Mr. Clif Evans (Interlake): Madam Speaker, I would like to make some comments today in the opportunity under my grievance on the situations and the conditions that we have in our province in rural and northern areas with respect to the way our highways are, the shape that our highways are in and the conditions that they have been in, with the lack of support from this government that we have seen over the past many years in cutbacks and taking down the maintenance program, decreasing the maintenance program, taking resources out of the department and not being able to provide a good sound and very important link in our rural areas and rural communities.
We have seen over the past few years the fact of the rail line abandonment that CN and CP has imposed not only on this province, Madam Speaker, but across this country. It is a situation that the rail lines and the railways have created for our country and have created a monster as far as the highways and the conditions of our municipal roads, our PRs, our main highways in this province. Highways are the real victims of rail line closure. But not only are the highways victims but also the people, the producers, the communities that are involved with rail line abandonment are also victims of this cutback of rail lines. Abandonment of rail lines has created an enormous concern, an enormous problem within our rural communities.
In 1989, when I was mayor of our community of Riverton, I was informed that the CP line from Gimli to Riverton was going to be abandoned and torn up and leave many, many producers without the availability to be able to bring their grain to Riverton and thus haul it out by rail--1989. What I have seen since 1989 is more abandonment, more need for upgrading our highways, which has not been happening, more communities at risk in losing not only business, more communities at risk in the fact that they cannot and do not have a good routing system to and from their communities because of the necessary evil that has been put on us in our communities, and that is an increase of truck traffic.
Madam Speaker, we see that to be able to do the necessary work, the necessary maintenance, the necessary upgrading of our road systems in rural Manitoba and in Manitoba as a whole, we will see horrendous costs to the communities, to the producers, to be able to undertake the necessary maintenance for municipal roads, highways. Main streets are all going to be affected and are being affected and have been affected for the many years since the two rail lines have decided that they are going to cut out the Riverton line. They are going to take away the Steep Rock line. They are taking away the Fisher Branch line. They are proposing, CP is proposing, by the year 2000 to abandon the main line going to Arborg. But we say there has to be some situation that this might be resolved. It cannot be resolved. We need a transit system, a highway system, a municipal roads system, a PR system that is going to work and function for the people of this province.
What we have seen is unco-operation by this government in seeing that occurring and happening in the future. We have seen this minister and this government put blinders on. We have seen this government not fight strongly enough to have the rail lines maintain their short lines in this province. We have seen an offloading in the department. We have seen offloading to municipalities for costs. We are seeing offloading when it comes to dust control, that is maintenance, so important.
I know in my constituency, and I am sure in members' across the way and my rural colleagues here, some of the calls that we get when it comes to our highways, provincial roads, truck traffic increased enormously in Fisher Branch. Why? Because in Fisher Branch, Manitoba Pool Elevators was able to provide the community with a first rate elevator on a highway that needs continuous upgrading and maintenance. Do we get that from this government? No, Madam Speaker. What I get is phone calls and letters stating that the dust is unbearable. But what has happened with that situation? This government, some five years ago, decided that they were going to cut the dust control program in the province of Manitoba, taking away $400,000 out of a program that when we see that when roads are not maintained and dust control needs to be put on these roads, they have to pay for it. They have to pay for it.
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Madam Speaker, in a lot of situations in my constituency, what we see, what we have is people who have allergies who live on these highways. Now they understand. They have chosen to live and homestead where they are, but what I am asserting to is the fact that with the rail line abandonment, with the decrease of maintenance on our highways by this provincial government, with the increase of traffic, heavy truck traffic, grain traffic, it has taken a toll on the people of Manitoba whose health also is at risk.
Now we might say in different situations, and we see this year the conditions of some of our highways has deteriorated enormously this year, and part of it is because of the weather this year. But getting back to the people whose lives are affected because of the lack of caring by this government for those people who are greatly affected by the dust because of the heavy traffic, because of the increase of traffic--I get inundated with calls and letters seeking some support in providing some sort of a maintenance package together so that they do not have to incur these costs, but not only incur the costs but incur the costs of the health care, taking care of their children who have asthma, with their families that there are asthma cases in. Those are parts of the situations that we have.
When we look to our road system and when we talk about trying to get some improvements done in certain areas, we see a government that has reduced not only the maintenance program but the capital program since the early '90s. Well and fine, they speak of how they are balancing the budget and how they are doing this and how they are doing that, but they are not providing the opportunity to be able to provide a system and a service that is so necessary. With the abandonment of our short rail line systems, even more of a situation has occurred, even more and greater of a need do we have.
On the rail line abandonment, some years ago Continental Lime in Steep Rock, a very big industry for the Interlake area and in the province, was using approximately 20 percent for product and coal to be brought to and leave their plant in Faulkner, 20 percent some years ago. Over a period of time, slowly but surely, CN was squeezing out Continental Lime's availability of being able to have the cars necessary to be able to rail out their finished product, rail in the coal that was so necessary and needed for firing their kilns at the plant--slowly but surely. We heard nothing when the rail line abandonment issue came up and was discussed. We heard nothing. I heard nothing from the Minister of Highways and Transportation. I heard nothing about what is going to happen to the increase of truck traffic, not only on the highway leading to Faulkner to the plant but also on Highway 6, which is a major, major thoroughfare which connects our south and our north. I heard nothing. Not at that time.
However, what did we finally hear? We finally heard under the urgency--and on this note, I compliment the minister's department for undertaking the initiative to listen to and at the request of the municipalities from Grahamdale south to the Perimeter requesting a meeting to discuss Highway 6 and how it was going to be affected by the increase of truck traffic.
The Faulkner plant now, with the rail line abandonment, has gone from 50 percent at this time last year using trucks to, of course, 100 percent. The line is gone; the rail line is gone. Not a whimper from over there. Nothing. We have raised the issue with the minister as to the importance, the importance of maintaining that Highway 6, upgrading, what effects are these trucks going to have on it, the safety. The Continental Lime people themselves have made issue with the fact that the feds--and with the fact that they need something to be done for the future for Highway 6.
So, Madam Speaker, I say to you, I say to this House, we need an improved highways program. We have to go and repair, make sure, upgrade, rebuild, do the things that are necessary, not only for rural Manitobans but throughout this province in urban centres, because that is our link now with each other, with communities, with larger centres, with other provinces, when it comes to transportation of goods and services or anything, now is truck traffic--a tremendous increase.
We see just today, a notice from the Manitoba Trucking Association about how much truck traffic will be increasing in Manitoba, is increased, will be increasing and they need and they say so in their study, and they say so in their notification that they need better highways. They need this province to increase its capital spending to support and to get some money from the Minister of Finance's (Mr. Stefanson) office so that we can increase and better our highway system in this province, not just to certain minister's houses or areas, but throughout this province--the Minister of Finance knows what I am talking about--but for the whole province. The Trucking Association supports it and we support it, and we have been after this government since they decided to cut these programs out, cut the maintenance cost down, the maintenance programs and resources, we want to see that being increased. We want to see our roads in a safe and equitable and in a condition that we can all work for and all work with. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Ms. Becky Barrett (Wellington): Madam Speaker, I rise today to use my grievance. Recently the National Council of Welfare put out its poverty profile of 1996. In that profile it says that in 1996, five years after the last recession, almost 5,200,000 Canadian children, women and men lived in poverty.
In 1989, the House of Commons resolved to eradicate child poverty by the year 2000. Only four years before that date, child poverty had risen in Canada to almost 21 percent, the highest rate in 17 years, the highest rate since 1979, and that includes the recession years of the early 1980s.
The 1996 poverty rate for couples under 65, without children, was 10.3 percent. So that means that a couple living together without children still has an almost 11 percent chance of being poor in Canada. However, if you are a single parent mother under the age of 65, with children under 18, 61.5 percent of you in Canada were poor. So, if you have children under 18, and you are a single parent, there are almost two-thirds of you going to be poor, whereas only just under 11 percent if you are a couple without children are going to be poor.
Not only are those statistics very disturbing, Madam Speaker, but the trend is disturbing. The total income of the poorest 20 percent of Canadians has dropped dramatically because of a combination of lower earnings and cuts to cash transfers from governments. This is a trend that is increasing, not only in Canada, but throughout the developed world where the gap between the rich and the poor is expanding rather than contracting.
I read a letter to the editor, actually in the Manchester Guardian Weekly, last week from a person in New Zealand. In New Zealand, it is interesting, Madam Speaker, because this current provincial government trots out New Zealand as a wonderful showcase for the kind of economic success story that they are trying to emulate. Well, the story in New Zealand is anything but successful. In the late 1970s, yes, New Zealand was alone among the developed countries in slowly narrowing the gap between rich and poor, almost alone. I think probably some of the Scandinavian countries and the Benelux countries were in that category as well. But, unlike the Scandinavian countries and the Benelux countries and other nations in Western Europe who have maintained at least a centre-right if not a centre-left government, the government in New Zealand, since the late 1970s, has gone more Thatcher than Thatcher. It has gone very, very far to the right. New Zealand now has the worst gap between rich and poor of any of the developed countries. Going from one of the best, 15, 20 years ago, to one of the worst.
Madam Speaker, I would say to you that the country of Canada, while not perhaps as overtly Thatcherite as some of the other countries, has, over the last 10 or 15 years of Conservative and now neoconservative-Liberal rule federally, shown that these statistics are truly alarming, and that they do come as a result of conscious decisions and choices made by governments. As the National Council on Welfare states: lower earnings for low-income Canadians and reduction in transfer payments, not to provinces from the national government necessarily, but cash transfers to low-income Canadian individuals and families--so those are choices that governments make that have had a detrimental and deleterious effect on the lowest income earners in our nation.
What are the implications of that for Manitoba? Well, Madam Speaker, the statistics for Manitoba are truly frightening. I am going to share some of them with the members this afternoon because I think they bear repeating.
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The child poverty rate for Manitoba is 25.4 percent, highest in the entire country. Over one in four Manitoba children lives below the poverty line, one in four. That is unbelievable in an economy that is supposed to be booming. Now, again, I said that it was about 60 percent of single parents, mostly mothers, with children under 18 nationally that live below the poverty line, but in Manitoba it is 10 points higher than that, 71.6 percent of single-parent mothers with children under 18. Those family units are poor. Almost three-quarters of those families are poor. We are second in the country there. We are less than half a point behind Newfoundland, Newfoundland which, since the time it joined Confederation, has been at or near the bottom of the socioeconomic scale due to a number of factors: its virtual total reliance on resource economy, et cetera, and its small size, a whole number of factors.
Manitoba used to pride itself on being in the middle or at the top end of social indicators. Well, we are now down with Newfoundland. We are less than half a point behind Newfoundland if you are a single parent with children under 18 living in poverty, almost three-quarters. That percentage, that number, translates into 69,000 children; 69,000 children live below the poverty line in the province of Manitoba.
Now those are children who likely will not get to the Manitoba Children's Museum because they cannot afford the price for their families to go. It used to be that schools would send kids to the Children's Museum on field trips, but since the Minister of Education and the Minister of Education before her and the Minister of Education before her cut money to the schools, have forced a higher reliance on property taxes, those schools, many of which are in the inner city of the city of Winnipeg, cannot do field trips like taking their kids to the Manitoba Children's Museum. They cannot do any field trips. They have had cutbacks to basic educational components. That is just one example of what happens to these 69,000 kids.
The members opposite, by and large, do not represent constituencies that have large numbers of poor kids in them. I am saying by and large because there is poverty throughout our province, but it is concentrated in pockets. Never mind pockets; the inner city of Winnipeg is an overcoat not just a pocket of poverty. It is an unbelievably difficult situation that families are facing themselves with.
There are 205,000 poor people in the province of Manitoba; 205,000 men, women and children in the province of Manitoba are poor. We are second only to Quebec in this statistic. This is an unbelievable commentary on the abilities or the choices that this government has made over the last 10 years it has been in power. In the context of those dismal, frightening, unconscionable statistics and the stories they represent, the human lives those statistics represent, what does the Minister of Finance (Mr. Stefanson) for the province of Manitoba have the temerity to say yesterday in the Sun?
Before I give you what the Minister of Finance said, I am just going to give another little bit of context to this whole issue. There are the statistics about poor families and poor children, but there are other elements to this picture that need rounding out. The province last year in 1997 posted the highest number of bankruptcies since the 1991 recession. Now the Minister of Finance has said for years now that we are out of the recession. The economy is steamrollering ahead. I think that was two throne speeches ago. So what is going on here? If we have a burgeoning steamrollering economy, and we have the highest number of bankruptcies since the depths of the last recession, something is wrong here.
Average wages fell for the third year in a row after inflation is taken into account in 1997. Average wages fell for a third year in a row, average wages, and you can imagine what that does to the people who are working for minimum wage and low wage. It is even worse, because you have to figure in average wages, average incomes, average money going into a person's pocket also includes, at least in some form of statistics, the kind of support, financial support that the people of Manitoba indirectly are paying to Mr. Tom Stefanson, among others, the head of Manitoba Telephone System, who, as a direct result of the privatization of Manitoba Telephone System, is now going to be a millionaire, while average wages in the province of Manitoba have fallen for three years in a row.
The province's minimum wage--and this minimum wage is terribly important because minimum wage is reflected in the poverty statistics. There is a huge correlation between what the minimum wage is, what the cost of living is, and what the poverty line is, and in Manitoba, the minimum wage has fallen below inflation by 12 percent in the last 10 years. If you are living at the poverty line to begin with and your minimum wage falls below that cost of living by 12 percent, you have nothing left, absolutely nothing left. As a result, Manitoba has posted the highest net population to other provinces in five years in 1997. Since the depths of the last recession, Manitoba has lost more people just last year, and a thousand of those people out-migrated not to the normally big booming economies of Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta but to Saskatchewan, a province that this government in Manitoba derides because of their NDP government. Well, a thousand Manitobans went to Saskatchewan last year. The job growth in this province has been largely in the low wage. Telemarketing represents three-quarters of all new jobs. Manufacturing produced less than 2,000 of the new jobs between 1996 and 1997.
In this context, Madam Speaker, what does the Minister of Finance (Mr. Stefanson) say? He says what is happening in our economy today is virtually almost all very positive. Tell that to the 205,000 poor Manitobans, to the 68,000 kids who are living with their mothers below the poverty line. More unconscionably, he says, even given those dreadful statistics on poverty, that Manitoba's positive economic news far outweighs any of the economic challenges by child poverty. It sounds like it is a little bump in the road, child poverty. Seventy-one percent of kids living in poverty, that is a bump in the road. That is an economic challenge.
No, Madam Speaker, that is not an economic challenge. That is a despicable indictment of the record of this government over the past 10 years. It is an indictment and a record that is going to come back to haunt this government, because it just is not people in the inner city of Winnipeg who find this government's plans and choices reprehensible. More and more, it is people throughout this province who say enough is enough. So, on behalf of the poor children and people in the province of Manitoba, we are on record as saying very soon enough will be enough.
Ms. Diane McGifford (Osborne): I, too, today rise on a grievance and join my colleague from the Interlake and my colleague from Wellington.
Madam Speaker, my particular concern today is this government's stance or policy or plan or lack of all these on hepatitis C. Certainly this side of the House feels, as far as really knowing where this government stands, we have been kept in the dark. I think it was on April 28, 1998, in the House of Commons, when there was a vote on hepatitis C compensation, a vote that was defeated 155 to 40, that the Minister of Health Allan Rock said that the file on hepatitis C was closed.
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Sometimes in this province, Madam Speaker, one wonders if our minister has opened the file on hepatitis C, or if he has opened it, he has opened it and he is the only one looking at it, because we simply cannot pin this minister down and find out exactly what his thoughts are, what his policies are, what his plans are and where we are going with compensation for victims of hepatitis C infected before 1986.
Madam Speaker, what I would like to do is just trace through the history of the concerns in this House on hepatitis C. I think that it will show, reveal, quite clearly what is bothering me. I would like to bring you back to December 11, 1987--pardon me, 1997. It was at this time that people--the ministers had not formulated a package at this time and people with hepatitis C were living in the communities without any compensation, without hope of compensation.
I know here in Manitoba they lobbied the minister, and I believe the minister at one time told one group of people that they could go to court. I gather that this government is rather fond of telling the citizens of Manitoba who want decent government, who want supports, who want the legislation to be respected, that if you do not like it, you can go to court. Well, in December 1997, this side of the House tabled a resolution to try and move talk on hepatitis C, and the resolution I am going to read into the record quickly: Be it resolved that the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba urge the provincial government to consider working with the federal government to develop in a timely manner a compensation program which includes primary and secondary victims and which does not compromise other social benefits and which assures access to care as well as fair and equitable benefits according to the severity of the disease including hepatitis C; and be it further resolved that this Assembly urge the provincial government to consider consulting with the organizations representing the victims of the disease and their families in working on this compensation package.
Madam Speaker, this particular resolution, as I say, was prepared in December. There were negotiations between the House leaders asking that we be able to debate this resolution immediately. The negotiations went nowhere because clearly members opposite did not want to talk about compensation for victims of hepatitis C. On the same day, December 11, 1997, I rose on a matter of urgent public importance and asked in my presentation that we have a debate in the House on compensation.
You, Madam Speaker, might remember ruling that indeed there was not a matter of urgent public importance, something that greatly distressed me. I believe your reasoning was that there was a resolution and we would debate it, and I never quite understood that logic because since this was No. 67 on the Resolutions list, we all know that the chances of ever debating this motion were simply really not there at all, so I did not quite understand that ruling but let that go.
Madam Speaker, I want to make the point that this side of the House has been consistent in its position with regard to hepatitis C. This side of the House has consistently said that we support compensation for all victims of hepatitis C. That was a position we took in December, 1997. Our Leader, the member for Concordia (Mr. Doer), reiterated that position when he was on the radio earlier this month.
When the House opened in March, we again began asking our questions on hepatitis C, and, again, this Minister of Health (Mr. Praznik) very cleverly danced around them, refused to answer them, did not ever really tell us what his position was.
Well, then on March 27, 1998, a compensation package was announced, a compensation package of $1.2 billion. I believe it was $800 million from the federal government, $300 million from the provinces and $100 million from the Red Cross. The problem with this package, of course, was that it was restricted to those who contracted hepatitis C after January 1, 1986, and, of course, one of the results of this was that there was a hue and cry from victims who had contracted hepatitis earlier, and that is advocacy that is continuing to this day, Madam Speaker.
On April 7, 1998, the debate on hepatitis C moved to Health Estimates, and we spoke for several days, and I want to point out that there was a very deliberate reason for moving to Health Estimates and discussing these issues. We believed that this was a way of keeping the issue nonpolitical, that it was something that we could talk about in a civilized way and in this forum, and we had some very interesting discussions at that point.
Well, Madam Speaker, on April 27 in the Health committee, we introduced a motion for a free vote, and I would like to put this motion on the record. The motion was: that this committee recommend that the Legislature and the House of Commons hold a free vote on whether to extend compensation to all victims who have contracted hepatitis C from contaminated blood.
Well, Madam Speaker, the tabling of this motion in the Health Estimates committee had produced some very interesting results. I think I remarked at that time that those members opposite who spoke about just about any subject under the sun other than the question of the free vote, most of them accepted as God's truth, written in stone, the date, January 1, 1986, but that is not the case. January 1, 1986, as a cutoff date, is arbitrary at best. This was the date that the test was first done in the U.S.; however, we know that there were tests much earlier. There was a test as early as 1982, a test which would have screened out 40 percent of all contaminated blood and would certainly have greatly reduced the numbers of people contaminated.
But, as I was saying, the members opposite did not really address the issue of compensation. They talked about everything else. Pardon me, they did address the issue of compensation; they did not address the issue of a free vote. The Minister of Justice, for example, ranted on and on about the Workers Compensation Board in Ontario and the massive debt that he claimed that the Workers Compensation Board had run up under the NDP government. My colleague for Crescentwood checked into this matter and found that indeed the minister had completely wrong information, and so my colleague corrected that information on the record.
Now I do not quite understand why this government would not support a free vote, would not allow us to come into this Chamber and vote according to our consciences. If the government has a position, if the government is convinced of its position, then I really do not see any reason whatsoever why they would not support this free vote. I know that the House of Commons was very roundly criticized by their refusal to hold a free vote. So I do not quite understand why the same thing happened here, why a government that would be critical of the House of Commons and Prime Minister Chretien would do the self-same thing here. It seems there are two sets of standards, Madam Speaker, one for Ottawa and one for the Chamber here in Manitoba. So, unfortunately, we did not have the opportunity to vote with our consciences in this Legislature. Perhaps we still can. We have not had that opportunity.
Now, Madam Speaker, the next thing that we did was on April 27. On April 27, we introduced another motion into the Health committee. That was the same day that our motion for a free vote was defeated. This motion was based on the National Assembly in Quebec's motion. If I can just read its RESOLVED: I now move that this committee recommend that the Legislature support the content of the motion adopted by the Quebec National Assembly, and further, that the Legislature urge the Minister of Health to contact the federal government and press for the existing compensation package for victims of tainted blood to be maintained and that an extension of the existing agreement be entered into which would provide compensation for all victims of hepatitis C injected by contaminated blood or blood products.
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Now, actually, Madam Speaker, the motion that was introduced into the committee on that day was slightly different. It did not include the word "maintained," and so for days and days and days, we had Tories coming to that committee room and talking on about, again, anything under the sun, sometimes talking about hepatitis C and compensation packages. Two days into the debate, we realized that their problem was us not having inserted the word "maintained." Now this is a simple matter that could have been taken care of between House leaders. We could have been tipped off that, well, we really like your motion except we really want to have the word "maintained" inserted into the motion. That did not matter because clearly members opposite were taking the opportunity to filibuster.
However, Madam Speaker, on May 1, there was a meeting, a telephone conference call between ministers of Health. On this date the provinces reiterated that they would only support a limited deal, the limited compensation package. On May 4, Ontario broke ranks and said that it was in favour of compensation for all victims of hepatitis C.
Now, Madam Speaker, I know that my time is soon running out, and I had many more other things that I wanted to say and put on the record. Unfortunately, I will not have the opportunity today, but I do want to conclude by saying that last week this minister went to Ottawa and, from what we heard in this House today, the only thing he did there was keep a bench warm, because he came back with no policy. There has been no progress, there has been no commitment, and members of this side of the House along with victims of hepatitis C are really sick and tired of his dancing and his vacillation.
We would like to know what his position is. He keeps telling us he would have a position if the federal government had a position. What is wrong with his taking a position, his taking a stance, his demonstrating some leadership? That is what we have been asking for. That is what we expect of our minister. That is what we expect of our Premier (Mr. Filmon). That is what those who are living with hepatitis C expect. They want conclusion. These people are ailing and very, very ill.
So, Madam Speaker, with those few words I will sit down.
Madam Speaker: Order, please. The honourable member for Dauphin (Mr. Struthers) has already utilized his grievance this session on April 8. The honourable member spoke on privatization of the MTS stock options. Each member is allowed one per session.