LEGISLATIVE
ASSEMBLY OF
Tuesday,
July 13, 1993
The House met at 1:30
p.m.
PRAYERS
ROUTINE
PROCEEDINGS
PRESENTING
PETITIONS
Mr. Jim Maloway
(Elmwood): Mr. Speaker, I beg to present the petition of Jaik
Josephson, Janis Bermel, Don Sullivan and others requesting the Minister of
Family Services (Mr. Gilleshammer) consider restoring funding of the Student
Social Allowances Program.
Mr. Speaker: I have reviewed the petition of the
honourable member (Mr. Plohman). It
complies with the privileges and the practices of the House and complies with
the rules. Is it the will of the House
to have the petition read? (agreed)
Mr. Clerk (William
Remnant): The petition of the undersigned citizens of
the
WHEREAS
WHEREAS over 55,000 children depend upon
the Children's Dental Program; and
WHEREAS several studies have pointed out
the cost savings of preventative and treatment health care programs such as the
Children's Dental Program; and
WHEREAS the Children's Dental Program has
been in effect for 17 years and has been recognized as extremely cost‑effective
and critical for many families in isolated communities; and
WHEREAS the provincial government did not
consult the users of the program or the providers before announcing plans to
eliminate 44 of the 49 dentists, nurses and assistants providing this service;
and
WHEREAS preventative health care is an
essential component of health care reform.
WHEREFORE your petitioners humbly pray
that the Legislative Assembly of
* * *
Mr. Speaker: I have reviewed the petition of the
honourable member (Mr. Martindale). It
complies with the privileges and the practices of the House and complies with
the rules. Is it the will of the House
to have the petition read? (agreed)
Mr. Clerk: The petition of the undersigned citizens of
the
WHEREAS
WHEREAS over 1,000 young adults are
currently attempting to get off welfare and upgrade their education through the
Student Social Allowances Program; and
WHEREAS
WHEREAS the provincial government has
already changed social assistance rules resulting in increased welfare costs
for the City of
WHEREAS the provincial government is now
proposing to eliminate the Student Social Allowances Program; and
WHEREAS eliminating the Student Social
Allowances Program will result in more than a thousand young people being
forced onto city welfare with no means of getting further full‑time
education, resulting in more long‑term costs for city taxpayers.
WHEREFORE your petitioners humbly pray
that the Legislative Assembly of
Mr. Speaker: I have reviewed the petition of the
honourable member (Ms. Cerilli). It
complies with the privileges and the practices of the House and complies with
the rules. Is it the will of the House
to have the petition read? (agreed)
Mr. Clerk: The petition of the undersigned citizens of
the
WHEREAS
WHEREAS over 1,000 young adults are
currently attempting to get off welfare and upgrade their education through the
Student Social Allowances Program; and
WHEREAS
WHEREAS the provincial government has
already changed social assistance rules resulting in increased welfare costs
for the City of
WHEREAS the provincial government is now
proposing to eliminate the Student Social Allowances Program; and
WHEREAS eliminating the Student Social
Allowances Program will result in more than a thousand young people being
forced onto city welfare with no means of getting further full‑time
education, resulting in more long‑term costs for city taxpayers.
WHEREFORE your petitioners humbly pray
that the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba may be pleased to request the
Minister of Family Services (Mr. Gilleshammer) to consider restoring funding of
the Student Social Allowances Program.
PRESENTING
REPORTS BY STANDING AND SPECIAL COMMITTEES
Mrs. Louise Dacquay
(Chairperson of Committees): Mr.
Speaker, the Committee of Supply has adopted certain resolutions, directs me to
report the same and asks leave to sit again.
I move, seconded by the honourable member
for La Verendrye (Mr. Sveinson), that the report of the committee be received.
Motion agreed to.
* * *
Mr. Bob Rose
(Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Law Amendments): Mr. Speaker, I beg to present the Seventh
Report of the Committee on Law Amendments.
Mr. Clerk (William
Remnant): Your Standing Committee on Law Amendments
presents the following as its Seventh Report.
Your committee met on Wednesday, July 7,
1993, at 7 p.m. and Friday, July 9, 1993, at 1:30 p.m. in Room 255 of the
Your committee heard representation on
bills as follows:
Bill 29‑The
Minors Intoxicating Substances Control Act; Loi sur le controle des substances
intoxicantes et les mineurs
Peter
Sim ‑
Written Submissions:
Ian Goldstine ‑
Your committee has considered:
Bill 29‑The Minors Intoxicating
Substances Control Act; Loi sur le controle des substances intoxicantes et les
mineurs
and has agreed to report
the same with the following amendment:
MOTION:
THAT subsection 7(2) be amended by adding
", other than a term of imprisonment" after "determine".
All of which is respectfully submitted.
Mr. Rose: Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the
honourable member for St. Norbert (Mr. Laurendeau), that the report of the
committee be received.
Motion agreed to.
Introduction
of Guests
Mr. Speaker: Prior to Oral Questions, may I direct the
attention of honourable members to the gallery, where we have with us this afternoon
from the Adult English Secondary Language Centre 45 students under the
direction of Ms. Gail Ross and Ms. Dolores Kimak. This school is located in the constituency of
the honourable member for Burrows (Mr. Martindale).
On behalf of all honourable members, I
would like to welcome you here this afternoon.
* (1335)
ORAL
QUESTION PERIOD
Provincial
Parks
Endangered
Spaces Policy
Mr. Gary Doer (Leader of
the Opposition): Mr. Speaker, in August of 1990, the Premier
promised to enact the endangered spaces promise of 12 percent as proposed by
the Brundtland Commission and accepted by the United Nations.
The Premier made that promise in the tall
grass prairie of
I would like to ask the Premier: How is the promise of the 12 percent
endangered spaces incorporated in government policy, given the vagueness of the
policies in the parks act before this Chamber today?
Hon. Gary Filmon
(Premier): Mr. Speaker, I am not sure the question is in
order given that this is a matter that will be called for debate today.
I appreciate the member's concern, a
concern he did not have when he was in office, of course, because we are
operating under a parks act that does allow for multipurpose use of parklands
throughout
Yes, we are committed to achieve that 12
percent, and, yes, we have made commitments and announcements made earlier this
year by the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Enns) that will contribute
toward that achievement of 12 percent, and, yes, it is our understanding that
under the new parks act, those areas that are designated for very restrictive
use will contribute toward that 12 percent, and we will indeed be able to
achieve that target.
Mr. Doer: Mr. Speaker, the policy, as articulated in
the act, is to allow the minister to make those designations.
Mr. Speaker, provinces are coming forward
with specific commitments, specific areas and specific designations to achieve
the 12 percent promise, something that is not contained within the parks act or
in any other specific document that has been tabled in this Chamber to achieve
the Premier's promise.
Mr. Speaker,
I would like to ask the Premier: When is he going to table the specific
reserved lands and preserved lands, which really will achieve the 12 percent
promise that he made to the people of Manitoba, that promise which we do not
see contained anywhere in the parks act?
Mr. Filmon: We are committed, Mr. Speaker. I repeat, we will attain that target.
Mr. Doer: Mr. Speaker, in the preamble of the act, the
government speaks to its policy of preserving spaces, but in the act itself,
there is no such designation. B.C. just
announced on June 15 how they would get from 8 percent to 12 percent. Many other provinces are announcing it.
When will the Premier give us the promise
of the 12 percent and the specific action plan to get there?‑‑because,
Mr. Speaker, surely, with an act that allows just the minister to designate in
a whimsical way all kinds of different designations at all kinds of different
times, we need the specific promise to be fulfilled at the 12 percent the
Premier promised, so we will know what is set aside as endangered spaces and
what, in fact, over and above that will be used for multiple use, of the
resources of Manitoba.
* (1340)
Mr. Filmon: Mr. Speaker, the only people who treated this
in a whimsical way were New Democrats who, when in office, took the logging out
of one park and put it into another.
That was their idea of protecting these lands. They are the same people who allowed for
mineral extraction, who allowed for petroleum extraction, who allowed for all
sorts of things in their parks and now are saying that, all of a sudden, they
are born again and they are somehow going to do things differently.
We need no advice from New Democrats who
ranked 10 out of 10 in terms of the provinces for protection of the
environment. That is not the kind of advice we are looking for.
Yes, Mr. Speaker, we are committed to
achieving that 12 percent, and we will achieve that 12 percent with the
policies we are implementing.
Ostomy
Program
User Fees
Mr. Doug Martindale
(Burrows): Mr. Speaker, all users of ostomy supplies in
Unfortunately, the Minister of Health does
not have the honesty to call it a user fee or a tax. He uses a euphemism and calls it a client
contribution.
I would like to ask the Minister of Health
why he sent out this letter signed by his assistant deputy minister which is
causing such confusion and anger amongst users of ostomy supplies, and why is
he‑‑
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The honourable member has already put his
question.
Hon. Donald Orchard
(Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, the
change in policy where we are asking the users of the ostomy program to
contribute up to 50 percent of costs maximizing $600‑‑in other
words, up to a maximum of $300 per year on a 50‑50 cost‑sharing
basis‑‑was part of the budget and subsequent announcement on April
7.
It was the subject of a number of
questions in the House in April, May and June.
It was the subject of questions in Estimates, and because its
implementation date was July 1, the clients were so informed of that change in
policy.
No one, and I in particular have not
attempted in any way, shape or form to avoid the issue of bringing in this new
charge to the consumers of ostomy supplies, which brings us in line with most
other provinces in Canada in terms of the contribution users make toward their
ostomy supply and maintains the central focus of the economic purchasing power
of the Province of Manitoba to maintain and contain the costs of the program to
Manitobans.
Mr. Martindale: Unfortunately, the minister does not know why he
is creating confusion.
Could the minister tell us why this letter
was sent out to social assistance recipients, since we have been told by the
Minister of Family Services' (Mr. Gilleshammer) staff and people in his
department that they do not have to pay?
Why did the Minister of Health send this
letter out to all users, and why did he send them out to social assistance
recipients if they do not have to pay?
Mr. Orchard: Mr. Speaker, I will take that question as
notice, but I suspect that on the list of ostomates in
If my honourable friend is suggesting we
so label Manitobans in all records of government, I will take that under
advice, but I will choose to ignore that advice, Sir.
Mr. Martindale: I would like to ask the Minister of Health or
the Minister of Family Services (Mr. Gilleshammer) if they would consult with
each other and organize themselves and send out a letter to correct this
situation, so people have accurate information?
Since the Minister of Family Services
seems to know what he is doing and the Minister of Health does not, will he
send out a letter and correct the situation and end the confusion?
Mr. Orchard: Mr. Speaker, there is no confusion other than
the fact the New Democrats appear to be saying that all people on social
assistance ought to be so noted and so labelled throughout the entire provision
of government services.
That is a new policy proposal and probably
the only policy suggestion we have received this session from New Democrats,
but I do not think it appropriate that we label for all government programs
welfare recipients, as suggested by the member for Burrows.
* (1345)
Provincial
Parks
Logging
Activity
Mr. Paul Edwards (Leader
of the Second Opposition): Mr. Speaker, last
night in the Estimates for the Department of Natural Resources, the Minister of
Natural Resources (Mr. Enns) revealed that 3 percent of available forests in
My question, Mr. Speaker, for the
Premier: Why are provincial parks being
used for logging at the rate of two times the provincial average?
Hon. Gary Filmon
(Premier): Mr. Speaker, what the member has to appreciate
is that logging rights were awarded before the establishment of provincial
parks in many cases. So that is an
historic anomaly that takes place.
The question was whether or not the park
boundaries should be drawn to avoid those logging allocations that were made
historically, or whether or not, because of the geographic nature of the area,
they should all be included because they represented that kind of geographic
area that was intended to be in provincial parks.
Mr. Speaker, the member opposite will be
able to have that kind of situation addressed by the new parks act, which
allows for the designation of areas for particular uses, and he will have an
opportunity to argue or debate whether or not the proper designation is given
under the new act, but I repeat for him, historically those logging and timber
rights were allocated before the parks boundaries were established in many
cases.
Mr. Edwards: Mr. Speaker, in fact, in the new parks act
the minister and this Premier are seeking to enshrine logging within provincial
parks boundaries as a matter of law in this province. It is already, and this
minister is trying to continue that tradition.
The
My question for the Premier: Why, given their control over this industry
and the fact that logging is occurring at two times the provincial average rate
within provincial parks, is this government unwilling to live with the
recommendation of the Clean Environment Commission of February 1992, which told
the province that commercial forestry activity in all provincial parks should
be phased out?
Mr. Filmon: Mr. Speaker, I find it interesting that, as a
lawyer, this individual opposite would like to strip away the pre‑existing
rights the company that operates in the Pine Falls area has had for decades,
and with no compensation, just simply strip their rights and throw out of work
hundreds and hundreds of people in that Pine Falls area.
Mr. Speaker, that is the Liberal view of
how this province ought to be operated and developed, and I am sure the people
of Pine Falls will be very interested to know that he has absolutely no
interest in their continued economic operation and that all he wants to do is
throw them out of work and close down an operation that has existed there for
more than half a century.
Mr. Edwards: The Premier is‑‑I do not accept any
of what he says, and he knows it is true, what I said earlier.
Mr. Speaker, the Clean Environment
Commission did not recommend expropriating without compensation. They recommended phasing out forestry logging
in provincial parks. No new licences in provincial
parks, that is what they recommended. This government is attempting to enshrine
the right to grant licences in provincial parks in the new provincial parks
act.
Why are they unwilling to commit to the
recommendation that this practice of logging at two times the provincial
average in provincial parks should be phased out, Mr. Speaker?
Mr. Filmon: Mr. Speaker, we are setting aside by virtue
of this act significant tracts of land for permanent protection‑‑permanent
protection. This act grants no new
licences for logging.
* (1350)
Year of
the Family Secretariat
Budget
Allocation
Mr. George Hickes (Point
Douglas): Mr. Speaker, yesterday, along with other
members of this Legislature, I received a set of these glossy leaflets and material
from the International Year of the Family Secretariat. The irony of the Minister of Family Services
devoting resources to such a secretariat days after he eliminated funding for
student social allowances, foster families, MAPO and a host of other
organizations makes this government look even more hypocritical.
My question for the Minister of Family
Services is: How much will this public
relations secretariat spend this coming year?
Hon. Harold Gilleshammer
(Minister of Family Services): We are
very pleased to join the international community to celebrate the International
Year of the Family with a very small secretariat. We had a chance to debate
this in Estimates, and it is in the budgetary allocation that was debated by
many members who spent some 30 hours during the Estimates process. The member can easily check that within the
budget book.
This is an international celebration of
the Year of the Family in 1994, and I am pleased
Mr. Hickes: Mr. Speaker, as usual, we never got an
answer. We are still waiting nearly
three years later for the last MLA project to release their project on drug
abuse.
Will the minister release the full budget
for the program and tell the House how this compares to the provincial support
for the International Year of Indigenous Peoples?
Mr. Gilleshammer: Mr. Speaker, as I have indicated, this is
part of the budget for the Department of Family Services that we spent many,
many hours debating within the Estimates process, and his seatmate there was
there for some 30 hours, and I remember one or two questions on the Year of the
Family. The member can easily check the
budget Estimates booklet to get that information.
I am disappointed that members of the New
Democratic Party are opposed to the Year of the Family. It appears not prepared to participate in the
celebrations of the Year of the Family in 1994.
Mr. Hickes: The most positive way this government can
support families is to reinstate the funding they have cut to families.
Mr. Speaker, since the government
eliminated funding to the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, the MKO, NCI, friendship
centres, MAPO and other organizations this year, does this mean there will be
further cuts to foster families, daycares and other community services next
year to pay for this secretariat?
Mr. Gilleshammer: The member shows a rather limited
understanding of the Department of Family Services, and I would point out to
him we have had increases in the Family Services budget far beyond what other
departments have received over the last five years.
I am very pleased to say that almost all
areas of our department have shown tremendous increases to look after the many
services that Family Services is responsible for.
I know attempts have been made to provide
information for the NDP caucus, and I do hope you will avail yourself of the
opportunity to learn more about the Year of the Family.
Youth
Unemployment
Rate
Reduction Strategy
Mr. Leonard Evans
(Brandon East): I have a question for
the Premier regarding our serious unemployment situation in this province.
The recent labour force survey shows a
very sharp rise in youth unemployment in
This is the highest in western
So my question to the Premier is: How much longer will the youth and students
in this province have to wait for this government to recognize the seriousness
of the problem of youth unemployment?
* (1355)
Hon. Gary Filmon
(Premier): Mr. Speaker, I find it interesting that the
member did not come with a question like this during the last six months when
we were amongst the lowest, if not the lowest level of unemployment for the
youth in Canada. He waits to selectively
pick figures that will be as negative as he can possibly make it.
Mr. Speaker, if he has any real
credibility, if he has any real desire to see jobs created in this province,
why does he not speak to his member for Radisson who is trying to kill a
thousand jobs in Brandon and western Manitoba by going out and lobbying against
and arguing against the expansion of the Ayerst plant in Brandon?
Why does he not tell her to stop sending
around petitions, to stop sending around letters to everybody encouraging them
to stop the Ayerst expansion in
Point of
Order
Ms. Marianne Cerilli
(Radisson): Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I would ask
you to have the Premier clarify his remarks. It is not correct that I sent out
petitions on this issue, and I would ask him to remove that remark from the
record.
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The honourable member does not have a point of
order. That is clearly a dispute over
the facts.
* * *
Mr. Leonard Evans: Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, the youth of
Mr. Speaker, will this government consider
setting up a summit meeting to look at solutions to the question of chronic
unemployment in this province?
We had 55,000 people unemployed in
June. That is significantly higher than
the levels we achieved in the 1980s, and even the G‑7 leaders have agreed
to address the problem of‑‑
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The honourable member has put his question.
Mr. Filmon: Mr. Speaker, indeed, this government is doing
everything it can to ensure there is a sound climate for economic development
and investment in job creation in this province, and tomorrow I will table the
material being circulated by the member for Radisson (Ms. Cerilli) that
says: Call Marianne at 945‑whatever‑her‑number‑is
in the Legislature if you want to join in the opposition to the expansion of
the Ayerst laboratories in Brandon.
I will place it on the table and show what
hypocrisy exists within this New Democratic Party when there is a potential for
a thousand jobs in rural
Mr. Leonard Evans: It is regrettable that the Premier of this
province has no solution to youth unemployment in this province, no solution
whatsoever‑‑thousands of young men and women out of work.
Social
Assistance
Employment
Creation Strategy
Mr. Leonard Evans
(Brandon East): Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question
for the Minister of Urban Affairs (Mr. Ernst).
Would the Minister of Urban Affairs advise the House whether any
progress has been made in his discussions with the City of
I ask that because
Hon. Gary Filmon
(Premier): In response to the preamble of the member for
Brandon East, I can tell him he lacks the courage to be able to talk to the
rest of his caucus who are antidevelopment, anti‑investment and anti‑industry
in this province.
That is what will kill jobs more quickly
than anything else in the history of this province. That is what the New Democrats stand for, and
he has no credibility asking a question about job creation in this province.
Point of
Order
Mr. Leonard Evans: On a point of order, on behalf of welfare
recipients and the unemployed in the city of
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The honourable member does not have a point
of order.
* (1400)
Midwifery
Obstetrics
Committee Mandate
Ms. Avis Gray
(Crescentwood): Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Health made it
clear there are two criteria that were important to him regarding the
implementation of midwifery services.
One criteria was that midwifery, as a birthing choice, would not be an
add‑on cost to the health care system.
Now we are also awaiting Dr. Manning's
obstetrical report which is independent of any discussion about midwifery.
Can the minister tell this House why the
committee he set up to study obstetrical services would not include as part of
its mandate a discussion of midwifery services?
Hon. Donald Orchard
(Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, the
issue of midwifery has been before government and before independent study with
advice from professional groups prior to the establishment of the obstetrics
committee chaired by Dr. Manning that is mandated to give us advice on the
configuration of hospital‑based obstetrical care.
Mr. Speaker, there is nothing in the
mandate of either committee which precludes midwifery, which precludes changes
to the delivery of obstetric services in the city of
It is an entirely open question, Sir, and
we are seeking advice on both issues with solutions hopefully to emanate which
will make sense to the women of
Policy Co-ordination
Ms. Avis Gray
(Crescentwood): Mr. Speaker, with a supplementary question to
the minister: Can he then tell us, with
the two independent committees that are now functioning, what mechanism is in
place to ensure that recommendations from the obstetrical report and
recommendations that are now being worked on by the midwifery implementation
committee, that there will be a co‑ordination of those and we will see
some real reform in health care?
Hon. Donald Orchard
(Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, I can simply give my honourable
friend the assurance that there will be real reform in obstetrics by giving her
my commitment, as I have over the last five years, to making change to the
health care system which will positively benefit the recipients of needed care
in the
Obstetrics, midwifery and the ability to
offer choice to the women of
Policy
Implementation
Ms. Avis Gray
(Crescentwood): Mr. Speaker, with a supplementary question to
the Minister of Health: Can the minister
today give us a time frame as to when we might see some concrete
recommendations from the obstetrical committee and some legislation and a plan
as to how midwifery services will be incorporated into part of a community‑based
health care system? Could he present a time frame?
Hon. Donald Orchard
(Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, it would be my expectation that
over the summer months, the final reports from the respective committees will
be received, reviewed and recommendations acceptable to the women of
Should that process lead to, for instance,
the passage of midwifery legislation, I would simply put the call today to my
honourable friend the member from the Liberal Party, and, of course, my
honourable friends from the New Democrats, to give speedy passage to any
legislation that might flow from midwifery, in particular, at the next sitting
of this Legislature because, obviously, I would suspect it is a little too
late, even if we had legislation drafted to present and pass same on midwifery
in this session.
Midwifery
Legislation
Ms. Judy Wasylycia‑Leis
(
Mr. Speaker, the minister has had on his
desk the report of the Working Group on Midwifery for over six months now. I think he has had ample time to come forward
with recommendations and legislation.
So I would like to ask the Minister of
Health today: Since we are all willing
to co‑operate, where is the legislation on midwifery?
Hon. Donald Orchard
(Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, I
indicated in an answer to a previous question, prior to my honourable friend's
question, it would be the anticipation that the next session would see the
presentation of that legislation.
Working
Group on Midwifery
Report
Tabling Request
Ms. Judy Wasylycia‑Leis
(St. Johns): Mr. Speaker, could I ask the minister, quite
simply, since he has had this report for over six months, a report that
followed an Advisory Network report on midwifery and the Advisory Council on
the Status of Women's Report on Midwifery, if he would table in the House today
a copy of the working group's report on midwifery?
Hon. Donald Orchard
(Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, as soon as the session is over,
because there are time constraints that do not make meetings with women's
groups easy to schedule, it is my intention to hold a meeting with women's groups
and to share an up‑to‑date‑‑although I will not have
received the final report of Dr. Manning, but to share with women's groups an
up‑to‑date review of midwifery and other obstetrical issues.
That meeting is in the process of being
arranged, and the women's groups that are interested are quite anxious to have
that meeting.
The simple answer is, legislation is not
drafted because there has not been a decision as to what the legislation ought
to incorporate. With advice from women's
groups in Manitoba, I expect to settle some issues that have come up during the
consultation process so we can proceed with legislation next session that will
receive quick passage and be appropriate for Manitoba circumstances.
Ms. Wasylycia-Leis: My question, Mr. Speaker, to the Minister of
Health is, what has this minister got to hide?
Why is he not willing to table this final report from the Working Group
on Midwifery, so we can all see what this group is recommending and so the
women of
Mr. Orchard: Mr. Speaker, I am not hiding anything except
my frustration with the silliness of the questions from time to time.
My honourable friend will have her
opportunity to review the report when I table it. I just hope my honourable friend has some
comments, contrary to other reports that have been tabled for her and, all of a
sudden, when she has the report, there is abject silence from same person.
Natural
Gas‑Rural Service
Report
Release
Mr. Clif Evans
(Interlake): Mr. Speaker, a year ago,
the Interlake Development Corporation launched a major initiative to bring
natural gas to the Interlake region. At
the time, the Minister of Industry (Mr. Stefanson) promised that the province
would announce a policy to assist in the delivery of natural gas service that
fall. A year later, we are still
waiting.
When will the government release the long‑awaited
report and policy on natural gas?
Hon. Leonard Derkach
(Minister of Rural Development): Mr.
Speaker, in the Estimates debate last evening on Rural Development, I explained
to the member for Interlake that it is true we have staff from the Department
of Energy and Mines and from my department working on a report for the
extension of rural gas services to communities where it is feasible to do that.
I met with the Interlake Development
Corporation last week, Mr. Speaker. In
that meeting, we discussed the whole issue of the extension of natural gas
services to the community of Arborg, where there is a potential industry
looking at the possibility of locating in that community.
Mr. Speaker, we are working aggressively
to seek out communities where there is a possibility and where it is affordable
to be able to extend natural gas service to those communities.
Mr. Clif Evans: Mr. Speaker, people in Teulon and in Arborg
and the Interlake Development Corporation, yes, were informed. They were also informed that a pipeline from
the Stonewall line would not be feasible, and thus in that area, they would not
be able to receive natural gas.
Why does the minister not simply release
the report? When will the report be out?
Mr. Derkach: Mr. Speaker, there is not a specific report on
the extension of natural gas to Arborg. As
the member knows, Arborg is just one of many communities in this province that
would like to see the extension of natural gas services to their community.
There are alternative ways of providing
that service, as well. Staff from my
department and the Department of Energy and Mines, along with the utility, are
looking at ways in which we can extend those services in the most affordable
and cost‑effective way.
* (1410)
Video
Lottery Terminal Revenues
Mr. Clif Evans
(Interlake): Mr. Speaker, will this minister and this
government commit VLT revenues toward the study and toward the commitment to
bring natural gas into rural areas that will lead to increased exports and jobs
in these areas, such as forest products and processed food?
Hon. Leonard Derkach
(Minister of Rural Development): Mr.
Speaker, the member across the way should know that in order for us to be able
to extend natural gas services to all communities in
There has to be a commitment made by the
communities that want this service to ensure that people within that community
are going to hook up to the natural gas service. Additionally, we have to ensure that it is
affordable to extend those services to those communities. We certainly are not going to be able to do
it where it does not make any sense and is not affordable at this time.
Five-Year
Plan
Mr. Paul Edwards (Leader
of the Second Opposition): Mr. Speaker, my
question is for the Minister responsible for the Manitoba Lotteries Foundation.
Can the minister tell us whether or not
the Manitoba Lotteries Foundation has in place a five‑year plan governing
lotteries and their expansion in the
Hon. Bonnie Mitchelson
(Minister charged with the administration of The
I indicated at that time that on a regular
basis, the Manitoba Lotteries Foundation does present to government a five‑year
plan. That plan is updated just like any
five‑year plan. The City of
It is up to the Lotteries Foundation to
make the recommendations. As government
accepts or rejects the recommendations and implements new initiatives, those
initiatives become public information through announcement.
Mr. Edwards: Mr. Speaker, will the minister table for the
members of this House and members of the public the current five‑year
plan of the Manitoba Lotteries Foundation?
Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Speaker, as I have indicated, the
Manitoba Lotteries Foundation does present a plan to government. Government, in
all instances, does not accept all of the recommendations that are made by the
Manitoba Lotteries Foundation. That is a
process that is ongoing.
As we accept recommendations and as we
look at expansion, those announcements are made, and those announcements will
be made in due course. That is a process
that is internal to government, and government ultimately has to make the final
decision.
Ultimately, the people of
Introduction
of Alcohol
Mr. Paul Edwards (Leader
of the Second Opposition): The problem is, Mr.
Speaker, the people of
Can the minister tell members of this
House whether or not that five‑year plan includes plans for the
introduction of alcohol into casinos and bingo palaces? Will the minister confirm whether or not that
is part of the plan and what this government's intentions are with respect to
that expansion of the role of alcohol and gambling in this province?
Hon. Bonnie Mitchelson
(Minister charged with the administration of The
Dauphin
Sign Shop
Employee
Management
Mr. John Plohman
(Dauphin): Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Highways has
contributed with his colleagues to the economic decline of the Dauphin and
Parkland areas with the closing of the Dauphin Sign Shop from the Highways
department, which I asked about a couple of weeks ago in this House, and the
minister seemed to indicate he was hopeful that all the employees would simply
retire.
I want to ask the minister a specific
question with regard to the continued operation of the sign shop once it has
been sold.
I want to ask the minister if he is
serious about giving the employees a realistic opportunity to continue the
operation of the sign shop in Dauphin and what support and encouragement he has
given to assist in the transition to employee management of that sign shop.
Hon.
Albert Driedger (Minister of Highways and Transportation): Well, Mr.
Speaker, first, some of the preamble was totally wrong. I did not indicate to the House that I wished
the employees would retire. The member
should go and read the answers I gave at that time.
Mr. Speaker, we are in the process of
developing a proposal call, and it has been advertised, I believe, at the
present time. We are asking for
responses, at which time we will meet again with those people who respond,
before we come up with a final proposal call, in terms of how we are going to
do it so that we can address some of those concerns.
In the interim, the position still
stands. We have many inquiries that have
been made about people who are interested in the sign shop. The answer still stands the same way as I
gave it last time, that the employees basically can avail themselves of the
Crocus Fund, that my staff are prepared to be able to work with them to see
whether they can come forward with a proposal.
Whoever is going to be the successful
bidder, ultimately the decision will not be mine alone. It will be made by the government of the
province at the time we see the proposals come forward.
Mr. Plohman: Mr. Speaker, the Crocus Fund is not even
available for them at this particular time.
If the minister is indeed serious, why has
he not even met with the employees directly to discuss a transition to employee
ownership? Why has he insisted on
requiring them to post a $10,000 bond in order to submit a proposal, as open
right now? Why will he not cancel that proposal call and give the employees a
first opportunity through discussions at the present time, immediately?
Mr. Driedger: Mr. Speaker, first of all, the proposal call has
not officially gone out. We have
advertised. Responses are coming
in. We will meet with all the
respondents, and at that time, we will develop a proposal call based on the
information of those who have interest in it.
That is how we will develop the proposal call which will then go out
officially.
The issue of the $10,000 bond in the case
of the employees, I am going to go back and check with the employees exactly
how we have established that.
Mr. Speaker: The time for Oral Questions has expired.
Introduction
of Guests
Mr. Speaker: Prior to recognizing the honourable member
for Point Douglas with his committee changes, I would like to draw the
attention of honourable members to the gallery to my left, where I see we have
Mrs. Charlotte Oleson, the former MLA for
On behalf of all honourable members, I
would like to welcome you here this afternoon.
Committee
Changes
Mr. George Hickes (Point
Douglas): I move, seconded by the member for
Motion agreed to.
Mr. Edward Helwer
(Gimli): Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the member
for
Motion agreed to.
Mr. Speaker: That is all the committee changes? Okay.
ORDERS OF
THE DAY
Hon. Clayton Manness
(Government House Leader): Mr. Speaker, would
you call the four following bills in this order: 41, 37, 40 and 44, and I will give further
instructions to come.
DEBATE ON
SECOND
Bill 41‑The
Mr. Speaker: On the proposed motion of the honourable
Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Enns), Bill 41, The Provincial Parks and
Consequential Amendments Act; Loi concernant les parcs provinciaux et apportant
des modifications correlatives a d'autres lois, standing in the name of the
honourable member for Swan River (Ms. Wowchuk).
Is there leave that this matter remain
standing?
Some Honourable Members: No.
Mr. Speaker: No.
Okay, leave is denied.
Also standing in the name of the
honourable member for Flin Flon, who has 18 minutes remaining.
Mr. Jerry Storie (Flin
Flon): Mr. Speaker, we have a number of speakers
lined up on Bill 41, and I have to say, express some regret at the government
House leader's insistence that the member for
I think the government House leader and
the government should be aware, to some extent at least, of the circumstances
that face the member for
Having said that, I want to continue my
remarks on Bill 41, particularly on the heels of the answers from the First
Minister (Mr. Filmon) today with respect to the protection of our natural
resources.
As my Leader pointed out today, the
reputation of this government when it comes to setting aside lands to meet our
collective commitment to the preservation of 12 percent of our natural heritage
for posterity, leaves this province looking like an abject failure.
In terms of progress toward meeting that
goal, we have the worst record in the country.
The members opposite are often trumpeting a report that was presented by
the Wildlife Foundation some years ago rating the previous government on its
performance. This is a denunciation of
the current government's commitment, a 1990 provincial election commitment, to
move towards a set‑aside of some 12 percent for natural preserves in the
So what we had hoped, and many Manitobans
had hoped, and those who have been involved in this debate had hoped, is that
the bill before us would have done more in terms of providing some information
about where the province is going, providing some information about what
classes, what areas of the province might be designated initially at least in
terms of those set‑asides.
* (1420)
We had also hoped that the government
could have seen its way clear to provide for a format for making those
decisions which would have left less discretion on the part of the government
and encouraged and, in fact, allowed for greater participation on behalf of
Manitobans, on behalf of those with expertise in the area and with a great deal
of concern.
Instead, Mr. Speaker, what we have is a
bill which, in effect, gives the government and the minister carte blanche in
many respects to do as he sees fit. I
know this minister certainly has been supportive of the principles enunciated
by the Brundtland Commission for set‑aside. I know the minister himself may in fact wish
to move the government in that direction.
The unfortunate fact of the matter, as we indicated in the House today,
is that we failed, that there has been no progress to date, or very little
progress to date, in meeting our objectives.
Mr. Speaker, what are we to make of Bill
41? We are here discussing the principle
of Bill 41, and in principle we would like to think that this is a measure that
is going to take us toward our objective.
I think it is becoming increasingly clear, and from the First Minister's
comments today, abundantly clear that the government has no plan. The Department of Natural Resources has no
plan. The most obvious intent of Bill 41
is not to do what we all hoped it would do, and what the government and the
Premier committed to do in 1990, but quite the reverse.
The object of this bill is to give the
government, particularly the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Enns), more
flexibility when it comes to dealing with commercial activity in parks. For the first time in this legislation, there
is recognition, stated recognition, that one of the goals of our provincial
park system can be and should be economic development, the use of our
resources.
Mr. Speaker, there is use of our resource,
and there is use of our resource. We all
recognize that there is commercial activity within park systems already. We had attempted, and the provincial park
plans have attempted to define what areas are to be used in what way, whether
intensive, extensive uses, recreational uses, et cetera. The difficulty here is that where the wording
of the bill and the inclusion of the new section which governs economic
activity make it more likely that the government is going to receive pressure
from communities and from resource users, from forestry companies and mining
companies, to expand the exemptions, to allow more and more intrusive kinds of
activities.
So, Mr. Speaker, that is where we have
some concern. Clearly, we want to balance the need for economic development in
the province, generally, with our desire to set aside additional natural
resource space for protection.
Mr. Speaker, what we do need to do is
ensure that there is a balance, and that the balance does not simply lie with
the government, because as I mentioned last time, the government is under
increasing pressure, certainly in times of economic uncertainty, in times when
jobs are disappearing by the hundreds to amend their original plans to do what
they otherwise might not have done.
(Mr. Marcel Laurendeau, Acting Speaker,
in the Chair)
So, Mr. Acting Speaker, I can only
reference the situation in my community.
Since this government was elected, we have seen three communities
jeopardized. We have seen thousands of
miners lose their jobs, more than a thousand miners in the last few years
alone. We understand that the people in
those communities, the municipalities, the towns that rely on mining have a
desperate interest in finding new ore and becoming more profitable and
continuing their viability. That also is
a legitimate goal.
What we are concerned about is that the
government seems to have lost the balance.
Certainly, when the
Mr. Acting Speaker, clearly the other area
of concern, particularly amongst many in the province, is the area of forestry
and the use of our forest resources within provincial parks. That is clearly going to be an ongoing
debate. In many circumstances, as the
Premier (Mr. Filmon) pointed out earlier, the use of those resources predates
the establishment of our park system. In
fact, the issue at
Therein lies another problem, the question
of how we are going to assess when we elect commercial activity take place, the
potential for problems that it may create.
I do not think the minister, I do not think anybody in the Chamber wants
to encourage, allow, facilitate the development of our resources whether it is
forestry or mining or quarrying or any other activity, hotelling, whatever,
cottage lots subdivision, if we can show the consequences are going to be
detrimental that we are going to create more and more problems.
Mr. Acting Speaker, the other side of the
equation, the other side of this bill, and again it is an interesting amalgam
of problems. We have, on the one hand, a
need to establish a consistent park policy, park development plan, a public
process, and on the other hand, we have the introduction in this legislation,
really what many are going to consider a tax grab. Particularly, when it comes
to permanent residents within provincial parks, the government is giving itself
the power to impose a levy in lieu of taxes.
This is not something new, and in fact
many of the people, certainly in the part of the province that I represent,
have expressed a willingness to contribute to the municipal tax base in the
area.
The difficulty is that what the province
is actually doing is making sure that the government is the benefactor of this
legislation and not the municipality.
Now the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr.
Enns) may be able to assure me when he closes debate that that is not the
intention of the government. Certainly,
if that is the case, then that takes away one of the main objections that I
have to this legislation as it now stands, because in my community, in Flin
Flon, going back to the early 1980s, this issue was being pursued by the
municipal governments themselves.
The City of
I have spoken to our mayor in the city of
* (1430)
Mr. Acting Speaker, I have already talked
at some length about the service fee that is going to be imposed. Again, the bottom line is that the
legislation as it is written is going to create a lot of uncertainty among
cottagers. That is going to happen
because the government is allowing itself not only to have full cost recovery,
but it is allowing itself to, on an annual basis, impose additional costs based
on the experience in a given park district.
I had raised the issue of flooding or fire emergencies of one sort or
another in a given park district that then could be passed on immediately and
directly to the cottagers without any regard to their ability to pay, without
any regard to, I guess, their individual financial circumstances. It certainly is going to leave open, on an
annual basis, the question of what the service fee may or may not be.
I do not expect that to happen very
often. I am quite certain that it will
not. There are not that many emergencies
in our provincial parks, in our cottaging areas, but it leaves open the
possibility that we may have to address that, Mr. Acting Speaker.
I am going to be interested to listen to
the minister's comments in closing debate when we come to that. I know that a number of other members have
concerns that they want to raise in terms of this legislation, and I am going
to be listening with interest to the literally hundreds of people who are
lining up to speak at committee. I have
mentioned that I have received a copy of the lists already, and we are
approaching 200 as far as I can see. It
is certainly possible that we will exceed that unless the minister is able to
clarify some of the intentions and some of the implications of this bill in
second reading.
With that, Mr. Acting Speaker, I want to
thank you for the opportunity of putting my remarks on the record.
Mr. Gary Doer (Leader of
the Opposition): Mr. Acting Speaker, I would like to speak for
a few minutes on Bill 41. I think it is
a very important bill before the Chamber.
I was looking forward to reading the bill. I sort of recall some reticence on behalf of
the minister, I think, when he was introducing it. I think the word "reluctant" was used
in his statement about introducing this bill in this House.
I was extremely disappointed when I saw
The Provincial Parks Act in its detail.
I know that this is a very difficult issue. Nobody in this House should
pretend that this is not a difficult issue to deal with. We see all around us, we see the challenges
that are before us in terms of jobs, resources, endangered spaces, endangered
species and provincial parks, federal parks, or national parks.
That is the case in the
Originally, George Bush would not even
commit the
We see in B.C., daily on our nightly
newscasts, some of the challenges dealing with the challenges of land use
policies. So nobody in this House in
debating this bill is pretending for a moment that these issues are simple and
they are some kind of absolute black and white solutions to very multiple and
complex challenges for our land use and our parks. I want to say that at the outset.
Mr. Acting Speaker, I recall the 12
percent endangered spaces announcement of the Premier (Mr. Filmon). It was made some three years ago. It was an announcement that all of us agreed
to. It came from the United Nations
report, the Brundtland Commission Report, chaired by a very eminent former
prime minister of
This report had a number of
challenges. It did not address all
challenges. It did not address, for
example, the challenges of chemicals with the agricultural land use, because
that was too controversial. But there
was a tremendous degree of agreement and consensus between the developed
countries, the underdeveloped countries, the Third World countries, if you
will, on a number of specific steps that must be taken in our world, in our
universe, so to speak, to deal with our specific challenges on the environment
endangered spaces and endangered species.
The former minister of the environment co‑chaired
with industry the Canadian response; Mr. Gerard Lecuyer co‑chaired the
response. I believe the other chair was
from Alcan, if I am not mistaken, or Noranda, I cannot exactly remember who it
was. But there was an industry and
government representative to provide
There was consensus all across this
country from business, labour, environment, government, that 12 percent would
be the endangered spaces provision.
That would be the threshold for setting
aside spaces in different ecosystems across our country and across our province
that we would preserve from resource extraction and development.
Mr. Acting Speaker, we watched with some
interest after the government had received a majority how it would implement
its various promises and how it would implement the specific promise of 12
percent. They received a tremendous
credit. I remember the articles in one
of the newspapers; the Blue Party turns green, that was the lead sentence in
the dealing with the Premier's election promise.
That was followed by an advertising
campaign where the Premier was paddling in a canoe, extolling the virtues of
the Conservatives on the environment.
They probably think that is a very unique idea over there, do they
not? They are very proud of this
advertising campaign. You can see the
joy on their faces on that advertising campaign.
You should know, Mr. Acting Speaker, where
that ad came from. The Minister of
Industry, Trade and Tourism (Mr. Stefanson) would know. He should know. He is dealing with the same advertising
agency now. It is getting lucrative
contracts for tourism from the government.
He would know that this advertising campaign of having a person in a
canoe paddling around is not unique to
I would refer members opposite to a book
called Sultans of Sleaze. It is a
book. It is not my title. I am not referring to honourable members
opposite. It is a book called Sultans of
Sleaze, and I happen to have a copy of a certain advertising section: Public opinion polls conducted by the
An Honourable Member: What do you call him again?
Mr. Doer: An engineer.
An Honourable Member: What about the sleaze?
Mr. Doer: Sultans of Sleaze is the book. I would refer the member. This is on page 132 of the same book.
But this strategy in the short term worked
and in the long term failed because, Mr. Acting Speaker, people over time judge
the government by its actual record, and this strategy, even though it was
slick and clever at the time, failed the government of Ontario and the
Conservatives of Ontario because they saw again directly in front of them the
first‑hand evidence of environmental degradation.
We were very optimistic about the
Premier's promise in the 1990 election.
I say that this act, I believe today, before us today, is a betrayal of
the Premier's very own promise in the 1990 election, and, I dare say, that is
therefore a betrayal of the mandate that the Progressive Conservative Party of
Manitoba received from the people of this province in 1990. The Premier promised a strategy on the 12
percent, and in the parks bill that is before us today, in the preamble of the
bill, they speak to this promise of Endangered Spaces, but they do not have any
strategy whatsoever after.
The government deals with their promise of
Endangered Spaces in the preamble of the bill.
It does not deal with it in the operative sections in the bill. "WHEREAS the provincial parks are
special places that play an important role . . . ."
* (1440)
An Honourable Member: As provided in the bill and as duly
designated by the minister, 80 percent of the 3.5 million acres of our parks
will be in the Endangered Spaces Program.
Mr. Doer: So the minister says that he or she or
whoever that person will be will ensure that that promise will be protected.
Mr. Acting Speaker, the whole purpose of the Endangered Spaces Program was to
set aside a set of ecosystems across the province in a specific plan and keep
it clear of political decision making from any political party at any
particular time.
It was to set aside the land in the 12
ecosystems in such a way that whimsical decisions could not be made by anyone
of any political party that may hold the office of Natural Resources. It is
meant to be not a whimsical decision‑making policy. It is meant to be a firm commitment beyond
partisan politics to the world and to the people of this province.
We do not see that. We do not see this in this bill. We do not see it at all in this bill. It allows for parks to be designated and
redesignated and counterdesignated. It
allows for things to be changed ad hoc in the bill, and it allows the Minister
of Natural Resources, therefore, to have the delegated responsibility that was
given by the Premier to the world community.
Mr. Acting Speaker, they could have done
better. We thought after three years
that they would have done better. We
thought after three years that they would have a strategy to take us to 1994,
'95, '96, and to the year 2000, which is ultimately the promise of the Premier.
I would refer the members opposite to the
pledge just made recently in
Mr. Acting Speaker, they are going to
designate these parks and set aside these areas, and that is why they are
leading the country and achieving the 12 percent reserve spots and preserve
spots, which is the key word because there is a difference. As I said today in Question Period, there is
a fundamental difference between reserving some land, which is talk about doing
it, and preserving land, which is action that is consistent with the Premier's
promise and, I would hope, consistent with all members in this House.
So that is the first part of this act that
we are critical of. As I say, just think
how much less controversy we would have in our province if there was 12 percent
set aside in the strategy in this park today, and then the multiple use for
logging and other activity would be over and above that threshold. So we take away the legitimate fears of working
people in some of those situations that feel threatened between the absolute
yeses and the absolute noes of this debate.
Think how more secure the people of
How much easier would it be? It would not be without problems. But if we were to say to the people in this
province who are concerned about having our endangered spaces set aside: Here
is the endangered spaces strategy, this is how it is going to work, this is how
the 12 ecosystems will be impacted, and here is the other set of parks that
will be over and above those 12 percent, here are the other areas that will
have multiple use for logging, mining and mineral extraction, I would suggest
to members opposite that rather than having all this controversy that we see
now‑‑and every province is having it‑‑you would have a
strategy to deal with this challenge.
Because it is a challenge.
I want to repeat, I do not believe for one
moment this is easy to deal with. When
we are dealing with provincial land use we have another consideration besides
the parks and jobs and that set‑aside policy. We also have the whole issue of aboriginal
land use and the whole aboriginal policies of land entitlement. Where is this
anticipated in this act? Where is the
strategy to deal with aboriginal land entitlement? Where is the strategy to deal with land
entitlement negotiations with the federal government, which I hope is going on?
Again, I believe the government should
have come forward with a parks act, and if it was going to have multiple use,
that would be on top of the 12 percent and together with the strategy dealing
with aboriginal land claims across the province. Then we would have a comprehensive land use
strategy.
I admit, that is not easy to achieve, but
after three years of majority government and moving on to six years of a combination
of minority and majority government, Mr. Acting Speaker‑‑and, you
know, allegedly we are leading Canada in this area in terms of the
International Sustainable Development centre being located here in Manitoba,
surely we can provide the international leadership through the Premier's
promise in the Premier's own province where the International Sustainable
Development centre is located to achieve the land use policies that are so
essential in Manitoba and so lacking in the bill we see before us today called
The Provincial Parks and Consequential Amendments Act.
The second concern I want to raise is the
whole issue of the taxation policy that is contained within the act. I was quite surprised to see that in the
act. I guess if you want everybody against
you on a bill, that is the way you do it.
You do not do anything on the parks side. What you do is provide a taxation on the
cottage side and then you can succeed in getting everybody against you.
It is maybe a curious strategy. Maybe nobody will talk about the unemployment
rate or the education system or the health care system. I do not know whether it was deliberate or
not. Well, let us find a way where
everybody can be against the bill. I
know, says somebody in cabinet, let us pass on that taxation policy to the
cottage owners. Oh, well, we better not
have the money go to the municipalities; it will make sense. Let us just grab it ourselves so we get the
municipalities against us. Oh, that is a
great idea, we will have everybody against this bill.
Oh, what a wonderful idea. We will have people wanting endangered spaces
set aside against the bill because it does not have it. You will have cottage owners in the parks
that would normally be with the government on multiple use against the bill
because of the whimsical taxation policy, and then you have, of course,
municipalities that expected some contributions from the provincial government
saying, hold it, we provide the services, and we are not going to get the
revenue.
Now, if you want to even make it worse,
let us not provide any fair market value for assessment, let us not provide any
fair market value for services, let us not provide any fair market value for
how you will assess a person's property or assess fees, and then let us not
have any appeal process except to the minister.
That is the legislation before us. Now, I do not know whether that was why the
minister said "reluctantly" when he tabled this bill. I will have to go back to Hansard, because I
thought I heard him say "reluctant."
If he did not say it, I apologize ahead of time. But I thought I heard the word
"reluctant." I reluctantly
introduce this bill on first reading, I think I heard him say.
But, Mr. Acting Speaker, that is why I
want to put my apology in. I will never
complain‑‑I never explain, I guess, is the minister's‑‑(interjection)
Yes. So he is going to fight people on
the landing strips, on the beaches, in the forests and in the cottages and,
yes, he will, in his Churchillian best, be out there with this bill.
* (1450)
But, Mr. Acting Speaker, it is not good
policy. People's contributing in
provincial parks to services they receive, particularly education services and
municipal services, makes sense. Nobody
is going to be popular doing it. But
this bill, in the way in which it approaches this with, again, in such an ad
hoc, whimsical, ministerial‑down approach, is not consistent with, again,
good land use policy and not consistent with the parks act that would provide
partnership and fairness for those people that are located in those parks.
Those people have all made major financial
investments, and we should treat people that make major financial investments
in the parks the same way we treat people that make major financial investments
anywhere else in our society. Those are
families; those are ambitions; those are livelihoods; those are economic
decisions people have made. We should
treat them not as statistics on a briefing note paper or pieces of spreadsheets
dealing with legislation. We should
treat them with the same kind of respect we would treat any other citizen of
this province and allow that to be the guiding light.
Mr. Acting Speaker, I can comment about
other areas in this bill for purposes of looking at the public hearings. Again, we are concerned about the 12
percent. We are concerned about concepts
in Section 8 allowing for additional additions and omissions of park boundaries
and the ability to change categories so dramatically.
What happens if the next time around we
have a Minister of Natural Resources that does not have the great respect for
our history, does not have the great respect for canoeing on Seal or
What if it somebody who wants to build
But it should not depend on the personalities
of the people who come and go. It should
depend on much more specific areas of designations and not allow omissions,
deletions and additions to be done in such an ad hoc way. Tomorrow it could be somebody else. It could be somebody that wants to build some
massive project, an aluminum plant on the
How would the minister feel 20 years from
now, if he finally retires, sitting in his rocking chair, knowing that he had
an opportunity to change an act and preserve in an act something as beautiful
and wonderful, but he missed that opportunity?
Rivers that he once paddled will now have aluminum plants located on it
and have various other developments that distort our beauty and our
opportunities.
Mr. Acting Speaker, the bill has, as I
say, a number of major weaknesses. I do
not know why the government brought the bill in. I mean the real question is, after the Clean
Environment Commission had reported on Nopiming and reported on the
Is it just public relations? Is it back to the Premier (Mr. Filmon) in the
canoe, just a public relations campaign?
Is it only the perception that we are going to do something? What in this bill is being proposed that is
not there now for the government to propose all kinds of different
classifications? In fact, the Premier, I
think in his answer in questions today, said, they could do whatever they want
now. So they can do whatever they want
in this bill.
What is the difference? The only difference really is that the
appearance is that there is a "new" park lands act and the cottage
taxation without any consideration for the municipalities and the communities
of this province.
Mr. Acting Speaker, we are opposed to this
act. We are disappointed in this
act. We recognize the difficult
challenges between a "multiple‑use users of land" land use
policy and the desire to fulfill the 12 percent. We know that jobs can exist with Endangered
Spaces. We know that logging can exist
in this province, and we can fulfill our commitment to Endangered Spaces.
I mention the Atikaki experience, where
Abitibi‑Price reluctantly had to go along with the new cutting licence,
but Atikaki was protected. Now there
were cutting rights given to Abitibi‑Price so that the jobs would be
maintained and‑‑(interjection)
Mr. Acting Speaker, the Minister of Labour
(Mr. Praznik) some day will have to look at the promises they have made on the
12 percent because the Premier (Mr. Filmon) has committed himself to 12 percent
of Endangered Spaces, and until he resolves his promise and his commitment to the
international community, there will always be this controversy going on between
communities like Pine Falls and the rest of the province. I suggest that if we are to‑‑(interjection)
Nobody has got a lockup of commitment to
jobs in that area anymore than anybody else in this Legislature. We have met with members of Pine Falls and
workers in that community, and I think they would be better protected‑‑I
suggest to you they would be better protected and the woods resource would be
better protected by having a 12 percent set‑aside policy as the threshold
and having the multiple‑use ability of this parks land to be beyond that
12 percent threshold. That would be
consistent‑‑(interjection)
Mr. Acting Speaker, the Minister of Labour
(Mr. Praznik) does not understand the commitment his Premier (Mr. Filmon)
made. The 12 percent is for 12 separate
ecosystems in the
The Minister of Labour is asking questions
he should be asking the Premier. It is
the Premier's promise of 12 percent. It is a promise that was agreed to by the
other two parties, and we believe that the government must provide the
threshold of 12 percent before it can proceed with a parks act that allows for
multiple use with no designation whatsoever.
We believe that jobs and endangered spaces are consistent with
sustainable development. We do not see
sustainable development in this bill, and we do not see the reason to pass this
bill. We see no comfort for jobs, and we
see no comfort for the promise that was made on endangered spaces by the
Premier.
Thank you very, very much and we look
forward to the public presentations and the debate that I am sure will continue
with many other critics in this Chamber.
The Acting Speaker (Mr.
Laurendeau): Is the House ready for the question?
Mr. Oscar Lathlin (The
Pas): Mr. Acting Speaker, I welcome the opportunity
to once again be able to rise in this House this afternoon to speak on Bill 41,
The Provincial Parks and Consequential Amendments Act. This bill, right at the outset I will say is
both flawed and too encompassing. It
tries to cover too many areas all in one swoop.
This bill, as members of this Assembly will know, had been promised by
the minister for almost a year now, and this bill was supposed to be the cure
for all of the trouble spots, that is, to address logging, to address the 12
percent campaign of the Premiers, the wilderness park development, selling of
parks and so on.
The 12 percent issue, the integrity of
provincial parks and the question of fairness to those people who reside
casually or have leases or in some cases own land in parks will be our main
concern. We can say again that the bill
is not addressing the issues that we think it was intended to address. We will not be supporting it, as our Leader
has said. We have quite a few concerns
about it. There are some serious defects
that the bill has, and we will be seeking amendments as we go along in the
debate of this bill.
* (1500)
As I say, this bill replaces the fiasco of
last year when this same government brought in Bill 21, I believe it was. For that particular bill last year, who did
the government consult with? Who did
they consult with before they introduced Bill 21? They consulted no one,
absolutely no one. We asked this
minister and his colleagues on a number of occasions last year why they did not
see the need to consult with people prior to bringing in that particular bill.
Well, Mr. Acting Speaker, as usual, no
answers were forthcoming, so instead we were subjected to listen to the
minister and his colleagues go on and on about Bill 21, and then, lo and
behold, on a Friday morning, the minister quietly withdrew Bill 21 at second
reading.
I raise this issue because as of last
Friday, there were over 170 people registered to speak at the public
hearing. People have registered to come
and present their views and concerns at the public hearing because, as I said,
this bill is flawed. It has a lot of
deficiencies in it.
A good number of those over 170
registrants come from The Pas as well as from Flin Flon. If the minister is indeed sincere when he
says‑‑he told me during Estimates of Natural Resources that, and I
believe him when he says he values input from people. He likes to listen to people for their advice
and their input, so I am sure he will listen to my advice and request on behalf
of the people from The Pas and Flin Flon to have the hearings process be
carried out either in The Pas and Flin Flon, but preferably in The Pas, instead
of just conducting hearings here in Winnipeg.
This would enable the minister to really listen and hear the people, as
he claims he prefers to do as he goes about performing his work as a minister
of the Crown.
Mr. Acting Speaker, why are there already
so many people registered to speak out on this bill? Well, it is very simple, you see, because
once again with Bill 41, this government is targeting cottagers for major tax
increases. The issue of fees for
services for cottagers and new taxes on private landowners is obviously
contentious. Landowners may soon be
paying $500 a year plus other expenses the government does not have to justify.
(Mr. Speaker in the Chair)
This bill as it is currently written does
not allow for the democratic process to work in that people are going to be
asked to pay for fees, people are going to be asked to pay for taxes, and where
will this money go after those fees and those taxes are paid, Mr. Speaker?
As far as we can tell, the fees and those
tax revenues will come directly to the provincial government coffers, thereby
bypassing a very important democratic process and, of course, I am referring to
when you pay taxes you have elected people who are held accountable to the
community.
In addition to that, when you pay taxes
like that, we have to have some sort of an appeal mechanism. Currently, the way the bill is written, there
are no provisions for people who reside in a park either as cottagers or as
landowners in those parks; there is no vehicle that I can see that would allow
them some appeal protection, Mr. Speaker.
Not surprisingly, then, cottagers wonder,
and rightfully so, just who will protect their interests and why they should
trust this government. Certainly, when
we look at the track record of this government, there is very little reason to
be optimistic or to be trusting. The
issue of fees in parks was to be addressed, but, as I said before, the bill was
removed at the last minute by the minister after much public outcry. This current bill contains much of the same
information that is contained in the original bill that was withdrawn.
The cottagers that I met in The Pas some
two weeks ago now and other people that I meet as I travel around are, of
course, concerned over the intentions of this minister and his colleagues. In fact, those who will be able to make it to
the hearings‑‑and I think the minister will probably get even more
advice if he listens to my suggestion and request that he hold hearings in The
Pas and Flin Flon as well, because I know those people who will be coming to
the hearings will be offering the minister all kinds of options, all kinds of
alternatives and some good advice.
The question is, of course, whether the
minister will actually listen and hear what those people will have to say at
those hearings. In fact, municipal
governments are also concerned that those funds that will be raised from the
fees and the taxation will go directly to the provincial consolidated revenue
and that municipalities will not receive their share of the proceeds.
This has been a long‑standing issue,
I know, for our community in The Pas. I
think, once and for all, I was kind of hoping that this bill would settle a lot
of those issues that have been just festering when it comes to municipal
services and people living in the parks.
* (1510)
Mr. Speaker, all parks, according to this
bill, will be operated on a sustainable basis so that the money put into parks
will be recovered through direct fees.
This issue is of grave concern to a lot of people who own cottages in
northern
The intent of the bill, as I said, was to
clear up the land use policy issue in parks as well as developing a framework
for the development of future parks.
This, of course, stems from the Clean Environment Commission report on
the Abitibi logging in Nopiming.
There is nothing in this bill that
pertains to the Endangered Spaces 12 percent campaign that was carried on by
the First Minister (Mr. Filmon). The
government has not lived up to any of those commitments that were made to that
program. There were a lot of expectations,
I guess, that were left unfulfilled by this bill and if it passes will continue
to be left unfulfilled.
In fact, Mr. Speaker, it appears that the
promise of the 12 percent protected spaces was simply a photo opportunity for
the Premier when he was travelling around on the canoe for a television
ad. Perhaps the Premier, as he was
paddling down the river on his canoe, was referring to the 12 percent of
something else. He certainly was not
referring to endangered spaces.
Certainly, since the election, the
commitment of this government to protecting the environment has been hazy at
best. The government is given powers in the bill to ensure land is available
for parks through expropriation, but it is unclear what will be done to resolve
other issues such as aboriginal land claims, as in the Nopiming park area where
the Sagkeeng First Nation has claimed an area that is being logged as we are
speaking here today.
Unless progress is made on this and other
claims, it would be pointless to redefine park boundaries. As well, there was a desire to put the
classification and land use category schemes into the act instead of
regulations as currently exists, Mr. Speaker.
Probably the two most contentious issues
that people have in terms of defining what the purpose of provincial parks
would be that purpose that deals with the multiuse of parks, including economic
development; the other one, of course, is the different categories that the
minister is proposing to include in the bill, one being the natural regions.
Unfortunately, the natural regions do not
make a whole lot of sense as far as the environment is concerned because, as
you go through the other parts of the bill, subsequent parts of the bill, other
clauses will nullify or negate whatever might have been gained by the
categorization of the different parks.
The minister says that this bill reflects‑‑not
only the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Enns), but we heard the First
Minister (Mr. Filmon) this afternoon saying in this House that this Bill 41
reflects the 12 percent campaign, and he is quite sure that through this bill
he is going to attain or achieve the objective of 12 percent protection. We believe, Mr. Speaker, that this is not the
case. There is no mention, as I said, of
the campaign, of the
The other concern that I have with this
particular bill is‑‑as I said, the classification of a certain park
is not as important as the land use category which is designated. There is the chance that special interest
groups will be able to put enormous pressure on governments, on the minister,
to add or remove areas to parks as the development of certain resources becomes
more or less feasible.
I guess, in coming to a close, I would
also say that the enforcement of this legislation will present the government,
I am afraid, with enormous difficulties because for the past three years this
government has been cutting back on the Department of Natural Resources. During Estimates last night, the Minister of
Natural Resources admitted that his department had been affected quite
dramatically by the budget cuts.
However, he says, I support the government in its fiscal measures; but,
he admitted, I am left with a department that over the last five years has
received $20 million less in this department.
So I wonder, with those kinds of cuts to
this department, whether the minister can say with any degree of certainty
whether the enforcement will be able to be carried out in the parks. It is hard to believe that if areas of parks
are to be protected, that staffing will be adequate to ensure those areas are
protected, Mr. Speaker. The enforcement
aspects of the bill, as I said, are strong, but how will it be carried out when
the minister has really nobody left in his department to enforce this
legislation?
The other area I wanted to mention was the
idea of having public parks. Parks
belong to all people, to all citizens of
* (1520)
We believe that eventually this government
is going to be saying to the people of Manitoba that in order for you to enjoy
the beauty of the parks, in order for you to be able to go camping or go
paddling down rivers and lakes and so on, and do what it is you do in
provincial parks, you are going to have to pay for it every time you want to do
that.
So, Mr. Speaker, I want to close there
now, and, as I said, I am grateful for having been given the opportunity to
speak on this bill, and, again, I repeat we have some pretty serious concerns
on the bill, and we will be looking to see if we can change some of the areas
that are presenting a lot of difficulties for us.
Thank you for listening to me.
Mr. Doug Martindale
(Burrows): I move, seconded by the
member for Point Douglas (Mr. Hickes), that debate be adjourned.
Motion agreed to.
Bill 37‑The
Manitoba Public Insurance Corporation Amendment
and
Consequential Amendments Act
Mr. Speaker: On the proposed motion of the honourable
Minister responsible for the Manitoba Public Insurance Corporation (Mr.
Cummings), Bill 37, The Manitoba Public Insurance Corporation Amendment and
Consequential Amendments Act; Loi modifiant la Loi sur la Societe d'assurance
publique du Manitoba et apportant des modifications correlatives a d'autres
lois, standing in the name of the honourable member for Transcona (Mr. Reid).
Some Honourable Members: Stand.
Mr. Speaker: Stand?
Is there leave that this matter remain standing?
Some Honourable Members: No.
Mr. Speaker: No?
Leave is denied.
Mr. Leonard Evans
(Brandon East): Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the principle
of Bill 37, which will bring about a major restructuring and reorganization of
the Manitoba Public Insurance Corporation.
It is a bill that has been a long time in coming, and although we may have
some specific concerns about details of the bill, generally I am rising at this
point to state that the New Democratic Party, the official opposition, is in
support of the introduction of a no‑fault automobile insurance program in
the
As some of you may recall, this was the
major recommendation of Judge Kopstein when he issued his report in 1988. I must say I still cannot believe that the
government and the minister have changed their position on it, because every
time we raised the issue in the House or in committee, urging the minister and
the government to move in this direction, we got a negative response‑‑in
effect, we are not able to proceed with it or we have too many questions, too
many problems, and therefore we will not proceed with the no‑fault
scheme.
As a matter of fact, I suppose I could
quote Hansard back to the minister, even of last year's legislative committee
on Public Utilities when we had the review of last year's MPIC annual
report. That was in 1992, and the
minister, in so many words, said, you know, over my dead body. He did not use those words particularly, but
that was the intent. No way would he
introduce a no‑fault scheme.
However, we are pleased he has seen the light and has proceeded to
introduce Bill 37.
In some ways, we wish we had a little bit
more time for this because it would be good to have had more public input,
although I realize Judge Kopstein did get input from members of the public, but
it would have been good to have more public input. I am sure there will be representation made
before the committee of the Legislature that will be dealing with this matter
in second reading.
I think it is important for us to remember
the key philosophy, if I can use that, outlined in Judge Kopstein's report. This is very important. We are debating a very essential piece of
legislation, Mr. Speaker, that is going to affect the general population of
Mr. Speaker, I wanted to touch a bit on
Judge Kopstein's philosophy which is the basis really for this particular bill,
because what Judge Kopstein did, in effect, was to reject the tort system as a
means for settling these matters. He
says in so many words that the tort system is simply not an appropriate method.
As a matter of fact, I could quote from
page 92 of his report, where he states:
The tort system is no longer an appropriate method of determining who
shall be, and who shall not be, entitled to adequate compensation for bodily
injuries sustained in a motor vehicle accident.
He rejects the tort system because it
operates on a standard that does not recognize a normal human mistake. In other words, what Judge Kopstein said, and
those others who support a no‑fault system, is that accidents are
inevitable, and an accident is just that‑‑an accident. Ordinarily, usually careful drivers will
often be found at fault because they did make a mistake quite innocently: a momentarily loss of concentration; or
something that caused them to not see a particular red light, let us say the
sun shining, the setting sun shining in the person's eyes, and accidentally
went through a red light; commotion in a car; accidentally turning the wrong
way on a one‑way street and so on.
These happen to all of us.
All of us have made mistakes in driving
our automobile, even though we are usually very, very careful, ordinarily
careful, but nevertheless we do make mistakes.
Under the present system, the fact is, though, that if you have made the
mistake and, therefore, have been found at fault, in the present scheme we
have, you have very, very minimal compensation, totally inadequate compensation
for the at‑fault driver, who is not a criminal type necessarily, who is
usually an ordinary Manitoban who has made a mistake.
* (1530)
Judge Kopstein recognizes that, and I am
quoting Judge Kopstein where he says:
Accident insurance which discriminates between those entitled to
adequate compensation and those not so entitled on the basis of luck is not
insurance; it is a game of chance with high stakes.
This is page 90 of position paper No.
2. He stated that the application of the
concept of negligence or fault is fundamentally inequitable because, firstly,
it can fail to compensate at all some who are entirely innocent of negligence.
The innocent party is often not
compensated. That can happen because he
or she may happen to, unfortunately, be involved in an accident with someone
who has no insurance or who has inadequate insurance and, therefore, simply
does not get compensated at all, or at least not to an acceptable level.
Also, he points out that it does not
compensate those ordinarily careful drivers who, through momentary lapses, are
negligent.
Mr. Speaker, I say that all parties in
this Legislature should have no difficulty in proving the principle of no‑fault
insurance. Overall, it increases
protection for Manitobans who have serious accidents, including those, as I
said, who make a mistake in driving but, because they are at fault, have very
minimal protection at present.
The tort system that we now use is based
on the idea that the negligent driver must be penalized somehow and must pay
the cost of injury. Normally, that cost
of injury is through the third‑party public liability insurance section
of the present Autopac policy, but the fact is that the no‑fault system
that is envisaged in this bill is based on this premise that most accidents are
simply that, accidents, and that it is futile to penalize the wrongdoers.
Now, obviously, there are wrongdoers who
break other laws. They may be drinking; they may be under the influence of
drugs; or they may have broken provisions of The Highway Traffic Act. There are
laws to deal with such people. I am not
suggesting they are not dealt with with full justice, and I am not suggesting
that for one moment.
In terms of compensation, particularly for
loss of income and particularly for the protection of the family, the security
of the family, it is simply that the system we have now is not adequate.
What I am saying, Mr. Speaker, is that
because accidents do happen and often just because of a momentary loss of
judgment or a momentary loss of concentration, that 50 percent of those drivers
who are involved in an accident are found at fault. So half of Manitobans‑‑I am
perhaps simplifying here; I am putting aside those accidents where there is
shared responsibility‑‑but let us say we are dealing with people
who are either at fault or not at fault.
Basically, therefore, you are dealing with half of the population of
this province, half the population involved in accidents and who are deemed to
be at fault and, therefore, are receiving inadequate assistance if injured
somehow at the present time. I am
talking about bodily injury.
I just want to go on, of course, and then
make obvious observation that we already have a no‑fault system for
vehicles. Forgetting about the deductible, which is really a minor amount, we
virtually have a no‑fault system for vehicles. We have a limited no‑fault system for
bodily injury, but what this bill does is bring forward and improve and enhance
the no‑fault bodily injury portion of the average Autopac policy. This is what I understand it to do.
In doing so, Mr. Speaker, we are making a
major change in how we settle these matters.
We are eliminating the tort system where you, unfortunately, tend to be
very, very involved in very lengthy procedures, very lengthy litigation, and
sometimes it takes four, five, six years for a settlement. In the meantime, the injured party may be
suffering a great deal, or the family may suffer a great deal. There are horror stories of people who, even
though they are innocent and are entitled to compensation, do not get that
compensation soon enough; therefore, there is a great deal of suffering on the
part of the family. So we have a system
now that is very, very tardy in dealing with settlement, and many years of
delay in settlement.
Of course, there is another phenomenon we
must mention. For those cases that go to
court and even those that do not go to court where legal personnel or the legal
profession is involved, it is normal for a 30 percent fee, a contingency fee to
be levied by the law firm. In other
words, if you were, let us say, awarded $100,000, to use a round figure, by the
court for an injury, normally 30 percent of that $100,000 would go to the law
firm, so that you end up with a net amount of only $70,000.
Those are real costs, and I am not arguing
whether any specific lawyer is worthy of that or not. I am just saying that is the way the system
is, and the fact is, therefore, that it is contributing to the cost of operating
an automobile insurance program in this province. So the system I see in this bill will avoid
these unpredictable, lengthy and expensive delays. Instead it is going to provide compensation
to anyone injured in a motor vehicle accident.
As such, Mr. Speaker, it resembles a social benefit plan.
I regard this as an extension of social
security for the people of
Also, Mr. Speaker, I see other elements of
this that enhance social security. I say
that it extends social security because those individuals who were not able to
seek compensation through the courts, for whatever reason, will have an
automatic payment made to them. Also, I
recognize that people will no longer be able to seek compensation through the
courts for their own particular case, and this is a deficiency of the bill. In other words, it does not allow for tailor‑made
compensation that a court settlement can do, taking in all the particular
circumstances of a particular accident.
What we have here, we are trading that off
for a generalized improvement in compensation for people. So while some people will not get what they
want, I think it is still wrong to continue a system for those who can find
someone else at fault and get compensated.
As I said, we all make mistakes at some time, and if you are found to be
at fault, you are out of luck. Further, if you are at fault and you injure
yourself, then certainly you cannot expect to be compensated adequately and
this is wrong. This is what Judge
Kopstein has stated in his report, and I agree with his observation.
So, in effect, what this bill does, this
no‑fault system that has been set up, it reduces the risk and fits well
into the social justice goals I think we all share, where we would want to
ensure we have adequate social security for the citizens of
I look upon this bill also, Mr. Speaker,
as a step in the direction of a universal sickness and accident program similar
to the one they have in New Zealand which is all‑encompassing and
virtually would not require any separate insurance for automobiles or would not
require a workers compensation system or whatever. If you had a universal sickness and accident
program that would be all‑encompassing, you would take care of all these
individual problems in a more universal way and perhaps a fairer way. I do note that they have such a system, and
successfully operating, in
* (1540)
Now, I appreciate the fact that the
minister and the Manitoba Public Insurance Corporation have studied alternative
plans, because alternatives have been proposed by others in the community. There have been proposals of having a
threshold type of a system where you still go to court but you eliminate a lot
of claims because you put up a threshold.
(Madam Deputy Speaker in the Chair)
Madam Deputy Speaker, that was rejected
for a number of reasons. One of the
reasons was that the threshold tends to erode over time. In other words, people may tend to exaggerate
their claims or may find that they should be asking more rather than less in
order to get above the threshold.
That system has been rejected, for that
reason particularly. There may be some other reasons as well. You can have a verbal threshold as well. The problem with the verbal threshold, and
Judge Kopstein refers to this in his report, is that it leads to even more
litigation than we have at the present, arguing before the courts as to exactly
how bad the injury was and whether it was sufficient that there should be
consideration for compensation and so on.
That was rejected as well as being unsatisfactory.
There is another system that has been
looked at and that is a deductible system. It could be either a pure or a
noneconomic deductible. By noneconomic
deductible, I am referring to deductibles for pain and suffering, which is
deemed to be of a noneconomic category.
So my understanding is that MPIC studied
various alternative plans and finally recommended this system, which was in
Bill 37, as being the fairest and most cost‑efficient. I note, by the most cost‑efficient they
are also able to provide a greater level of benefits than would have been
possible either through a threshold system or a deductible system. So that is something that is worthy of note,
Madam Deputy Speaker.
I want to state, if I have not already,
that I appreciate that there can be some drawbacks in a no‑fault system,
and I guess I did mention this earlier, that the no‑fault system is
designed to accommodate all claimants as efficiently as possible, but it is not
geared to individual circumstances of the claimant. Although the schedule of compensation
established may seem to be fair and general, it will inevitably fail to take
into account all of the individual differences in claims.
Of course, there is no compensation in the
program for pain and suffering, and many people may be very unhappy about that,
but it is very difficult to draw the line in pain and suffering. Either you
have compensation for pain or suffering or you do not. This, of course, is where a lot of the
litigation comes in, to what extent is the pain real and to what extent is a
person suffering.
At any rate, I note that there is a
proposal put forward by the legal rights network for a no‑fault
deductible plan, and it has been looked at by various people. What they are proposing is a deductible
applied only to noneconomic loss.
Without going into all of the details and giving you examples, I would
simply say, it tends not to be satisfactory because the deductible system tends
to erode over time, and you have to continually adjust the deductible. Furthermore, it continues the existing
adversarial tort system which Judge Kopstein rejected as being adequate for the
settlement of Autopac bodily injury claims.
So, Madam Deputy Speaker, just to
recapitulate on some of this, the principle of the proposal considered by MPIC
and the deductible scheme put forward by organizations such as LERN and others
who talk about a deductible scheme was rejected because they deemed it would
not be equitable to all claimants because some claimants would have more
serious injuries than others and could suffer a greater loss of compensation
than those with relatively minimum claims.
As I said, the level of claims tends to build up to offset the
deductible. Also, it has been observed,
and I think in some analysis done by MPIC, this kind of a system does not
provide the same generous level of compensation for the at‑fault driver
that Bill 37 proposes.
Having said that, Madam Deputy Speaker, I
want to make it clear we would like to have more time, rather than less, to
discuss it and to involve the maximum amount of public input for suggestions
and recommendations.
While we support the principle of the
bill, there are elements of the bill we would like to see changed. We want to offer these proposals, offer these
amendments, in a positive way. I want to
see the bill improved. I want to see the
bill approved. I do not want to see it
dragged down. I do not want to see it
watered down. I want to see it
strengthened. (interjection) Yes, I would consider them to be friendly
amendments, although it depends on your interpretation perhaps. It depends on
your interpretation maybe or your understanding of what may be friendly.
Just to use one example, Madam Deputy
Speaker, there is a requirement that there be a waiting period for income replacement. I believe the bill says 10 days, a 10‑day
waiting period for income replacement.
Frankly, I consider this to be far too long. This should be reduced to a few days. You could even argue it should be reduced to
zero, but surely it should not be that long.
You should not have to wait that long for some income replacement. There are other amendments we would like to
propose, as well, that full disclosure be required at all stages, including the
claims adjustment review and appeal.
We also wonder whether there should not be
some kind of an advocacy system set up similar to that which exists with the
Workers Compensation Board setup, where you have an advocate program to help
claimants who wish to appeal to the appeal commission.
As the minister has explained, people who
are not satisfied with the decision of the adjustor can go to an internal
review mechanism, but if they do not like the internal review mechanism's
findings, they can then go to an independent appeal body, which I understand is
going to be responsible to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Mrs.
McIntosh).
Nevertheless, we are concerned that some
clients may not be in a position to put forward their appeal to the extent that
they should be able to. Therefore, we
should give some consideration to an advocacy program.
Then there is the whole question of
establishment of the appeal commission.
How do you establish an appeal commission that is truly independent and is
made up of professional people who can use their best judgment and use their
wisdom to adjudicate on appeals? It is a
matter of finding good people, and then the question is, well, how do you find
those good people, and how do you go about appointing them? Should they be appointed as recommended in
the bill, or should there be some other method?
Another suggestion is perhaps there should
be a statement of purpose or interpretive clause in the bill focusing on the
provision of compensation regardless of fault.
This was a suggestion made by the Legal Aid Manitoba people, the public
interest section of Legal Aid Manitoba, and that is something worthy of
consideration as well, that the benefit‑‑(interjection) Okay, well,
so be it, but as I said, these are meant to be positive suggestions.
* (1550)
Another one is there should be a clause
inserted stating that the benefit of the doubt should favour the claimant and
not the corporation. You should think
about that one for a moment.
Another area that is probably more
controversial is with regard to appeals.
The legislation now limits appeals to the court. It does not state which court. It does not state whether it is the appeal
court or the Queen's Bench court. It
just says appeals to court. It is limited
to appeals of law only, and I note, Madam Deputy Speaker, that Judge Kopstein,
in his report, recommended an appeal procedure both on fact and law. Therefore, that should be considered as well,
that we should allow an appeal to the court.
I would imagine that a lot of these courts
would be more involved; if they got into matters of fact, they would likely
relate to issues such as whether Autopac's rating of impairment was appropriate
within the categories permitted or whether the discontinuation of disability
benefits on a finding of fact that the claimant had recovered was justified, or
the whole question of pre‑existing conditions. You can think back to the Workers
Compensation system and all the complaints that I think all of us have received
as individual MLAs. (interjection) No, as I understand it, you cannot appeal to
the court from here. However, this is something that we should consider, and
we, therefore, want to put this forward.
We are likely to put this forward by way of amendment.
There was another suggestion made by Legal
Aid
I think it could be argued, well, the
minister will get a report every year from MPIC, and I think the Minister of
Consumer Affairs (Mrs. McIntosh) will be getting a report on the appeals
commission as well. So perhaps there can
be debate here and governments can make changes anytime anyway, I am sure. You do not have to wait for three years.
Nevertheless, if you knew that you were
going to have this major review in three years, it may be good for MPIC and for
all of us to know that we will take a serious look at the setup at that period
of time.
There is some concern also about the
treatment of senior citizens, whether we should not have amendments to
accommodate people who may work past 65.
Now, I believe there is some misunderstanding on this because I believe
you do get compensated if you are working beyond 65.
Let us say you are a physician working at
the age of 75, and you had an accident and you are entitled to income
replacement within the guidelines. Then
you would get 100 percent for the first year, but then it would scale down, I
believe, 25 percent a year over a period of three years, which is the case for
everyone. So maybe that is not as great
a concern as some people first envisaged.
There has also been some expression of
concern about opportunities for pension building by people who would normally
be self‑employed and young earners who somehow or other are prevented
from being back at their work and are losing on that score as well. So we should consider those aspects as well.
There is a question about section 177
about the chair being able to make a decision if there is disagreement. Maybe that is just a matter of interpreting
the wording, and maybe it is a misunderstanding on that.
The whole question of clarifying the
legislation's intent, perhaps there should be something beefed up in the
preamble.
I have given some examples of some types
of amendments I think we should be looking at.
There are, indeed, many others that could be considered.
Madam Deputy Speaker, could you tell me
how much time I have left?
Madam Deputy
Speaker: The honourable member
has seven minutes remaining.
Mr. Leonard Evans: I was going to state that‑‑at one
point I was going to ask for unlimited time as the designated spokesman for the
opposition, but I would not tend to go on for many hours. I may go a bit over the time limit.
At any rate there are people who are
indicating to us‑‑Manitobans who have looked at the bill and have
raised some concerns as to the fairness of it.
So I think that is the challenge to this House.
I would hope that there would be unanimity
on the agreement on changing the system to the no‑fault program that is
outlined in Bill 37, but that having agreed to this principle and moving it on
to committee, we then seriously look at some changes that will improve the
legislation.
There is a great deal of concern, I know,
on the part of some, whether the indemnities proposed for students, both at the
secondary level and the post‑secondary level, are too low. There is concern about that.
There is concern about definitions of
incapability, definitions of regular employment. People are concerned about other phrases in
the legislation with regard to income replacement sections. These are legitimate concerns, Madam Deputy
Speaker.
If, for example, a person is temporarily
laid off of work and may be getting CPP disability benefits, does laid off for
any reason apply? This may be a rather
technical thing, but my understanding is that the corporation will deduct CPP
disability from the amount but would not necessarily deduct other forms of
disability insurance, particularly that which was bought privately. They would be allowed to add on.
Although, I understand it is possible that
the private insurer may take care of that.
In other words, if a person did earn an income of about $55,000 and
decided to take out additional insurance, it is quite possible that the private
insurer, the insurance company, may deduct from the policy payment the amount
that the victim was getting from Autopac. Autopac would not do that, but it is
possible‑‑(interjection)
Well, I do not know but I was told‑‑because,
you see, this was the concern‑‑we are going to deduct CPP
disability from your income replacement, but we will not deduct the private
insurance.
I can see the argument for not deducting
the private insurance because the person has gone out and he has bought that
insurance, and that is it. But I was
given a response that, well, even though you might do that, you may find that
some insurance companies, at least some, may decide that they would deduct the
Autopac payment from whatever was deemed to be payable from the private
insurance scheme.
There have been concerns also‑‑some
people have told me, well, why set a $55,000 limit. Madam Deputy Speaker, $55,000 incorporates 90
percent of the people of
* (1600)
There are great concerns about staff in
the corporation having a great deal of power over deciding matters of whether or
not you are able to go back to work, just as there are these concerns now with
the Workers Compensation Board. There is
the whole question of vocational rehabilitation. Should this be a mandatory right? As Bill 37 now stands, it provides a
discretionary approach which is completely controlled by MPIC.
Madam Deputy Speaker, there are many, many
other questions we have and many, many other suggestions we would therefore
have to amend the bill. I know it is not
appropriate for me to go into the details at the second reading stage. I know we are discussing it in principle, but
I am trying to make the point that the New Democratic Party wants to ensure
that we have as fair a system as possible.
We want to ensure that Manitobans are treated fairly.
I think and I hope that if we follow the
experience in the
Let us face it, Madam Deputy Speaker,
without this type of major change, I am convinced that Manitobans are going to
continue to look at very dramatic increases in their Autopac premiums. The people of
Madam Deputy
Speaker: Order, please. The honourable member's time has expired.
Point of
Order
Mr. Leonard Evans: On a point of order, about 10 minutes ago I
was indicating that I was the designated speaker.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order, please.
I have been informed that the custom of the House is that the Leader of
each of the parties assigns who the designated speaker will be in writing to
the Speaker in advance of when the bill is being dealt with. I have no notification or anything in writing
on my desk.
Mr. Steve Ashton
(Opposition House Leader): Madam Deputy Speaker,
you are quite correct in terms of the rules, but the member did ask for leave
and previously it had been agreed. I
would ask perhaps if we might just ask again if there might be leave for five
minutes.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Is there leave of the House to permit the
honourable member for Brandon East to have an additional five minutes to
complete his remarks? (agreed)
* * *
Mr. Leonard Evans: Madam Deputy Speaker, well, as I said,
obviously one of the driving motivations of this bill is the fact that it has
not been possible to contain rapidly escalating Autopac costs as reflected in
rapidly escalating Autopac premiums. The
fact is that Autopac is not a profit‑making organization. The rates that it charges reflects the cost
of operating the system. While there
have been costs escalating across the continent because of rising costs of
autobody repairs and bodily injury claims, especially bodily injury claims, the
fact is that those costs have been reflected in ever increasing premiums.
The people of this province wanted some
action. They wanted the government to
get a handle on this. In 1988, the
previous government tried to get a handle on it by appointing Judge Kopstein. Judge Kopstein came down with this report,
and he made many excellent recommendations.
Many of them have been implemented.
The No. 1 key recommendation had to be this recommendation of
eliminating the tort system and bringing in a no‑fault system because it
was simply more just. That I think was
his prime reason, that it was a more just system than the present tort system
that we have, that it would treat more people of
So that was the key rationale, but, also,
he did point out that there would be a considerable saving to the motoring
public, there would be considerable saving to Autopac in the millions of
dollars. There have been various numbers
reported, $40 million, $50 million, $60 million depending on how you do it, so
there would be a considerable saving and then that saving, a good chunk of
that, could be used for improving the general benefits for people whether they
are at fault or not at fault.
Regardless of the motivation, Madam Deputy
Speaker, we are pleased that the minister has brought this bill forward for
consideration. It is our intention to
expedite it as much as possible, but as I say, I want to repeat again, we want
to make sure that the bill is as fair as possibly can be, and for that reason
we will be bringing forward a number of amendments. I would hope that in due course the
government would give them due consideration and may even find their way to
supporting, if not all, certainly some of them.
As I say, we are making those
recommendations in a positive spirit to try to make the bill even stronger and
fairer to the people of
Mr. Neil Gaudry (St.
Boniface): I move, seconded by the
member for
Motion agreed to.
Bill 40‑The
Legal Aid Services Society of
and Crown
Attorneys Amendment Act
Madam Deputy Speaker: To resume debate on second reading, Bill 40
(The Legal Aid Services Society of Manitoba Amendment and Crown Attorneys
Amendment Act; Loi modifiant la Loi sur la Societe d'aide juridique du
Is there leave to permit the bill to
remain standing?
An Honourable Member: No.
Madam Deputy Speaker: No?
* * *
Mr. Steve Ashton
(Opposition House Leader): I would just like to
ask the acting government House leader if we could have leave to call Bill 44
first.
Hon. Darren Praznik
(Deputy Government House Leader): Yes.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Is there agreement to call Bill 44? (agreed)
Bill 44‑The
Alcoholism Foundation Amendment and
Consequential Amendments Act
Madam Deputy Speaker: To resume debate on second reading on Bill 44
(The Alcoholism Foundation Amendment and Consequential Amendments Act; Loi
modifiant la Loi sur la Fondation manitobaine de lutte contre l'alcoolisme et apportant
des modifications correlatives a une autre loi), on the proposed motion of the
honourable Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard), standing in the name of the
honourable member for Burrows (Mr. Martindale).
Is there leave to permit the bill to remain standing?
Hon. Darren Praznik
(Deputy Government House Leader): Madam
Deputy Speaker, if I understand the intention of the opposition House leader,
if what he is requesting is leave to allow the member for Point Douglas (Mr.
Hickes) to speak and then the member for Burrows (Mr. Martindale) to speak, we
would grant leave for that but not to leave the bill standing in his name for
another day.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order, please. It is my understanding that we cannot give
leave conditionally. We either give
leave or deny leave. What is the will of
the House? Is there leave of the House
to permit the honourable member for Point Douglas to speak first, followed by
the honourable member for Burrows? (agreed)
Okay, leave has been granted.
Mr. George Hickes (Point
Douglas): Madam Deputy Speaker, we just want to add a
few remarks on this bill before we pass it into committee, because on surface
it is only a very minor change where they are changing the wording of The
Alcoholism Foundation Act to amend it to read Addictions Foundation.
* (1610)
If this is a way of dealing with the
problem we have with solvent abuse addiction, I do not think it has been that
well thought out. There is nothing in
the bill that states that there will be additional support programs and proper
training for the individuals that now have the experience to deal with alcohol
addiction but do not have the experience of dealing with solvent abuse
problems, because they are so different.
When you have an alcohol problem, it is not as detrimental to one's
brain cells as is the sniffing of solvents.
It is a whole new area that has to be investigated and looked into very,
very closely.
When you look at the issues pertaining to
northern Manitoba, where the communities have been asking for a northern
solvent abuse treatment centre, and if this is a way of addressing that, I
think it has to be looked at very closely, because for one thing, when you talk
about the staff that are there now, they are dealing with mostly alcohol‑related
problems that pertain to the individuals that are seeking that kind of help.
If you check any alcohol treatment centre
in
So I hope it is only a name change. If there is going to be added responsibility
to the centres dealing with solvent abuse, I hope the government will put
proper dollars in place for proper training and for additional staff to deliver
the appropriate training.
When you look at Alcoholism Foundation
centres across
When you leave a treatment centre because
you feel so secure and you are so protected and then you are back into the
environment where you had the problem and a lot of the issues pertaining to
abusing alcohol, you need that strong support from fellow Alcoholics Anonymous
members to help you to overcome some of the real rough times, because it takes
a minimum of at least two years working and going to meetings in order to get a
real grasp of what the program is all about.
Without the real grasp of the program, it is hard to make the changes in
your life and your lifestyle in order, hopefully, to become a better citizen
and, hopefully, to be in a position to contribute something to the community
and the province you live in. It takes a
minimum of at least two years to get an understanding of that.
When you are in a treatment centre for,
well, they vary from 21 to 29 days, what it is giving you is a new way of life
that is totally foreign to most individuals who go into a treatment
program. You have to make so many
adjustments that you have to be willing to make when you leave that
centre. When I talk about that, it is a
whole new way of life, a whole new circle of friends. A lot of your friends that you had previously
because of your weakness at that stage, you really cannot associate with them
until you become stronger to handle the‑‑I am not sure exactly what
word I am looking for here‑‑but to handle the attractiveness of all
the fun times that you experienced or you thought you were having at that time. It takes such a long period of time.
The reason I am saying that is because if
you look across
If you look at, I would say 99 percent of
your counsellors in the Alcoholism Foundation programs are struggling alcoholics
themselves that have recovered and now are wanting to give back something of
their own self back to the mainstream of society. If you ever have been in a
treatment centre, when you talk to the counsellors they always relate what you
are trying to say to their own life experiences, and it is so valuable when you
are trying to get an understanding of what step that you are trying to relate
and trying to understand.
They explain it in everyday language. They do not use big fancy words and they say,
well, this is what happened to me. That way you are able to relate and
understand what that step is trying to say and for you to understand what that
step means to you to help you overcome the problem that you are facing. It is a problem that never goes away, Madam
Deputy Speaker. As long as you draw a
breath of fresh air and as long as you are alive, you are faced with that
problem. I would not say everyday, but
you are faced with it. You never know
when it will creep up on you and if you do not have a good understanding and
the strength, it is very, very easy to fall back. So I hope this is not going to be the answer
or supposed to be the answer to the problem we face with solvent abuse.
By adding addictions, this addictions
foundation, it could be easy for the government to say, well, we have addressed
the problem of solvent abuse by the foundation's being able to work with the
solvent abuse people. If that is the
case, I hope the government will put in the proper support systems, proper
training programs, but not to try and have the counsellors that are working in
those centres to be counsellors to all addictions and all the programs that we
are facing.
* (1620)
Few will know the real impact and real
effects that pertain to solvent abuse.
They will have more of the expertise in the alcoholism area, and if that
is the case, if that is how the government is going to address solvent abuse
problems, that is one way of doing it without having to build additional
centres. If that is the route that they are choosing to do, I would encourage
them to look at proper treatment and proper training programs to make this new
additional staff have the tools to do the job in a proper fashion, because it
is such a serious issue and it affects the whole family. If anyone has lived with or has a family
member that has or has had any addiction problems, they will know what I say,
because it is sad to see the individual, but it is even sadder to see the
negative impact it has on immediate family members.
When you see a person who is recovering
and is willing to work towards addressing their addictions and to see the
immediate and long‑lasting impact it has on family members and close
friends as they develop over the years, it is very rewarding and nice to see,
and you will see that a lot of those individuals will contribute greatly to
society, to their families, and very rarely you will see those individuals get
into any kind of problems
Well, I should not say problems, but to
get into problems with the law and stuff like that, because a lot of times when
those individuals had those kinds of problems with the law and stuff they were
inebriated or under the influence of whatever, whether it was drugs or alcohol
or what have you. Once that is removed
and the proper support system is in place, a lot of times those individuals
surge forward and they make a complete turnaround, and they do eventually gain
respect in their communities and with their communities and within their own
family settings.
We all know that solvent abuse is a very
serious problem now. It is even growing
worse and worse. I listened to all the
briefs that were presented on Bill 29, and a lot of the individuals that were
coming forward describing the frustrations, the anxieties, the hurt and
hardship that they had seen as workers, and even some as past solvent‑abuse
sniffers.
The individuals that talked about that
said that they had to overcome it on their own.
Some of the individuals who are now working at‑‑one
individual, in particular, anyway‑‑was working at a youth centre
and said: I feel so sorry, and I feel so
much for the youth that come in here under the sniff, because I know what they
are doing because I did to myself.
That is the real strength of the
Alcoholism Foundation, that they are able to pass on their experiences and
their knowledge. It is amazing to see how much they really care about the
people that they are trying to work with.
Madam Deputy Speaker, just in my closing
remarks, I would just like to caution the government that, again, if this is
going to be tied in with the solvent abuse program, I hope they think it out
very carefully and make sure that they consult with the people, consult with
the workers and the staff at the Alcoholism Foundation centres across Manitoba
and discuss with the staff the appropriate way of incorporating solvent abuse
addiction to narcotics and alcohol abuse.
I mentioned, and I will have to mention it
again, that it is a totally, totally different set of circumstances. Without the proper funding and the proper
training in place, you are going to burn out, and you are going to be losing so
many excellent staff that have been there for years and are so committed to
their great interest and great knowledge in the alcoholism field. You will burn them out, and you will lose too
many excellent counsellors that we have had that have helped thousands of
people across
So I hope this is not just a change of
words to say that the government is seriously addressing solvent abuse. I was sorry to see some amendments that did
not go through in Bill 29, because there were some amendments that came forward
from the presenters that were very valuable, that were dealing specifically
with making it tougher for individuals to sell solvent abuse to individuals.
The punishment of youth of abuse, instead
of treatment, they kept saying that there needs to be adequate treatment, not
punishment. We heard that from every
presenter, I was there, over and over again.
I was sorry to see that those amendments did not come forward.
So I look forward to seeing what this
change will do. I hope it is looking at
solving the problem that we face today with solvent abuse because, as I said,
the foundation, the way it is set up, offers so many valuable programs and has changed
so many lives of Manitobans to become better citizens for the province that we
all live in. With those remarks, I thank
you for the time.
Mr. Doug Martindale
(Burrows): Madam Deputy Speaker, the government House
leader (Mr. Manness) will be pleased to know that I am the last speaker on Bill
44, The Alcoholism Foundation Amendment and Consequential Amendments Act, and
then we are prepared to pass it to a committee.
Alcoholism and the treatment of alcoholism
is something that I have some small knowledge of, having been a fifth‑step
counsellor for people who belong to AA, and I always viewed it as a privilege
and an honour to listen to those individuals who came to my office in my
capacity as a minister to unburden themselves and to confess all the things
that they had done to hurt themselves and their families as part of their 12‑step
program. It was really very, very interesting and educational, in addition to
being an honour and a privilege to listen to those individuals confide in me as
someone that they trusted to keep confidences. I am going to talk a little bit
later about the Confidentiality clause of this bill.
* (1630)
I also helped two new groups, an AA group
and an Al‑Anon group, to get started in a church that I was minister
of. They were very appreciative of that,
and they invited me to their open meetings.
If anyone has not been to an AA open meeting or an Al‑Anon open
meeting, I would recommend that they do so, because it is very beneficial to
hear the stories that people tell and to see people supporting one another in
the fellowship of AA. They put a lot of
emphasis and stress on the fellowship of AA so that they as individuals are
able to continue as abstinent individuals and to provide support to others who
are abstinent.
The first summer that I came to
I still run into those people from time to
time. One of them is on the staff at the
Native Alcoholism Council. One is an
elder that I see in the community from time to time, and it is good to keep in
touch with those people. It was a very
educational course to be in a classroom for eight hours a day for a week, and
to learn a lot about the disease of alcoholism, and to learn about its
treatment, particularly as it applied to aboriginal people. I hope that they are still teaching that
course for people in the community, particularly for educators and people in
social services and police forces, et cetera.
In fact, it was quite similar to a course that I took at the Calder
foundation in
The name change is actually a good
one. We support the change in name from
the Alcoholism Foundation to the Addictions Foundation because, as we know,
there is more than one kind of addiction in our society. We have heard the member for Point Douglas
(Mr. Hickes) talk about the need for solvent treatment, and I would like to
speak briefly to that. We also know that
there are many, many drugs that people become addicted to, which the Alcoholism
Foundation is already helping people with through their drug treatment
programs.
But I guess the latest kind of addiction
that our society is forced to deal with is addiction to gambling. I assume that the minister responsible for
the Lotteries Foundation has had some input and say in this bill so that until
now, the Alcoholism Foundation, and becoming the "addictions
foundation," will help with the treatment of people who are addicted to
gambling.
Certainly, the minister has indicated she
is going to put some money into this, and I presume that is where the money is
going to go. I have been doing a little
reading on this; for example, I have read The Treatment of Problem and
Pathological Gambling in
This is a study by Rachel Volberg. I believe the same consultant that the
minister responsible for the Lotteries corporation in
The statistics and the definitions of the
different kinds of people who are addicted are really quite interesting,
because in the
So if you apply those stats to Manitoba‑‑and
I am sure that the stats are probably similar; they are no doubt at least in
the ballpark‑‑and if you round off the number of residents of
Manitoba, if you assume for a minute that there are only a million people in
Manitoba, and I believe there are more, 6 percent would be 60,000 people.
Well, if 60,000 people are either problem
or pathological gamblers, then our society indeed has a very serious problem
that the minister responsible for the Lotteries corporation must address and
must put some resources into. Similarly,
if 4.5 percent are pathological gamblers, then that is 45,000 Manitobans who
are pathological gamblers.
This is a very, very serious problem
indeed, because we know that when people have an addiction, and particularly in
the case of gambling addiction which, like drug addiction and similar to
alcohol addiction, requires the spending of a lot of money to support one's
habit or one's addiction. So we may have
45,000 or 60,000 people there with a very serious problem, who are going to lie
and who are going to cheat and who are going to steal in order to support their
particular habit.
We already have a very serious problem in
our society with people who do not want to obey the laws of this province and
who want to commit break‑and‑enters and things like that. Now we have a new group in society who are,
of course, being enticed by government advertising to spend more money in the
bingo palaces and in gambling of all kinds.
The opportunity is becoming more and more available and, with it, the
social consequences.
Hon. Donald Orchard
(Minister of Health): Would you shut them down?
Mr. Martindale: Well, the Minister of Health asks if I would
shut them down. I am not in government;
that would be the government's decision.
I would say that probably, for better or
for worse, we are stuck with the existing situation. The question is: Are we going to expand them or are we going
to put a halt to expansion? This government has chosen to greatly expand the
opportunities, and the result is that they are going to greatly expand the
number of people who are problem and pathological gamblers.
Point of
Order
Mr. Orchard: Madam Deputy Speaker, I wonder if the member
for Burrows (Mr. Martindale) might want to comment on some of his confreres
from other provinces and their approach to opposition.
Ms. Becky Barrett (Wellington):
Madam Deputy Speaker, I would suggest that the
Deputy Speaker might want to call the Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard) to
order, because we are discussing a very important issue that he has some
professional interest or should have some professional interest in, and he
might learn something if he listens quietly in his seat.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order, please. The honourable Minister of Health nor the
honourable member for
* * *
Mr. Martindale: Madam Deputy Speaker, if the Minister of
Health wants to do something, perhaps he could do something with the task force
on drugs whose final report from the Minister of Education (Mrs. Vodrey), who
is chair of that task force, is sitting on his desk, has been sitting on his
desk for at least a couple of years, and this minister is not doing anything
with it.
We would be pleased if the minister would
release this report and make it public.
We are still wondering what it says.
We are wondering if this government is ever going to act on it, if they
are ever going to do anything about it.
We can only speculate as to why they are not doing anything. Perhaps it is because in their original press
release they wanted to declare a war on drugs, and then the committee members
went around and had public hearings. I
attended one of those public hearings at the Freight House. My recollection is, the people who made
presentations to that task force said that the most serious problem in their
community was alcohol, not drugs.
I can only speculate, because the Minister
of Health will not release his task force on drugs report, but perhaps that is
what they heard around the whole province, that alcohol addiction was the most
serious problem everywhere, and since they could not build a case for a war on
drugs, the Minister of Health is sitting on the report. He is suppressing the report. He will not make it public.
They start off with great fanfare, and
they do a good thing. They appoint a task force and they have public hearings,
which was a good thing. Many people came
forward and presented briefs to this task force. I am sure the task force were diligent in
their job and wrote a good report, but we will never know. We will never know whether it is a good
report or a bad report or what they recommended to the government, if anything,
or if the government plans to take action and do anything about the task force
report on drugs, because they have never made it public.
This government has blown an opportunity to
do something good probably because it did not fit their preconceived agenda.
Perhaps it was just an election promise that they had to fulfill in a token
kind of way. The Minister of Health does
not even want to defend his lack of action in this area.
We also know that another area that this
government could be taking some action on is setting up a treatment facility in
northern
In fact, we heard an excellent
presentation by one of the solvent abuse councillors at the committee stage of
the sniff bill of the Minister of Justice (Mr. McCrae), a young man by the name
of Tim Henderson that I knew. He used to
be an employee on our staff, and he made an excellent presentation. He talked about the fact that many young
people from northern
An Honourable Member: Tell the truth, Blackjack.
* (1640)
Mr. Martindale: Well, we would be happy to have the minister
speak on this bill and put on the record what action he is taking to bring
about a treatment facility in northern
Since I am not going to be speaking very
long, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to talk about the confidentiality
aspect of this bill. I know we cannot
refer to clause by clause because we are speaking in principle, but this would
seem to me to be a positive addition to this bill or to the act itself, because
confidentiality is very, very important to anyone in any helping profession,
particularly to people in a treatment facility. People who are involved in
education or treatment may in the course of their work or by being on the board
or an employee of any kind of the soon‑to‑be‑called
Addictions Foundation‑‑confidential information about people there
either there for an educational course or a treatment program, and it is very,
very important that people do keep confidences.
So I think it is a good idea to put that in the act. Certainly it should encourage the staff to
follow, what I assume, is already written policies about confidentiality, and
hopefully it will assist the public in reaching out and getting treatment.
I remember when I was at the Calder Centre
(phonetic) at an educational program, we were told that women who abuse drugs
on average abuse drugs for 11 or 12 years before they seek treatment. So anything that inhibits people from seeking
treatment needs to be removed, and anything which encourages people to seek
treatment should be put in place. I
would hope that a confidentiality policy which is put in the act is the kind of
thing that would encourage people to seek treatment and seek help.
We know that there is a problem. A lot of people are going out of province to
seek help. Maybe that is the
reason. Maybe they are afraid that if
they seek treatment in
Just recently, I was talking to parents
whose daughter went to
The final part of the bill has to do with
immunity from prosecution for anyone engaged in good faith in the performance
of their duties. This would seem also to
be a worthwhile thing to add, so that people who are involved in either
education or training do not feel that what they say or the advice that they
give is in any way inhibiting them or is jeopardizing their job because someone
might choose to sue them.
So with those few remarks, Madam Deputy
Speaker, we are prepared to see this bill pass today. Thank you.
(Mr. Speaker in the Chair)
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (
I wanted just to comment somewhat briefly
in terms of what it is that the bill is going to be doing. The most obvious, of course, is in fact the
name change, thereby also having changes in terms of the mandate which is going
to be expanded to include other addictions.
It has been pointed out in terms of drug and solvent abuse and, more
recently, from the Minister of Lotteries (Mrs. Mitchelson), the Minister of
Health (Mr. Orchard) with respect to the addiction and problems with gambling.
I think that each and every one of us
could probably go through a number of examples dealing with addiction to
alcohol and, no doubt, a significant number of individuals that have been
involved with the antisniff legislation that has been introduced and supported
first from the New Democratic Party, which all three political parties did in
fact support the initial bill and the legislation that we now have before us. So it has brought in a sense of awareness or
that much more of a sense of awareness up inside this Chamber. At least I believe it has, Mr. Speaker.
The third issue which I had made reference
to is the one of gambling, and gambling is something that I have had ample
opportunity over the last year, year and a half, to talk a considerable amount
about. I think that is, in fact, going
to be a growing problem, and it is good to see in one sense that the government
has finally acknowledged that there is going to be a problem with that.
Hopefully, with the broadening of the
mandate of the Alcoholism Foundation, we will see the resources that are going
to be necessary in order to deal with the many different addictions that are
out there. I think the member for Point
Douglas (Mr. Hickes) when he was commenting in terms of exhaustion of
counsellors and so forth‑‑and by increasing the mandate, you are
definitely going to have a significant increase in demand. Hopefully, as I say, the government will see
fit to ensure that that demand is, in fact, going to be met, for the simple
reason that this foundation and organizations, support groups that are out
there, are of benefit to society and, in fact, can save the taxpayer future
dollars.
Another aspect is dealing with the
confidentiality provision, which, again, I think, goes without saying, at least
in part, that you need to have that confidentiality in order to get, in many
cases, to the root of the problems, and that confidentiality must be respected.
The third part of it does protect the
employees of the foundation itself, which, again, is something that we do
support because the employees are put into a position of trust, and individuals
at times do make mistakes. As long as
you have employees of the foundation following the regulations and laws and
doing what they can in good faith to maintain the integrity of the organization
and the question of confidence and so forth, I think it is the most that we can
ask from any given employee.
Mr. Speaker, with those very few words, we
are quite prepared to see this bill go to committee.
Mr. Speaker: Is the House ready for the question? The question before the House is second
reading of Bill 44, The Alcoholism Foundation Amendment and Consequential
Amendments Act; Loi modifiant la Loi sur la Fondation manitobaine de lutte
contre l'alcoolisme et apportant des modifications correlatives a une autre
loi.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt
the motion? (agreed)
Bill 40‑The
Legal Aid Services Society of
and Crown
Attorneys Amendment Act
Mr. Speaker: As previously agreed, we will go back to Bill
40.
On the proposed motion of the honourable
Minister of Justice (Mr. McCrae), Bill 40, The Legal Aid Services Society of
Manitoba Amendment and Crown Attorneys Amendment Act; Loi modifiant la Loi sur
la Societe d'aide juridique du Manitoba et la Loi sur les procureurs de la
Couronne, standing in the name of the honourable member for Wellington (Ms.
Barrett).
Ms. Becky Barrett (
Mr. Speaker, Bill 40 provides for the use
of paralegals in certain designated communities in the
We do, however, have some concerns which I
will try and elaborate on in the brief period of time I have left to me. We know in the province of Manitoba, given
the size of the province, the geographical range of the province and the fact
that the population is so heavily concentrated in one major urban centre with a
couple of other smaller urban centres, and then the remainder of the population
spread throughout some very remote communities, that services are often not
provided to the level to which people should be entitled.
This is very clearly evidenced in the
justice system with the lack of adequate resources, both in the Crown
attorney's point of view and from the defence attorney's situation.
This bill, as I stated before, attempts to
alleviate at least one of these problems, and, that is, individuals having
access to legal counsel and the justice system without having to deal
specifically with lawyers in both defence and prosecution areas.
* (1650)
Currently, the legislation requires that
both the prosecution and defence services must be undertaken only by
lawyers. Bill 40 allows the Lieutenant‑Governor,
and by that I take to mean cabinet under Order‑in‑Council, to
designate certain communities as being eligible to have both defence services
and prosecutorial services provided by paralegals instead of lawyers.
In the case of the Legal Aid or defence
services the paralegal would have to be under the general direction and
supervision of a Legal Aid lawyer or a solicitor. In the case of the Crown attorney paralegal,
the paralegal would have to be under the direction and supervision of an
official Crown attorney, but they would actually be able to provide the direct
services‑‑the paralegals would.
As the minister in his remarks on second
reading stated, this legislation was prepared following consultation with Legal
Aid
I do know that Legal Aid Manitoba has been
asking for this kind of change for some time.
The reality is, from their perspective, that well‑trained,
culturally appropriate and sensitive paralegals from the community or the area
would potentially and, maybe, in many actual circumstances, provide better
services to the designated communities than they currently receive.
The potential there is for‑‑and
I think perhaps the critical concept is "culturally
appropriate." In these designated
areas, if you can get a paralegal under the supervision of a lawyer to provide
direct legal services, then you are more likely to have services that
understand the situation and the local conditions more than when you have to
rely on Crown attorneys or Legal Aid lawyers who have huge caseloads and
enormous distances to travel and virtually no time to prepare for their
cases. We all, certainly on this side of
the House, know of examples where the legal system, certainly through no fault
of the individuals involved, has broken down just because the resources are not
there. So potentially, this piece of
legislation could provide some very positive services to these designated
communities.
The other general area of the legal system
has been lobbied or has been consulted with, according to the minister. However, according to my consultations with
the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, the First Nations have been virtually ignored
in this consultative process. That is
something that concerns us greatly. The
First Nations feel that this legislation might open up situations in remote and
reserve communities and provide for more community involvement. They see this as a potentially very positive
thing.
However, there are some serious problems
with the legislation as it‑‑or questions about the legislation that
we hope to have answered in committee and maybe in third reading. First of all, whatever the positive benefits
might be achieved by Bill 40, it still is tinkering. It does not deal with the systemic problems
of the justice system in the
One of the potential problems that was
raised both by Legal Aid and by the First Nations was that there was the
possibility of setting up a two‑tier system. I think that needs to be looked at and
monitored very closely in implementing this legislation. Any time when you have
professionals, a situation where people who are not trained fully as
professionals doing the job that professionals have done, and you have that
parasystem in place only in certain designated communities, you run the
possibility of a two‑tier system being provided. I do not mean for a moment to say that will
happen. I just think it is something
that needs to be monitored and monitored very effectively as the legislation is
implemented.
The other concern that was raised or one
of the other concerns that was raised is that the legislation, at least at this
point, is not clear on the qualifications of these paralegals. It is very loose in that context. I am sure that regulations will address this
situation, but again, since we do not have the regulations, it is incumbent
upon us to raise these issues as a concern.
I guess the question that I have, or
several questions that I have, is the Lieutenant‑Governor, by that I
assume the cabinet, decides‑‑(interjection) I take the admonition
of the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Enns) to heart.
As someone who was not born in this
country and for whom the British pronunciation is still many times unfamiliar,
I appreciate that the Lieutenant‑Governor, by which I understand to mean
the cabinet, will make the determination as to which communities are
designated. I would have preferred the
minister, in his remarks, to be a little clearer in what kinds of communities
will be so designated and think that this is an important issue that needs to
be clarified.
Again it is not clear to us as to just how
much training and how much supervision these paralegals will be required to
undergo, so we are very concerned, Mr. Speaker, about these issues.
I would like to state that while we are
prepared to support, with these reservations, in principle Bill 40, I do hope
that the Minister of Justice (Mr. McCrae) in committee will be able to give us
the answer to some of these, I believe, fairly legitimate concerns. I would reiterate for the record our very
serious concerns that Bill 40 is not addressing the major issues that need to
be addressed in the justice system, particularly as it relates to the
aboriginal community and remote and northern communities. It is, as I stated earlier, merely tinkering.
While we do certainly support in principle
this piece of legislation, we wish that the Minister of Justice (Mr. McCrae)
would have spent a little more time in negotiating and consulting with the
aboriginal community and dealing with the major systemic issues that face the
province of Manitoba instead of bringing in just a piece of legislation such as
this. While it is marginally better than
what is currently in place, it certainly does not answer the major important
basic issues that face the
With those remarks, Mr. Speaker, we are
prepared to allow this piece of legislation to go to committee.
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Is it the will of the House to waive private
members' hour? Agreed? No, leave is denied. Leave has been denied
for private members' hour.
An Honourable Member: Give us 10 minutes.
Mr. Speaker: Is there leave now to allow the honourable
member for
* (1700)
Ms. Judy Wasylycia‑Leis
(
Mr. Speaker: That is what I am asking. Is there leave of the House to allow the
honourable member for
Mr. Lamoureux: Mr. Speaker, Bill 40 does cause a great deal of
concern for our caucus, and there are a number of reasons as to why. You know there is a lot of concern with
respect to what it is that the government is in fact attempting to do.
In particular, you know the member for
I know that we will be having some
comments in the committee stage, and I know that we will definitely in all
likelihood be having someone speak against it while we are in third reading on this
particular bill, but did want to see, Mr. Speaker, at least the bill go to
committee at this stage. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker: Is the House ready for the question? The question before the House is second
reading of Bill 40, The Legal Aid Services Society of Manitoba Amendment and
Crown Attorneys Amendment Act, Loi modifiant la Loi sur la Societe d'aide
juridique du Manitoba et la Loi sur les procureurs de la Couronne. Is it the will of the House to adopt the motion?
(agreed)
PRIVATE
MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Mr. Speaker: Now, the hour being a little bit after 5
p.m., time for Private Members' Business.
DEBATE ON
SECOND READINGS‑PUBLIC BILLS
Bill 200‑The
Child and Family Services Amendment Act
Mr. Speaker: On the proposed motion of the honourable
member for
Is there leave that that matter remain
standing? (agreed)
Also standing in the name of the
honourable member for Interlake (Mr. Clif Evans), who has one minute remaining.
Stand? Is there leave that that matter
remain standing? Leave? (agreed)
Bill 202‑The
Residential Tenancies Amendment Act
Mr. Speaker: On the proposed motion of the honourable
member for Burrows (Mr. Martindale), Bill 202 (The Residential Tenancies
Amendment Act; Loi modifiant la Loi sur la location a usage d'habitation),
standing in the name of the honourable member for
Is there leave that that matter remain
standing? Leave? (agreed)
Bill 203‑The
Health Care Records Act
Mr. Speaker: On the proposed motion of the honourable
member for St. Johns (Ms. Wasylycia‑Leis), Bill 203 (The Health Care
Records Act; Loi sur les dossiers medicaux), standing in the name of the
honourable member for Emerson (Mr. Penner).
Stand?
Is there leave that that matter remain
standing? Leave? (agreed)
Bill 205‑The
Ombudsman Amendment Act
Mr. Speaker: On the proposed motion of the honourable
member for Kildonan (Mr. Chomiak), Bill 205 (The Ombudsman Amendment Act; Loi
modifiant la Loi sur l'ombudsman), standing in the name of the honourable
member for Niakwa (Mr. Reimer).
An Honourable Member: Stand.
Mr. Speaker: Stand?
Is there leave that that matter remain standing? Leave? (agreed)
Bill 208‑The
Workers Compensation Amendment Act
Mr. Speaker: On the proposed motion of the honourable member
for Transcona (Mr. Reid), Bill 208 (The Workers Compensation Amendment Act; Loi
modifiant la Loi sur les accidents du travail), standing in the name of the
honourable member for Niakwa (Mr. Reimer).
Stand?
Is there leave that that matter remain
standing? Leave? (agreed)
Bill 209‑The
Public Health Amendment Act
Mr. Speaker: On the proposed motion of the honourable
member for St. Johns (Ms. Wasylycia‑Leis), Bill 209 (The Public Health
Amendment Act; Loi modifiant la Loi sur la sante publique), standing in the
name of the honourable member for St. Norbert (Mr. Laurendeau). Stand?
Is there leave? (agreed)
Bill 212‑The
Dauphin Memorial Community Centre Board
Repeal Act
Mr. Speaker: On the proposed motion of the honourable
member for Dauphin (Mr. Plohman), Bill 212 (The Dauphin Memorial Community
Centre Board Repeal Act; Loi abrogeant la Loi sur le Conseil du Centre
commemoratif de Dauphin), standing in the name of the honourable member for
Gimli (Mr. Helwer). Stand?
Is there leave? (agreed)
Bill 216‑An
Act to amend An Act to Protect the
Health of Non‑Smokers
Mr. Speaker: On the proposed motion of the honourable
Leader of the Second Opposition (Mr. Edwards), Bill 216 (An Act to amend An Act
to Protect the Health of Non‑Smokers; Loi modifiant la Loi sur la
protection de la sante des non‑fumeurs), standing in the name of the
honourable member for Gimli (Mr. Helwer).
Stand?
Is there leave that that matter remain
standing? Leave? (agreed)
SECOND
READINGS‑PUBLIC BILLS
Bill 210‑The
Plain Language Act
Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis
(
Motion presented.
Ms. Wasylycia-Leis: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased with this
opportunity to at long last be able to begin the debate on a piece of
legislation that has been in the works for some time, The Plain Language Act.
Mr. Speaker, I bring this bill forward to
this Chamber with the hope that it will be taken seriously by all members in
this Chamber and that it will be considered in the time remaining for this
legislative session. It is a bill that
would do a great deal towards enhancing equal access of all members in our
society to our legal, judicial and political systems. It is not a new idea. It is not unique. It is not unusual. It has a long history.
The movement to establish plain language
has been with us since the mid‑'70s.
It has been a major force in the
The movement is less pronounced and is not
as strong here in this country, in
Before I get into the broad principles of
this bill, let me first indicate the roots of this bill and give credit where
credit is due. I want to indicate that
this bill, this idea, came from just an ordinary constituent in the
constituency of
Mr. Bill Benson actually gave me the
determination to pursue this matter after he read an article, and this is
giving again credit where credit is due, to a lawyer here in
* (1710)
It has been a difficult process because,
in fact, we felt it was absolutely imperative that to bring forward such a
bill, it itself must be written in plain language as much as possible. So the bill before members today, Bill 210,
may not be perfect, may not be in absolutely clear and plain language. It is in our estimation an attempt at what
such laws could be, could look like, and we hope it is a model for other
legislation and government regulations in the future.
Mr. Speaker, those are the roots of this
particular bill. Of course, as I said,
there has been a movement across
Why do we need plain language? Why do we need this piece of
legislation? Well, Mr. Speaker, every
facet of life is affected by plain language or the absence of it. We know that whether we are dealing with
consumer contracts, or statutes or regulations or procedurals or manuals or tax
forms or technical journals or educational materials or many other documents,
they are often very dense, often very unreadable, packed with legalese and
written in jargon or elevated prose, and for many, many people very difficult
to understand, very difficult to know what contractual arrangements they are
entering into and very difficult to know their rights.
The absence, in our view, of plain
language creates a fear of the system and I think deters many from pursuing
their rights, so it is our view that plain language is necessary to help
achieve equal access for all Canadians to our justice and legal systems. So we
present legislation that is innovative, we believe, and also would be a
forerunner for legislation of its kind in
This bill, this proposed law for Manitoba,
calls for action both in terms of consumer contracts and in terms of government
programs, whether that is legislation or regulations or manuals or procedures
or what have you, so it is far reaching but presented, we hope, in a way that
is manageable and not too difficult to implement.
It is curious to follow the remarks of the
member for
I think I could add to that and say, and
the Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard). It
is awfully hard to figure out exactly what he is saying and what to make of
what I call the gobbledegook. But the
point of this whole bill is, of course, not to attack anyone on a personal
basis, but to make a case for plain language.
It is absolutely clear in our view that if
we are serious as legislators in terms of acting responsibly to our
constituents and making life a little easier in an otherwise very complex and
complicated world, then the place to start is in the very language, in the very
tools that people have to access programs and understand their rights and
privileges in our society today. This is a starting place if we are serious
about responding widely and concretely to the concerns of individuals in our
society today.
There is no question that increasingly
consumers in our society are forced to turn to hiring professional help in
order to understand their rights and pursue their obligations in cases where
that need not have been the case if plain language had been the rule of
thumb. There are increasingly
individuals who come to us as legislators looking for help to understand what
kind of arrangement they entered into, what it means when they did not
understand the fine print, did not know what something meant and now are faced
with horrific problems, costly problems, as a result of that misunderstanding.
They have to turn in those cases to
professional advisers, to lawyers, to people in the legal field, and that, as
we all know, costs money. It costs money
to get that kind of professional help, to hire lawyers just for the purpose of
understanding what a contract means or what a piece of legislation means or
what a government document means. That
is a denial of a basic right in our society, the right to access programs that
are put in place for all members of our society, so it seems to me that if we
are at all concerned about equality and pursuing justice and fairness, then the
place to start is with plain language.
I mentioned earlier that this would be an
innovative, unique piece of legislation in all of
There are some bits and pieces of plain
language being included in different government documents‑‑
Hon. Donald Orchard
(Minister of Health): Yes, I will give you some plain language,
Judy, from Paul Crane (phonetic), from Bill Pashak, from Les Campbell, plain
language about NDPers not being able to tell the truth.
Ms. Wasylycia-Leis: Mr. Speaker, I just hope that the members across
the way will take this bill for what it is, which is a serious attempt to get
at a pretty serious problem in our society today. While the Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard)
might have other political issues to pursue using the overall topic of plain
language, this bill is not on politics and it is not about who is telling the
truth and what different jurisdictions are doing.
This is about plain language in consumer
contracts, in laws, in regulations, in manuals, in application forms, in
everything that affects and impinges on individual lives in our society today. It is an attempt, Mr. Speaker, to in fact
make life a little easier for our constituents and for the consumers of this
province. It is workable. It can be up and running in short order with
some co‑operation in this Chamber in short order.
I know that our history in terms of
agreement on private members' bills is not that great. It has been mixed, and there have been some
different developments happening around private members' bills that do not
always give us reason to believe that this bill may have a future. I hope that the government and the members of
the Liberal caucus will look at it seriously and give it some thought and
perhaps get it on to committee today so that we can have a chance to hear from
some consumers and sort out some of the problems they might have with the bill
and get on with making it law so that all citizens in our society will not fear
the system, so that they will feel that they have full and equal access to our
justice and legal systems and pursue their rights and carry out their
obligations.
* (1720)
I would commend, notwithstanding this
bill, to the government some initiatives that they might consider in addition
to this legislation. There are steps
that can be taken now if there is a will.
One document actually came out of
Mr. Orchard: Mr. Speaker, I think that plain language is
certainly appropriate and never more called for in this great nation of ours
and this great province of ours. Sir,
that is what the citizens of this country are calling from, not necessarily in
the legal contracts and the fine print that one has to go through when one
signs on the dotted line for different things, but I think that Manitobans and
Canadians are demanding plain language from New Democrats, from Liberals, from
Progressive Conservatives.
I harken, my extensive research has
brought me to an article which is in the Maclean's magazine of July 12 of
1993. The cover article is fairly plain
language. It says: "So Long, Solidarity." In plain language, what Maclean's is
addressing is the philosophical dilemma that the socialist movement in Canada
finds itself in today at the helm of governing New Democrats in Ontario under
Premier Bob Rae, governing New Democrats in British Columbia under Premier
Harcourt and governing New Democrats in Saskatchewan under Premier Romanow.
What is in this article, Sir, is some very
plain language. For instance, on page 14, a chap by the name of Peter Cassidy,
who is alleged to be "a loyal NDP foot soldier for 28 of his 43 years,
epitomizes the party's malaise."
Here is what Peter Cassidy describes Bob Rae's agenda in government as,
in plain language. Cassidy calls Rae's
"corporate, right‑wing agenda" as what in plain language Bob
Rae is doing to the people of
In plain language, New Democrats used to
talk about solidarity, the brotherhood of togetherness in the union movement,
the workers paradise, the new utopia of plain language where the workers would
be shoulder to shoulder and they would push the agenda and they would stop this
ruthless capitalist agenda, but when in government in Ontario, Premier Bob Rae
is said by Peter Cassidy, "a loyal NDP foot soldier for 28 of his 43
years" as having a corporate right‑wing agenda. Premier Bob Rae, the NDP in
Plain language continues in this article,
Sir.
Hon. Harry Enns
(Minister of Natural Resources): . . .
understand the significance of him.
Cassidy is a foot soldier, not a general driving the jeep.
Mr. Orchard: This is the real people. My honourable friend the member for
One of my colleagues, and I have to
attribute this to my good friend, cabinet minister and colleague the member for
Assiniboia (Mrs. McIntosh). She said
that the New Democrats when they present issues in this House, particularly
those who were once elected, say that they were a government that could have,
would have, should have, but did not. I
think that probably describes it in as short terms and as plain a language as
one can get.
I want to go to page 16 of this report
from July 12 Maclean's magazine, and I know that it will be required reading
for a lot of people. The headline here
is "Down and out in
In plain language Mr. Pashak says "If
we formed a government and tried to implement all of our policy directives, we
would bankrupt the government overnight."
What plainer language can you get of a
defeated NDP MLA in
How much plainer can the language be from
a New Democrat defeated in
I want to reflect on some plain language
that Premier Bob Rae in
That is what is alleged to have been said
by the financial markets to Premier Rae in
Now, that plain language was attempted to
be defined and negotiated over a period of two and a half months by one of
their most skillful negotiators, a gentleman that I have a great deal of
respect for, even though from time to time we may disagree philosophically. The man is a very skilled individual who was
leading those negotiations for the
* (1730)
What is it that Premier Rae is saying in
plain language in the same interview in Maclean's, July 12, 1993, page 17? Rae is talking about forming partnerships to
get out of the financial morass that he himself contributed significantly to in
I think that has pretty plain implications
to New Democrats across
Here is the quote from Premier Rae. "I was becoming increasingly frustrated
with my role in opposition‑‑you can't go through life with your
hand on the horn. At some point, you've
got to start contributing to doing things, and there is a terrible tendency in
opposition to just oppose. Being in
opposition for 60 years was bad for the New Democratic Party of this province. It created expectations that were unrealistic
and it meant that there were a lot of choices‑‑hard choices‑‑that
the party didn't have to make because we were in opposition. What passes for policies in opposition is
simply the articulation of grievance.
And the articulation of grievance doesn't make a program for a
government."
Is that not rather plain language? The tendency to just oppose when in
opposition, to articulate grievance in opposition and grievance does not make a
very good program for a government. Very
plain language from Premier Bob Rae in
Now in plain language, though, the social
contract was rebuffed, rejected by the labour union movement in
Mr. Speaker: Order, please.
Point of
Order
Ms. Wasylycia-Leis: Yes, Mr. Speaker, just on a point of order. I
believe our rules call for general relevancy to the matter at hand. I just looked up Beauchesne's. I am not an expert on this, but on page 136
there is an item about relevance and it does say "Relevance is not easy to
define." There are borderline
cases, but I am not sure if there is any relevance at all between the Minister
of Health's comments and the matter at hand.
He seems to be talking a lot about
solidarity in the NDP, and I am wondering if he could talk a bit about what
kind of solidarity there might be in this Chamber for Bill 210, The Plain
Language Act.
Mr. Speaker: On the point of order raised by the honourable
member for
I would ask the honourable Minister of
Health to attempt to try and keep his remarks relevant to Bill 210, The Plain
Language Act.
* * *
Mr. Orchard: Mr. Speaker, in complying with your ruling,
the intent of the Plain Language bill is to explain contracts, language that is
understandable by the general public and I, quite frankly, Sir, agree with
that. I am attempting to speak very
plainly by quoting from other plain talkers like Bob Rae and other plain
messages that come from
Mr. Speaker, to make plain language out of
what Bob White is saying about the
I simply say, I feel sorry for the labour
union movement in Ontario and in Canada, but when you make your bed with one
political party as they have done and as certain special interest groups in
this House have done, you tend to narrow your field of objections, you tend to
narrow your field of opportunity, you tend to close opportunities and doors,
but that is, in plain language, what some minority, special interest groups
tend to do.
But to get back to the principles of the
bill, in plain language, I want to close by quoting one other plain language
advocate out of page 18 of this Maclean's article, and this is a
quotation. I will read the quote first,
and then we will have three guesses as to who said it.
An Honourable Member: Do I get the first guess?
Mr. Orchard: You get the first guess. This is the quotation, sir. Quote:
"Unfortunately, there are a lot of armchair left‑wing
quarterbacks who do a lot of yakking and complaining."
"It's a little depressing. Even the strongest supporter finds it hard to
get enthused any more."
That was by Les Campbell, the former
adviser of Gary Doer.
Mr. Speaker: Is the House ready for the question?
An Honourable Member: Question.
Mr. Speaker: The question before the House‑‑oh,
I am sorry, the honourable member for Burrows.
Mr. Doug Martindale
(Burrows): Mr. Speaker, it is a
pleasure to speak on this very serious bill sponsored by the member for
I am grateful that the Minister of Health
(Mr. Orchard) put all his remarks on the record, because from time to time,
constituents and members of the public make comments to us as MLAs about the
kind of language that we as legislators use in drafting legislation.
I will be able to tell them that our
member from St. Johns sponsored a bill, a very serious bill, in which we would
hope that all members of this House would support her and pass this bill and
require that our Legislature require that our bills be in plain language and
that consumer contracts in this province be in plain language.
But what did the government do when they
had a chance to speak on this bill? The
Minister of Health stood up, on the record, and was totally irrelevant to the
content of this bill, totally irrelevant to the issue of The Plain Language
Act. So we will be able to tell people
that we tried to change the way we write legislation here. We tried to change the way contracts are
written in the
The record can speak for itself. I would be quite happy to mail out this
minister's remarks and show people how seriously or, actually, the lack of
seriousness with which they approach this very serious issue.
Just the other day, I was talking to one
my colleagues about the flooding in the
Now, I know that the Minister of
Government Services (Mr. Ducharme) has to read insurance policies all the time,
and he understands these things, which is why people hire agents and why people
hire lawyers.
It is unfortunate that people have to. I mean, in the case of an insurance agent,
that is what the agent is paid for and so if you have a problem you phone the
agent and the agent interprets your insurance policy. Usually these individuals are quite
helpful. I have always found my insurance
agent to be helpful, and I am sure the Minister of Government Services (Mr.
Ducharme) over the years was helpful to his clients.
When it comes to legislation or to
regulations or to many different kinds of contracts, people are forced to hire
a lawyer. Why are they forced to hire a
lawyer? Because when you read it, you
cannot understand it. This bill would
change that. This bill would say, let us write it plainly in the first place so
you do not have to hire a lawyer to understand something.
* (1740)
When I was preparing for this bill, one of
my colleagues gave me a very interesting paper obtained from the legislative
library called Plain Language, A global perspective, a paper presented to the
annual general meeting of the Consumers' Association of Canada (
There is an example of legislation that
definitely was not written in plain language.
I asked myself in thinking about this
bill, well, why does this happen? Why do
we have statutes that are written in ways that are incomprehensible? Well, you might think that Legislative
Counsel are hired to write things in such a way that if they get taken to court
that they will be something that will cover the waterfront or cover every
conceivable situation so that when people are having to arbitrate something,
then the judge will have something to guide him or her.
In this paper that very matter is addressed
in a footnote on page 6. This person
disagrees with that and the reasoning is quite interesting, so I would like to
read this footnote into the record as well.
In 1987, Professor David Kelly put forward this view: "The primary audience (for the drafter)
is not the judiciary. The judges are
breakdown experts. One should not design
a law, any more a car, primarily for breakdown experts. One should design it to
do its essential work, bearing in mind, of course, that breakdowns may
occur. If the draftsman pays attention
to that principle, he will use, as far as possible, the language understood by
the practitioners in the relevant field."
I think that is a rather interesting
observation that you do not need to write bills for judges to understand
because their job is to break them down and make them understandable. So you should just write them in plain,
simple language in the first place. I
think that is what this individual is saying.
Some members here might have read a very
interesting book called Plain Speaking by President Truman. I think if people have they would agree with
me that he indeed was a person who spoke very plainly. It is a fascinating book. If people have not read it, I would recommend
it to members. Some of the things that
he said have become common sayings in our society and in the English
language. I believe it was President
Truman who said, if you cannot stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, which is
a very easy aphorism that everybody can remember.
I do not intend to speak very long on this
bill. I think the bill commends
itself. I think it is self‑evident
that we need to make changes in our society that would benefit everyone, in
particular consumers, because we have a great many contracts that we enter into
as consumers that need to be written in plain and understandable language.
Government documents, all of us know that
government documents and statutes are often very difficult to understand,
similarly with regulations, and that they could be written in plain English and
much more understandable English. It
would make it easier for us as well as the public to understand.
I get a great many of my constituents
phoning me with the most basic of questions.
In fact, with many of them, they could probably answer themselves, but
they phone their MLA for help for a great variety of reasons.
I think this probably happens to those of
us who have constituents who are illiterate or constituents who have very
little education, depending on what constituency we represent. So it is
understandable that they should phone us.
Quite often, what they want is an
interpretation of a particular act or a particular statute, because they cannot
afford a lawyer, or they do not know that they could probably get five minutes
of free advice from most lawyers, and so they call us as MLAs.
Usually, it is fairly easy for someone
like myself to read a particular clause and give an interpretation that I think
in most cases will be accurate. But we
should not have to do that. We should
write things in plain language in the first place.
So I commend this bill to all honourable
members, and I hope that all three parties will be able to support it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Marcel Laurendeau
(St. Norbert): Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the
honourable member for Niakwa (Mr. Reimer), that debate be adjourned.
Motion agreed to.
* * *
Mr. Speaker: Is it the will of the House to call it six
o'clock?
Some Honourable Members: No.
Mr. Speaker: No, okay, moving right along then.
Are we proceeding with Bill 214? No?
Okay.
PROPOSED
RESOLUTIONS
Res. 43‑Proclamation
of Anti-Sniff Legislation
Mr. George Hickes (Point
Douglas): I move, seconded by the member for
WHEREAS alcohol and solvent abuse is a
particularly serious problem for young people, who often turn to these
substances to escape from the realities of hunger, poverty, abuse, broken homes
and prostitution; and
WHEREAS the seriousness of this problem
was recognized by all three parties in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba
with the passage of amendments to The Liquor Control Act, which regulated the
sale of cooking wines; and
WHEREAS the consumption of Lysol as an
intoxicant has reached epidemic proportions in some economically disadvantaged
areas of the city; and
WHEREAS this poses a serious health risk;
and
WHEREAS the seriousness of this problem
was recognized in 1989 with the passage of Bill 91, an amendment to The Public
Health Act which sought to restrict the sale of solvents and inhalants like
Lysol to young people; and
WHEREAS the Justice minister stated that
"we have to have legislation like this" when the bill was passed with
support on all sides of the House; and
WHEREAS the provincial government has
since refused to proclaim the bill into law‑‑
Point of
Order
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux
(Second Opposition House Leader): Mr.
Speaker, on a point of order. I would
ask maybe if there is a quorum inside the Chamber. I count nine, including yourself, at this time.
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. I would ask all members standing to please
stand so that the Clerk can count to verify whether or not there is a
quorum. All members will please
rise. All members will rise.
Mr. Clerk (William
Remnant): Mr. Laurendeau, Mr. Lamoureux, Ms. Wasylycia‑Leis,
Mr. Lathlin, Ms. Friesen, Ms. Barrett, Mr. Martindale, Mr. Hickes, the
Honourable Mr. Rocan.
Mr. Speaker: Due to the lack of a quorum, this House is
now adjourned and stands adjourned until 1:30 p.m. tomorrow (Wednesday).