Hon. Greg Selinger (Minister of Finance): Mr. Speaker, I would like to table the 20002001 Supplementary Estimates for the Department of Finance.

Hon. MaryAnn Mihychuk (Minister of Industry, Trade and Mines): I am pleased and honoured to table the Supplementary Estimates for the fiscal year 20002001 for the Department of Industry, Trade and Mines.

Hon. Diane McGifford (Minister of Culture, Heritage and Tourism): I am pleased to table the following reports: Manitoba Liquor Control Commission Nine Month Report for the period from April 1 to December 31, 1999, and the Manitoba Lotteries Corporation Third Quarter Report for the period April to December 1999.

Mrs. Bonnie Mitchelson (River East): Mr. Speaker, one of the ongoing issues facing rural Manitobans from southern Manitoba is the high cost of ambulance and interfacility transfer fees. Many in southern rural Manitoba wish that their costs were as low as $50.

Now that the $50 northern transportation fee has been eliminated, will the Minister of Health, as the selfproclaimed saviour of health care, please explain to southern Manitobans what he has done in this budget to address their emergency transport fees?

Hon. Dave Chomiak (Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, as we said for many years when we were in opposition and when we assumed government, the way that the former 10 years of ambulance assistance had been allowed to deteriorate was nothing short of shameful in this jurisdiction. There was report after report asking for improvements in ambulance services across the province, which the members did not make public and hid from the public. It was absolutely disgraceful what happened with regard to ambulance services.

Year after year, we stood up and asked for assistance, and there was not a word on that–

Mr. Marcel Laurendeau (Opposition House Leader): Mr. Speaker, I would really like to see if we can get some answers out of this minister, but today. Beauchesne's 417: "Answers to questions should be as brief as possible, deal with the matter raised and should not provoke debate." We want to know what this minister is going to do with this budget for rural Manitoba's ambulance services.

* (10:05)

Mr. Speaker: The Honourable Government House Leader, on the same point of order.

Hon. Gord Mackintosh (Government House Leader): On the same point of order, the question was: What were we doing about ambulance services? The answer is we are trying to clean up the mess created by the former government.

Some Honourable Members: Oh, oh.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

An Honourable Member: I cannot believe the audacity . . . to stand up here and use that forum.

Mr. Speaker: On the same point of order?

Mr. Mackintosh: On a new point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: No, I have to deal with this point of order before I recognize a new point of order.

On the point of order raised, I would like to take this opportunity to remind all ministers of Beauchesne's Citation 417: "Answers to questions should be as brief as possible, deal with the matter raised" and to not provoke debate.

Hon. Gord Mackintosh (Government House Leader): The Member for Carman, I am sure the whole House heard, talking about I do not have the balls to do something and do not push me, terribly unparliamentary words. Surely if the Member for Carman has a point of order, he can get up and raise a point of order.

Mr. Speaker: The Honourable Official Opposition House Leader, on the same point of order.

Mr. Marcel Laurendeau (Opposition House Leader): On the same point of order, the Honourable House Leader knows that a point of order is to be raised when we move away from the rules of this House. If he has a problem with something that is being said across the House, he should wait and see if it is picked up in Hansard. I did not hear the Honourable Member say anything as such.

Mr. Speaker: The Honourable Government House Leader, on the same point of order with new information.

Mr. Mackintosh: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I want to clarify. I ask that you rule or that the Member for Carman get up, withdraw his comments and apologize for the unparliamentary language. If the Opposition wants to hide behind their microphones, they are entitled to do so. I am sure everyone heard the remarks of the Honourable Member. Would he please do the honourable thing?

Mr. Speaker: The Honourable Member for Carman, on the same point of order with new information.

Mr. Denis Rocan (Carman): Mr. Speaker, on that same point of order that has been raised by the Honourable Government House Leader, to make your job much easier, Sir, I will, if the Member so asked, withdraw it, because I will hide behind nothing, Sir. If you want to use a point of order to try and bring forward information that your Minister of Health is incapable of doing, so be it, because you, as a Government House Leader, sir, are supposed to help the government along with the rules of this House.

I will remove the remarks, if they are so taken affront of by the Government House Leader. I will remove them, Sir, to make your job easier, only your job, Sir.

Mr. Speaker: On the point of order, I thank the Member for Carman for withdrawing the comments. That should be the end.

Mr. Speaker: The Honourable Minister of Health, to respond to the question.

Mr. Chomiak: Mr. Speaker, in this our first budget after seven months in office in this province, we doubled the amount of resources provided to ambulances outside of Winnipeg.

Mrs. Mitchelson: That is small comfort to southern rural Manitobans. Will the Minister of Health now, who was the selfproclaimed saviour of the health care system–

Some Honourable Members: Oh, oh.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

* (10:10)

Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Speaker, given that the Minister of Health, who during the election campaign indicated that the health care system would be fixed within six months, will he–

Some Honourable Members: Oh, oh.

Mr. Speaker: The Honourable Member for River East to please put her question.

Mrs. Mitchelson: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Will the Minister of Health now be eliminating the ambulance fees and interfacility transfer costs for southern rural Manitobans now that he has eliminated transport fees for northern Manitobans?

Mr. Chomiak: Mr. Speaker, in the '9293 provincial budget, the former government instituted a $50 user fee on northern patients to fly down for treatment. We eliminated that user fee and, I might add, after 10 years of utter neglect by members opposite with respect to transportation.

We cannot do everything in the first year, but this year we more than doubled the resources provided to rural Manitoba for ambulance services, something that had not been done for 20 years.

Mr. Leonard Derkach (Russell): Mr. Speaker, constituents of mine on the west side of the province are worried and very concerned about the emergency health care services not being available to them in time of urgent need.

On more than one occasion, patients with acute and lifethreatening circumstances have been denied access to both Health Sciences Centre and St. Boniface, even though officials confirmed that beds were available but were being kept for Winnipeg cases.

What has actually happened is that, instead of being able to use air ambulance services, these patients were forced to use road ambulance services at their own expense to facilities either in Saskatchewan or in Brandon, and in some cases those costs were as much as $2,000.

Can the Minister tell the House and Manitobans whether rural residents are now being denied access to major hospitals in Winnipeg so that the Minister can claim no patients in hallways in Winnipeg hospitals?

Hon. Dave Chomiak (Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, as I indicated to the Member yesterday when we discussed this issue following his speech, we have not changed any policies that were in place by the former government.

Mr. Derkach: Well, Mr. Speaker, the reality is that circumstances have changed.

How can the Minister assure rural southern residents of our province equal access to acute and emergency health care needs, when they must bear the full cost of transportation while those in northern Manitoba now enjoy fully paid transportation costs to receive services in Winnipeg?

Mr. Chomiak: Mr. Speaker, as indicated earlier, firstly, we have not changed the policies that were in place for 11 years by the former government. Secondly, we have put more resources, more than double the resources into rural ambulance transportation services, something that has not been done in this jurisdiction for over a decade.

Mr. Derkach: Well, Mr. Speaker, I remind the Minister that I have never had a case before me where people with acute care needs in rural Manitoba have been denied access to–

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The Honourable Government House Leader, on a point of order.

Hon. Gord Mackintosh (Government House Leader): Mr. Speaker, Beauchesne's Citation 410(8), supplementary questions require no preamble. I ask if the Honourable Member would be directed to put his question with no preamble. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker: On the point of order, I would like to also take this opportunity to remind all members that Beauchesne's Citation 409(2) advises that a supplementary question should not require a preamble.

* (10:15)

Mr. Speaker: I would ask the Honourable Member to please put his question.

Mr. Derkach: Mr. Speaker, I acknowledge your ruling, but I certainly do acknowledge that this is a very serious matter as well.

Mr. Speaker, I am asking the Health Minister what he can tell my constituent, a senior female living on a fixed income in a senior citizens' home who has received a transportation bill of more than $2,000 for having a pacemaker put in when she had a heart attack in her residence.

Mr. Chomiak: Mr. Speaker, I can tell the Member quite clearly what he could tell that woman and other people in Manitoba, that unfortunately for the past decade there had not been the kind of resources that were put into ambulance services as were put in this particular year, the ability to purchase 40 new ambulances in rural Manitoba, the ability to have a provincewide communication system.

Mr. Speaker, the Member can tell his constituent that we inherited a complete and utter mess and disregard in health care for the past 10 years and we are doing our best in our first budget to try to improve the situation and will continue to do so.

Mr. Mervin Tweed (Turtle Mountain): Mrs. Cathy Campbell of Brookdale wrote me advising me of the circumstances and financial costs surrounding the birth of her grandson on April 29. The Campbell family is facing serious medical bills for transportation from Brandon to the airport in Brandon, from the Winnipeg Airport to the St. Boniface Hospital and from the St. Boniface Hospital back to Brandon. It should be a time for celebration, not financial worry.

My question is to the Minister of Health. Why is your government treating people in southern Manitoba as secondclass citizens when it comes to transportation fees?

Hon. Dave Chomiak (Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, I hearken back to when there was a former Minister of Health, the Member for Brandon West, who used to be here, used to say to us on this side of the House: Oh, ambulance coverage is not part of the medicare and it never has been part of medicare. That used to be his response.

But we do not say that. What we are saying is, in seven months in office, we have put in place, earmarked resources that have rivalled anything that had happened in this province in over a decade, and the problems that are occurring in Manitoba which have been reoccurring for over a decade, we have tried to deal with that situation by over doubling the resources that are provided to rural transportation, something that has not happened in over a decade in this province.

Mrs. Louise Dacquay (Seine River): We have received word that the Multicultural Grants Advisory Council, also known as MGAC, will cease to exist on May 31. Could the Minister responsible for Multiculturalism confirm if her government is in fact scrapping the arm's length council that has been extremely successful over the years?

Hon. Becky Barrett (Minister responsible for Multiculturalism): No, the Multicultural Grants Advisory Council has not been scrapped. The members, who were all appointed by the former government through OrderinCouncil, have been sent letters thanking them for their service over the years, and that is it.

Mrs. Dacquay: My supplementary question to the Minister is then: Why has the chair of the Council not been advised of this decision, considering the chair put a call in to the Minister on Monday and is still waiting to have her call returned?

Ms. Barrett: The chair has been advised by letter, as have all the members of the Council.

* (10:20)

Mr. Jim Penner (Steinbach): Mr. Speaker, in the April 27 Winnipeg Free Press, the First Minister (Mr. Doer) was quoted as saying about an 8000 hog barn operation in the RM of Hanover: "We've put a stop on that barn." Yet in a letter dated May 1 regarding the same operation, the Minister of Conservation states that an environmental risk assessment and accumulated impact assessment will be done and will be the basis for the Department to either issue or deny the permit.

My question is to the Minister of Conservation. Can the Minister tell this House and the people of Manitoba if it is his policy and that of his government to make environmental decisions on the basis of scientific knowledge and scientific fact?

Hon. Oscar Lathlin (Minister of Conservation): I thank the Member for the question. I would like to advise the Member that we have been working with the community of Hanover. We have advised them that we are taking measures to ensure that environmental concerns are addressed. Also, we are in the process of getting in place the mechanism that will create some balance in the way the hog barn industry in Manitoba is developing.

Mr. Penner: If this is the case, can he then explain to the people of Manitoba, who believe they will be treated fairly by this Department, why his Premier is quoted in the April 27 edition of the Winnipeg Free Press in reference to a proposed hog barn operation: We put a stop to the barn?

I would like to table a letter from the Minister to the RM of Hanover.

Hon. Gary Doer (Premier): Part of the debate on the legitimate benefits of the expansion of the livestock industry is how best to proceed. We are dealing with a system that we inherited from the former government, and we want to make the transition to see the benefits of livestock growth and development and expansion. The whole issue of developing a policy that allows for the legitimate and great benefits of the expansion of the livestock industry to be balanced with the longterm sustainability of our water and our watersheds and the sewage lagoon systems are very important to, I think, all members of the Legislature.

We believe, and we have already announced, a livestock strategy and public hearings on expansion of the livestock industry. What we are trying to do with this case and what we need to do in the future is to make sure that the decisions on the sewage and the lagoons and the waste system are considered at the time of approval of a barn and not after. We believe the information provided by the Department of Environment to the proponent of this barn is certainly where we are going to head as a government. We are going to make sure that the short term, the immediate impacts of the waste and sewage, is considered scientifically as part of the decision and in the long term we are going to deal with also the accumulative impacts to make sure that we can develop our livestock industry and protect our watershed. That is the balance we are bringing to things.

* (10:25)

Mr. Penner: Mr. Speaker, we still have not answered the question. Are we going to believe the political statement that we put a stop to the barn, or are we going to believe that we are going to do a scientific study? We have two questions here and my constituents really want to know. Which answer? [interjection]

Mr. Lathlin: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my elder for that advice.

The barn, although it might have been improved by the municipality, the project still has to go through a licensing project. Nothing has gone through yet. I would also like to advise the Member that the discussion paper that has been created from a series of meetings with various stakeholders has been completed, is being printed at the moment, will be ready probably in two weeks, after which that discussion paper will be taken around to the province of Manitoba as a basis for discussing the overall livestock stewardship plan that we have initiated. From there policies will be developed.

Hon. Jon Gerrard (River Heights): Mr. Speaker, the revelations from the lottogate scandal have outraged Manitobans, and yet we are getting far less than full answers from the NDP Government. A former CEO says he just followed directions from his board. A board says it kept the government informed of its every move, and a former government says the Board kept it in the dark.

I ask the Premier, who campaigned on open and transparent government, whether he will make available to the public copies of the relevant minutes of the Board meetings of the Manitoba Lotteries Corporation so that people in Manitoba can learn what really happened.

Hon. Gary Doer (Premier): Mr. Speaker, I will certainly take the question as notice to see what minutes are available and what the provisions are on public disclosure. I think we have already had a verbal confirmation, and I have read it in the media, from a board member, that said all relevant information was available to the former government. I think Mr. Cooper has made that statement. The issue of the audit deals with the disclosure of the capital project. It deals with the need for the public to be fully informed and not "misled." It deals with the whole issue of keeping proper records at the Corporation, and it deals with questionable practices dealing with other matters pertaining specifically to the Corporation and Corporation executives.

The question on the minutes I will take as notice, but already on the public record is a member of the Board appointed by the former government that says the former government was fully informed. I expect that that is the truth of the matter.

Mr. Gerrard: My supplementary to the Premier: Since nowhere in government is it more important that there be transparency and accountability in public affairs than in those affecting gambling establishments, I ask the Premier, rather than using innuendo and rhetoric and somebody else's words to blame the former government, to put the facts on the table and make sure the public is aware so that people can really judge.

* (10:30)

Mr. Doer: Mr. Speaker, I believe, if I recall correctly, that in the past, for example, the minutes of Crown corporations were available. I will check the specific request of the Member. It is certainly our intent to have a full and open disclosure of information like that. I will check that with the Minister, but I consider the request legitimate.

Mr. Gerrard: My second supplementary to the Premier: Given the circumstance where there seems to have been more puck or buck passing than in a hockey game and where there are still 60 million questions about this $60 million, why does the Premier hesitate to call a full public inquiry to get to the bottom of this?

Mr. Doer: Mr. Speaker, the Committee on Lotteries has met on three occasions, I believe, in the Legislative Chamber. Even though the previous annual report has been dealt with, perhaps the more current annual report that was tabled today could be dealt with and the legislative committee could meet. I look to the House Leader on that. Perhaps that is a good forum, the legislative committee, to deal with the more recent annual report and the findings of the Lotteries audit.

The Auditor did go through the various allegations, some of which were dealt with in his report. Others were not substantiated, which is fair enough. We have a matter referred by the Deputy Justice Minister to the Winnipeg Police. Other reports from the Board will be reviewing the action plan.

I think there are other avenues to deal with this without having it a very expensive public inquiry, because the Auditor did have a number of recommendations. We could review that with the legislative committee.

I think now my sense is the public mood is to get on and solve the problems and move on to the next stage of dealing with the recommendations that are made by the Auditor to this Legislature. That is what we plan to do.

Ms. Bonnie Korzeniowski (St. James): Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Family Services.

Over the past months, I have met with several operators and directors of daycare centres in St. James and have become even more aware of the acuity of the problems created by reprehensibly low wages available for staff in this system over the past decade. These services provided, which are invaluable in terms of allowing particularly our single parents and lowincome earners to continue to provide for their families and contribute–

Mr. Marcel Laurendeau (Opposition House Leader): Mr. Speaker, Beauchesne's clearly states there should be one carefully drawn question. I do not get an opportunity to stand up and do this very often, but I do believe that the Honourable Member has already put her one carefully drawn sentence. She might want to put the question now.

Mr. Speaker: On the point of order, the Honourable Member does have a point of order. Beauchesne's Citation 409(2), a preamble should not exceed one carefully drawn sentence.

Mr. Speaker: I would ask the Honourable Member to please put her question.

Ms. Korzeniowski: Will the Minister of Family Services please clarify: What will the impact of this increase in child care be for the children and parents of Manitoba?

Hon. Tim Sale (Minister of Family Services and Housing): When we formed government, no crisis was more apparent in my ministry than the crisis in child daycare. We had a situation where more than a third of the centres that we license could not attract and keep staff to meet the regulations. This is because of the abysmally low wages that have been forced on this system since 1991, when they were cut some $4 million in total, and that money was only begun to be restored in the last year of the previous government.

This announcement of $9.1 million means wages will rise so that we will be able to attract people into our training programs; we will be able to retain workers. But more importantly, in fact most importantly, the families and children of Manitoba who need care will be able to get quality care, assured care, the staff will stay, and we can build a system for our kids, for our families for the future.

Mr. Darren Praznik (Lac du Bonnet): Mr. Speaker, there is a very serious matter that arose earlier in Question Period with respect to the answers of the Minister of Conservation (Mr. Lathlin) regarding the way in which his Department and his Premier deal with legitimate applications for licensing. The Minister has said, I believe correctly, about the process, an application in process.

He has written to people involved with this, indicating that he is awaiting scientific testing and studies to be done, exactly what we would expect of a responsible minister. Yet his boss, the Premier, is quoted in Brandon as saying that this hog barn is stopped. He is quoted as saying we have taken the first move to stop the hog barn. He said: We have put a stop to that barn.

So I ask the Minister: Who is the proponent to believe? Who are the public to believe? The Minister or his boss, who has politically said that this project is dead. Who do we believe?

Hon. Gary Doer (Premier): The Member is putting words in our mouth, and I think the Minister of Conservation is conducting the affairs of his Department properly in the sense that there were serious issues raised on the issue of the lagoon and other standards. Those concerns mean that they have been communicated back to the proponent. We are going to ensure that the proper stewardship of our environmental resources is balanced with the livestock expansion. That is what the Minister of Conservation did, and that is what we will continue to do in government.

Mr. Praznik: No one is disputing what the Minister of Conservation is saying, but I would ask the First Minister, today he is a proponent of the process, yet in Brandon he is quoted as saying that, after the speech, and I quote: Doer said he is referring to a controversial proposal in the R.M. of Hanover–

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Gord Mackintosh (Government House Leader): Mr. Speaker, Beauchesne's Citation 410(8): "Preambles to questions should be brief and supplementary questions require no preambles."

We heard here this morning how the Opposition wants to be very tight on questions. I think we have to apply those rules evenly. I ask, Mr. Speaker, that you draw the Member's attention to that citation.

Mr. Speaker: On the point of order, I would like to remind the Member that Beauchesne's Citation 409(2) advises that a supplementary question should not require a preamble.

* (10:40)

Mr. Speaker: I would ask the Honourable Member to please put his question.

Mr. Praznik: Mr. Speaker, my question to the First Minister is this: Why, when there is a process in place to give proponents a fair, scientificbased assessment, is that First Minister then saying to the public and saying to the media that the project is dead, that his government has stopped it, when that scientific process has not yet even been completed?

Mr. Doer: I would like to thank my elder for that further advice, to quote the Minister of Conservation. Mr. Speaker, the term "dead" is being used only by the Member opposite. I do not know in what connotation he is using that.

It has not proceeded to date. There are serious concerns raised by the Department of Environment properly with the proponent.

Science will be used in making sure that the public and the stewardship of this resource is proper. So please do not put words in our mouths.

Mr. Praznik: I would like to ask the First Minister why he would expect any proponent of any project to feel that this is a legitimate, sciencebased project, when his words, his comments to the media and to a public gathering in Brandon undermine that whole process.

How does the First Minister expect any Manitoban to have confidence in a process that he is undermining with his own words?

Mr. Doer: Mr. Speaker, I am glad the former minister did not use the term "dead" again, because he puts words in our mouth and then attacks that position. That may be a very convenient way. Well, the next time members opposite stop at a stop sign, I would like them to note what the difference is between stop and dead.

The project is going to be reviewed for scientific reasons. I would ask them to take that into consideration.

Mr. Jack Reimer (Southdale): Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister of Justice.

Back in 1995, our government entered into a sevenyear conditional funding agreement with the Winnipeg Police Service whereby the Province would provide $2 million per year to put 40 more frontline police officers on the street.

Can the Minister of Justice assure this House that that commitment of $2 million is in this year's budget that was just tabled by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Selinger)?

Hon. Gord Mackintosh (Minister of Justice and Attorney General): Yes.

Mr. Glen Cummings (Ste. Rose): Mr. Speaker, recently there was an announcement that the federal government intended to participate in road rehabilitation in aid of grain transportation. Can this Minister of Highways indicate the amount of dollars that we can expect, and will there be extra construction this year as a result?

Hon. Steve Ashton (Minister of Highways and Government Services): I can indicate that we are probably looking at approximately $6 million a year. The figure we have heard is approximately $35 million. The initial indication from the federal government, unfortunately, similar to their announcement on a national highways program, is that we may be looking at receiving this money as early as next year, not in this fiscal year. We are currently within the department identifying potential projects; in fact, I have asked that the priority–and I have met with many RMs. We are more than aware of the pressure that changes in the grain industry have put on our roads, and we look forward to working with the federal government finally. In fact, any time we can get any kind of federal money back into this province, we will.

Mr. Cummings: Certainly we appreciate that rural Manitoba roads are exploding under the weights that are being put on them, as we see continued abandonment of not only railways but service centres along those railways. Can this minister indicate whether or not he will be matching these federal dollars?

Mr. Ashton: Mr. Speaker, I think it is important for the Member, who should know this, to know that the Province of Manitoba, including this government, the previous government, in fact going back more than two decades, has spent virtually every cent it has taken in, in terms of gas taxes. So the Province of Manitoba's money has been on the table for many years. It is a question of the federal government putting some back in. In fact, they put in none of the 10 cents a litre they take out of this province in gas taxes. We expect the federal government to be putting the $6 million in. In fact, I say a lot more should be reinvested in our highways than the $6 million.

Mr. Cummings: This minister has just confirmed that the $10million cut to highway construction this year is a real cut. Will this minister commit to a formula that will guarantee the producers of southern Manitoba that these dollars potentially coming from the federal government will in fact be spent on roads where grain transportation is important?

Mr. Ashton: In the Member's preamble, I think it is important for members opposite to recognize that, in terms of our highways spending this year, it is up. We have increased dramatically the maintenance expenditures, we have increased the winter road expenditures, and we are starting to deal with the terrible neglect we saw in terms of our highways equipment. It is so bad that we have a 97year replacement cycle on the highways equipment. For every four hours they are on the road, they are one hour in the shops.

We started to deal with that, and in fact the only thing that the members opposite refer to when they talk of the highway construction is the fact that they had a onetimeonly initiative last year of $10 million. In fact, our highways construction budget this year is the exact same average as theirs was in the last four years, and it is higher than two years under that previous government.

Mr. Darren Praznik (Lac du Bonnet): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Justice. We earlier in this session asked the Minister to confirm that their budget would in fact bring an end to the police athletic clubs, an initiative that has proven to have great success in over 13 parts of the city of Winnipeg. The Premier (Mr. Doer) in the election said he was turning on the lights of the gyms on election night. I want to ask the Minister of Justice why he is turning those lights off in those 13 gyms across the city of Winnipeg.

Hon. Gord Mackintosh (Minister of Justice and Attorney General): It is an incredible question which has no foundation in fact whatsoever. The program is proceeding because the province is still funding it. Even though the federal government withdrew in September, the City of Winnipeg has not been meeting its expected obligations. The fingers on the light switch are not those of the province, but when it comes to afterhours school programs, there are going to be improvements in this province. There is going to be a great expansion.

You ain't seen nothin' yet.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Time for Oral Questions has expired.

* (10:50)

Hon. Steve Ashton (Minister of Highways and Government Services): Might I have leave to table reports?

Mr. Speaker: Is there leave to revert back to tabling of reports? [Agreed]

Mr. Ashton: Mr. Speaker, I would like to table the Supplementary Information for Legislative Review of the Department of Highways and Government Services for this year.

Hon. Dave Chomiak (Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, might I have leave to return back to tabling of reports?

Mr. Speaker: Is there leave to revert back to tabling of reports? [Agreed]

Mr. Chomiak: Mr. Speaker, I would like to table the Annual Report for Community Support Programs, which has been previously distributed in this Legislature.

Mr. Larry Maguire (Arthur-Virden): Mr. Speaker, it was my pleasure to attend the Manitoba Oil Show, the evening before last in Virden, on May 17. This event was co-hosted by the Manitoba Oil Museum and Interpretative Centre Incorporated and the Petroleum and Energy Branch of Manitoba Conservation.

The Manitoba Oil Show provided an excellent opportunity for firms in the oil industry to showcase their supplies and services and to share ideas that will help create growth in Manitoba's oil industry.

The oil industry has had an important presence in Manitoba for more than five decades. There are more than 1200 producing oil wells in this province, many of them located in Arthur-Virden constituency. Each year our oil industry expends millions of dollars in the Manitoba economy. The industry is of vast importance to the economy of Manitoba, and nowhere is it more important than in Arthur-Virden. This industry provides products and services to meet people's needs and generates wealth and spinoff benefits for governments, investors, employees and communities alike.

This year this event, held every two years, provides an important opportunity for industry representatives to meet and chart the industry's future. I was very impressed with the quality and variety of the displays showing our oil industry at work.

The Oil Show also marked the induction of five new members of the Manitoba Oil Museum Hall of Fame. Congratulations to Clare Cawston, Elwyn Dunning, Butch Forsyth, Clare Moster and Frank Coulter for receiving recognition for their pioneering work in Manitoba's oil industry.

Each of these recipients are most deserving, and I congratulate them, along with their families, for this great honour. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Gerard Jennissen (Flin Flon): I rise today to highlight the advances that our government has made in health care provisions in this province.

In general our government, through Budget 2000, reflects the need for a more efficient and financially accountable health care system. There has been a 6% increase over last year's expenditure, which will allow us to take health care in the province to a higher level.

In particular, I would like to address the improvements that have been made to Pharmacare. On May 11, our government was pleased to announce an expansion to Pharmacare program to include the coverage of new lifesaving drugs, palliative care drugs and the Aricept trial for Alzheimer's patients. The recent additions to lifesaving drugs include medication intended to treat such diseases as AIDS, cancer and hepatitis B.

A very positive step towards improved pharmaceutical care is the approval of a medication known as Aricept used in the treatment of Alzheimer's patients. This medication will now be available to residents of personal care homes and will also continue to be supported in Pharmacare's Aricept pilot project.

Recently our province was acknowledged by the Canadian Institute for Health Information as a leader in the renewal of health care in Canada. We hope to maintain this reputation by introducing further initiatives that are in the best interests of all Manitobans. In fact, essential programs such as Home Care and Pharmacare were pioneered in this very province.

The changes we have introduced to the Pharmacare program provides further evidence of our support for and our continued interest in building an effective and appropriate health care system for Manitobans. Health care in this province has gone through a decade of neglect. Only recently have we seen significant progress in this area.

The Government of Manitoba is committed to making health care work better for people by delivering programs such as Pharmacare, programs that are efficient and effective.

Mr. Speaker: Fifteen seconds.

Mr. Jennissen: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to address this very important issue.

Mr. Mervin Tweed (Turtle Mountain): Mr. Speaker, yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the opening of the new clinic in the town of Killarney. It was a project started and developed through the regional health authorities and brought forward to the province for some funding–and went to enjoy the afternoon with the residents of the surrounding communities and the people of Killarney.

A couple of things that were brought up at the opening–and I would like to comment that it is a beautiful facility. It has eight service rooms for the doctors to work in. We have a new group of doctors who have come to our community, and they are just thrilled with the opportunity to work in a new facility.

I think it was, regrettably, unfortunate that the Department of Manitoba Health did not or would not send anybody out to partake in this type of an opening. It was acknowledged by the crowd and by a lot of the people who were there. One of the comments that I heard most often throughout the day was: Who is our new member for our particular community and region on the community regional health board? I did acknowledge that the member has retired or resigned, and we are still waiting anxiously for the Minister to appoint a member for that area.

It is a beautiful facility. It will set the community up for the future in the sense of providing for the health care needs and services of that particular region of the province. The people of the community just wanted to send on a special thanks to the former government for their foresight in creating those opportunities for the community. Thank you.

Ms. Linda Asper (Riel): Mr. Speaker, in spring 1999 the Building a Healthy St. Vital conference was held. From this conference, involving many community members, came the idea of using the green space along Bishop Grandin Boulevard to develop a pathway linking communities and areas rich in nature. The long-term vision is to see this pathway as part of a larger system of links, including Fort Whyte and Assiniboine Forest. The current project, however, is focussed on the three-mile stretch between the Red and Seine rivers, the stretch in my constituency. This is an exciting possibility for reclaiming land along an existing right-of-way as an amenity for the citizens of St. Vital and Winnipeg.

The idea of the Bishop Grandin Nature Corridor project is to preserve the available green spaces and to have the community decide how it wants to develop them for its use. These ideas already include bike paths, walking paths, skateboarding areas, and the reinstitution of natural habitats, including Manitoba wildflowers. The project has now been accepted as a spur, part of the Trans Canada Trail. It will be an opportunity for our community to enjoy healthy active lifestyles along the greenway in ways consistent with preservation of the native species and natural areas. This will increase an awareness, appreciation and knowledge of the area's natural and historic value. Natural spaces will be reclaimed, habitats that may have been compromised by past developments will be reinstated. It will be possible to create thematic pockets of space that highlight recreation, history and nature appropriate to the landscapes along Bishop Grandin Boulevard.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The Honourable Member's time has expired.

The Honourable Member for Arthur-Virden, on a point of order.

* (11:00)

Mr. Larry Maguire (Arthur-Virden): Yes, Mr. Speaker, I failed to acknowledge in my member's statement, that the Minister for Industry, Trade and Mines (Ms. Mihychuk) was at the function, as well, and acknowledge that she, along with my former colleague Mr. Jim Downey, helped to present the plaques for the people who received the Oilman's Hall of Fame Awards. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker: On the point of order, the Honourable Member does not have a point of order.

Mr. Glen Cummings (Ste. Rose): I would like to congratulate the Elks lodge in Neepawa for making an important donation to Brookdale School recently. They made a $1,500 donation to cover the cost of a special project to improve the listening and learning skills of Brookdale students. This presentation was made by Mr. Ketts, Mr. Murray and Mr. Hart, a donation that was made on behalf of the Elks of Neepawa.

The funds will be used to install a classroom sound field amplification system. This technology includes a microphone, a receiver and speakers that are used to amplify the teacher's voice and will be especially beneficial for students with learning difficulties by ensuring that they can all hear directions clearly.

I am very pleased and want to encourage these partnerships that have been developed between our communities and our schools. Clearly, the Elks of Neepawa have recognized the importance of providing our young people with the tools necessary to succeed in school and beyond. I know this will pay significant dividends for the staff and especially the students at Brookdale.

Mr. Speaker: Adjourned debate on the proposed motion of the Honourable Minister of Finance (Mr. Selinger) and the proposed motion of the Honourable Member for Kirkfield Park (Mr. Stefanson) in amendment thereto, standing in the name of the Honourable Leader of the Official Opposition, who has unlimited time.

Mr. Gary Filmon (Leader of the Official Opposition): I am delighted to be able to resume my response to the Budget and to add some information that time did not permit yesterday. Just in beginning, my colleague for Southdale wanted me to add a comment that he was unable to get in during the course of asking his question, that this is, of course, the end of Mining Week in Manitoba, and it is appropriate because middle-income taxpayers are getting the shaft with this budget.

I just wanted to go back to the point that I was making yesterday at the end of the session, and that is that it seems absolutely unbelievable that the members opposite, particularly the Minister of Family Services and Housing (Mr. Sale), would make this big fuss about the fact that they finally acknowledged the pension liabilities of the province on the books, but they have not added one penny toward the repayment of that liability.

They took the $96-million minimum payment on the debt that was required under the balanced budget legislation, and they took part of it, $21 million, and applied it on that. So, all they did was reduce the amount that they were paying on the province's debt by that amount and put it onto the pension liability. They added no money, and so they have actually contributed nothing toward the retirement of that debt, but they have actually acknowledged it. Well, it has been acknowledged year after year by the Provincial Auditor. One would hope that if you are going to take that step you would at least begin to make payments on it. But, no, this budget makes no additional debt payments while acknowledging that, yes, we do have pension liabilities.

It just seems unbelievable the kind of almost fraudulent ways in which they have dealt with taking money from one pocket to another to try and create a perception that they are dealing with the issues that confront them.

An Honourable Member: Smokescreen, Doer, smokescreen.

Mr. Filmon: Yes, as a colleague says, smokescreen, and I do not think that is too far from reality.

The major concern that people ought to have about this budget is its lack of vision. I know that when we came into office we said that we were going to prepare Manitoba for the next century, that we were going to get us onto a footing in which we would have balanced budgets in future, that it would take a period of time. We gave ourselves two terms. We accomplished it in seven years. We kept working toward the vision of having a balanced budget, a healthy economy and a solid foundation while at the same time preserving and enhancing the vital services that Manitobans depended upon.

There is no vision here. It does not say anywhere that we want to be competitive with the rest of Canada so that we attract our share of investment, that we want to become a haven, for instance, for high-tech investment. We do not have a lot of the advantages. The Member for River Heights (Mr. Gerrard) has referred to that. We do have some advantages, many of them, in this province of ours, that other places do not have. We may not have the resource riches of Alberta or even Saskatchewan. I mean, they have uranium and potash and oil and gas and all those kinds of things.

We have certain things going for us. We have location advantages. We have the transportation and distribution side of things. We do have the strongest industrial base in western Canada. We do have a combination of many things. We have the diversity. We have a lot of things that are going for us, but this does not say that we are going to take those advantages and we are going to build on them or that we are going to use the opportunity that has never been here in the history of Canada or the world, and that is that we now have a new means of distribution for the world. It is called the information highway. It means that you no longer have to be confined by being close to natural resources or close to your markets, because so much of what is being traded today is knowledge based, information based. It means that the information highway allows us to be able to set our own future.

It means that we can say that you can do anything world-class from here and we can set about to accomplish that, but in order to do so, you have to be attractive to the kinds of people who have this intellectual capacity and make it so they want to be here.

You ask yourself: Will anything in this budget do that? Of course, the answer is no. In fact, it is going to discourage them, because they are told flat out by the makers of this budget, the New Democratic Government, that if you aspire to do well, to create opportunities, to be an entrepreneur, an investor, a developer of intellectual properties and opportunities for the new, modern world, then we are going to hammer you harder on taxes than you would be anywhere else in Canada.

So, when you can choose to be anywhere in the world–I mean, you take a look at the things that are happening around the world. You look at the United States. The sunbelt has been attracting investment traditionally for decades. The growth in the United States has been in all those sunbelt areas, but in more recent times, the last decade in particular, places like Colorado and even Utah and places that are known for a lifestyle are now attracting significant investment and growth. Why? Because people are going there for lifestyle, and they are able, with a laptop computer, faxes, telecommunications, computers, to do business with the world. So they have had tremendous growth in opportunity because they have recognized that you have to set up the kind of thing that attracts people. That is a combination of lifestyle, but also an attractive tax environment that insures that people go there and they do not have to take the vast majority of their income and give it back to the state.

As a consequence of that, we have got a budget here that does not give anybody a reason to stay. It does not give anybody a reason to perpetuate this kind of thing that we had, that all of us were very excited about, because I know our government worked and worked and worked to reverse that net interprovincial out-migration, and there it came last year. We have stopped the bleeding, big headline saying that for the first time in about 14 years we had net interprovincial in-migration to this province. You just have to look around and see why this is happening, creation of all sorts of opportunities. Even today, yet another announcement of a call centre expansion of Air Canada, over 150 jobs, and another call centre of 200 jobs for Auto Trader. These were things that were a conscious government policy, one that I might say was criticized by members opposite.

An Honourable Member: McJobs.

Mr. Filmon: McJobs was the term that the now Premier (Mr. Doer) used to use. It is still criticized by some of his members. The Member for Interlake (Mr. Nevakshonoff) made a speech in which he criticized those kinds of jobs as being any use to the growth of a province. There was a discussion on the radio just a couple of days ago about the southwest corner of Winnipeg and all of these big box centres and all of this development that is taking place in the Kenaston, McGillivray, Scurfield and other areas. A person said it is just like Calgary, in many ways. It gives you that sense of growth and investment that you see in many parts of Calgary.

* (11:10)

My daughter, the only one of our children, regrettably, who does not live in the province, was here just a couple of weeks ago. She had been away for a year and a half. We took her around and she was saying: What is going on there, what is happening there? Her eyes lit up at all of this activity taking place. Of course, it has been the result of consistent policies and consistent vision towards goals that have been there for a dozen years to say we can do it here. We have things that we can build upon, and it has happened, Mr. Acting Speaker, in so many different areas.

As I talked earlier in my remarks about the fact that so many major initiatives have taken place over the last certainly half decade in which the foundation resulted in people finally making these long-term decisions, because they do not make them overnight. When they require major investments or structural changes to their operations to move parts of their operation to another city or another province, it takes some three to five years often in their planning cycle to get there.

Well, what in this budget is going to cause somebody to start thinking about three or five years down the road making a significant commitment to come to Manitoba? The answer is nothing. The answer is nothing. If we have a desire or an objective to grow at a faster rate than the rest of Canada, it is not contained here in this budget. There is nothing in this budget that will make it happen. You know, it is something that does not necessarily have to worry us today. Members opposite are saying what is the problem? There is 2.7% growth projected for this year and about the same for next year.

What they do not say is that that is going to be running at pretty close to half of Canada. So they have already decided to give up the race, to set their targets well below. They do not want to be as we were, three of the last four years our growth rate exceeded Canada's. They are prepared to set the target lower, so that they can say we met our target. We met our target, they will say. So that is the thing that all of us ought to be concerned about is that they are not going to meet those targets. They may meet those targets, but those targets are not good enough and, indeed, that is a real worry for us.

You know, the other thing that occurs to me in this whole analysis is what it means for the young people, what it means for the young people who want to stake their future here, who want to be here to pursue their careers, their goals, their life's ambitions. That, I think, is the cruellest of all of the parts of this budget. You may recall that during the last election campaign, the now Premier had slogans that said "New hope for young people." Well, I am afraid this budget says no hope for young people in Manitoba. No hope.

Indeed, it is a cruel, cruel joke, because they may well be offered the short-term fix, and this budget is filled with short-term fixes, of cheaper tuition, because, as I pointed out yesterday, we already are the third lowest in Canada for universities and the second lowest for colleges. So they are saying that we are going to take you even cheaper. But at the end of the day, you are going to find that there are no choices in universities because they are having to cut back on their resources, on their staff and their course offerings. Worse still, when you graduate, you are going to be faced with paying the highest taxes in Canada as middle-income earners. Therefore, the opportunities for real growth, the opportunities for real job creation are going to be somewhere else. What a cruel joke on the young people of this province. That is all I can say.

The converse to this very happy story that was in earlier this year about our population growth now reversing and our having net in-migration for the first time in 14 years is the article that came out with the analysis of the Budget called "Running Back to Saskatoon." In it, of course, the comparisons are made with what is going on around us, because, like it or not, in many cases when we looked at significant policy decisions–and I remember wrestling with the policy decision of whether or not we wanted to expand gaming in this province. One of the things that was significant in our decision was that we had to offer alternatives to what was being offered all around us in the other provinces. We could not allow for the bleeding of our Manitobans going to North Dakota, going to Ontario, going to Saskatchewan, and putting their money in the casinos because no outlet was available here.

Now, many of us had our difficulties with that choice. Members opposite criticized the choice, and now they are going to add five additional casinos, despite their criticism of the choice that we made. But part of it was what was happening around us. When we looked at opportunities for attracting, for instance, the television and film industry, which went from $1 million of film and video production in 1987 in our province to what is expected to be close to $100 million this year, part of it was that the federal government had pulled out of their support for it. Some of the provinces were creating support or had created support. For us to get our share, we had to get into that game. So we created, of course, the support program plus the tax credit program. The two of them resulted in our being able to attract and, in fact, grow very significantly that film and video business.

So you always have to look around and say: What is happening in the rest of the world? What is happening that should be of interest to us? When we decided to go full bore into the call centre business, we looked around and we saw that just south of us in places like particularly Nebraska, where Omaha was known as the 1-800 capital of America, and South Dakota and so on, they had attracted all of these kinds of operations because of being in the central time zone, one factor that was there for us that was not there for other parts of Canada.

We looked at other things that were absolutely the same characteristics as prevailed just south of us in the United States that had resulted in their getting all these call centres. You know what happened? Many people attributed it originally to the free trade agreement that call centres that were servicing Canada were actually set up by Canadian corporations in the States. You may remember when Canadian Pacific hotels set theirs up in the United States, people went crazy. Other major travel agency groups set up call centres in the States.

The reason they did it was that Canada was not competitive in a variety of different ways. We were not competitive in our long distance rates for telephone, and we had a few other things that had to be adjusted, the taxes that we charged on telecommunications and other things. We made those adjustments, we made that decision and we also set up a group to go out and sell our advantages vis-à-vis other parts of Canada. Now you are looking at 10 000 jobs. As I say, even today, close to 400 additional ones in the paper in that sector. Competitiveness, competitiveness, and competitiveness.

So, my former colleague Roy Romanow in Saskatchewan, a New Democrat, philosophically might be seen to be quite different from a Conservative. I would argue from my personal friendship with Roy that we are both Prairie populists in many ways and we are both "small c" conservative in most ways in terms of the way in which we evaluate the solutions to problems. Roy Romanow is a person who, I think, has vision. I think Roy Romanow is a person who has the ability to take a leadership role, who is not just the pawn of the union bosses or the forceful parts of his society that twist his arm and push him over backwards. Roy Romanow is a person who looks at a problem and says: How do I solve it? What is the best solution for the people of Saskatchewan? He once said, and I remember this, that you cannot be beholden to a collection of special interests or you will not serve the people of your province.

* (11:20)

An Honourable Member: How does that describe the government of the day?

Mr. Filmon: Now, that is exactly opposite to the Government that we have in Manitoba today, because they are beholden to a collection of special interests. Every one of their solutions in the Budget is a quick fix that is designed and completely put together to satisfy a particular special interest that was important to them in their re-election campaign. It is a disjointed collection of solutions to problems with no coherent vision behind it. It generally consists of saying, well, we will just reverse what the previous government did whatever that solution was. You know, it is going to be interesting to see how many different things that they do that will be damaging to the long-term best interests of our province in just simply their desire to reverse what the previous government did.

So they blame the previous government; that is the No. 1 solution to every problem, and secondly, they say, okay, we will spend more. That is going to come to haunt them because there has been reams and reams and reams of articles about the fact that you cannot, for the major challenges of this province, this economy and this society, just simply believe that spending more will be the answer.

Jeffrey Simpson has an article in yesterday's Globe and Mail about health care as one example. Health care, of course, is the major challenge for every provincial government in Canada. I would argue all the governments of Canada, health care is the No. 1 challenge that they are going to face.

Now, what did the New Democrats do throughout their time in opposition? They just simply said that every change that was being brought in by the Government that I represented, that we on this side participated in, that every single thing we did in health care was wrong and it had to be changed.

They talk about the reduction of nurses on the acute care side, which went along locked step with the reduction of beds. Why were beds reduced in health care? They were reduced because if you go into hospital today for anything from the birth of a baby to open-heart surgery, cataract surgery to hip replacement, knee replacement, you will spend a fraction of the time, usually a third or less of the time, that you would have 20 years ago in hospital. In fact, something like cataract surgery used to require 10 days in hospital. As part of the process is done on an out-patient basis today, it does not require one day in hospital. So what happened to those nurses, those 1000 nurses that he talks about over and over again, the Minister of Health (Mr. Chomiak) or the Premier (Mr. Doer) or the Minister of Labour (Ms. Barrett), or any of those, what happened to them? Did they disappear? No. They moved into the long-term care side of the system

An Honourable Member: No.

Mr. Filmon: Yes, yes, absolutely, the vast majority of them. There is just a handful, something around 10 percent that did not move into that side of the system. Virtually every one of them moved into the long-term care and community-based care side of the system. Those nurses did not disappear from the system. You look at the registration of MARN's numbers and they virtually were unchanged, give or take a small percentage.

That is because the system had to change. I will tell you if you read any people who know what is going on in health care, they will tell you that it has to continue to evolve and change, because we have to find better ways to do it. If not, you have the problem that Jeffrey Simpson raises in yesterday's column, which is we took over a system in which we were paying about 30 percent of all of our provincial dollars to health care. By the time we left, it had reached 36 percent. It is destined at the current rate of additional expenditure to be over 50 percent by the year 2020, and if you take it beyond that, I know I compared notes with other premiers in Canada, it can reach 70 percent of all provincial expenditures going to health care in the foreseeable future, while we are still alive.

This is something that cannot be allowed, because you cannot just say just throw more money and it is going to make the system better. You have to continue to change the system to do a better job without necessarily having to just add bags and bags of money. Yes, more money is needed in certain parts of the solution, in certain parts of the evolution. Much of what the Minister of Health is now taking for credit that he has solved things like hallway medicine–believe me, hallway medicine will never fully be solved. You will find certain crises on long weekends; when the flu season comes, there will be people in our hallways, and he will live to regret the smug attitude that he is taking today. He will live to regret it because you do not build a church for the number of people that are going to be there on Easter Sunday. You have to provide flexibility that you can predict in the system, but you cannot provide for people just standing around waiting for somebody to arrive at the tremendous cost that it is to keep a bed open, to keep a wing open, to keep a hospital in service and all of that.

You are dealing with these people who are going to be hit with the highest taxes in Canada with income levels of $50,000 if it is in the nursing category, with income levels well higher than that if it is in the physician category, and you cannot build a facility for this to occur.

So what is he going to do? Is he going to say, we will freeze all change in place, despite the fact there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the things that have been done have not diminished the quality of health care in this province? There was an article from the Centre for Health Policy and Evaluation. It is associated with the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

We are seeing more and more of these think tanks develop to help us in the decisions that have to be made in health care, and they are saying there is absolute incontrovertible evidence to tell us that hospital cutbacks have not restricted growth in life-enhancing and live-saving procedures, like cataract surgery, total joint replacement, coronary bypass. All of these increased at the time that hospitals were being downsized in the past decade in this province.

They say that what you have to do, though, is start to evaluate. Every hospital is not necessarily operating efficiently. Some are doing a better job than others. Some are getting better results than others. You have to start looking at best practices. You have to start doing the things that you look and find all over Canada. You have to look at these ratios of people to beds. You have to do all of these things. But every time as a result of your using hard, solid, information-based decisions we made changes, the members opposite said, oh, it is a terrible thing.

Here is what the institute says, the Centre for Health Policy and Evaluation: Emergency room overcrowding does not necessarily mean a system teetering on the edge of an underfunding crisis. Seasonal pressures exist, all sorts of things, flu, as I said, long weekends, staff going on holidays. All sorts of things lead to that kind of thing, using the wrong yardsticks, using them wrongly.

Of course, it is all about politics. The sad thing about it is that people are led to believe that somebody is going to solve their problem. They become completely destroyed in terms of their trust in people and the system.

* (11:30)

I thought it was a very sad day. We had this article on the 15th of May, last Monday: "Mother launches fast, blasts Chomiak," which talked about the fact that when the New Democrats were running for office and trying to tear down the Government, the Member for Kildonan (Mr. Chomiak), as he was then, the Health critic, recruited her–that is her word–to go to news conferences with her child, who needed surgery on her eyes, used her, is what she now says, because he wanted to create a following for the New Democrats to give the impression that the Government was cruel and hard-hearted and that he was going to do a better job. Here she is, she says, seven months later, he has done nothing to recruit the pediatric eye surgeon that her daughter needs, that she is still here waiting for the attention that she needs.

What does the Minister say? What does the Minister have the gall to say? He says: "There has been a shortage of ophthalmologists for years and years." Now, did he say that last year? No. He said the Government must solve it.

When people talk to him about the nursing shortage in this province, I might say that it is not just a nursing shortage in this province. Here is another article in today's newspaper. It says: Nova Scotia short more than 600 nurses, studies show. This is true right across Canada. That is what he was told. He knew it to be the truth. Yet today he goes before nurses and says: We cannot recruit nurses, you know, because we do not have enough being trained, and so on and so forth.

You know what? He is going to vote in a few minutes from now for a budget that will do not only nothing to solve that problem but will make it more difficult, if not impossible, to recruit and retain nurses in this province. Sad, sad, sad that they could be facing these problems now and have the gall to just simply say: We cannot do anything about it. It is a national problem. They knew it was a national problem, but they could not and they would not tell the truth when they were running for election. They said: Blame it all on the Conservative government of today.

What is the other thing that he is doing? What is the other thing that he is doing in the field of health care that I think is going to be an even sadder situation. He is going to reject the position that has been taken by nurses' professional associations right across Canada on the degree program, the BN requirement for entry to the profession. Every other province in Canada is going in that direction, and Manitoba is taking a backward step. What is he doing? He is dividing the profession. He is creating a rift between the head of the union, who is the only person that he responds to, who has him dancing on the end of her string, and what is he doing? At a cost of 16 million additional dollars, he is setting up a separate diploma program over at Red River Community College, despite the fact that the professional association right across Canada rejects that, despite the fact that after due consideration Saskatchewan rejected that. I have an article here from the Star Phoenix in Saskatoon: Degree plan for nursing correct move. It is acknowledged now, after all the analysis they did, they were wrong to do it.

If there was no other viable solution to the problem, you could say to him: Okay, this is an emergency; let us see how it works. But the University of Manitoba Faculty of Nursing gave him an option, an early exit from their degree program, that would allow nurses with the same qualifications that they are going to get out of this diploma program to leave early, to get into the field early, and in fact he would have had them earlier working at the bedside than he would have through this diploma program.

He rejected it. He rejected it for purely political reasons because he is bought and paid for by the Manitoba Nurses' Union, and he has no regard for the professional people in nursing or any other part of the health care profession. It is a tragedy that this Minister of Health (Mr. Chomiak) is in this situation and is doing such a disservice to the people of our province because of his propensity to play politics day in and day out and not to do what is best for the people of this province. It will come back to haunt him, and it will come back to haunt him big time, Mr. Acting Speaker.

I also want to speak briefly about agriculture. I know that a number of my colleagues here have talked about it in the course of their discussions on the Budget. In agriculture, I think the great shame of all of this is that the Government has failed again to show any vision. Firstly, they have not even come forward with money to solve the real needs of a group of people in southwest Manitoba who are hurting badly, people who could not have a crop planted last year, and so we put in $50 an acre payment when we were still in government. It was paid out while we were still in government. We put on the table over $70 million that went into their hands last fall, even before the election campaign.

They have acknowledged that they have put nothing more into the pockets of those people in southwestern Manitoba, despite the fact that, in similar circumstances, the farmers of the Red River Valley got a JERI program, Jobs and Economic Restoration Initiative, that paid for fertilizer and chemical that had been placed on the land previous to that, and that helped them with getting their early seeding done. We did that. The custom seeding proposal, again the federal government has not contributed to that, so they say they are not going to put anything into it. Well, the fact of the matter is that the federal government did come forward with $100 million sometime earlier this year.

Now I am not going to carry the ball for the federal government, but I can tell you that I have listened to the federal government. I have listened to what they have said. Essentially they put that $100 million on the table as an offset to the removal of the Crow, which happened several years ago. They said: This is the only way that we can do this without getting the same demands from farmers in Ontario and Quebec. Because we do recognize that you have unique problems in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, we are going to give you this additional money, and you can do with it what you choose.

They could have chosen to bring in the negative margin solution in AIDA, which would have helped those farmers. They could have chosen to fund a JERI-type program for those farmers who were unable to seed last year, but no, they did not. They decided, in their political wisdom or lack of it, to just simply apply it over all the farmers of Manitoba and not target it to the people in southwest Manitoba. Now they are saying, well, the problem is the feds, but they acknowledged in this House that they have not put a nickel of their own in and so the federal government is saying to them: Well, what are you doing as a government? You have to look at that and say how strong a position they have to stand on when they have not put a nickel of their own into those farmers in southwestern Manitoba. How credible is their plea when they go to Ottawa when they are not willing to put the money forward?

I say to them, as I said before, put the money forward. We did it. We did it in 1989 for the forest fires, all of the costs of fighting those fires, of evacuating people, of housing people, of restoring properties, of all those things, and it took us seven years to get it back from Ottawa. A share of that took us seven long years, but we got it back and we got it back because we did the right thing.

The Member for Lakeside (Mr. Enns) has told them about 1988, the Swan River Valley. Within days of us, in fact we had not even been sworn into office, we were there dealing with a crisis in which there was tremendous flooding in the Swan River Valley. We put our money into it. At the time, we were not sure that we could get money from the federal government for some aspects of the disaster. Did that stop us from doing it? Absolutely not. It took leadership, and it took us standing up and saying we will stand up for our Manitoba people and we will fight you, federal government, to make sure that we get our share of it. Eventually, we got not everything we were looking for, but we got a share of it. But we stood with Manitobans. We do not see that from this government, and we do not see it in this particular budget. We do not see it all.

* (11:40)

What we do not see when I talk about vision in this budget, though, is no effort on the part of the Minister of Agriculture (Ms. Wowchuk) to go out there and to encourage farmers to take control of their own destiny and their future. What has the last 10 years in this province taught us in agriculture? It has taught us that we must, absolutely must have an agenda that continues to stimulate, encourage, provide incentives for people to do two things: diversify and add value to the production that they are doing in this province. That is something that was fought by members opposite.

When we went to do a marketing of hogs, they fought it tooth and nail. What have we got now? We have a whole industry of hog processing here in this province. We have hundreds of millions of dollars being invested all the way from the farm gate through to the processing side. We have thousands of jobs. When my colleague the Member for Lakeside told people publicly that the potential here was for 7000 to 10 000 jobs if we just did it right and had the courage of our convictions, members opposite said absolute nonsense, and they stood against it, as they stood against every single major change that improved our economy and that improved the delivery of services in this province. They stood against it.

Do we have any example of courage, of vision to look at the challenges of the future in agriculture in this budget? The answer simply is no. The answer is, no, there is nothing in here that says that they even recognize that diversification must continue so that farmers do not–

An Honourable Member: They never understood the loss of the Crow. We had to change it.

Mr. Filmon: Exactly, and now we have tremendous value-adding taking place. I know that, even despite the fact that this government does not know and understand agriculture, there will be another expansion to the potato processing plant in Carberry because this is a good place for the potato industry to centre. That is why we have these two huge plants in Portage la Prairie and in Carberry. That is why we have thousands of jobs associated with it. That is why there are many, many farmers who are producing a crop that produces a big income. If I am not mistaken, on a per-acre basis, it is one of the largest returns of any crop you could grow. That literally did not exist 30 years ago in this province, and now we have I do not know how many hundreds of farmers who are producing for this industry.

We have the same thing happening with lentils, peas and beans. We have sunflowers. We have all these different areas. We are producing buckwheat for Japan. We are producing so many, and, of course–

An Honourable Member: Beans.

Mr. Filmon: Yes, the biggest edible bean producer in Canada now is Manitoba. All of these things say that that is where you have to be. You cannot just grow a commodity in which the world price goes up and down without having a choice. Otherwise you will be constantly dependent on the taxpayer.

We have to have a sound water management plan. It was part and parcel of our election campaign last time. It is not even on the radar screen with these people. No vision, no vision about where we are going to take this province in agriculture, as in any other aspect of the economy.

In order to get to a lot of these initiatives you have to be investing in research and development in agriculture. My colleagues pointed out that the research and development portion of the Budget in agriculture was cut from nearly $5 million to $3.5 million, that in particular the Agri-Food Research and Development Initiative that is resulting in things like the nutriceutical industry evolving and so many other aspects of agriculture here was the hardest hit. Funding was slashed from $2.6 million to $1 million.

This is about the long-term sustainability of our farmers. This is about the future of agriculture. This is about having vision as to where you want to be in the decades ahead in agriculture, and where do they cut? In the very, very place that you are going to need to have in order to create that opportunity for future agriculture sustainability and the prosperity of our family farms and everything else. They are tinkering around the margins. They are dealing with little political issues, and they are not looking at what we need to do and where we want to be in the future.

Global competition, that is what we have got to talk about. Global competition was interesting because again this is reality. We are in a free trade environment. The interesting thing is that the farmers of Manitoba operated in a free-trade environment throughout the last century despite the fact that to a large extent they sold 80 percent of their production on a world market. So they know what trade is about and they know what globalization is about.

The group opposite, the New Democrats, fought free trade tooth and nail right across this country and throughout this province. Now, this week you have the Minister of Labour getting up, and she is saying just exactly what we said, which was that free trade will enhance the circumstances of the labour force. They talked about, you know, they were with Ross Perot, the great sucking sound of all the jobs leaving Canada going to Mexico and all the cheap labour was going to defeat Manitoba's economy. Baloney. It has proven to be the biggest boon to our economy in the last decade.

Now, interestingly enough, you have an organization, which is NAOSH, the North American Occupational Safety and Health organization that evolved out of that, that is resulting in those workers in Mexico now having better living conditions, better working conditions, better health and safety in the workplace, better incomes, all those kinds of things, a whole better North American climate and market for labour. I found it so ironic that they fought against it, and now they are saying: Oh, what a good thing is happening in the labour market because of it.

When we talk about agriculture and the failure of the Minister to represent the real needs of farmers, there was nothing that said it more than this particular headline, Ag Ministers take a hike, and the picture of our Minister of Agriculture and the Saskatchewan Minister of Agriculture.

How did they stand up and defend and fight for the rights of the Manitoba farmer? By walking out of the meeting in Ottawa. So, Manitoba's Agriculture Minister was not there when important decisions were being made. Now, how do you then turn around and tell your farmers, we cannot negotiate with those people in Ottawa? They will not listen to us. Well, when you stomp out of a meeting like a petty little child, do you think that you are really representing the best interests of the farmers of Manitoba? No way, Mr. Speaker, and that is what we are dealing with. You do not have that kind of representation and expect that you are going to get anywhere on behalf of the farmers of this province.

Hon. Gord Mackintosh (Government House Leader): On a point of order. The Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Filmon) is continuing his remarks. I notice that there is 10 minutes left on the Budget. Of course, it is a long-held convention of this House that the Government closes debate on the Budget.

I wonder if there is leave of the House to continue the debate when the Leader of the Opposition completes his remarks so that the Minister of Finance (Mr. Selinger) can close debate. Is there leave?

Mr. Marcel Laurendeau (Opposition House Leader): On page 24 of our rule book, rule 41(b), the Leader of the Opposition has unlimited time.

* (11:50)

Mr. Speaker: Honourable Deputy Government House Leader, with new information on the same point of order?

Hon. Steve Ashton (Deputy Government House Leader): On the matter raised by the Government House Leader, Mr. Speaker, I think the Opposition House Leader missed the point that was raised by the Government House Leader.

I would suggest that in the years I was Opposition House Leader and in the time I have been in this House, I have never seen a situation in which the Opposition has prevented the Finance Minister from closing debate on the Budget, not once in the entire time I have been in this House.

The request–

Some Honourable Members: Oh, oh.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. We are getting into a debate. If the Honourable Deputy House Leader has new information to address the point of order, I will hear it.

Mr. Ashton: Mr. Speaker–

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. But I will not allow debate to take place on the floor while I am dealing with the point of order.

Mr. Ashton: Mr. Speaker, the Government House Leader has requested that we give leave to allow the Finance Minister to speak, to close debate, since we will be faced with a vote at ten to twelve. I would urge members of this House to show the same courtesy that has been shown by oppositions in the past and ensure that the Finance Minister has the courtesy, as is the principle in this House.

Members opposite, I think, should show the same courtesy we showed in opposition.

Some Honourable Members: Oh, oh.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. On the point of order, the Leader of the Official Opposition does have unlimited speaking time. It would require a unanimous consent of the House to waive the rules regarding the time of the Budget vote, if that is the will of the House. But the Leader of the Official Opposition does have unlimited time.

Is there leave?

Some Honourable Members: No.

Mr. Speaker: Leave has been denied.

Mr. Filmon: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will wrap up my remarks by just saying that I was looking through some old comments and quotes, and I found this one from Abraham Lincoln which I think probably applies very well here when we look at this first budget of the New Democrats. It says: You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should be doing for themselves.

I believe that what Abraham Lincoln said then is true today. I believe that this New Democratic Government, in its first budget, has demonstrated that it goes counter to those principles. Therefore, I will join gladly my colleagues in voting for the amendment and against this budget.

Hon. Greg Selinger (Minister of Finance): Ten days ago we tabled the first budget of the new century and the new millennium. In that budget we endeavoured and followed through on the commitments we made during the election. We decided to make an aggressive move to end hallway medicine and rescue health care. We took concrete steps to provide new hope for young people. We put in place practical initiatives to create safer communities where families and children can walk the streets knowing that the people who live around them are their neighbours and are not to be feared. We followed through on our commitment to keep Manitoba Hydro and to use it as a tool for new economic development as evidenced by the new gas generating plant announced in Brandon for $180 million. We delivered on a balanced budget and lower property tax increases.

I was proud to stand in this House 10 days ago and explain to Manitobans how we were delivering on the commitments we made. This budget meets our commitments by being fair, responsible and balanced. In the last seven months I have had a tremendous amount of co-operation from my fellow caucus members and Cabinet members. I have been impressed by the advice that I have received from Manitobans as we travelled the length and breadth of the province. I have also been very impressed by the professional civil service we have, particularly the members of the Department of Finance and Treasury Board. On behalf of all members in this Chamber, I would like to thank them for the many hours they put in to bring this budget to fruition.

When we came to office we found significant overexpenditures that had not been budgeted for. We found a health care system in crisis. We found draws from the Fiscal Stabilization Fund in the order of $335 million over the last two years. We found years of underfunding for education and post-secondary training. We saw a 2% cut in '93-94, another 2.8% cut in '94-95, a modest 1/10 of 1% increase in '95-96, a 2.5% reduction in '96-97, and a 2% decrease in '97 and '98.

We saw property taxes driven up due to the underfunding of our public school system. We saw an unfunded pension liability continuing to grow with no plan in place. In fact, Mr. Speaker, when the members opposite took office in 1988, the pension liabilities stood at $1.1 billion. Today it stands at $2.8 billion. If we followed the plan of the former government, by the year 2028 the current operating debt would be paid down, but the pension liability would grow to $8.4 billion. That is $2 billion more than our general purpose debt today.

So what do we do? We made a real increase in health care of 6 percent. We have amalgamated the Winnipeg Long Term Care Authority and the Winnipeg Health Authority to reduce administration costs. We have made several initiatives and taken several initiatives in health care from home care services to intravenous therapy to additional funding for long-term care facilities. We have expanded Pharmacare. We have reduced waiting times, and we have provided an addition $5 million for ambulance services. I think I have a lot of time left, do I not?

* (12:00)

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The hour being 12 p.m., in accordance with rule 30, subrule 5, I am interrupting the proceedings to put the questions necessary to dispose of the proposed motion of the Honourable Minister of Finance (Mr. Selinger) that this House approve in general the budgetary policy of the government and the amendment to that motion.

The question before the House is the proposed amendment moved by the Honourable Member for Kirkfield Park (Mr. Stefanson) to the proposed motion of the Honourable Minister of Finance (Mr. Selinger). Do you wish to have the amendment read?

Some Honourable Members: Yes.

Mr. Speaker: THAT the motion be amended by deleting all the words after "House" and substituting the following:

therefore regrets this budget ignores the present and future needs of Manitobans by:

(a) failing to provide a vision or plan for Manitoba's economy;

(b) failing to protect the strong economic climate established in Manitoba during the last decade;

(c) failing to provide substantial tax cuts to Manitobans;

(d) failing to recognize the importance of tax competitiveness so Manitoba can continue to prosper;

(e) failing to provide any incentive for our young people to stake their futures in Manitoba;

(f) failing to provide adequate support to Manitoba's universities;

(g) failing to provide a process for public consultation on the establishment of five new casinos;

(h) failing to provide assistance to agriculture producers affected by severe flooding in southwestern Manitoba;

(i) failing to meet the highways and infrastructure needs of rural Manitoba;

(j) failing to end hallway medicine as promised;

(k) failing to open 138 new, permanent hospital beds as promised; and

(l) failing to deal with the needs and concerns of the City of Winnipeg.

As a consequence, the Government has thereby lost the confidence of this House and the people of Manitoba.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment?

Mr. Speaker: All those in favour of the proposed amendment, please say yea.

Some Honourable Members: Yea.

Mr. Speaker: All those opposed, please say nay.

Some Honourable Members: Nay.

Mr. Speaker: In my opinion, the Nays have it.

Mr. Marcel Laurendeau (Opposition House Leader): Yeas and Nays, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: A recorded vote having been requested, call in the members.

Order, please. The question before the House is the amendment proposed by the Honourable Member for Kirkfield Park (Mr. Stefanson).

Madam Clerk (Patricia Chaychuk): Yeas 24, Nays 30.

Mr. Speaker: I declare the amendment lost.

The question before the House is the proposed motion of the Honourable Minister of Finance (Mr. Selinger) that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

Mr. Speaker: All those in favour of the motion, please say yea.

Some Honourable Members: Yea.

Mr. Speaker: All those opposed, please say nay.

Some Honourable Members: Nay.

Mr. Speaker: In my opinion, the Yeas have it.

Mr. Laurendeau: On division, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: On division.

Mr. Speaker: A recorded vote having been requested, call in the members.

The question before the House is a motion proposed by the Honourable Minister of Finance (Mr. Selinger) that the House approve in general the budgetary policy of the Government.

Madam Clerk: Yeas 30, Nays 24.

Mr. Speaker: I declare the motion carried.

* (12:10)

Hon. Eric Robinson (Minister of Aboriginal and Northern Affairs): Mr. Speaker, prior to adjourning, I wonder if I may have leave to revert to tabling of reports.

Mr. Speaker: Is there leave? [Agreed]

Mr. Robinson: I would like to table the supplementary expenditures for the Department of Aboriginal and Northern Affairs.

Hon. Gord Mackintosh (Government House Leader): I wish to announce that the Law Amendments Committee will meet on Monday, May 29, at 10 a.m., to consider Bills 11 and 20.

I wonder if it is the will of the House to call it 12:30.

Mr. Speaker: The Law Amendments Committee will meet on Monday, May 29, at 10 a.m., to consider the following bills: Bill 11, Bill 20.

Is it the will of the House to call it 12:30 p.m.? [Agreed]

The hour being 12:30 p.m., the House is adjourned and stands adjourned until 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday.