longer or shorter depending on the mood of the committee.

An Honourable Member: In a good mood right now.

Mr. Cummings: In a good mood, we will keep it short.

First of all, thank you for the opportunity to make a statement on the '99-2000 expenditures. My critic would have had delivered to his office the Supplementary Information, which is organized in three parts. The first part provides an overview of the department for budgetary requirements for '99-2000. The second part provides program and financial information, including details of staffing requirements and expenditures. Part three will provide a five-year historical budget comparison. I hope this document will provide meaningful information, that it will evolve and improve based on the needs of the users of the information. We will welcome feedback as to the usefulness of this package.

Resources has a mandate to protect, conserve, manage and sustain the development of the forest, fisheries, water, Crown land and parkland resources. The department is responsible for providing outdoor recreational opportunities for Manitobans and of course visitors. It is also a major contributor to the economic development and well-being of the province, particularly at the community and regional level.

The department continues to support and promote resource-based industries which are important to Manitoba's economy. The other two major roles that I should reference as departmental responsibilities are the protection of people and property from flood, wildfire and adverse effects of natural resources and to provide for the basic resource needs of subsistence users. Perhaps I could clarify what I believe is intended by the comment "adverse effects of natural resources." That can include protection from wildlife depredation and those sorts of things, which probably fits more adequately into that statement.

Note more than $63 million will have been expended on flood proofing in this fiscal year. That accounts for 38 percent of total expenditures in the department. Manitoba Natural Resources manages the federal-provincial Flood Proofing Program to provide protection for the Red River Valley beyond what has been in place until '97. At this time more than 1,200 families and businesses in the Red River Valley have benefited from the program, with the federal-provincial portion of the program totalling $40.7 million and the owner portion totalling more than $15 million for a $55.7-million expenditure.

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To enhance our flood-forecasting capabilities, the department has added two staff in '98-99: a systems technologist and a hydraulic technician. These additional experts will give us the depth we require to do what I hope will be seen as top-notch forecasting and I believe will enhance our capacity. Though, I want to point out that because there was criticism in this area, I never felt that we were unable to forecast appropriately, particularly in '97. Back in February the flag was raised as to the potential for a significant and possibly flood of the century proportions. The trouble we had then, if I could digress for a moment, was that frankly we had trouble getting people's attention as to how–after '96 most people were sort of ho hum about '96 with high water. We made it through that pretty well; this is a 50-50 chance that that level of water could appear. Of course, as my critic I believe would agree, it was the events that occurred in spring itself that finally caused the high water, because in fact we were close to having a downward revision of the flood prior to the heavy snow and rainfall event that topped up the '97 flood. Frankly, there were many, many Manitobans and government employees who worked endless hours and have continued to work beyond the call of duty to make this current program work.

We have an enhanced wildfire protection system that has been implemented, and The Wildfires Act was reviewed and revised in the past year to ensure the protection of people and property. Along with that, we have added two CL-215s which were recently purchased; that brings the fleet of water bombers for the province to seven. This spring has been particularly dry in some regions of the province, resulting in more than 300 wildfires that have covered 79,000 hectares–not an insignificant figure. Our firefighters have done an exceptional job with no loss of life and have saved communities and property primarily in the North, and I am sure the opposition joins me in thanking them for their commitment and dedication.

I would also like to take this opportunity to highlight three initiatives that we have in the '99-2000 Estimates. These include a groundwater initiative to protect groundwater due to the significant expansion of the livestock industry in our province, a joint effort with Manitoba Environment and Manitoba Agriculture. The agriculture sector in Manitoba is undergoing significant diversification and expansion which includes high-value crops such as potatoes, increased value-added processing and expansion of the livestock industry. At the present rate of expansion, nearly five million hogs will be produced annually in this province within the next two and a half years.

To ensure diversification and that the expansion of the agriculture industry remains environmentally sustainable, resources such as water must be protected. To this end, the department is adding two positions: a hydrologist and an environmental technician.

The second highlight is the addition of a groundwater geologist and a groundwater technician to the Water Resources branch to provide support in addressing groundwater-quality issues related to the livestock industry. With the addition of four staff and the earlier addition of forecasting staff that I mentioned, there will be a total of six additional staff to enhance our water resource information capabilities.

Also in the Estimates, you will note that there has been money set aside for a water retention strategy at a cost of $200,000 to provide for a review of the four basins for potential water retention possibilities. We will be undertaking these consultations under contract, and it will be the responsibility of the contractors to consider potential developments in each of the basins and provide recommendations on their development. These funds will provide for the contracting, and once the review has been undertaken we will be approaching our partners, the federal government, to look at potential cost-sharing of these developments.

Also, in the bigger picture, the forestry industry in our province generates more than $470 million in sales and employs more than 6,000 Manitobans directly and indirectly. The natural regeneration of our forests is supplemented by our reforestation efforts where approximately 8,000 hectares are reforested and 10 million seedlings planted each year.

The Dutch elm disease program continues to be one of the most effective and innovative programs in North America. I would acknowledge that I was probably somewhat skeptical in the early going 10 years ago in looking at the Dutch elm disease program whether or not we could actually make a difference, but with the help of dedicated people within the city and across the province who have recognized and have struggled to keep in front of everyone the importance of the Dutch elm disease issue and the importance of the elm trees themselves, we have, despite a setback in '97 frankly, managed to maintain elm losses from disease to less than 3 percent in managed communities through a co-operative and team approach that includes participation by many communities.

I should touch on fisheries, which has a challenge working with all of its stakeholders such as local fishing groups, farmers and industry to conserve habitat and fish stocks. Fishing in fact is big business in this province, with sport fishing generating more than $75 million annually. Commercial fishing accounts for more than 3,000 seasonal and full-time jobs and $20 million in sales annually. The Fisheries Enhancement fund is used to help local organizations improve fisheries with about $350,000. The enhancement fund is supported by the sale of licence stamps as part of sport, bait and commercial fishing. Since 1993, the fund has supported 120 local projects, including stream rehabilitation, construction of fish ladders, increased fish stocking to improve fish populations.

The Department of Natural Resources produces and stocks more than 100 million fish a year through our hatcheries and by supporting local hatcheries. Millions of walleye fry are stocked annually. Throughout the trout hatchery system the department stocks an average of one million fingerling and catchable trout each year.

Wildlife activities continue to focus on integrated wildlife management for both consumptive and nonconsumptive uses, and the branch will continue to work with Manitobans to improve the knowledge base and create new opportunities, and I am sure the conservation of vital ecological systems that maintain the biodiversity and support the plant and animal populations in our province.

The Conservation Agreements Act was passed into law in September of '98 and has created opportunities for individuals and nongovernment organizations to conserve habitat on private land. Approximately 90,000 hunting licences are sold each year, and The Wildlife Act has been amended to prohibit dangerous hunting and shooting practices, most notably hunting at night. Increased fines and penalties have resulted in a dramatic decline in this type of poaching.

Those are a few highlights from the department. There are many more activities and initiatives that I am sure my critics will bring up during discussions. I would now await perhaps if there is a statement from my critic before staff joins us.

Mr. Chairperson: I want to thank the honourable minister for the comments that he has made, and I would ask the honourable opposition critic for Natural Resources, the honourable member for Dauphin, if he has an opening statement.

Mr. Stan Struthers (Dauphin): I want to thank the minister for his opening remarks and his statement to get us started on the Estimates procedure for this fiscal year. I want to begin my statement by thanking the staff of the Department of Natural Resources for the co-operation that I have received and my colleagues have received when we go searching for information having to do with Natural Resources activities, Natural Resources policies and all the issues that are found within the Department of Natural Resources. I find that the staff is very capable, very co-operative, very helpful, and I want to make sure that I commend them on the work that they have done through the course of the past year.

The minister mentioned at the beginning of his remarks that he was looking for feedback on the supplementary information that he has provided for the 1999-2000 Estimates. I want to say that again I found the package of information very useful and very well laid out and answered many of the questions that I have about the Department of Natural Resources even before we get into this process. So I would tell the minister that. It is a very good package, and it helps myself out as critic immensely.

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I want to say that since we last met to talk about expenditures of the Department of Natural Resources there have been many highlights, and as a matter of fact, some positive things have happened, in my estimation. The minister flagged conservation agreements, legislation that was passed through the House a while back.

Maybe the minister was too modest to talk about the parcel of 35 acres of land that he has put forward out at his farm near Neepawa, but I want to say that that showed leadership, that showed that he is not only committed to the legislation but that he is committed to the program and the implementation of it. I do not mind saying that on the record.

Conservation easements legislation was a bill that we on the opposition side supported. We tried to put forward some positive contributions to that debate. It was my feeling from the beginning that a deal was possible. It was my feeling from the beginning that some negotiations would need to take place and did in fact take place to produce some legislation that I think is going to be successful. All too often we have an idea in our heads as politicians that a certain program should run a certain way, and it does not matter how many good pieces of advice we get, sometimes we just go straight ahead with whatever it is that we want to do. So I must commend the minister for that piece of legislation and commend the minister for his patience in hanging in there to get that legislation through and then putting forth, as a model, his own land to show his commitment to the program.

It is my intent to encourage others to put forward land for habitat, land for environmental purposes. It is my hope that many Manitobans will take advantage of that program, take advantage of the ability they now have to sign conservation agreements setting aside land for different conservation purposes. So I want to commend both the minister and the department for pursuing that particular legislation.

I will have some questions later on in the Estimates process about some of the regulations and implementation of the program, mostly to help my own ability to answer questions that may arise as I talk to constituents and as I talk to Manitobans about programs in Natural Resources.

I know that again this spring the department was faced with the schizophrenic position of having part of Manitoba on fire and part of Manitoba up to its ears in water. I am starting to learn that this is not necessarily exceptional in this province. In the four years that I have been in this Legislature I think every spring we have been faced with that situation. I know ministers do not know whether to put their hip waders on for Question Period or their fire fighting gear, but again I do want to make note of the work of the people in the department in not only fighting fires and fighting floods but preparing for what has become an annual tradition in this province, and that is to keep people safe from the ravages of both fires and floods.

This year, especially in the southwest corner, although I do not want to restrict myself to the southwest corner, it is an awful situation in that part of our province, but along with areas in my own constituency of Gilbert Plains and Grandview, areas in the minister's constituency around Laurier and McCreary and Neepawa and Gladstone, parts of the southeast part of Manitoba have experienced a lot of rain. From an agricultural standpoint, these are areas more used to putting their crops in and then praying for rain. What has happened this spring is pretty much the opposite. They have had an awful time trying to get their crops in because of the heavy rain, because of the saturated conditions even throughout the course of the winter and rain that these areas received last fall and last summer.

Again, I want to commend the people in the Department of Natural Resources for the work that they have been doing to help communities that are facing these floods. I want to thank the minister for keeping our side of the House up to date on conditions during flooding this spring, and I want to encourage the government to continue to be open to ideas on flood proofing and drainage and all those issues that are connected to excessive amounts of water and our attempts to try to alleviate problems that occur.

Just briefly, some of the concerns that I have that I will be addressing with the minister probably deal more with process rather than actual issues, a process of including as many Manitobans as we can in the input before decisions are made, whether that has to do with forestry or drainage or wildlife, fisheries. Whatever issue the Department of Natural Resources undertakes, I think one of the most important areas for discussion is the process setting up the discussion in the first place. It would be my hope that the minister and the department would want to include as many people as we can before we make decisions.

I know one of the complaints that has been channelled through me to the minister previously is that consultation is apt to take place after decisions have been made. The concern there is that it becomes not so much an opportunity to include Manitobans but rather a way to talk Manitobans into a decision that has been made by the minister or staff.

The other part of that process that I think is extremely important is the collection of data. The better the data is that we collect, the better the decisions will be that we make. So my hope, again, is that the minister would be committed to providing the resources necessary to collect information upon which we can make good decisions in the area of natural resources.

Part of the Estimates I would like to spend a bit of time on is the drainage review that the department is involved with. My understanding is that one of the goals of reviewing drainage is to reduce the number of water use disputes. Who could argue with that? We want to set up a situation where there are fewer disputes taking place with water, but that is a major undertaking. It is a huge undertaking. Water has to go somewhere, and when you replace one size of culvert with a bigger culvert, you end up putting more water down onto your neighbour. Sometimes people get quite emotional over water issues. So it is a huge undertaking but, I think, an important one, an important one in which to establish areas of responsibility between levels of government and also to get some kind of control over the licensing of water use and allocation in the province of Manitoba.

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One of my major concerns since the last time we met to discuss Estimates is the input into decision making by aboriginal communities. It still seems to be that I get a lot of requests from bands, from chiefs, from councillors, who feel as if they have been left out of decision making when it comes to natural resources issues; in particular, most recently, concerns expressed to me because of activity or perhaps anticipated activity along the east side of Lake Winnipeg. That is an issue that I look forward to getting into a discussion with the minister on. If I remember correctly, last year during concurrence, we spent a bit of time discussing development on the east side of Lake Winnipeg, and I think there are still some areas that need to be discussed there as well.

One of the major areas of disappointment for me in dealing with issues in the Department of Natural Resources falls in the area of wildlife. I have been a bit of a critic of this government's valuation of wildlife in Manitoba, beginning with the elk capture and elk ranching, falconry and different decisions that this government has made. Recently we have been discussing in the Chamber penned hunts, which is something that later on in the Estimates I will be giving the minister a chance to maybe clarify what his government's position is in that respect.

I look forward to a good set of Estimates. I always look forward to the information that I gain and the knowledge that I gain about the Department of Natural Resources, which has to be one of the more interesting departments in the provincial government. So with those few comments, we can begin.

Just as a point of clarification, the practice in other years has been to begin the Estimates on the first line of the Expenditures. It would be my hope, if the minister is agreeable, instead of going line by line through the whole book, that we could deal with all of these issues at the beginning, with the aid of the minister's staff, and then once we finish with the issues we need to deal with, we can quickly move through and pass the rest of the lines of the budget. I think this also allows some of my colleagues to come in, when they need to, to ask some questions of the minister. I am hoping that is a process acceptable to the minister.

Mr. Cummings: I would ask my deputy and Mr. Podolsky to join us.

In response to the question about process, if the critic wishes to do it that way, I have no objection.

Mr. Chairperson: Okay, maybe we will deal with that in a minute. Under Manitoba practice, debate of the Minister's Salary is traditionally the last item considered for the Estimates of the department, and, accordingly, we shall defer consideration of this item and now proceed with the consideration of the next line.

Before we do that, I would invite the minister's staff to join us at the table, and we ask that the minister introduce his staff when they are present.

Mr. Cummings: Joining me is deputy minister of the department, Dave Tomasson, and Mr. Bill Podolsky, who is the executive director of Administration.

Mr. Chairperson: We thank the honourable minister for that. We will now proceed to line 12.1. Administration and Finance (b) Executive Support (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits, on page 119 of the Main Estimates book.

Is it the agreement of the committee that we will proceed with general discussion on the entire Estimates of the Department of Natural Resources and then pass them at the conclusion of the questions and answers that are posed by the opposition critic and the minister? Is that agreed? [agreed]

We will now proceed to line 12.1.(b) Executive Support (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits–$424,500.

Mr. Struthers: Mr. Chairperson, in the time that we have remaining this afternoon, I would like to start Estimates on what I consider a very positive note and begin with a discussion about the conservation agreements, the conservation agreement legislation that this government passed I believe a year ago now, if my memory serves me correctly, a program that I support wholeheartedly, a program that I can see a bright future for, a program that I think will serve Manitobans very well.

What I would like to get from the minister is an indication as to who can apply for their land to be set aside, who some of the sponsors are that constituents can be approaching to enable their land to be set aside in a conservation agreement. Really, what I am asking for is an overview of the nuts and bolts of how to get involved in setting aside some land in a conservation agreement.

Mr. Cummings: We will, in a minute, get as complete a list as I can of organizations and/or government structures that could hold conservation agreement easements. I appreciate the comments of the member for Dauphin (Mr. Struthers) regarding this program. It did, in fact, require a bit of good will and movement on the part of a number of parties to bring it together, and credit needs to be given on the record to what is now AMM, the Union of Manitoba Municipalities at the time of the discussions a couple of years ago, and they were, rightfully so on the part of their constituency, concerned about what the overriding problems might be when the term "perpetuity" is put in place.

We were able to reach an understanding as to that being negotiable and put in a structure for an appeal mechanism that can be triggered over the long haul to look at and review lands that have been set aside and to determine if there have, in fact, been extenuating circumstances arisen that might modify the original agreement, and that would likely only fall under them in a situation where it was a very unique location in relationship to a family operation where financial hardship was somehow seen to have been imposed.

That is the long shot, as I understand it, that most people were concerned about, that none of us are intelligent enough or have enough knowledge to say what some of the impacts might be in perpetuity. Yet the goal is to in perpetuity make sure that wildlife habitat is adequately set aside for future generations and make sure that there is almost nothing that can impede that protection. Arguably, the one thing that enters into this is perhaps land swaps, which means there is still protection in perpetuity. It is just not quite in the same location it was to begin with.

That, in a broad sense, is I believe the concerns that were brought to the table and were dealt with in the legislation in the way that I just described.

Anyone who wishes to apply can make it known through the Department of Natural Resources and also through the Manitoba Habitat Heritage Corporation, who currently is leading in this area, but there are a number of nonprofit organizations, five of them, starting with Habitat Heritage Corporation. Ducks Unlimited would be another one. Another organization that can hold it is a municipal organization. The local government or municipality can hold the land on behalf of an easement. Those would be the first places that contact would need to be made.

In fact, the local R.M., through our process, needs to be notified in some form that in fact a set-aside is going to occur and that, if they intend to raise concerns, they are given an appropriate length of time to do so. The idea was that it has to be held by some body that has a likelihood of continuing into the future.

Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. The hour now being 6 p.m., committee rise.