Hon. Glen Cummings (Minister of Natural Resources): Mr. Chairman, I have a few comments that I think should be put on the record. Traditionally I do not spend a lot of time in preamble, but in this department there is such a diversity of issues that perhaps it is useful to remind my critics and myself, for that matter, of the variety of activities that this department undertakes.
One that I think is probably not well understood, nor has it received the publicity it deserves, is that we now have a pilot project focusing on the east side of Lake Winnipeg to apply an ecosystem-based management approach of our resources. This calls for a more holistic approach to resource management to conserve biodiversity and the integrity of ecosystems while accounting for public values and needs. This, I think, is a very important addition to the work that this department does in preparing for licensing and other matters that occur when resource development is undertaken.
Hecla Island has been a longstanding issue over the years, and I am pleased to say that this past year we have undertaken an initiative there that gives ex-landowners an opportunity to lease one lot per family on previously settled lands of the heritage land use category, and 37 lots have been taken up under that initiative. Along with the north shore development which is occurring, and I do not have the number of lots that have been taken up there, but I think it is over half of those lots as well have been taken up or are on the verge of being taken up.
Manitoba has entered into an agreement with the Manitoba Wildlife Federation to see them administer and deliver the Hunter and Safety Firearm Training program. This partnership will see the Manitoba Wildlife Federation as a major player in molding our future hunters, and the hundred of dedicated instructors will continue to be backbone and strength of the Hunter and Firearm Safety Training program. This agreement comes into effect on April 1 of 1998 and came into effect then, and Resources will continue to support the program over the next 10 years with $380,000 of support and undoubtedly will be the subject of some questions by the opposition, given issues that they raised around this matter. But when we have the affected parties leading and, in fact, working with the new hunters coming into the system, I do not think the tariff and/or the expansion of the program is in any way unreasonable.
As far as park developments, we have a development review going on for Falcon, West Hawk Lake and the Asessippi region and consultants are presently working to provide advice on improvements in both areas beginning with a series of public meetings for input and taking it forward to where they will eventually provide us with advice.
Floodproofing, which may also be of interest to the opposition, we paid out $10 million in 1997-98 budget, this is provincial cost, so home and business floodproofing of $25 million, including ring dikes, $15 million.
The Dutch Elm Disease Control program, which in itself is not a big program, but attracts a lot of attention and is very important to a significant portion of the population in the city and in other parts of the province, received an additional $137,000 for cost sharing with towns and R.M.s.
R.M.s and towns such as Gladstone, Pembina, Ste. Rose, Teulon, Russell, Melita, Cartwright, Wawanesa, Glenboro, Rosser, McCreary and St. Andrews will be included in this program. The department will also address the DED infestation in Winnipeg buffer zone through parts of R.M.s in Ritchot, East St. Paul, West St. Paul and St. Clements, St. Andrews, Rosser, Macdonald, Tache and Springfield. This buffer zone is intended to reduce the disease pressure around Winnipeg and has been the subject of some controversy. I am pleased to report that that is now being addressed and particularly after the flood of '97 when infestation was, frankly, being spread. At the same time, we were quite unable to deal with additional work in the field because of the deep snow and, of course, the early water and high flood waters. The recent inspections of the buffer zone indicate that we must address the number of infected trees, and this will be a $400,000 additional program.
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Spruce budworm, we will be implementing the long-term spruce budworm strategy on the east side of Lake Winnipeg and in the Pine Falls Paper Company forest management licence, which will run about $900,000. Again, a program that needs to be put on track in protection of the long-term investment that we expect and the benefits we intend to reap from the better management of our forests.
In conjunction with the Department of Highways, we are refurbishing a network of roads in Birds Hill Provincial Park and providing some upgrades as part of the Pan Am event for triathlon, rollerblading and cycling events. We also, of course, will be hosting the equestrian activities for dressage, endurance, and jumping at Birds Hill.
In addition, the department has been refurbishing other parts of the park to accommodate not only the games, but also the anticipated campers and day users of the park during the games, which includes major improvements to the beach and the lakefront area, which have been undertaken over the last couple of years.
There is a new initiative in rural bridge replacement program this year, with a capital cost initiative of $1.5 million. Out of that, $1 million will go to the conservation districts for bridge replacement, half-a-million will be used for the department bridge replacement program. This is an additional half-a-million dollars into this area.
Park water and sewage improvements. In the '98-99 activities, we will see improvements in roads, sewer and water, and solid waste upgrading for parts of the Provincial Whiteshell Park, an area that again we are glad to now be able to put some capital investment in place because of the aging infrastructure. Campground reservation, which I know is a coveted interest on the part of my critic from Dauphin, will be interested to know the SR&J Customer Care Call Centre of Winnipeg have been awarded a contract to operate the park reservation service for the '98 camping season.
Central service for booking campsites and family vacation cabins at our parks was introduced last year because of an increased interest in camping by Manitobans and our visitors from out of province, as well. Reservation requests have tripled. As a result, the service will be expanded from 20 to 38 locations for the 1998 season. The reservation system will provide a better, more convenient service for vacation planning in our parks; allows our visitors to plan well ahead and book their campsites. It does put us, I believe, very firmly in a position where we can respond to the increased demand that we anticipate for the year of the Summer Games, plus it puts us in part of a modern network across North America, for the people outside of our boundaries can inexpensively, conveniently access a system that will put them in a place to reserve a stall, if you will, or a campsite and plan their vacations in a much more proactive and a much more accurate method.
I should point out--and I am going partly by memory on this issue, but it seems to me that we have already dealt with about equivalent to two-thirds of the number of reservations that we handled under the old system. So while we acknowledge some controversy and some concern when this was first implemented, I think even the member for Dauphin (Mr. Struthers) will want to applaud the high level of activity and the very positive outlook that this provides for our camping season. No, the Destinet comes from Mississauga, Ontario, not from the United States. I hope the member will want to put something on the record apologizing for saying that they were an American company because they, in fact, were a successful Canadian company that bought out an American opportunity, rather than the other way around.
We are looking forward to a very positive, and have spent some considerable time this past year developing a positive, working relationship with the Manitoba Wildlife Federation, and the Lodges & Outfitters Association. I hope to be able to continue in that vein, because the users and the people on the ground have to work closely and co-operatively with the department or any kind of opportunity for development or, if necessary, enforcement that occurs across the province will likely be less than successful, if we do not have the fullest co-operation of those who are involved in the end use or involved in the assisting us with the conservation of the resource in question.
Mr. Chairman, I will leave my comments there.
Mr. Chairperson: We thank the minister for those comments. Does the official opposition critic, the honourable member for Dauphin have an opening comment?
Mr. Stan Struthers (Dauphin): Mr. Chair, I appreciate the comments put on the record by the minister, and thank him for flagging some of the issues that have been prevalent this past year in the Department of Natural Resources.
Many things have happened since the last time we sat here in the Legislature and talked about Natural Resources Estimates, many things that I think are good, many things that are not so good, and I am looking forward to discussing all those issues with the minister over the next period of time as we discuss and debate some of the issues involved in running a department such as the Department of Natural Resources.
Let me be clear, Mr. Chair, this is one department that is very interesting. This is a department that has quite a broad spectrum of issues that need to be dealt with on behalf of Manitobans. It is far reaching. It has implications in every corner of our province. The issues that officials in the Department of Natural Resources deal with on a day-to-day basis are issues that are very important to Manitobans no matter where you live. You can live in the middle of the city of Winnipeg and still end up in the middle of a Natural Resources issue. Dutch elm disease is one that comes to mind. It is not a department in which you can be confined in any way.
I think that is what makes this department so exciting to be associated with, and even though I am the critic, I am on the opposition side of the House, I want to state unequivocally that I am very impressed. Anytime I have contact, looking for information, looking for assistance of some kind with people within the department, I am never disappointed in their willingness to co-operate to make sure that all sides of an issue are discussed, that we are not dealing on the basis of misinformation or lack of information or lack of knowledge or lack of expertise. But it has been my experience, not just in the past year, but in the three years in which I have been the critic of Natural Resources, that people within the department who work for Natural Resources have been very helpful and deserve to have their credit that is due to them expressed by myself and by others. I am sure the minister takes every opportunity that he can as well to make sure that the people within his department know that they are doing a good, professional job in helping us as MLAs do our job better as well.
As I said, a lot of things have happened in Natural Resources since last year at this time, since last year's Estimates. Probably the biggest event is the flood of the century. In 1997, we saw unprecedented levels of water flowing through the Red River Valley, at some points not flowing quick enough as it backed up and formed what became known as the Red Sea. This was a very major event in the history of our province.
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Again, I want to take a minute or two to congratulate those people who worked some pretty late nights, some pretty long hours, including people right here in the Legislature who got involved in the flood-fighting effort that Manitobans took on at this time last year, people within the Department of Natural Resources and other government departments who worked together to try to help Manitobans who had gotten hit by this flood. People at the R.M. level and town council level in all the communities that were affected by the flood deserve to be patted on the back for the work that they did at that time, the citizens themselves forever being vigilant and monitoring their own situations and helping their neighbours out when their neighbours needed a hand.
Mr. Chair, it was my hope at the time that that kind of co-operative attitude, neighbour-helping-neighbour kind of approach, would be continued not just when the flood was at its crest and as we sandbagged together to try to salvage what Mother Nature was ravaging, it was my hope that that kind of approach would be carried out right through the whole life of this flood which was a lot longer than just the period of time of the water being high. That, of course, was the most pressing, the most dangerous period, but we all had and still have a responsibility to those people in the flood area who got negatively affected by Mother Nature, by the high levels of the water.
In some cases, and I say this openly, there were good examples of people within Natural Resources and Government Services who tried their best to help people once the waters had receded. However, in other cases, there are still many people who approach us on this side of the House to talk about having spent the winter outside of their homes, still looking for compensation, still asking questions about floodproofing. So even though the flood has subsided for just over a year now, there are still issues that we need to be dealing with in terms of the flood of 1997. I look forward over the next little while to hear some more comments from the minister in terms of the flood of '97 and floodproofing and the kind of ideas that we can come up with to prevent and mitigate a disaster of this magnitude again in the future.
Another example of something that has changed, which I think is a pretty major step, from the last time we met in Estimates was the decision by this government to issue sidearms for Natural Resources Officers, an issue I know that the NROs have been lobbying for for quite some time and other groups have been a little nervous about for quite some time. But, however, the decision was made, and I think it is an issue which some time needs to be spent with here in the Natural Resources Estimates.
A number of wildlife issues as well have been ongoing over the last year. Certainly the most controversial, I suspect, would be the continuation of the capture of wild elk for purposes of ranching. That, I would think, along with many other wildlife issues will be discussed here over the next period of time as well.
The minister touched briefly on Manitoba parks, our provincial parks. Certainly an area in Manitoba which is absolutely integral to overall tourist strategy for Manitoba is our provincial parks. I think we have a lot of beautiful, natural areas that we need to be showcasing for people, not just within Manitoba, but I would like to see a strategy for promoting our parks outside of Manitoba along with a co-operative approach with the federal government, since there are federal interests in Manitoba. I know just in my own area there are almost half a million people a year that come into Riding Mountain National Park. I think this is a great area of opportunity for those communities surrounding Riding Mountain National Park to work in a co-operative way with both the province and the federal government in terms of economic development.
There are, as the minister pointed out, some controversial decisions made this year concerning the reservation system for campsites. I am hopeful that what the minister says about SR&J, the company they have hired to take park reservation systems, I hope actually that the minister is right. I hope that finally, once and for all, the confusion that has been surrounding this whole area is cleared away. I want to point out that the statement that he made here just a few minutes ago sounded a lot like the statement he made when we first got into the whole Destinet argument a year ago. So that I am sure will cause a little bit of discussion here in Estimates.
Another issue I think that we need to be discussing here in Estimates is forestry. The forest industry in Manitoba is key to our economic growth as a province. I think that what the minister must keep uppermost in his mind is that the forestry agreements have to also reflect the word "sustainability." It is not wise to move on forestry agreements that somehow restrict our ability as a province to grow economically in the future simply for the sake of making a quick buck cutting trees down in Manitoba. So there will be some discussion in terms of forestry as well.
Another area that always is uppermost in people's minds in terms of maintaining a way of life and maintaining another industry in our province deals with fisheries. It was my privilege to attend meetings of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Department of Fisheries and Oceans, a committee that listened to people in The Pas, Grand Rapids, Gimli, and Selkirk while they were in Manitoba. This committee, I think in its wisdom, is looking at our inland fisheries.
It was not too many years ago that I remember attending a convention in Halifax. One of the sessions for the morning had to deal with Canada's fishing industry. You heard from a lot of people from the Maritimes and you heard from a lot of people from British Columbia. When I put my hand up to contribute to the conversation, I think there were people looking at me and thinking: what is the prairie gopher from Manitoba going to be able to contribute to this discussion?
So I gave them, as well as I could, a description of the inland fishery in Manitoba. I tried to give them a little bit of a history of the importance of this industry to our province, and I think there were people who were quite surprised at the extent to which fishing is important to our province here right in the middle of not only the country but the whole continent.
So I am glad that the federal committee came to Manitoba to hear from fishermen and from other people about concerns regarding the fishing industry. It is my hope that their recommendations reflect what fishermen and others had told them here in Manitoba. It is also my hope that the minister in the federal government responsible for Canada's fishing industry will take seriously the recommendations that this committee will make. It is also my hope that the provincial government here in Manitoba will lobby the federal minister to take seriously the recommendations that will eventually come out of the hearings that took place here in the province of Manitoba.
So I look forward to some discussion on some of the areas that I think were found that were in common from The Pas to Grand Rapids to Gimli to Selkirk. There were areas I think that we can work towards that all four sites for these--and Winnipeg, they also heard the people in the city of Winnipeg as well, but I think there was lots of common area that the federal government and this provincial government can move on quickly that would help out our fishing industry, and I look forward to a discussion on that.
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Other than that, Mr. Chairperson, I just welcome the opportunity to partake in the Estimates again this year and look forward to the information that the minister and his staff will provide me. With that, we can discuss Estimates for Natural Resources.
Mr. Chairperson: We thank the critic from the official opposition for his remarks. I would remind members of the committee that debate on the Minister's Salary item, 12.1.(a), is deferred until all other items on the Estimates of this department are passed.
At this time we invite the minister's staff to take their place in the Chamber. If the minister is ready, would he like to introduce his staff present at this time?
Mr. Cummings: Mr. Chairman, I have Deputy Minister Dave Tomasson and Director of Finances Bill Podolsky with me today, and given the comments from the member for Dauphin (Mr. Struthers)--I distinctly heard him say that if the minister did not get a raise that certainly the administration should.
Mr. Chairperson: The item before the committee is item 12.1 Administration and Finance (b) Executive Support (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $398,500.
Mr. Struthers: I think this might be an appropriate line upon which to ask a few questions having to do with the Schedule 5 on page 11 of the Estimates book that I have received from the minister.
Mr. Cummings: Yes.
Mr. Struthers: I am looking at Regional Operations 12.2, and I am noticing some changes in full-time equivalents. I thought it might be good just, instead of wading through line by line, to do all of these at once and clump it up that way. It might be easier to handle in the Estimates procedure. The Eastern Region looks to me like it has been decreased by two full-time equivalents, and I am wondering if there is an explanation, if there is a good reason for that, or should I be concerned?
Mr. Cummings: If the member is looking for an explanation of the two staff years, we will have some further justification for that in a moment, but he would probably acknowledge that overall we have pretty much maintained staff years and increased slightly in most areas. This pretty much reflects the fact that the department has received similar funding to previous years. I do not think we would ever say that we are overstaffed. Certainly our regional staff that I have been associated with are very busy and have a multitude of issues that they have to deal with.
Now, the Eastern Region, there might be some explanation that I can provide for the background on that. The detail of that particular issue is that we did transfer in one staff member and some appropriate funding dollars into central so that that particular individual could perform a wider range of duties related to Parks promotions.
Mr. Struthers: Mr. Chairperson, so it looks to me like about a 1.9, almost two full-time equivalent lost to Eastern Region. One person has been transferred to the Central Region. That still leaves--I think what I am getting at is the minister maybe answered half of the question. I would like to know why the Eastern Region is down that many.
Mr. Cummings: As well, the other number that the member is referring to, we would be looking at what would have been a term position, and those dollars are being redirected into operations.
A further explanation of the transfer of that one staff year, that person is still available, only on a broader basis. Using the knowledge and the background that person has of Parks promotions, it was a made-to-measure type of transfer, one which I fully support.
Mr. Struthers: Okay, I understand the reasoning when the minister says that it is a broad position, the promotion of parks. It makes sense to me that it does not necessarily have to be located within the Eastern Region. The reason why I was concerned, when I originally went through the figures provided here in Schedule 5, was that there are a lot of things happening in the Eastern Region. The minister has acknowledged that all the regions are very busy, and I would concur with him on that.
The people that I talk to in the eastern region of our province are talking about a lot of things happening in that part of the province, and I was originally concerned that if there are a lot of things happening in the Eastern Region, then it seemed to be almost two fewer people to handle the workload that is there.
Are there any plans that the minister has, or the department has, to get the full-time equivalent number back up? In other words, is he considering adding two more people to the Eastern Region to make up for the difference of having two people leave the Eastern Region, or does he see that there is not a need for that to happen? Can the Eastern Region continue to do the same work with the full-time equivalents that are listed here?
Mr. Cummings: Well, Mr. Chairman, interestingly enough, the position which the member is asking about specifically was actually central. By the way, I did not mean Central Region. I meant into head office in Winnipeg, not Central Region. That is actually where the position came from a while ago and was since moved back in there.
Mr. Edward Helwer, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair
The bigger picture, of course, we always want to make sure that we operate as efficiently as possible. In this department, as many others, there is probably a judgment that has to be made eventually as to how thin personnel can be spread, how competently the job is being administered or performed on the ground. I find a very high level of professionalism among our people in the department. The willingness to go the extra mile is quite evident.
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I will touch, at some future point before we are done in response to the member's comments, about the willingness of Natural Resources' people to jump to the pump, as it were, in relationship to the flood but, in terms of regional operations, I am sure that he would not want us to reduce the Western Region because, even there, there is a lot of territory to cover, even though there is not as much park activity as you see in the east.
But I would suggest that the number of complaints coming out of the Eastern Region has not risen or is not unreasonable. That is not the only way or not necessarily any way to judge performance, except that an awful lot of the parks issues are a matter of one-on-one communications sometimes. That is only part of their job, I know. But it is a part that can generate an awful lot of activity, if it is not handled carefully. My observations are that the departmental people responsible in that area have done a good job of minimizing issues that they are not able to mediate right within their region. But obviously all of the regions and all of the staff in these areas are fully employed.
Mr. Struthers: I thank the minister for correcting the error which I suppose I made. Maybe the older I get, the worse my hearing becomes. I am glad he straightened me out with the transfer from Eastern to Central Region. I did not mean to get the people in Central Region all excited about getting a new staff person in there inadvertently. What I do not see reflected here, though, is if the person was transferred from the Eastern Region to the Central Office or, I suppose, that is Headquarters Operations in line 12.2 under Regional Operations. I do not see the corresponding increase in that line in schedule 5, unless there has been another full-time equivalent lost on that line to allow for this transfer to take place. Unless again I am not reading that properly, but maybe the minister can straighten me out on that one as well.
Mr. Cummings: I guess that is the problem with getting into this particular type of detail because sometimes it is a matter of semantics. We did not lose the individual but the term position, as I indicated. The position that that individual was in, the equivalent of those dollars was put into operations in that region and, as I understand, the mathematics of it, the individual filled a vacant position but with a different set of responsibilities. That is one thing that I have, a different set of responsibilities, from what the position he filled previously, exercised because that is the other thing that happens today in government.
The member has heard me say this before, I think probably in Lake Dauphin advisory board meetings and other places, that government and government administrators today have to be nimble in terms to get the job done with a most efficient and probably, in many cases, minimal flexibility to deal with what no one would deny have been tough fiscal measures that we have imposed on ourselves over the last number of years. That means that there are times when you have to decide what is the priority that you want to get done, as opposed to other functions that you want to do but maybe are not as high on the priority list. Sometimes those decisions result in this type of a change, where we made a priority out of looking at, in this case, this individual being very knowledgable and excellent at putting his best foot forward for Parks and the issues surrounding it, that they could communicate that appropriately both within the department and without.
Let us be open about it. There is certainly nothing--I am not reticent about responding to the question at all. The individual who was in this position was also the one who has been our lead spokesman this year on Parks activities and is doing an excellent job in that respect.
Mr. Struthers: Line (g) talks about the Fire Program, and I notice that there is one full-time equivalent increase in the Fire Program, which I do not mind seeing. I think that we have seen in the past there is a lot of work for people in the Fire Program to be doing. Hopefully this year there is not an overabundance of work to be done by our fire crews and people associated with the Natural Resources Fire Program. If it is along the terms of preventing forest fires in the first place, that is a good thing. If it is in terms of having to fight a whole bunch of fires that are dangerous to people and result in the loss of significant numbers of timber, then that is a whole other ball game.
So I would like the minister to maybe indicate what type of position has been increased under the Fire Program, and if he can, the responsibilities that a new position within the Fire Program may have. It would give him an opportunity--this is one of those cases, Mr. Chair, that instead of me complaining about losing positions in a region, I want to give the minister a chance to tell about an increase in a program, so I think that may be a good thing for the minister to stand and talk about.
Mr. Cummings: The number of things that perhaps do not entirely show up on this line because--and I will explain in a minute or so the relationship between ourselves and Government Services. Let me deal with the one full-time equivalent salary dollars. We actually have three people in that staff year. We have enough time for an air attack supervisor, and we get two 44-week bird-dog officers. We also have, in this area, increased expenditures for fixed cost for two additional water bombers. When the member referenced whether or not we are preventing fires or whether we are fighting fires, this is, I suppose, an example of where not only within the department do we have to make priorities, we have to make those priorities against other major expenditures in government, because this was the year that we were able to purchase, at a very advantageous price, two water bombers from Quebec. Those are now part of the fleet.
This, with all of the pressures on health, education and social services for additional expenditures, which are made on a daily basis in this House, I hope the member for Dauphin (Mr. Struthers) will want to provide some credit for the balance that has to be brought to government expenditures under these times when there is a solid tax base. But you cannot start spending like drunken sailors because you have reached a different revenue status for the province, as opposed to 1990, '88, '89, '90 when very serious financial circumstances forced decisions on the government at that time.
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So bringing on two additional water bombers, some additional fixed costs for them and for the staff years, the costs of running them will show up as part of the--they are Government Services recovered from Natural Resources, however, and that money, frankly, is in support of the concept that the Department of Natural Resources has been putting into place on an increasing basis the last few years and that is to put an increasingly higher priority on our capability of responding to fire outbreaks.
I do not see that so much as fighting fires as I do see it preventing fires because the quicker we arrive on the scene where there has been a lightning strike or something of that nature, provided the entire forest is not tinder dry, it allows us to knock down those fires before they become significant. The water bombers are an important part of that response, also the fact that over the last couple of years we have had an early man up and more significant man up by the initial attack crews so that they can respond in the manner that I have just referred to on a more timely basis.
As we sell more and more of the opportunity to harvest forest in this province, we have to make sure that we protect the investment that we have in the forests. The spruce budworm program of three-quarters-of-a-million dollars or more that I indicated earlier is a significant part of that because you want to be protecting the harvestable forest before it becomes damaged, and particularly if it is in an area that you do not have road access to now but may in 10 years foresee harvesting opportunity in there, things like early attack into areas that a few years ago might not have been so well protected and particularly up the east side, the two water bombers gives us additional protection there, additional response capability.
But it is all part of an overall response to the fire prevention, fire elimination, if you will. Obviously education, all those other things, are part of fire prevention, but this is very much part of an early response so that the losses are kept to a minimum. As a matter of fact, last year I think was an outstanding year even though there were some significant fire possibilities in some of our harvestable cutting areas. We were able, with the early man up, as the department refers to it, to respond and keep those to a minimum of losses. Last year was in fact a pretty good year in that respect.
Mr. Struthers: I appreciate the minister putting into context the spending that Natural Resources did with the additional two water bombers. I want to suggest to him though that not many people accuse this government of spending like drunken sailors. Most people accuse this government of not spending, period. I, for one, do not for one minute suggest that he start spending like a drunken sailor. What I suggest to the minister is that he did a pretty good job just now of showing how some smart spending can save us some money down the road in terms of fire prevention.
I am looking at the overall full-time equivalent numbers for the Department of Natural Resources on page 13, Schedule 5, and I note that overall we have gone from $1,115.09 down to $1,103.85, a loss of about 11.5. So far we have talked about two of those full-time equivalents going down in the Eastern Region and one going up in the Fire Program for a net loss of one so far.
Then we get into the Parks and Natural Areas, line (4) Park Operations and Maintenance, and we see that there is a loss of over 10 full-time equivalents in the area of Parks Operations and Maintenance.
Over the course of the last couple of years, the last couple of Estimates that we have been through, the minister has been fairly clear in stating that one of the reasons why we have all these increases in park fees, one of the reasons why we are charging people an entrance fee into our parks, one of the reasons we now charge seniors in parks, one park fee after another has been tacked onto people wanting to enjoy our parks in this province, the minister has always maintained that that revenue would be plowed back into our parks in maintenance, in the construction of new things for our parks.
Mr. Chairperson in the Chair
So I was quite surprised, given the statements that the minister has made in the past, to realize that 10 full-time equivalents have been taken out of Park Operations and Maintenance. I would like the minister to explain to me where those positions have come from, what those positions were doing before they were lost from this schedule that is before me, what the overall effect this is going to have on the maintenance and operations of our parks.
Mr. Cummings: Again, I guess I will have to take a little bit of time to explain what the concept was here. Certainly I am quite prepared now and any other time to defend the fact that as much as possible the dollars that we are seeking in revenue are being used to make sure that the province and the users in particular are getting their money's worth out of parks.
The fact is that we transferred that salary money into operations to provide funding for beach safety programs at Winnipeg and Birds Hill Park were two areas where the additional dollars were spent. That in itself is a troublesome issue. We do need to have safety patrols in my view. On the other hand, we know the Markesteyn report from the original inquests that have occurred historically as a result of accidents that occurred within our system.
Of course, the concern is that people think there are lifeguarding duties or lifeguards on hand that will protect everyone who might be on that beach from any potential drowning. In fact, it is virtually an impossibility to guarantee that, and that was pointed out in that inquiry as I recall. So it is with some considerable care and caution that we invest in this area, but reminding people that beach safety is very important and that the ability to warn people when they are getting themselves into untenable or unsafe situations, at the same time without giving them undue comfort if you will, or inappropriate comfort, that somehow this is a lifeguarding service, the same as it would be at the local town pool where you have crystal clear waters, and you have the ability to limit the number of people who may go into the water.
There are very strict rules about the relationship between the number of guards to the number of people in the pool. There is an ability to, on the sounding of a signal, tell people to clear the pool and make sure that there is not someone who is in trouble in the pool. So people come from that environment to a natural environment of a beach, and if they do not change their thinking from that environment that I just describe to that of a beach environment where, in fact, physically it is pretty near impossible to provide that type of a safety assurance, No. 1; and No. 2, where we do have, however, a need to put safety programs on people who will do some enforcement on the beaches in place. That is the nature of the expenditure that is going in there.
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I just wanted to add that caveat because again that is very critical that that be seen in that light and not as an attempt to restore lifeguarding capability to our beaches. It is, by experience and by what I hope was learned from that Markesteyn report, that this is an area where we have to be very careful about how we educate the public in the manner of how they view it. Some of that money will also go toward the new Spruce Woods Visitor Centre and to cover some increased operating costs.
So while the number of employees is down somewhat, some of those numbers will not be the same people probably, but numbers will still be employed, obviously, in the areas that I just referenced, where those dollars will be redirected in the interpretative centre and in the beach safety areas. I do not know if you can say it is an exact trade-off, but certainly the numbers of people employed are probably similar, although they will have different skill sets.
Mr. Struthers: Well, of course, Mr. Chair, the Markesteyn report is something that is important and something that should form the basis of decision making when it comes to beach patrols and beach safety, and I agree with many of things that the minister has been saying about not confusing those two responsibilities with a full-fledged lifeguard that would be sitting on a chair at the McCreary Pool. I understand the difference.
I must say that any move that this government can make to improving safety at our beaches is going to get the support of this side of the House. However, I still notice that the drop in the total full-time equivalents for the entire Department of Natural Resources is still pretty much equivalent to the drop along the line entitled Park Operations and Maintenance. So I do not know if the minister was trying to tell me that those positions have simply been moved, which would indicate to me that the drop would not be seen on the bottom line for full-time equivalents in the entire Natural Resources department. It seems to me that that full-time equivalent would not drop at the bottom. Maybe I am not following this, but maybe the minister could help me out with that.
Mr. Cummings: We have about 700 part-time employees who are hired during the summer. Those are seasonal. They are three to four months, the amount of time that they are employed. I am pointing out that the equivalent salary dollars that are here, these dollars are switched into Operations, but the bodies do not show up as numbers in hiring because they are brought in under contract for different purposes.
I am not trying to play a shell game on the number of people, but this number that is here in terms of total full-time equivalents is in itself very deceiving because most of those would have three people in one staff year. Some of them will have different numbers. So it is not a shell game. It is a reality of the seasonality of the work in Parks and how you best manage those dollars. Sometimes you bring in a crew; sometimes you contract. For example, the lifeguarding is contracted so the numbers would not show up, frankly, but the expenditure still shows up.
Mr. Struthers: Of course, Mr. Chair, the bottom line is whether the work is getting done or not, which leads me to ask the question of the minister, what is not being done now under Parks Operations and Maintenance that was being done last year before the 10 full-time equivalent positions were moved out of that area of the Department of Natural Resources? Is the work still being done but by other people, or is there something that Parks Operations and Maintenance is not doing now that they did last year?
Mr. Cummings: Well, I do not want this answer to appear to be a smart-aleck response because it is not intended that way, but it is like when the member opposite was teaching school and he had a basketball team or a volleyball team that needed to take on a bigger challenge, and that is frankly what we--there is nothing in Parks that we have specifically said shall not be done this year. We are expecting the work to be done as efficiently as possible. You may have to do double time in some areas and prioritize a little bit of the work within the various operations, but we are not intending to back away from the work that is being done.
We do look for opportunities to contract. There have been some small wayside parks over the last few years that we have farmed out, contracted out or leased for private interest. The member for Swan River (Ms. Wowchuk), that should bring a smile to her face because now undoubtedly she will want to talk to me about one of her favourite local watering holes, but the fact is that the department tells me they are not anticipating that there is a list of projects that will not be done.
But there is another point that we passed over very quickly, and that is in relationship to the overall Parks budget and whether or not people are getting their money's worth out of Parks. Let us remember that there are, in Capital Expenditures, big chunks of money that have to be spent.
Falcon Lake is a good example where the lagoon has been--as Minister of Environment, I think for seven years I have been telling the minister of parks that he needed to be looking at the lagoon in Falcon Lake. It is ironic that I now have the opportunity to actually do something about it, but that is, in fact, in our budget to upgrade that. If you look at Falcon Lake, if the member is familiar with it at all, it is becoming an aged facility, there and West Hawk. They have a certain 1950 charm to them but, after a while, some of that infrastructure needs to be upgraded and approved. That is the kind of area where you can drop a million bucks and you really do not see what you have done for it, to tell you the truth.
So, that is in terms of if you were to drive into the town, let me put it that way, the first place you visit is not the lagoon when you are on your holidays. So that is the kind of expenditure that also, frankly, needs to be addressed, and that is one of the areas that we are struggling with, there and in a few other parks as well.
Mr. Struthers: The minister is partly right when he talks about my background in teaching and coaching. Being somebody who has coached in little, small schools taking on bigger schools, sometimes you do ask your team to do more with the energy that they have left. But I also, Mr. Chair, know that you cannot field the volleyball team with three people. You have to have certain minimums. You have to have a certain number of people out on the floor to do the job. So my concern, if the minister can convince this House, can convince me that people within Parks Operations and Maintenance can do more with the same number of people and if he can get that kind of efficiency, that is fine.
But my worry is that if we lose 10 full-time equivalents this year, lost some in years past, if we lose some more the next year, I think the minister can understand that there would be a concern that there are not enough people to do the same amount of work every year. No matter how professional and how good the workers and people working within Parks are, if you go down to a certain level, the job will not get done. So that is the concern that I have there.
Then, as I have stated, I was a little bit surprised to see that these full-time equivalents were coming out of a line which the minister has claimed would not suffer, an area in which the minister was actually rationalizing the increases in fees that have taken place over the last several years by this government, an area that we have gotten many calls on with confusion from everything from reserving of sites to confusion in general park maintenance and operations. So I was a little bit surprised to see full-time equivalents being decreased in that particular area of Natural Resources. I would like to know what part of Parks and Operations is not going to happen this year as a result of a loss of 10 full-time equivalents?
Mr. Cummings: Mr. Chairman, the member dwells on one line and believes that he can build a case. We are talking, as I said, almost 700 staff years on a part-time basis. You can manage around those 10 staff years simply by the number of weeks that certain employees--you might still have the same number of employees. You might manage the number of weeks differently in the end. Now that may be less in terms of dollars, but if we are looking at the same line, I think you are going to find that the Operations and Maintenance and in fact the dollars are slightly higher year over year, the dollars themselves. When this is linked back to whether or not are we refurbishing our parks as best we can, considering that we are charging more for entrance fees and user fees within the system, the answer is yes.
Remember, however, this department is also supported significantly from general revenue. While some of the dollars go directly into activities of this department such as in the parks, when we look at the fact that we are spending $1.5 million on parks capital this year, including refurbishing the lagoon at Falcon, then you have to acknowledge that we are beginning to put some of those significant dollars back into the park system. You could always argue that it is not enough. You could argue that we put more, but we also have a million and a half or more going into waterways and those sorts of initiatives. So parks is part of the bigger picture. But in the end, parks have not been shortchanged. Parks have in fact received some significant expenditures, even though some of those dollars do not show up here under Operations and Maintenance. These are branch responsibilities that the member is looking at.
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Mr. Struthers: Since we were talking a bit about parks and operations and maintenance, given some of the discussions we have had last year, particularly last year during Estimates, we had an extensive discussion on the revenues that are being brought in through fees, implemented by this department, and trying to figure out just where those fees are going once they are collected. At that time I had maintained that $1.6 million was being brought in through the revenues. It was $1.6 million in fees that this department was levying against people who are using our parks. At that time only $300 million of that was going back into the parks.
An Honourable Member: $300,000.
Mr. Struthers: Sorry, $300,000, exactly. Let me start that again since I goofed it up. The contention at the time that I made was that $1.6 million was being raised in revenue by the Department of Natural Resources and only $300,000 were being put back into the operations and maintenance of parks.
At the time, the minister was telling me that there would be construction going on, improvements to our parks, new outhouses being built and picnic tables being built. On and on goes the list. I am hopeful that the minister can, today, show me some figures, can convince me again that there is significant money going back into provincial parks from the fees that are being collected by this government.
This is not just one MLA, one Natural Resources critic wanting the answer to this question. There are a lot of people who believe that if we are going to have provincial parks that are worth anything to Manitobans and to tourists, we do have to put money into them. Nobody is going to argue with that. It has always been my contention that if you want something decent, you pay for it. I applaud every time this minister announces more money going into a certain park here or there across our province. I think that is a good thing.
But what I want the minister to do is to show to me that there is a significant portion of the fee revenue going back into our parks. He maintained last year at this time in Estimates that it is a very tricky question, a very hard question to answer, because the money originally goes back into general revenue and then is disbursed from there. But I contend that people who use our parks want to be assured that that fee they are paying when they enter the park is going back into the parks, and not going back just into the general revenue of the government for the government to spend wherever it likes. I think people want to have that assurance so I am hoping that the minister will be able to present a case, this time around, that would convince people that these fees are in fact going back into our parks.
Also, the minister might be able to indicate what percent of the revenue is going into parks and what percent of the revenue is going into general revenues. I just want to point out that it has been done with the hunting fees where the minister was clear. He said that half would go into general revenue, half of the fee that the hunter pays, and that the other half of that revenue would be going right back into maintaining habitat for animals that we hunt. I think the hunting community was quite glad to hear that explanation. I think they agreed that they should be paying for part of that through their fees and that made it a lot easier for people to accept that particular fee increase. I am hoping he can do the same with the park fees today.
Mr. Cummings: Well, if the member wishes to continue to pursue this line of thinking then we are going to have a long philosophical wrangle because less than an hour--well, about two hours--ago in Question Period, members of his side of the House, his colleagues, were up hassling the government about its expenditure in the social services, increase the expenditures there.
I think almost on a daily basis in the last couple of weeks they have been up raising Cain about whether or not there has been enough money put aside in health care. From time to time, in my own mind, I accuse them of believing that the only thing that is wrong with health care is that it needs more dollars. Frankly, that is probably not a debate we need to have in Natural Resources Estimates, but it does raise the issue about whether or not Natural Resources has anything to contribute to the overall well-being of the citizens in this province, and whether the revenues Natural Resources takes in are only the revenues of the Department of Natural Resources, or is there a reason to believe that we have to contribute to part of the overall process of government and the cost of government and the services to the public in this province.
Services--we can focus on services within parks, and I believe I can defend the amount of money that is spent on our parks. We could spend more, but we could, however, look at the fact that once you get past the gate fees, we have increased enormously the user fees within our parks for those who cottage--enormously, compared to what they were a few years ago. The member gets a grin on his face. I suppose he is going to quote me in the Dauphin Herald saying: the minister acknowledges park fees have gone up enormously. He better not, because the answer is that we are looking at a user fee in an area where we are the only jurisdiction that has cottaging in its parks system to any extent, and we have an enormous amount of what are really recreational communities within our park system. Should he and I, as modest users of that system, should we be building the roads in there? Should we be providing the garbage pickup? Should we be providing the sewer and water for the recreational homes that are sitting in--and they are homes, summer homes--the park setting in this province? I admire the people who have that opportunity, I support them, but I say to them, through the fees that we have imposed over the last two or three years, that they have an obligation to contribute to the actual cost of providing the maintenance of the service to them in the parks.
That is another area where revenues have been increased, but they are directly related to the cost of service that are provided to those people. But are they revenue? Of course, they are revenue, but they are offsetting the expenditures that we are putting into those areas.
So let us not get on the single, narrow track that whether or not every dollar that comes in in revenue to this department goes in its entirety to offsetting the expenditures and enhancing the service. There are far more dollars spent in this department than there is revenue. This is not a department that provides enough revenue to cover its $90-million budget.
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So the member has some suggestions about where we get the tax dollars from. Perhaps he would like to see additional tax on fuel so that people could enjoy the parks better. Does he want wildlife hunting and user fees to increase more than they already have? I mean, where is he going to get the balance of that $90 million? He uses the term, as do his colleagues very often, of general revenues as some sort of a slush fund that I and the Minister of Finance (Mr. Stefanson) gleefully divvy up every Friday afternoon in preparation for the next week. I mean that is a ludicrous analogy, but it does come down to the very question of whether or not the Department of Highways, the Department of Natural Resources can, in fact, be revenue neutral and cost neutral in terms of their position within the expenditures of government.
We have responsibilities across a full spectrum, but focusing just on parks, on the one hand there is an obligation to make sure that parks are accessible to the general public, that parks are, indeed user friendly, that the services are there that people expect. They are, in fact, the key element of our tourism strategy, that people be attracted to come and see and share in the natural beauty and resources of this province.
That revenue, should we be paying more of our share for the advertising that Tourism does in order to attract people to our parks, or should Tourism be paying Parks to improve the parks so that they could attract people better? I mean eventually you have to say that government has a responsibility, that the administration of government has a responsibility of bringing some balance to the income, the revenue and the expenditures of various aspects of government.
And, yes, in today's world, everybody looks more and more for a user-pay concept, but in health care, which is a constant source of haranguing across the floor here, user pay is not a system that our society has or should embrace, but we do need revenue to support that system. We need revenues to support the educational. Education is not a user-pay system. We believe in the public education system and the opportunity for all. Same thing with social services. We believe that we have to spend dollars to support those who need help in a time when they cannot help themselves.
So to say to Natural Resources that every dollar you take in in revenue must be reflected in a better park gate, a better road as you enter the park, more staff in the field and parks, after a while it starts to beg the question: does the member believe that there has to be balance in government or not?
Mr. Struthers: Before the minister gets too wound up and maybe it is a little late for that advice now, but I can understand why he would want to have a philosophical discussion on this because I think, as he did last year, he failed to be able to convince people that a significant enough portion of those fees, that revenue, was going back into parks.
Mr. Chairperson, I was also quite surprised to hear that the minister would be worried about what I put in the Dauphin Herald about him. I do not think he has to worry about that. What I think he should be worried about is putting in the Dauphin Herald, well before I ever go to the Dauphin Herald, so that people in Duck Mountain Provincial Park or Manipogo Park or Asessippi Park can read to see an accounting, an explanation of where their fees are going.
If the minister wants to check Hansard after we are finished here today, he will see that my previous question was not whether every dollar raised through revenue of these fees was going back into Parks. It was what percent of those fees were going back into Parks and what percent was going into general revenue. Mr. Chairperson, I understand fully what general revenue means. I do not envision the minister sitting with the Finance minister on a Friday afternoon, chopping up money to be divvied out to people across the province. I know how that system works. So I think what the minister should do is today, instead of trying to shift the discussion, instead of getting too bent out of shape on this, should simply tell me, first of all, how much revenue is going to be created by the fees that we charge in our provincial parks? That would be a good place to start.
Mr. Cummings: Mr. Chairman, I look at park infrastructure and facility renewal $2.7 million; I look at park road maintenance $0.5 million, that looks to me like 3.2; park enhancement projects, another $325,000, that looks like 5.25; park districts, another $800,000, that puts it in the neighbourhood of $4 million. Another park site development, another three-quarters of a million. That ignores equipment and facility maintenance, regional equipment and infrastructure, and the revolving inventory and all of the other aspects that go towards management in this area related to capital. So those are the type of capital expenditures.
I do not have the revenue figure at my fingertips, or I would share it with the member, that is not a problem. I think he should contemplate things in his own area, I believe, where there is a request for the Blue Lakes to be electrified. A problem that seriously grieved me, because I have some friends who use that area, who are dedicated to its improvement, who want to see dollars spent there, but in the end, they are probably going to need a quarter of a million, maybe more, maybe $350,000 of tax dollars spent to supplement over and above the costs that they are prepared to pay for in sharing that electrification project.
Now the member is free to advocate in that area, but he is going to have to justify spending that much money to put electricity into an area where not everyone wants electricity, frankly. There are those who believe that that area should be kept to a low-level development in terms of the available services. Nevertheless, if I could see my way clear to electrify and justify that kind of a service for the number of people involved, I think I would be more than happy to support that type of project. Nevertheless, I think the member would agree, when you balance that against all of the needs across our parks system, when you balance that against the number of people who would most likely benefit from that, that is probably not the No. 1 priority today when you consider some of the other areas of park enhancement that we are dealing with.
I think the member is confusing the user-pay concept that we are imposing on cottagers within our system as opposed to just the straight fee at the gate that we charge. Yes, we have increased the fee at the gate, the same as we have increased a number of hunting and fishing fees, but we have always done it within the context of what is the normal charge across all jurisdictions--Manitoba is generally neither high nor low--and is it commensurate with the level of service that is available in that particular area as well.
Certainly that has always been one of the considerations when we have dealt with those issues. So I have found, after the initial reaction to the fees that we were just discussing, that by and large people are quite satisfied and, I believe, appreciative of the fact that we have tried to place these fees in a context that is appropriate, the parks district fees, as I touched on, but also the various golf fees and other user fees within the system.
I would also indicate that we also have something that is very low compared to the--or not very low but relatively low compared to municipal charges, and that is where we start with a base charge of 4 percent of assessed value on the properties that are being charged a levy within the fees. We start with that base fee. Relative to other locations within the province, that is an advantageous rate.
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So the member is welcome to put that into a charge that we need to return all that money into parks, but if he is implying that we are talking about a balance-in, balance-out, then I suggest that he is asking for a smaller parks budget than what we have today, because the fees do not cover the dollars that we invest in parks. In fact, I think we are looking at $16.2-million worth of expenditures compared to revenues that would run somewhere between the $5 million and $6 million. So if you take the cottagers out of that, I do not know how you would appropriately divide those services. It was difficult when we put the assessments together, but in fact we are not talking about revenues that are in excess of our expenditures. In fact, the general revenues, that terrible slush fund that the public thinks is a sinkhole for tax dollars, is in fact supporting parks in a large measure and undoubtedly will continue a long time into the future when you can make those comparisons.
Mr. Struthers: The minister indicated in his answer that he would not have at his fingertips the amount of revenue--
An Honourable Member: He just got it for you.
Mr. Struthers: Oh, well. He said he could not get them, they were not at his fingertips. If he has them now, if he has the total figure for the amount of revenue that these fees have brought into his department, I think it would be helpful to know that. Maybe he would like to take the opportunity to put those figures on the record for us.
Mr. Cummings: Mr. Chairman, I just provided the gross dollars. We are between $5 million and $6 million in revenue as opposed to a $16.5-million expenditure in that area. So my point is, without breaking it down to the last 50 cents, you are looking at a ratio of 3 to 1--a third of the revenue, pardon me, that can be generated, and that is being generous. I mean, all the risk is still associated with whether or not you get a good season if you are talking gate fees. So at the same time it has got to do with the promotions that we are able to do both within the province and nationally and internationally in promoting people to come to our parks.
I just cannot pass this without giving a shot. Revenues are not necessarily the driving force behind our ability to provide a reservation system that is of international calibre that allows somebody from Washington state, if they want to plan a driving trip across parts of the States, and come up into Manitoba to come to our parks that they can with assurance phone one number and choose between over 30 parks as to where they might want to spend two or three nights while they are in Manitoba. They can do that well in advance. They can be assured that it will be there. They will even have the ability to know the description of the lot without ever having been there, the dimensions of it. They will be able to look at the location if they have appropriate maps with them, and we will be able to then enter into what I consider a more normal position for us to be, which is actively part of a system that people become familiar with across North America.
Mr. Edward Helwer, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair
Manitoba is not freelancing on this. Manitoba is playing catchup, frankly, in some areas in order to do this. But, we have tried to do it at as low a cost way as possible. There are other jurisdictions that charge much more than our $6.75 or whatever the figure is that we charge. We made that comparison a while ago. Yet, we know that going from zero to that is a significant jumpstart for those who are used to getting that service for free.
But while I am on a roll here, let me also say that most of the people who complained about that service were the ones who wanted to change what were traditionally transient sites into long-term sites, because they had found ways of getting around the transient limitations that were on the sites. Now with this system, they find that they are not on the advantageous footing that they used to have. Perhaps the bigger issue is: should we have more long-term sites in our parks? That is a legitimate question, but do not put some of our more valuable camping sites in a position where they are not available to the broad public on a first-come, first-served basis for a maximum of a certain number of days stay. That, I think, is where I would acknowledge that there were people who took umbrage with the system. But the system itself was not the problem. The park plan and what the lots were intended for was really the problem that they were railing against, but they used the reservation system as the point at which they were able to express their anger.
Mr. Struthers: I appreciate the minister, I guess twice now, putting those figures on the record. I appreciate him repeating them for me, so I could get them marked down here.
The minister started to speak of the reservation system that was in place that was changed by this government to Destinet, a company that was hired to provide that service, and now a change again to SR&J, a company with their own particular park reservation system. In his opening remarks, the minister made some comments about Destinet and what he referred to. I think he used the word misinformation that was out there about the company, where it was located, whether or not it was an American company or not.
All those statements, before there is any kind of speculation going on about SR&J, I would like to give the minister the opportunity to tell us about this company, its location, number of people that it will be employing, its system for providing reservations for people who want to camp in our provincial parks because, quite bluntly, I received a lot of complaints about Destinet. I received petitions from campers complaining about the process that Destinet used to reserve campsites. I received petitions and phone calls and letters from people saying here is my bad experience this summer. I would have hated to have been a school teacher and asked that question at the beginning of September to kids to say, what did you do for the summer, because I am sure teachers got letters back saying, well, we had a terrible time camping at this park or that park. So before we get down the road of debating the government's latest move on park reservations, I would like to give the minister an opportunity to put on record right from the beginning just exactly what this SR&J is and how he sees the park site reservation system working.
Mr. Cummings: I appreciate the comments of the member for Dauphin, because this is important that there not be any misapprehension or misgivings I hope in the end on anyone's part about continuing with this initiative to drag our reservation system into the new millennium.
There is going to be a high demand, we anticipate, next year, and the member asked me: where is the location of SR&J? I cannot give him the street number, but I can tell you they are a Winnipeg-based group who bring about 40 years--the operators bring about 40 years of combined experience to the call centre business.
In moving in this direction, they went in certainly with their eyes open, as we did, in terms of recognizing that in establishing a call centre for this type of service, it needs to be established in conjunction with other services that a call centre may be prepared to provide, because it is very seasonal. Something we learned last year with Destinet is not only is it seasonal, but it is very unusual--maybe not unusual in the call centre business but certainly interesting to me as an observer, an interested observer obviously--in that the majority of the calls come in between nine o'clock and 10:30 in the morning, and then things would just sort of die for the rest of the day.
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You can explain the psychology of families and how they operate in that manner as well as I can, but it would appear that people went to work, perhaps made the call early or quickly when they got to work, or they left for work and after the kids were away at school, the remaining member of the family who was at the residence made the calls to attempt to get their reservations. So there would be a flood of calls that would come in for about an hour and a half in the morning, and then things would be dead, so, you know, very difficult to respond under those circumstances, but the very important and significant part of this is that, No. 1, compared to our old system, this way a person makes one call.
There needs to be adequate numbers of people to answer the calls. Now, there was some waiting last year with Destinet, and that is where the rollover came to their American affiliate, but it was still a Canadian company which actually had an American affiliate where they turned the calls to. But the member had his fun, and I hope that he will acknowledge that he was perhaps stretching the truth a little bit when he continues to refer to them as an American company. They were a Canadian company. Nevertheless, they are history and we learned from the Destinet experience.
The fact was most of the complaints that I received, and I think they are the same ones the member for Dauphin (Mr. Struthers) received, were in the main related to one particular, very attractive campsite where people were very annoyed that traditionally they had been able to stay camped on one particular site at that campsite for time in excess of what would be the normal transient period, but under the new system, of course, because they had to rebook and they had to go through a system that put them on sort of an even footing with other interested users, they did not always get the renewal that they had expected.
For that I understand their frustration. I hope that they, in turn, will reason their way through what our campgrounds have been and generally are intended to be, that there needs to be a balance between transient campsites where people stay for varying lengths, but, you know, they come in and reserve for three days, a week, maybe 10 days, 14 days, but they know they are not going to be there all summer, and then we have seasonals where people book in, some of them in such demand that we have a draw in order to accommodate those who want to be part of seasonals and want to be there all year on any particular site.
But, interestingly enough, I have just been handed a note here that says that to date there have been no recorded concerns that have been raised with Otter Falls, that we seem to have brought at least some semblance of satisfaction in that area. The concerns did level off in mid-July and that arriving mid-week and leaving the site vacant until Friday--you know, registering and then leaving the site vacant until Friday--this system avoids that type of what sometimes might even be a very annoying process that a family used to have to go through in order to reserve themselves a site.
I mean, I know neighbours who would drive to Spruce Woods or other places, commandeer, register, whatever word you want to use, get themselves a site, then go home and then go back again when they were really ready for a day off when the weekend came. I mean, in reviewing how people should be served, that is not a good example of service. That is not a reflection on the people within the department who ran the previous service. It is just a reflection of the reality of what they were dealing with and the reality of how service can be delivered now in a much more efficient and practical way.
Destinet's agreement was that they were to deliver a service in Manitoba by January of '98, which it became apparent that they were not going to be able to deliver--they indicated that--so we were able to go through a list of appropriate candidates here, asked them for proposals, and SR&J was the most appropriate survivor of that screening process. There were six, I believe, five that were involved in that process, and we believe that so far--and I have some figures to support this.
Actually, the figures are very interesting. As of eight o'clock, May 27, the system had received 2,401 calls. Out of that, we sold 2,056 reservations. Now, that is an astounding turnaround from the types of concerns and complaints that were raised previously about the inefficiency of the system. It also answers some of the concerns, I believe, that the department had and had expressed to me and that SR&J would have had on whether or not they would be able to respond appropriately.
Interestingly enough, the very first day when they opened, somebody was sitting on the recall button somewhere, and there were 1,800 hits in one day. They were not calls. They were hits, and they were getting busy signals. Well, that happened for one day, so I suspect that there were maybe a handful of people out there who were frustrated from a year ago, and they were determined that they were going to show me that this system would not work. But after they got past their fun on the first day, and I am making assumptions here, but I do not think I am too far wrong, they now have--pardon me, I said 1,800; I should have said 18,000 hits the first day.
I mean, let us be real here. Somebody was spending their day punching the recall button, trying to create havoc on the line. Now, either it was--well, there could be all sorts of motives, and I should not put anything on the record, but that information I have just given the member for Dauphin (Mr. Struthers), I think he probably would concur with me that somebody out there, or maybe more than one person, was deliberately trying to create havoc on the system in order to prove that it would not work.
But, anyway, once we got past that first day, we are now doing very well. Initially, in the start-up there were some calls--the average call was in excess of 10 minutes. We are now looking at five and a half minutes, and we are probably going to be less than that as the operators increase their competency. The number of people on the calls, about a dozen, I believe, are employed, but as I said before, this also requires the company, in this case SR&J, to make sure that they have other work for these people, because once the reservation system for camping has gone by--and it will go by very quickly; June, July and it will drop off very quickly--they will need other work they can turn their hand to, and I am sure that that, with an experienced company, is important.
I would remind the member of one other thing that is very important in this respect. Manitoba has attracted a huge number of call centre and the subsequent jobs that go with it. I think the Minister of I, T and T (Mr. Downey) has the numbers at his fingertips, but it seems to me that we now exceed New Brunswick in terms of call centre jobs, and some of them inbound calls which are much more valuable jobs, some of them very well-paying jobs in the $40,000 range that we have been able to attract here.
That does speak to the essence of when we originally sought someone to operate a call centre, whether or not we could exclude out-of-province bidders, and how would we be able to do that in the name of fairness when we are drawing in call centre jobs from all over North America? I mean, if you either believe in open trade and competition for this type of service which can be delivered in many cases from universal number of locations depending on the competency in the phone connections or whether you believe in an artificial barriers to competition. While Destinet is history, we do have another active call centre of which Destinet is part of their portfolio, and I am confident that this will be a pretty successful summer. We are counting on this being successful and competent delivery of service this summer so that we can pick up the increasing number of reservations we anticipate for next year.
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Mr. Struthers: At the beginning of the minister's comments, he seems to be quite intent that I am going to admit that we were wrong in raising the issue of Destinet and its American connections. I want him to know, and I want him to be assured, that the bulk of the complaints that I got about Destinet and the reservation system were that the company was unfamiliar with the actual lay of the land here in Manitoba. They were unfamiliar with our parks, they were unfamiliar with, for example, where overflow parks are located in the Whiteshell. If you cannot get in at one lake, in previous practice when people in Natural Resources were fielding these reservations calls, they knew that if you were overbooked and you could not get in at one lake, they knew that the overflow was another lake within the Whiteshell.
Those are the kinds of real, hands-on, practical things that people were angry about, and when they had to call a company in Mississauga, Ontario and then got bumped on to a call centre in San Diego, California, I think the callers were quite justified in being frustrated with the system that the Department of Natural Resources had set up. Of course I am not going to apologize for representing those concerns on behalf of Manitobans and park users here in Manitoba.
I want to also point out that if the minister wants to debate on whether or not we should be putting artificial barriers up, I want to make the case that you have to have somebody reserving campsites who knows all about our parks. Now, this, I do not think is an artificial barrier to anyone. I think it is good common sense to hire somebody who can do the job, who can do it well, who can maximize the number of sites that are being used over the course of the summer and who will lessen the amount of frustration that campers in this province have undergone for the period of the last year or so.
So, Mr. Chair, I am glad to hear the minister say that Destinet is part of our history and that it is not in charge of our reservation systems anymore in this province. My hope is that SR&J can do a whole lot better than what Destinet did, and I hope that the minister has learned some of the lessons from Destinet. I think listening to what he has said here today is that there are some lessons that they have taken from it.
I would imagine the whole Department of Natural Resources learned those lessons because they are very professional people and they would learn from the mistakes that this government made in the past. So part of the complaint, as well, that emanated from this whole Destinet fiasco is that Destinet seemed to come into the province on the hope that they were going to provide X number of jobs. I remember when we raised this whole question of our reservation sites in the House that the minister was very quick to point out that Destinet was going to provide hundreds of jobs here in Manitoba. They were going to set up a call centre in Manitoba. All these great things were going to happen in Manitoba.
Just like most promises that this government makes, it did not come to fruition. I would like the minister to indicate how many jobs he sees being created as a result of SR&J getting this contract to do the reservations and maybe indicate what kind of dollar benefit he sees to the province of Manitoba in taking this decision to hire SR&J to handle our reservation system.
Mr. Cummings: Mr. Chairman, SR&J will probably staff up in a variable level so they keep the waiting time down. That is the advantage of them having a diversified portfolio. So we are looking at a minimum of, I would suggest, a dozen jobs that would be implemented, depending on the number of calls that come through, which is pretty well the same number that I had indicated.
And Destinet, it was their intention to come to Manitoba, expand into other services, and probably create about 20 or more jobs on an expanded service basis. So we are still putting the opportunity for job creation as part of this initiative, and it is in fact occurring. Whether the member would agree that it is the same jobs that I said were coming before or not, it is, in fact the same jobs employed by a different company however.
Something that I have to put on the record that the member for Dauphin and others very often conveniently overlook when they defend the previous system, that is, how did people like phoning in? Phone Spruce Woods; have you got any spaces for the July long weekend? No, we are booked. Okay, hang up. Dial another number. Another long distance call. Call any other one of the campsites. Each site in the main had to be called individually and the person looking for a booking had to pay a long distance charge each time they called.
Now we are talking about one charge that does cover obviously part of the in-bound 1-800 number calls, but provides access to over 30 sites. So, okay; Spruce Woods is full; what else is available? Or if not, what else, is such and such a site, Asessippi, whatever, is it available? Is it booked, and so on?
Part of the criticism that the member levels is that there was not a strong base of knowledge on the part of those answering the phone. Part of the problem with that is related to the computer capacity to have all of the information displayed in front of the individual. It has to do with the program that is developed around that. I am not going to get into the technology of this, but it would follow that it makes sense if an operator has a call coming in and pulls up information in front of them about a particular site, if the system does not have the full capacity to display all of the relevant information for answering particular questions, then the alternative is to have somebody behind that phone who is probably a long-time park employee, who has had years of experience in all of the various parks and by memory can tell you whether or not site No. 37 down under the big oak tree is still available and if it will take a 25-foot goose neck.
That information has to be fed into a system, so that it can be run as any system would be. Whether it is the Holiday Inn, you might ask where does the Holiday Inn downtown here have its call centre when it takes reservations? I mean, I do not know the answer, but I am sure the large international hotel companies have systems similar to what I described. I can assure you that we have received a fair bit of information about the various systems that are available across North America to provide the system service to various park needs in various jurisdictions. Manitoba is small enough that the amount of reservations that we would take in in a year is probably equivalent to what the state of Texas would take in in a week. That puts into context the amount of money that needs to be spent and the amount of money that needs to be recovered from the users of the system in order to provide the totality of information that we have just talked about and the convenience of that registration from thousands of miles away without having to make several long distance phone calls.
It is one thing to be calling from Neepawa. It is not the cost so much as it is to know the list of parks and know the quality of the park. When you already know that as a resident of Manitoba, perhaps that is one thing. If you are calling from out of province, half way across the continent, the best you are going to be doing is looking at a list that has some kind of a criteria on size and location, and so on, from which you will want to choose a park. So we need to have that ability for somebody from a long distance to make it one call, and to then make a decision based on the information they can get from that call as to whether or not they can stay at which park and provide the information as to whether or not their equipment is suitable for the site and make a reservation that is ironclad in terms of their being able to protect it.
Mr. Chairperson in the Chair
Just think how frustrating it is for the person who is a half a day late coming in, or a day late coming into a park, and they have to drive, let us say, to Hecla Island, and they get halfway up there and they blow a tire or an axle or whatever, and they do not need the frustration of wondering whether or not their campsite is still going to be there when they get there.
This system is a prepaid system. That is one of the advantages of a prepaid system. It is a guaranteed system. While there were some criticisms of our system last year that sites were seen to be vacant, the fact is we were probably still getting revenue on those sites, because some people chose, by their own volition, to be a day late. All sorts of matters could have made them a day late, but they did not need to worry about whether that site was still going to be there because it was darn well paid for, and we were not going to take it away from them.
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So that is the kind of business approach to this, the kind of tourism service, that I think is so important that we demonstrate in order to get the usage of our parks up, to make sure that people, not only Manitobans but others who want to take advantage of them--that is the kind of thing that once we get this working, and I am optimistic as of this point, that the people will feel much more confidence in the system, and not just because they will have better people on the phones or because they will have the information that we talked about earlier. It will be related to the total package that the people on the end of the phone are working with. The development of that package is a different computer capability that we are dealing with. I think it will provide the service that the member thinks is necessary.
Mr. Struthers: How much money will this cost the province, the deal with SR&J? What are we paying them to provide these services?
Mr. Cummings: We are looking for the numbers here, Mr. Chairman. Yes, we are looking at the per-call basis. We have some additional costs that we have put into this system in order to guarantee that we will not be left without capability for some unforeseen reason we have to ever change operators in the future. The province will have some proprietary rights in this system for which we are prepared to pay.
There is also the question that the member raised in the House earlier about whether or not this system can accept a cheque, whether or not people can walk down and drop an envelope in through the door and make their reservation. I can assure him that those numbers are mighty, mighty small, but nevertheless I am not going to be in a situation of denying those who are demanding that service the opportunity to have it. So that is paid for on a per-minute, per-hour basis. It is not a huge charge, but it is a per-hour basis to cover off those that fall outside of the normal call centre cost.
In other words, if there is--and I would suspect there is going to be one person or maybe two who is going to want to walk a cheque down to wherever and put it through a mail slot and know that they have a chance to reserve. You know, they do not want to provide a credit card and perhaps they do not have a credit card, but those numbers are extremely small. It is more likely the person who, out of long-established habit as opposed to not having a credit card, is demanding the right to be able to do that. Some systems do deny it, but we, in order to make sure that no one in the public is denied the opportunity, will pay by the hour, and that will be a one-off cost, but I anticipate it will be very little, unless I misjudge society. But that is one charge.
The other is that we are trying to break down from the totality of the contract what this might be, and I will provide the number to the member in a moment. But we are paying some small cost over and above the $6.75. That is the base charge that the user pays. The province is paying some small additional cost, but I do not have that breakdown in front of me. We will get it as soon as we can.
Mr. Struthers: Will SR&J be responsible for the complete list of provincial parks and providing that service, or is there a set number that they will deal with?
Mr. Cummings: We are building on the work that was done by Destinet last year. There were 20 sites last year. That is moving to 38. I said 30 a few minutes ago; it is 38 in fact, and we will continue to build the bank of information. It is a matter of expanding the computer capacity and the bank of information in the main. But also it depends how good the communication is at the site itself to be able to accept these. You cannot necessarily courier the information on the reservations out to somebody if they do not have a phone or a fax.
Mr. Struthers: That sounds good. Is the eventual goal to have all the provincial parks under the umbrella of SR&J?
Mr. Cummings: It is our goal to have them all, but it is limited by communication capability at the site. So there will likely be the odd one. I could not name them today if you asked me, but there will likely be the odd one where we would never be able to get them on-line. They may not even have a phone other than wireless. But we want as much of the information, as many sites as possible on there.
By the way, this program will ultimately be able to display the configuration of various sites and whatnot for the operator, so that they can provide the backup on whether or not certain types of equipment will be able to be used. By equipment I mean camping equipment; it will be used in certain sites. That sometimes has to be juggled by the operator or the manager on site today. We hope to have that reduced over a period of time as well.
Mr. Struthers: I wonder if the minister could not--I do not need an answer to this just on the spot here, but I wonder if he could not provide a list for me of the provincial parks that are now under the auspices of SR&J plus a list of the ones he sees there is going to be a problem with in hooking them up to this service.
I applaud the goal that the minister is setting. I think that any way that we can see to make the camping experience more accessible and more enjoyable, and also if it is going to bring down the costs, although I do note that there is still a cost to the fee at the beginning. I think most people booking campsites now know that. But if this work can be done centrally, and you can phone and get information on any park you want, I think that is a goal that we should be striving for. I wonder if the minister could take it upon himself to get those two lists together and send them to me at his convenience.
Mr. Cummings: Oh, I can certainly provide him with a list of the 38 and others. Someone in the department probably has an analysis of the future capability, but that can also change. So if the member is happy with the list of those on the reservation system and others, we would be glad to provide it.
Mr. Struthers: Mr. Chair, I thank the minister for that. I want to wrap up the discussion on the reservation system. Just by highlighting some of the very particular complaints that came in, and I am sure the minister has heard from campers on this one as well--and yet even this spring I have had people say to me two totally different things. On the one hand, I have had campers say to me that they were really angry that they were asked to provide their credit card number in reserving a site at a park. They were told that they could not write a cheque to do this. They were told they had to have their credit card number available for them. I know that out there today amongst citizens, there is a lot of skepticism when it comes to giving out your credit card number given the number of frauds that take place, the number of people that get ripped off. So I can understand people who are a little nervous about that.
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What I find frustrating is that I listen to those very specific complaints saying, we were told we have to have our credit card, we cannot write a cheque. I come to the House and I ask the minister the question in Question Period, and he says, you know, write the cheque, send the cheque, no problem. So I am faced here with the minister saying one thing and campers actually coming across the exact opposite when they go to reserve sites. So who is right? Well, it does not really matter to me who is right on this one. I am willing to accept what the minister is about to tell me in his next answer to this question.
What is the situation now? Can a camper pop a cheque in the mail and reserve his site, or am I going to have more people calling me saying, I have been asked for my credit card number and I have been told I cannot write a cheque? So when the next complaint comes through to my office, I want to know exactly what I should tell them. Can they write a cheque?
Mr. Cummings: Yes, you can send a cheque. You can walk a cheque down and put it in if you wish. I said that earlier in this discussion. When the member is commiserating with his constituents or whoever is calling into him, when he is trying to make the system look like something less than what I believe it will become--because I would not expect him necessarily to become an advocate at this point yet--I would ask him also to be fair with those people and say, you know, when was the last time you made a phone call and reserved a hotel room and said I will put the cheque in the mail, and then the hotelier after he hangs up, he says, h'm, okay. But meanwhile, the next day, that hotelier gets a convention that says they will come in for that particular date and will take all his rooms. You think he is going to wait on that cheque to come in the mail?
And why should your park system take somebody's word? I take people's words till people prove otherwise; I am prepared to take their word. But no normal reservation system will take somebody's phone call as the lockdown on a site for which somebody within the next few minutes may well phone in and say, I want that site. So I ask the member when he is commiserating with these people, just remind them that their cheque may take a week to get to the site, and then maybe the site they want will not be available.
Now I know the squeamishness and I know the public consumer advisory that goes with the question--do not hand out anybody your credit card number--but I would challenge all the members sitting in this Chamber that if they are willing, or unwilling, to provide some kind of a guarantee to the hotelier when they phone to reserve a hotel room, there is a difference if you have an office doing it for you, I know, but, on a personal basis, do you provide a guarantee to that hotelier that you are going to take that room in the form of some kind of an identification number, some kind of a guarantee that they can take down against that room?
So this system is not asking for anything any different than what the majority of reservation systems do across North America, around the world for that matter, I would think. It can accommodate the other style of doing business, but that person, unfortunately, has to also deal with the fact that the mail might be there tomorrow, it might be there three days or it might be a week. This is not a shot at the mail system. It has got to do with weekends, whether or not people are sorting mail over the weekend; it has got to do with when to make connections. Neepawa's mail goes to Portage to be sorted, I believe, and then it is spun out from there. The member knows the levels of how it is delivered around Dauphin better than I do.
So I do not apologize, but the system has been structured, as I said, at extra cost on a per- hour basis so that we can accommodate people from all styles of business as to how they get their reservation. I implore the member to be honest with those who say to him they do not want to give any kind of credit ID to the system, to warn them that that might well mean that a week from that time they are, in fact, risking their--but if they are phoning next year in February or March and they want to reserve the September long weekend or something like that, then, certainly there is lots of time, probably, for that type of a system to work.
But if you phone on a Wednesday afternoon and you say, I am going to send you a cheque and I want the camp site, in this case, on Saturday, I am sorry, it might not work.
Mr. Struthers: Really, all the minister needed to do was say yes or no whether you could get a cheque or not, but I appreciated the rationale that he supplied as far as why the answer is actually yes. I agree you cannot just put a cheque in the mail Wednesday for a site the next day. Common sense should dictate that to people. He can bet on a couple of things. First of all, when I commiserate with my Dauphin constituents on this, as he put it, No. 1, it is not just Dauphin constituents. I think I have actually talked to some Ste. Rose constituents on this one in terms of Manipogo beach and the beautiful little park we have there north of Ste. Rose. The other thing that he can bet on--I mean he implied that I may not be an advocate for a system like this--is that if this works, I would be an advocate. I think he can count on that, if it works.
There were so many complaints about the Destinet arrangement that his government had come up with that I could not tell people with any confidence that it was working, so I was not an advocate. If it had worked a lot better, I would have been an advocate. If there were no complaints about the situation before Destinet, I could have been an advocate of that as well. I will assure the minister that if people phone me, and they are saying that this system works and that they have learned all their lessons from the Destinet fiasco, then I will be an advocate.
I hope that I get to be an advocate on this because, quite frankly, we have had too many months, a couple of summers now with way too many complaints and way too much frustration, so I hope that it works.
So, Mr. Chairperson, probably the other issue that came to me just about as much as the credit card issue was the situation in which there were limits put on family sites. I think this leads to maybe a discussion about who gets to make the rules in our provincial parks. What kind of latitude does SR&J have for making rules such as four people per site or whether that can be six people per site, those kinds of rules that go along with camping in a provincial park? What jurisdiction does SR&J have and what kind of a jurisdiction does the province have? Does the province still call the shots when it comes to those kinds of rules? Maybe the minister can outline some thoughts on that.
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Mr. Cummings: I do not think I can quote in minute detail all the various aspects of conditions of the camping, but SR&J does not set any of the conditions. Those are all set by the department with my approval. I think that people took advantage of the fact that there were complaints about the Destinet system last year, to also complain about what may have been genuine misunderstandings, but certainly what were not new requirements or obligations that were put on the people when they acquired a campsite. In fact, I am sure I probably heard or saw the same person, certainly a member talking about that regulation.
As I recall, I think there was a limit on the number of adults per site. That is generally intended to reflect that you do not want six teenagers--and I use the term advisedly--you do not want six adults--it does not have to be teenagers--in an 8 by 10 camper who intend to spend the night sitting beside the bonfire and disturbing their neighbours. It was simply a control mechanism for what is a reasonable population in what are sometimes quite tight areas. There was a person with a family who complained that somehow we were impeding their opportunity to have the neighbouring site reserved. I think it was related to the fact they wanted to reserve two neighbouring sites. Certainly, the system is intended to accommodate that.
The rule was in place, however, to limit the number of adults who might, in a minimal amount of space, want to crowd in and very likely would lead to some disruption within what would be the normal campground ambience, whether you have six people in a tent on a site. I mean that does start to beg the question, so where are they going to sit? Where are they going to spend their time? There is not enough room on the site to accommodate that many people, frankly, in some cases. So it was not intended to be something that either--certainly, the reservation company had nothing to do with it; it was campground rules. The difference might be that when they are conveyed through a reservation system, people automatically assumed there would be no flexibility in how it was handled.
The system is intended to accommodate additional sites, where possible, but it is also meant that sometimes people have to be flexible in their expectations. They may not be able to dictate that they want sites 14 and 15 in bay 6 or whatever the description might be. They might have to take a second choice, because someone may have already been allocated to one of the two sites that they wanted. As I recall, the mixup that occurred last year, I think it was a misunderstanding which was joined to the fact that they were talking to somebody on a phone, as opposed to their normal experience of talking to the manager of the campground.
Mr. Struthers: Would it be possible for the minister to put together some numbers for me, the annual visits to provincial parks, and run that back over the last five years? I know that he has given me bits and pieces over the course of questioning through Question Period and through Estimates. What I would appreciate is the number of visits annually to our provincial parks over the course of the last, say, four or five years, including last year.
The minister referenced that already this year that they are seeing some good numbers in terms of reserving sites. He talked about the numbers being good last year. I am wondering if he cannot put together a string of about four or five years in which we can see if there is a pattern developing and the number of annual visits and maybe identify--if there are successes we can identify those successes, and what we did each year to maybe encourage those numbers up. All kinds of factors affect the number of visits from the weather to the date the ice leaves the lakes and that sort of thing. So I am wondering if that is possible for the minister to provide.
Mr. Cummings: Mr. Chairman, that does not seem like an unreasonable request, but sometimes this type of information can appear to be unreasonable in the manner in which it is manipulated. We will attempt to pull together the information the member is asking for, but a good example and he referenced it, that last year was a perfect example of when at the height of the flood the whole province, whether they were flooded or whether they were not, was focused on the battle that was going on in the Red River Valley, and frankly it was an absolutely lousy May long weekend.
You have to take that type of parks information, attendants information as the member is asking for and put it into context. If we have very much weather like we are having today, there is not going to be very good news, this weekend, for example. But we have come through a very good May long weekend. It was early this year. The risk was there that it might not have been good. It turned out it was very good. So that is the type of thing--providing the raw data is one thing, but once you get more than a year or two back, you have to start stretching people's memory as to what really influenced people during that time.
That is the other thing that enters into this reservation system we are talking about, of course, and that is when the weather turned bad we had people who had reservations under the old system who simply did not show up. Yet if I phoned in looking for a reservation, I might have been told that a certain site was in fact booked. Now if people plan on being there on a certain date and a certain time on a weekend, unless they phone three days in advance, I believe the number is, I forget the precise number now, and in fact revoke their--or asked to be relieved of their obligation, we will in fact receive the revenue for at least part of that weekend when it might have been rained out other years. People may well choose to stay back a day knowing they will have their reservation and come the second day when the weather is nicer, plus they will have some confidence that if they want to keep that option open for themselves, that site will be there.
Whereas under the old system, if you did not show, eventually it was put back for rent, so there are pros and cons. I am truly believe as people become more comfortable with this way of providing reservations that we will all have a better experience.
Mr. Struthers: A few years ago when I was just a rookie MLA and had much thinner skin, I might have been offended by the minister suggesting that I might manipulate the figures that he gives me. Being here now a whole three years and I have developed a lot more thicker skin, I can understand that there are some risks in simply looking at an annual report of numbers coming out of the parks. So I am wondering if this is possible, if maybe instead of that last request I made for an annual number, I wonder if it makes any sense then to look at, say, the May long weekend, July long weekend, the August long weekend, September long weekend, the ones where the numbers may be up and having a comparison of those from one year to the next, so then it might allow me more of a chance to see a better picture of what the real numbers are instead of just an annual list.
I would settle for each. I wonder if the minister would be able to consider that.
Mr. Cummings: Yes, as I said, we will assemble some information. It is not impossible to do the gross numbers but, again, they have to be put in context or they do not make sense.
Mr. Struthers: Just before we move off of Parks, I have a specific case that was brought to the attention of my colleague the MLA for Flin Flon. It was brought to him. It is the case of Mr. Tom Crowhurst, who was writing to the member for Flin Flon (Mr. Jennissen) in terms of the $300 levy that he is now being charged to live at, I believe, Rocky Lake.
Again, we are getting into a situation where it is not so much the amount of the levy or whether the levy is being charged to him or not. It is again a case of where that revenue is going. Mr. Crowhurst, his request to us was to find out if in fact that money was going towards education, as it was alleged to him when he questioned whether or not he should be paying this $300 levy. He was told that that money would go into education. His suggestion at the time was that instead of that money just going into the Department of Natural Resources or into general revenue that that money should be better collected by the local Kelsey School Division if this government really is being honest about the money going towards education.
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So I would like the minister to shed some light on the rationale that was given to Mr. Crowhurst that that money would be going towards education.
Mr. Cummings: Well, certainly I think I recall the letter. At any rate, I am pretty sure I recall his concern. I did respond in writing to that. It is a chief place of residency fee. He went on into a couple of examples, at least one of which I also responded to in my letter, about what he thought were frivolous expenditures by Parks or irrational expenditures by Parks. At least one and maybe both of those irrational expenditures occurred under an NDP administration. So he was being somewhat liberal with his criticism towards this government when in fact the only part that we were responsible for was levying the $300. But it was based on that concern that he did not want to pay the $300 to Parks.
There is a very basic principle here which the member for Dauphin being a teacher would appreciate, or being a teacher in his past life would appreciate, and that is that we do not want two or three tax collection systems. School divisions have never run their own tax collection. General revenues have always supported schools along with opportunity for local levy. At the same time, if he requires some known offset to this revenue, this is an example of revenue that would go into general revenues. The government did redirect additional revenues into Frontier School Division, if he is looking for a place where those dollars might possibly have gone. Those are not revenues for the Department of Natural Resources. Those are to support education.
I could make a further argument that it does speak to fairness. If you are going to live in a park as your chief place of residency and if you do not pay maintenance on your roads, if you do not pay school taxes and you have children attending school--the member for Dauphin smiles about this, but I had young people in my house who were children of people who were being dinged this $300, and they very vociferously told me what their parents thought of it. But they attended school for 12 years and their parents, other than through their tax deductions off of their payroll, would not have contributed one nickel towards the maintenance of the road, management of the school division, or provision of educational services.
So yes, they are now being forced to pay the real cost of providing the roads and the maintenance within their area, the same as they would be if they lived in the municipality. Without going to the full force of assessment and the province imposing a tax based on the value of their property, which I would think would normally be quite expensive based on lake front property, high resale value in many cases, very desirable recreational property, we chose a nominal figure, $300. I would think you will find that most properties under similar circumstances are paying $500, $600 of school tax. If you are paying $1,200 taxes, most school divisions are asking for about half of the total assessed revenue.
So there were a few people, and this gentleman was one of them, who vociferously opposed, and some have in fact refused to pay it, I believe, but I think that number is extremely small. As I hope I just did, I think there is a very logical answer as to why it is not some practical thing to do. Many people have argued, and it is an argument that does not hold water with the vast majority of our population, but many people have argued that traditionally they were never required to pay in parks, and there should be no reason for them to pay now, but then that frankly is an issue of fairness and a whole lot of other things that come to bear on this. It is not an unreasonable charge.
Mr. Struthers: I do not question the unreasonableness of the charge; I question who gets the money and then gets to spend it again. One of the points that good old general revenue--you are back into that argument again. Can the minister indicate how much money the department takes in with this levy altogether?
Mr. Cummings: I think the multiplication is simple. I will double check our number here, but I think it was 300 residents times $300. It is not an enormous number, but I do not apologize for the fact it is revenue that is not necessarily dedicated as it goes out, because it--[interjection] It is 500. Pardon me, there were 500 properties at $300 per property, so it is $150,000.
Mr. Struthers: Mr. Chairperson, I would like to move on--
Mr. Cummings: On a point of order, I did not provide the context of the expenditures. I am pretty sure that we can show an increase in expenditures that went to Frontier School Division as well, which would in fact, could be linked directly to those dollars.
Mr. Chairperson: The honourable minister does not have a point of order. It is a matter of clarification. But it was a point.
Mr. Struthers: I think that when we are talking about Executive Support, it might be a good idea to talk a little bit in terms of wildlife. Maybe I should have made this a little more clear at the beginning, but I believe maybe I forgot to get the advice of the Chair in indicating the plan that I have for Estimates, and that is to remain on the line that we are on now and take in as many different areas of the Natural Resources Estimates as we can and then pass things at the end, line by line.
I probably should have okayed this with the minister before we got going, before I made that assumption, or with the Chair, but it was the way we had done it last year, and I am hoping that that is still okay in terms of this committee. Maybe I need the advice of the minister or of the Chair.
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Mr. Chairperson: Is the minister in agreement with that, that the honourable member ask all the questions under Executive Support? Do you have all the staff necessary?
Mr. Cummings: It is his nickel.
Mr. Chairperson: In that case, the committee is in agreement.
Mr. Struthers: That nickel will be spent wisely and not like the drunken sailor that the minister talked about earlier in Estimates. But a nickel does not go far these days either.
I would like to get some questions to the minister in terms of the Manitoba Trappers Association. I was disappointed to hear of some of the controversy in reading in the media the controversy surrounding the funds that the province provides for the Manitoba Trappers Association, letters to the editor of Grassroots News, for example, in which a member of the Manitoba Trappers Association made some allegations having to do with not just the amount of money that was going toward the MTA but also what the writer felt was a lack of accountability in terms of where the money was being spent.
Now, what I need to get clear in my mind is, first of all, how much money the Department of Natural Resources provides for the Manitoba Trappers Association and what procedure the province follows in terms of making the Trappers Association accountable for that money, taxpayers' money, that we provide for that association.
So maybe the minister could deal with that, indicate the amount of money that is paid to the Trappers Association and what process there is for him to make sure that the Trappers Association is accountable for all that money.
Mr. Cummings: I am interested that the member raises this concern. It strikes me that the Trappers Association has done a pretty good job, and the dollars involved are $60,900 to assist them with administration and management. I am wondering if the member is concerned about the issues that were raised about the political alignment of the Trappers Association. As I recall, that was the main concern upon which the person was complaining, was basing his fact that he wanted some kind of special review.
Mr. Struthers: Well, Mr. Chairperson, I do not think that was much of an answer. Frankly, I do not really care if the MTA is supporting the New Democrats or the Tories or the Liberals or the Reform. I want to know, I want to be assured that the minister knows where that money is being spent, and based on the answer he just gave me, it would indicate to me that he either does not know where it is being spent, or he does not care to make the Manitoba Trappers Association accountable to the government when they get Manitoba taxpayers' dollars. So I would suggest that the minister take another run at that question.
Mr. Cummings: I just wanted to make sure that the member for Dauphin would address the underlying currents of the reason that this was even an issue. I wanted to know where he stood on the issue. He did not rise to the bait obviously, which is his privilege.
But, yes, we know where the money is going. We have appropriate auditing process on their expenditures. The Trappers Association, there is always some potential for disagreement. I hope that the disagreements that arise are not based on political concerns that people have expressed from time to time. I have no political axe or otherwise to grind with or against the Trappers Association.
I have been very active, as was my predecessor, using the Trappers Association to put forward the message, nationally and internationally, that trapping, while it is in many cases a subsistence or a small support to a number of people in northern and remote areas, it is extremely important to their overall well-being, not because of the traditional opportunities so much, but because if you are living in a remote area you do not have a lot of opportunities sometimes to gain real dollars to spend on personal needs. The revenue from trapping is very important in some of those more remote communities--$5,000, $6,000, in some cases $20,000, I suppose, depending on the aggressiveness of the trapper and the prices of the year. The whole of that was at risk, given the international animal rights and antifur lobby that was at play.
As I recall the history of this, the province became quite active in supporting the Trappers Association to use them to put forward their own message to help them--use them is the wrong word--help them put forward their own message so that they could be heard in Ottawa and, subsequently, around the world. They had their own version of what I just tried to say in terms of the importance of the industry, and they also have, however, some internal political strife that I hope does not boil over.
I would suggest the member does not have a secondary agenda on this, but there was one person who certainly made a career for a brief period of time out of accusing one of the leaders of the association of having an active Reform agenda. So what if he did? He was also one of the best spokesmen for the industry and had credibility across this province, across Canada, and I can tell you that when I met with fur people from Europe, his name was recognized as somebody who is a spokesman on behalf of the active trappers in terms of the message they need to get out.
So we get a report, financial statements. We have workplans from the association. I have no qualms about the manner in which they handle their funds. I suppose there is always grist for the mill there. There is potential for conflict between the trappers who are active in the North and the trappers who are active in the south and who is running the association. But frankly, I have had a fair bit to do with rubbing shoulders with people within the association.
I was at the fur table this past year, spent a day there, and did a fair bit of lobbying with the international community on behalf of getting the European ban or potential ban slowed down against leghold traps or any kind of fur industry.
The Trappers Association is a key player, and I have not seen any evidence that would collaborate some of the fear and loathing and some of the concerns that were raised around how they manage their affairs. In fact, European media has taken a very active role and was very involved with representatives of the Trappers Association, both Indian, Metis, and with some of the southern community who were showing them the science that was involved. It led to some active TV work that was presented in Europe.
I suppose while I have the floor, Mr. Chairman, it is also a good opportunity to provide a tip of the hat to at least one of the European media outlets who came to the fur table. They came to my office, and I had the opportunity to meet with them again on their own turf. The producer, broadcaster, if I have his right title, certainly the spokesman who was involved in this endeavour by the name of Christian Dettwiler took a lot of personal heat in Europe after he did the broadcast showing what the Trappers Association and the trappers themselves were doing here because he did do a pro-trapping program. He talked about the social aspects; he talked about the reality and the renewable resource that we had and what it meant.
So I tie all that together for a very purposeful reason. I am not rambling. The Trappers Association has played an important role, and we have been glad to support them in that role. Anytime you take a leadership role and anytime you have someone who is involved in your organization who, in fact, might be outspoken and wants to get involved in other ways, in politics I suppose it can be a bit of a lightning rod. But, obviously, it is not my politics that is involved here that I think spurred on some of the criticism, but, nevertheless, I do not want to see the Trappers Association get the back of somebody's hand because of that, and therefore what I put on the record.
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Mr. Struthers: If I was not very concerned when I asked the first question about the Manitoba Trappers Association, I am all of a sudden a lot more concerned, given the answers that I just got from the minister.
When I asked the question, I fully expected the minister to say, well, we give them $60,900, but we ask for an audited statement or we ask for an annual report or we ask for minutes of meetings or something like that that shows that they are accountable for the money that the Manitoba taxpayer is providing for them. What I got, though, in the answers was an indication that the minister may be aware that there is some money going into partisan politics, and that worries me, Mr. Chair.
Again, I would ask that it might be advisable that the minister takes a third run at this question. For a government that talks a lot about accountability to not even mention audited statements or annual reports in a question about the Manitoba Trappers Association leads me to believe that the word "accountability" is nothing more than a cliché, and I would give the minister this chance again to explain to me how Manitobans can be assured that there is some accountability on this matter in this department when it comes to $60,900 worth of taxpayers' money being given to a lobby group, a group that is more than just a lobby group, but there is an example. Maybe the minister can explain the objective ways in which this minister keeps track of where that taxpayer's dollar is being spent.
Mr. Cummings: I indicated earlier that we do get financial statements, work plans. We check the work and the expenditures, so that way we do audit reports on a rotational basis. So all the things that the member is asking for are, in fact, in place to protect the accountability and to protect the credibility of the group.
Now, I do not know if the member meant to be using the term lobby group as some kind of a derogatory reflection of--well, he shakes his head, no--I take that back then, because I do not consider this--they are a lobby group in the sense that they are putting forward the position of their livelihood, but they are not a lobby group in the sense that they are a gimme group that is only asking for support in order to continue some sort of an artificial management structure.
They are always short of cash. They are always in need of having people out there acting as spokesman. You cannot take somebody out of the north who is knowledgeable and who makes their living dealing with trapping. You cannot move them around. You cannot get them to where they can interface with the right people unless you have some money to do it. That is why we were only too happy to be involved in supporting. As I am sure the member for Dauphin would agree, it is important that we do that.
Mr. Struthers: In that case, Mr. Chairperson, would the minister condone the use of taxpayers' dollars going from this government to the Manitoba Trappers Association? Would he condone that association then turning and using that money for partisan political purposes?
Mr. Cummings: Absolutely not.
Ms. Wowchuk: I would like to take this opportunity to ask a few questions on issues that have been raised in my constituency. I wanted to ask the minister on the subject of capture of elk. In the latter part of the year, the minister made an announcement that First Nations would be responsible for the capture. First Nations were quite pleased with that announcement, because it gave them an opportunity to play a role, and the agreement that appeared to be signed was beneficial to them. A short time later the plan changed, and the capture was then turned over to producers in the Swan River area in one area in particular. I guess the same agreement was available to other parts of the province.
Can the minister indicate why he changed his mind on the agreement that he had with First Nations, where they would have the responsibility of looking after the elk capture and then switching it over to the other route where, then, the various farmers were able to participate?
Mr. Cummings: I think the member is probably dealing with the stories that were rampant in the valley, that we were going to turn the valley over for the aboriginal capture. In fact, the department had some discussion. I mean, I am not going to try and sugar the cookie. The department had some discussion on whether or not there should be some regional approach as to where capture should take place and whether there should be some separation of the areas between where, not Treaty 5, but the association of First Nations would be running the capture.
In the end, what we decided to do was that the province would maintain, through its regional officers, the final okay as to where capture would occur. In other words, there were a couple of sites that the that the First Nations groups wanted to capture on, but we denied them access, and the same with other individuals who wanted to capture. We did not always approve where they wanted to set up traps. So the places we did approve in the end were not necessarily agreed with by everybody in the public, but it should be known that there were some sites we also did not approve. We did not change, I do not believe, from any line of the agreement. That is why I referenced some of the discussion and some of the debate that may have occurred in the valley. I think that has to be the basis upon which she is concerned.
Ms. Rosann Wowchuk (Swan River): It was my understanding that there was an agreement made with First Nations, West Region Tribal Council, for people in that region that they would be responsible for the capture of the elk. If I am not mistaken, there was also an announcement on the percentage that they would be able to keep, and that that was where it was supposed to go, that the First Nations were going to be responsible for the capture. Then, afterwards, the minister changed his mind, and I wonder what kind of obligations he has to that first agreement that he made with First Nations that they would be responsible, and then changing his mind to then open it up to other people to do the capturing.
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Mr. Cummings: There never was any discussion even of them running the entire capture in the province. I was part of the discussions. I guarantee you there was no discussion or no intent on the part of this ministry to turn the entire capture over to the First Nations.
Ms. Wowchuk: Is the minister saying then that there was no agreement signed with the First Nations that spelled out the number of elk that they would be able to capture, and was that agreement for the full amount of elk that were going to be captured in the past season?
Mr. Cummings: There was an agreement, as the member described, and that agreement prescribed the number of elk and a percentage of elk that would be captured over a three-year period, who would retain them, and so on, with the First Nations.
But that was not meant, nor was there ever any discussion, that that would be an exclusive deal for the whole province. The exclusivity is what I am objecting to, not the fact that there was an agreement. There certainly was an agreement, one which I am very proud of. We got a lot of input and a lot of movement on both sides to bring that forward. I took a fair bit of satisfaction from that agreement, but it was never meant to be exclusive, nor did the province ever give up control as to where a capture might occur. Although we had a few other private contractors whom we also signed contracts with, they did not sign the same type of contract.
The agreement with the First Nations is still in place for two more years. The private contractors for which we had agreements with, I do not think we signed any more than a seasonal agreement with them. If they want to capture again next year, they will have to come back and make a subsequent agreement with us. So frankly there were some hard feelings that were generated based on the very thing, I guess, that the member is asking, which is why I am so strong on my answer, that despite the fact that that was a rumour that was very strongly circulated out there, it was never written, it was never offered, it was never asked for, but somehow the feeling got out there that we were going to turn over to the First Nations an exclusivity. There was some question asked about the exclusivity of having them have an area, possibly an area in the Swan River Valley, but that is not the only area where elk could be captured.
In fact, it was never written into the agreement, so exclusivity was only a management tool in terms of the province saying where they would have wanted the capture to occur. Frankly, that never went past the question of whether or not should the First Nations capture in this area, should our private contractors be over here just so that they are not working in the same area, and we have to decide whether they are going to capture on section 3 and you are going to capture on Section 4. I mean, there was a potential for some conflict, but in the end I thought in the Swan River Valley, having also the advisory committee being the proponent of at least one trap that that was a good compromise. But there was never anything written in any contract with anybody along the line of exclusivity.
Ms. Wowchuk: I forwarded to the minister a request, probably well over a year ago from Sapotaweyak Cree Nation, asking that a herd be established in the Pelican Rapids area. This would not be a domestic herd; it would be just a re-establishment of another herd. There were steps taken to establish a herd some time ago in the Cranberry Portage area, but the government did not proceed with that.
Can the minister tell me if there are any plans or any consideration is being given to these proposals to establish herds in other parts of the province where they would not be domestic herds, rather that they would be herds that would be established and would be available for harvest through hunting and similar aspects?
Mr. Cummings: No, there has not been any serious long-term planning done in that vein, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Wowchuk: Mr. Chairman, there are a few more questions that I am sure my colleague the member for Dauphin (Mr. Struthers) is going to want to ask on this subject, but there are a few other areas that I would like to touch on today, while he is giving me some of his time. One that the minister touched on earlier in the day and that is the concern about the privatization of the spring water wayside park in the Pine River area. The minister is aware of petitions that have been signed, and he had many calls in his office last year about this. I have had the opportunity to meet with the proponent of the park and share with him, but there is still a concern in the community with the whole aspect of this park being developed.
I want to ask the minister if he can share with us, perhaps if he does not have the details of it here today, a copy of the contract or tell us what the proponent is required to provide in exchange for taking water from that site? What are their requirements as far as maintaining the park? Certainly in the last year, we were told that the park would be maintained, but this spring the people from Pine River, in fact, had to get together and clean up the site because it is not clean. So what are the requirements of the individual as far as maintaining the park area that is beside the spring?
Mr. Cummings: I will double-check, but I am not sure that the agreement was ever officially signed, No. 1. I know that the proponent was very amenable to trying to put forward a proposal that was acceptable within the community. He was not looking to be unreasonable or unethical in any way. From the perspective of the department, it was negotiated. The early negotiations, in the early potential agreement that was looked at to be signed, would have provided some limited access to water, which was the concern the community was raising.
But the proponent certainly indicated fairly quickly after discussions with the department that he could come up with another way of providing unlimited access to the water for local consumption if that was the issue. Not tank loading obviously, but there could be ways that sort of that same amount, same volume, same nature of delivery of water could be provided. In exchange he was going to put in access to that water for himself. He was going to put in some restrictive fencing. Frankly, that site is in danger of being polluted. The very people who are using it cannot wing their garbage down over the bank without realizing that when that garbage deteriorates, it is soaking into the very aquifer to which they are wanting to draw this very sweet and desirable water.
So in all fairness, in all honesty, I was not annoyed with the department when they brought forward this proposal. I was not annoyed even when it became controversial, although I would sooner it had not degenerated into a hair-pull in terms of the community and how they felt about it frankly. But the objectives were very laudable. It was, to get the site, someone who would, because he had access to the site for larger volumes of water, was prepared to invest his own time and money cleaning up, provide service in that respect.
The original proposal may well have been objectionable in the eyes of the community in terms of they might have felt they were going to be too restricted or they were going to have to pay for water. But certainly the objective and the desire on the part of the people who entered into this discussions within the department and eventually had to defend it publicly were all very honourable, and I do not think should, today, be a problem for the community.
But there may have been some other business concerns that have since entered into it. For example, in terms of delivering the water in Dauphin, I think if you are going to do that on a commercial scale, there are health standards and other things that the proponent would have to meet. There was a significant amount of investment that he would have had to have made. I think we have health regulations, when you are talking about drinking water that you are selling for commercial purposes, that enter into it.
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Mr. Jack Penner, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair
I am talking very openly here about some of the concerns that I know were raised. Whether they are still today the concerns, or what has ultimately influenced the proponent in any decision that he has made, I cannot tell you. I do know that the original concept was a laudable one and was not meant to be offensive to the community or to anybody else.
Ms. Wowchuk: I just want to share with the minister, it is interesting, and I would like the minister to investigate whether a contract has been signed yet, and what are the obligations on the part of that individual as far as maintaining the site?
Mr. Cummings: He is not drawing water?
Ms. Wowchuk: No, he is not drawing water, but my understanding is that he is has got a contract signed and he is responsible for maintaining the picnic area, and that is not being maintained.
However, I think the real problem here is, although the minister is well aware, the people have made the minister aware; I have made the minister aware that this is a very contentious issue, and it is still contentious. I think part of the problem is that the individuals who have decided to take on this site have not been prepared to come to the community. Perhaps, maybe that is what should be one of the requirements: you are going to take this site over; then come to the community, hold a meeting, and explain to the public what your intentions are.
I know we will continue to disagree as to whether or not the site should be privatized. That is where we will disagree, but if you have proceeded to the point where it is privatized and someone has a contract to maintain it, in fairness to the community I think that there should be a little bit more public information. That is why I am trying to find out who is responsible for maintaining the site, what are the plans here, and, if this is going to be some sort of business venture, is there any opportunity for local people to be involved in it?
What I am asking for is for a little bit more information to be put out. If the contract is not signed yet, maybe there can be some information provided to the community. Because at the present time, I want the minister to be aware that there are not very good feelings out there. People are saying he can put any kind of pumps he wants in there and there are threats of vandalism. That is not a good sign. I do not think the minister would want that, and I certainly do not want it. So what I am suggesting is that there has to be a way to work through this and ensure that the water supply is there, that it be maintained as a good water supply, and that people have a full understanding of what the plans are for the area. So if the minister could check into this a little bit more and exactly what the responsibilities are of this individual to maintain the site.
Mr. Cummings: Well, yes, now that the member has brought that to my attention, we certainly will review what the situation was, but I am going by memory from last summer. Regardless of whether there is a contract in place or not, I am pretty sure that the contractor is concerned about the bad blood that seems to be generated about this. That is why I say that both the contractor and the people in the department, when they looked at this issue, obviously have profit motive in the long run. The alternative would be because he is doing it out of the goodness of his heart that he wanted to go and maintain that site, but if the area is not going to be developed under a contract, maybe one of the things that is stopping it from proceeding is the fact that people are inclined to express some very violent feelings about it.
I am sorry that they feel that way. They may well be missing an opportunity, because if this contract or contractor does not proceed, then the question is, from the point of view of Natural Resources, we would almost be better off to shut it down if it cannot be maintained in a safe and healthy standard. We would have to spend some money or we have to find a contract. We would be quite prepared to look at a local contract. The member has asked me about this before. If there is some local area that wants to take it over, wayside parks, the member for Dauphin (Mr. Struthers) asked earlier about expenditure of parks and so on. We have actively looked for other ways of managing some of these small, local wayside opportunities.
Local people do a much better job of managing them. I do not care how much money we spend, we are still sending people in on an hourly wage to go and do a certain job. It is not the same as taking some local ownership and pride in an area and maintaining it for local opportunities. I mean picnicking and everything else all enters into it, so I am not wanting to be obstreperous about this at all. If the contractor does not intend to proceed, then we will be glad to seek other partners.
Ms. Wowchuk: I will look forward to getting more information on this one from the minister as to the status of the contract. I know that the department was hiring local people to maintain that particular site before, and I know that there are people who are prepared to maintain it now. As I said the local people went out as a group and cleaned it up just this last spring because it was not in very good condition. So perhaps we can work on that and have this resolved, because it is one issue that is causing a lot of hard feelings in the area.
Mr. Cummings: Mr. Chairman, it should be put on the record that I am pretty sure an offer was made to the community a year or two ago prior to this independent contractor coming forward with an agreement, and the community was not at that time interested or, at least, the people we talked to were not. So if nothing comes out of this, at least, we now have the attention of everyone, and we can bring it to some conclusion, because this should be run to the benefit of the community. The community has, I think, at a very low cost, an opportunity to develop something that could be very beneficial.
It should not be seen as somebody corralling up a resource to the exclusion of others. That was the impression to begin with. The contractor, certainly, I had every indication was prepared to be flexible, that this should not have to be a problem. He may just have changed his mind at this point, and I will further investigate where it is at.
Ms. Wowchuk: Just to finish that up, the contract was offered to the LGD of Mountain, and the LGD of Mountain's offices are some 60 miles away, and I think that it might have been councillors--the local people in the particular area were not even aware, so I think it was maybe the way it was offered up. Lack of proper communication is the way I understand it.
There is one other area that I would like to ask the minister about, and that is the use of Crown lands for agriculture purposes. We will have a chance to discuss this further with the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Enns), but my understanding is that at the present time when there are agriculture leases close to wildlife habitats, if a farmer has them in his hands right now and decides to let those leases go, then they go back to wildlife habitat. They cannot be transferred to another farmer for agriculture use. Also, there are areas along the edge of the mountain in the Ethelbert area where people are trying to get agriculture leases, but cannot get them because this land is not available for pasture. Now, these people are not looking at cultivating this land. They are wanting to use it for grazing land or for cutting of hay, and I have had several people in the area--and the minister is well aware that with low grain prices you have more and more people wanting to change over to livestock, but their hands are being tied because of policies of the Natural Resources department that do not allow particular lands to be transferred over to another farmer or for these lands to be used for agriculture purposes. I would like to ask the minister the purpose of that and whether there is any way we can resolve this.
Mr. Cummings: First of all, on the previous question, if the member has a name of a contact in the Cowan area, perhaps you would put it on the record or send it to us.
On the last question, I will have to seek some details, but it seems to me that probably we are talking about land where there have always been some wildlife habitat concerns. I do not know of it being--there are Crown lands out there that we simply are concerned about the maintenance of habitat, whether by putting it into agriculture we are reducing that. If it is going to be cultivated or bulldozed, that is an issue. So I believe there are actually some leases in WHAs that we would not renew, but being adjacent to, it has got to be land--and I need further detail. I will investigate this, but it seems to me that this has to be land that has a habitat concern and would not have a habitat caveat placed on it if it were to be re-leased in any way. I am not familiar with situations where we may have denied a renewal continuing the present lease unless it is, in fact, inside a designated area, so I am going to have to get further details.
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Mr. Chairperson in the Chair
Ms. Wowchuk: Is the minister suggesting then that I provide him with the various land locations that I have been contacted about, and then we can work on it from there?
Mr. Cummings: Yes, we can very quickly identify what the problem might be if we have the description of the land.
Mr. Struthers: I have some quick questions, still in the area of wildlife, before we run out of time this afternoon. [interjection] This is the short snapper section. That is right. We will see how good the minister does. We will keep tally of the points that he racks up.
The first one deals with falconry. The minister has decided to allow falconry in the province. He has set up a situation where people can trap two birds for the purpose of falconry. I have been approached by several people who have some concerns with this. The concerns deal with the enforcement and the regulations that may be needed to control this practice.
I think the observation has been made to me that it may not involve a lot of birds being captured, but how do we go about ensuring that only the number of birds to be captured are actually captured, and how do we get around the perceived problem of the birds being captured and sold into a black market to be used elsewhere, thus making this a conservation problem?
What are the minister's plans in terms of controlling what he set in motion here by okaying falconry in Manitoba?
Mr. Cummings: Well, first of all, there is nothing today that would change in terms of those who want to be involved in the black market. Illegal operators, it would be illegal yesterday, it would be illegal today and it will be illegal tomorrow. The question, as the member has identified, is, well, because we are allowing some legal activity, are we going to get that confused with some kind of illegal black market function subsequently?
First of all, the process has to be inspected. Anyone who would propose to hold a falcon has to receive approval for that. So they are in the system to start off with, and they get approval to capture a nestling. I forget the word now that is used. There is a particular name for a falcon that would be in that stage of its growth, but, nevertheless, once they acquire that, then they must also report. The fact is if someone who is a registered falconer today should apply to take one bird but takes two and attempts to market one on the black market, he is today going to be dealing with regulators. At least he is going to interface with a regulator two or three times during the course of that event, whereas if he were to be operating in the black market previous to today, he would not be interfacing with a regulator at all.
So you could argue that having regulations in place actually pulls these people who might choose to be in violation of all sorts of things by operating in the black market, actually pulls them a little closer to the regulator, and it might well slow down their activity. But that very statement implies that those who might choose to engage in falconry may be predisposed to selling the birds illegally.
One of the reasons that I, personally, felt that this was not an objectionable thing to do was that the history of falconry, modern-day falconry, is that those who want to practise this are the very people who are the strongest advocates in support of the various raptors that are out there, that they strongly believe in the survival of the species, that they strongly believe in the education of the community, particularly the youth.
I interfaced with a lady who was very opposed to the legalization of falconry. She felt that I was somehow condoning going into the schools and encouraging young people to become falconers. That is not at all what people are talking about. If they choose to become interested as a result of seeing a falconer who is demonstrating or who has brought his bird in, this is no different than the Manitoba Great Horned Owl or the Great Grey Owl that are our Manitoba symbols, brought in and shown to the youth in the schools, generate some interest, some knowledge of the bird.
The same thing is true with falconers. We have falconers today in Manitoba who are anxious to do that. In fact, I believe two of the six people who I interfaced with who wanted to become falconers are teachers in our school system, and this is one of the great advantages that they see to allowing them to practise their sport within the boundaries of the province.
In terms of game that they take, in terms of birds that they take from the wild, in terms of training the birds, they just enjoy working with raptors. They enjoy the opportunity to share that pleasure with others. So this is not a blood sport of ancient kings practised in the way that some people would think that falconry used to be. It is a very small, discreet group of people who do, in fact, like to train raptors of some sort to come back to hunt, but they simply take them in the wild and allow them to hunt what they would normally be doing if they were in the wild, but they come back to the original trainer.
I got at cross-purposes somehow with the Humane Society on this issue when they originally wrote a letter of support. Management has changed, directors have changed and they have said they do not want to be seen to be supporting this. But the fact is the very practice, the very skills that they demonstrate are the very skills that the rehabilitating injured raptors--the things that these falconers do is the very practice of how they would get some of these injured raptors back into the wild and gainfully survive.
So I see it as an educational opportunity to allow people to share the--
Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. The hour being six o'clock, committee rise.
Call in the Speaker.
Mr. Marcel Laurendeau (Deputy Speaker): The hour now being six o'clock, this House now adjourns and stands adjourned until tomorrow (Tuesday) at 1:30 p.m. Good night.