LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA
Tuesday, June 7, 1994
The House met at 1:30
p.m.
PRAYERS
ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS
PRESENTING REPORTS BY
STANDING AND SPECIAL COMMITTEES
Committee of Supply
Mrs. Louise Dacquay
(Chairperson of Committees): Mr.
Speaker, the Committee of Supply has considered certain resolutions, directs me
to report progress and asks leave to sit again.
I move, seconded by the honourable member for Sturgeon
Creek (Mr. McAlpine), that the report of the committee be received.
Motion agreed to.
Introduction of Guests
Mr. Speaker: Prior to Oral Questions, may I direct the
attention of honourable members to the gallery, where we have with us this
afternoon from the Tuxedo Park Elementary School, eighteen Grade 5 students
under the direction of Mr. Claude Lemaire.
This school is located in the constituency of the honourable First
Minister (Mr. Filmon).
Also this afternoon, from the Winkler Elementary School, we
have thirty‑two Grade 8 students under the direction of Mr. Plett. This school is located in the constituency of
the honourable Minister of Energy and Mines (Mr. Orchard).
On behalf of all honourable members, I would like to
welcome you here this afternoon.
INTRODUCTION OF BILLS
Mr. Speaker: Is there leave‑‑I did not see the
honourable member for Sturgeon Creek‑‑to revert to Introduction of
Bills? [agreed]
Bill 206‑‑The Coat of Arms, Emblems
and the Manitoba Tartan Amendment Act
Mr. Gerry McAlpine
(Sturgeon Creek): I move, seconded by the honourable member for
Seine River (Mrs. Dacquay), that leave be given to introduce Bill 206, The Coat
of Arms, Emblems and the Manitoba Tartan Amendment Act (Loi modifiant la Loi
sur les armoiries, les emblèmes et le tartan du Manitoba), and that the same be
now received and read a first time.
Motion agreed to.
ORAL QUESTION PERIOD
Aerospace Industry
Federal Initiatives
Mr. Gary Doer (Leader of
the Opposition): Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Premier.
A week ago yesterday I asked the Premier a question about
rumoured layoffs at Bristol and, unfortunately, later last week we had it
confirmed that 230 people, pursuant to The Employment Standards Act, were given
layoff notices effective September 9, 1994.
These are high‑paying jobs in our communities that represent a
considerable investment in our province and in our economy.
At the time of the question last Monday, I asked the
Premier whether it was dealing with the federal government about any other
alternatives for work for people at Bristol in the aerospace industry. On the same day, June 3, that the layoff
notice was handed to the Bristol employees, there was indication that a space
program would be established and work would be somewhat provided to Bristol
along with other companies in Canada.
I would like to ask the Premier: What alternatives are in place? Are there any alternatives in place? How many people will be employed as a result
of the federal space program, and can we prevent these layoffs from taking
place September 9, 1994?
* (1335)
Hon. Gary Filmon
(Premier): Mr. Speaker, I have spoken both to local
management and, indeed, even to Rolls Royce senior officials. We cannot prevent these layoffs from taking place
in September. I know the Minister of
Industry, Trade and Tourism (Mr. Downey) continues to work with Bristol, and to
what extent is possible, we will be lobbying the federal government to ensure
that we would in future be able to see other work in Bristol.
At the moment, as I indicated, the immediate picture is
rather bleak with the combination of these layoffs in September due to the
overall reduction in defence spending and more expected layoffs at the end of
the year as a result of the federal Liberal government's cutbacks of the CF‑5
renovations and renewals. That will
bring the total to in the order of 400 for the Bristol workforce by the year
end, as I understand it, which is not a very comfortable picture and certainly
something that we would prefer not happen.
Unfortunately, there is not direct ability on our part to supplement
that. I do not have the figures on what
the space program additional spending will produce for Bristol.
Mr. Doer: Mr. Speaker, in 1992, I asked the Premier and
the Minister of Industry a question dealing with the two or three alternatives
that the previous federal government was looking at in terms of helicopters.
One alternative the federal government was looking at was
the new helicopter program which they announced and then downsized and then was
cancelled by the new federal government.
The other alternative in 1992 was a retrofit of existing
helicopter fleets, the Huey helicopter, which I specifically asked the
government about. The federal government
has promised and has delivered on the promise to cancel the original new
purchase of helicopters, but we still have the question of retrofitting the
existing helicopter fleet.
Has Bristol and has the provincial government pursued with
the federal government the original alternative that was before the previous
federal cabinet and which certainly should be an alternative now to look at
retrofitting helicopters and getting work to Bristol through retrofit programs
in light of the cancellation of the original purchase?
Mr. Filmon: The member asks whether or not Bristol has
pursued that with the federal government.
I am not in a position to answer on behalf of Bristol, but I will take
the question as notice on behalf of the Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism
(Mr. Downey) insofar as any initiatives or contacts that his department may
have had.
Mr. Doer: Mr. Speaker, workers in the total aerospace
industry are extremely concerned about the employment situation, as we can all
appreciate in this Chamber. In November
of 1993, the Finance minister, Mr. Martin, stated that companies affected by
reductions in aerospace contracts due to military decisions maybe have the
ability to have conversion programs to create alternative work for the workers
in those aerospace jobs.
Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the Premier, and I would ask if
the Premier has pursued with the federal Finance minister, Mr. Martin, any
alternative employment in terms of conversion programs which were outlined in
November of 1993, which the Bristol workers today feel is essential so that the
layoff notice that has been issued by Bristol can be prevented or precluded by
alternative work at the plant.
Mr. Filmon: Mr. Speaker, I, too, heard the statement by
both the federal Minister of Finance and the federal Minister of Employment to
the effect that they would be working on things that would convert the
aerospace industry into other areas.
In addition to the job losses that he referred to directly
affecting Bristol, there are the other job losses as a result of the $360
million of work that would have come to Manitoba but was cancelled by the
federal Liberal government on the EH‑101 cancellation. That other number of jobs would, too, have
been in the range of 400 additional jobs for engineers, technicians and
aerospace workers that will as well, of course, be seen as a tremendous loss in
the industry over the next five years and more.
Mr. Speaker, I will take the question of any contacts with
Mr. Martin or Mr. Axworthy on behalf of the Industry, Trade and Tourism
department as notice on behalf of the minister.
* (1340)
Physiotherapy Services
Reduced Workweek
Mr. Dave Chomiak
(Kildonan): Mr. Speaker, we have been very concerned that
the government is not in touch with the needs and the cares of patients as a
result of their so‑called health reform for some time. Bill 22 is one example of where delays in
surgery and delays in therapies could very much affect patient care.
My question to the Minister of Health: Can the minister assure this House that
individuals such as stroke victims or other individuals requiring some kind of
rehabilitation who require immediate attention from an occupational therapist
or physiotherapist will not have that therapy delayed by the imposition of Bill
22 at such places as Deer Lodge, St. Boniface or Health Sciences Centre?
Hon. James McCrae
(Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, all of the hospitals in Manitoba
and other health care facilities are aware of the concern expressed by
government or the condition expressed by government that patient care ought not
to be compromised in any action taken to put into effect the principles behind
Bill 22.
I think the honourable member may be referring to a news article
from today in raising his question. I
will use the same article to quote Mr. Jim Rodger, spokesman for Health
Sciences Centre. He said: If last year's experience is any indication,
patients will not notice when workers there take their days off. This is essentially nothing more than a long
weekend, so it has been transparent to the people who need us.
I will take notice of the specifics of the honourable
member's question with respect to physiotherapy and therapy services, but as a
general statement, it is my instruction to all the facilities that patient care
not be negatively impacted by their observance of Bill 22.
Mr. Chomiak: Mr. Speaker, will the minister give us his
absolute assurance that a patient who is unfortunate enough to have a stroke
and require rehabilitation over a four‑day weekend, that is now being
forced to be taken in some institutions, will not have that therapy delayed?‑‑because
the minister knows even a delay of one day can have an impact on an
individual's therapy and rehabilitation as a result of stroke. Can the minister give his absolute assurance
that delay will not occur?
Mr. McCrae: I want the honourable member to know that I
understand the circumstances that stroke victims find themselves in. If I was a stroke victim, I could only be
very, very glad that we do not have an NDP government here in Manitoba. The reason I say that, Mr. Speaker, is the
sweeping nature of NDP reaction to budget realities in other parts of the country,
including here in Manitoba when they were in office. I have a very clear recollection of what
happened in my own community of Brandon, where, in the name of health reform,
nothing was done except the permanent closure of 42 beds at the hospital in Brandon‑‑absolutely
nothing else done and they called that health care reform.
That is not the approach that we are using in
Manitoba. We are using a phased approach
which pays careful attention to the needs of the patients of the system here in
Manitoba. That is whom we work for in
Manitoba, the patients, and those are the people we serve and will continue to
serve.
Mr. Chomiak: Mr. Speaker, we ask a serious question; the
minister takes a cheap political shot.
He sounds more and more like the former minister every day in his
answers.
My final supplementary is:
Will the minister try to answer the question, a very serious question I
asked him? Will he give us his absolute
certainty that an individual who is unfortunate enough to suffer a stroke and
require rehabilitation will not be delayed as a result of the government's
imposition on these institutions of Bill 22?
Mr. McCrae: Mr. Speaker, it is not a cheap political shot
to ask the honourable member to go along with what his Leader said. His Leader was the one who said publicly that
he would be happy to defend the policies of the NDP government in Ontario. So I say, let him defend, paying a deputy
minister $140,000 a year while he presides over the closure of 5,000 acute
beds. Let him defend that. Let him debate that.
Point of Order
Mr. Chomiak: I believe the minister made an error. It is his own deputy minister that got a
$4,000 raise‑‑
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. That is not a point of order.
* * *
Mr. McCrae: We thank the honourable member for that clarification,
Mr. Speaker. I say to him that his soul
mate and the soul mate of his colleagues, Mr. Michael Decter, is one that he
can certainly ask for information, if he is looking for information about how
the New Democrats run health care systems in this country, and now, if he wants
to ask questions about Connie Curran, he can go straight to the source. He can go to the head honcho in Canada for
Connie Curran, Michael Decter, who is the former soul mate of honourable
members opposite.
* (1345)
Oak Hammock Marsh
Comparative Studies
Mr. Paul Edwards (Leader
of the Second Opposition): Mr. Speaker, my
question is for the Minister of Natural Resources.
Mr. Speaker, when Ducks Unlimited was given approval to
build their facility and set up Oak Hammock Marsh as it now is, they committed
as a condition of their licence to do comparative studies each year for four or
five years in order to track the flora and fauna in that area and to ensure
their commitment was kept to, which was that, according to the minister at that
time, it would increase and certainly not decrease.
Mr. Speaker, I want to table correspondence from Ducks
Unlimited dated April 29 of this year in which the writer, who is the chief
biologist for Ducks Unlimited specifically indicates that he does not think
costly formal surveys are needed, and he would propose to reinstate surveys in
the affected area in a year or two.
My question for the Minister of Natural Resources: Is this good enough for the minister? Can he tell the House whether or not he had
knowledge and has knowledge that they are not going to be doing the full
comparative studies for the next year or two, and what is he going to do to
ensure those studies are, in fact, done?
Hon. Albert Driedger
(Minister of Natural Resources): Well,
Mr. Speaker, I would hope that all members would endorse the great success
story at Oak Hammock.
Mr. Speaker, I can recall the ongoing questions and
criticism that took place in this House about the Oak Hammock project, period, and
the devastation that it would create on our waterfowl and our bird
populations. I just want to say that
none of the predictions that basically were made at that time in the negative
have come true, and I want to assure the member in terms of the process that he
makes reference to in terms of doing some ongoing studies there, I will take
the specifics as to the question as notice.
I want to say we have had over 100,000 people visit the
establishment last year, and we have very positive and rave reviews in the
positive for that.
Mr. Edwards: Mr. Speaker, part of knowing whether or not
the positive reviews will include the commitments made to enhance the flora and
fauna, which were commitments made by the minister at the time, as well as
Ducks Unlimited, it is essential that the comparative studies be done for those
four or five years. That was part of the
commitment, and that was the reason it was given.
My question for the minister, given that his predecessor in
June of last year specifically stated:
and we will continue‑‑"we" because he was seeing
himself as a part of Ducks Unlimited throughout this‑‑doing them
for another four or five years so that we can have the comparative database
that the member speaks about, is the minister saying that he is unaware that
Ducks Unlimited is in fact not going to do this for the next year of two, Mr.
Speaker, and why is he being so lax in enforcing the agreement which was put
into place as a condition of this development?
Mr. Driedger: Mr. Speaker, first of all, a commitment that
was made by my colleague I will honour, and if the studies and reviews are
required, they will take place.
I want to tell the member as well that it is not just the
issue of birds in the Oak Hammock area.
There is a general downward trend across the nation, and that is a much
bigger concern of mine than it is specifically on the Oak Hammock case.
I will give the undertaking that if the reviews are
required under the agreement, they will take place.
Mr. Edwards: Mr. Speaker, my final question for the
minister: This correspondence is
correspondence which is now going to be sent to the citizens advisory
committee, and it includes an outline and a plan of what they do intend to do,
which is less than the full comparative study.
Mr. Speaker, my question for the minister: Once he has had a chance to review this, will
he commit to members of this House that his comments in response to this will
be tabled in this House so that we can be assured that the minister will not be
so lax in the future in enforcing the commitments made by Ducks Unlimited and
his predecessor in putting this project through?
* (1350)
Mr. Driedger: Mr. Speaker, I have no difficulty in terms of
tabling what the response is going to be.
I might say, though, to all members of the House, that we have ongoing
discussions and negotiations with Oak Hammock‑‑not Oak Hammock
alone but with the Ducks Unlimited people‑‑on various projects
throughout the province. In fact, I am
very pleased with some of the projects that have taken place, one specifically
in my area, the Rat River project which was done in conjunction with Ducks
Unlimited.
So I sort of feel a little‑‑I do not have to
defend Ducks Unlimited, but I feel a little sensitive about the implications
that Ducks Unlimited are not good corporate citizens for the province of
Manitoba. They are doing many, many
worthwhile projects, and to date I have had no difficulty in working with
them. I will take this under advisement,
and I will table whatever response I have.
MTS Yellow Pages
Adult Video Advertisements
Ms. Becky Barrett
(Wellington): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Premier.
On September 9, 1990, just two days before the last
provincial election, the Premier (Mr. Filmon) said, and I quote: Protecting Manitoba families has been an
important part of my campaign. Our plans
include cracking down on drug dealers, tighter restrictions on adult videos and
measures to address family violence.
Can the Premier explain, in this International Year of the
Family, why Manitoba's Crown‑owned Manitoba Telephone System is flying in
the face of his 1990 commitment and promoting the Union XXX adult video in a
two‑for‑one coupon offer in The New Talking Yellow Pages Coupon
Book?
Hon. Glen Findlay
(Minister responsible for the administration of The Manitoba Telephone Act): Mr. Speaker, I will take the principal
component of the question as notice. I
know Manitoba Telephone System has a code of ethics on which they operate and I
am sure they are doing it, but I will check the specific incident that the
member has raised and report back to the House.
Ms. Barrett: The Group Against Pornography indicates that
soft pornography like that rented and sold at these adult‑only video
stores can lead to addiction and the breakdown of relationships and families.
Can the Premier indicate why Manitoba Telephone System now
seems to be indirectly sanctioning these sorts of businesses?
Mr. Findlay: Mr. Speaker, if the member had listened to
the answer to the previous question, she would understand that I am not aware
of the incident, and I will bring the specifics back to the House after I talk
to Manitoba Telephone System.
Ms. Barrett: Mr. Speaker, when the minister talks to
Manitoba Telephone System, would he also ask the Manitoba Telephone System why,
after the previous government issued a directive in 1986 not to permit display
advertising for escort services and massage parlours, it appears that it is
okay now for the Yellow Pages to permit display advertising for XXX adult
videos, and not only display advertising, but in a two‑for‑one
coupon book.
Would he also investigate that, please?
Mr. Findlay: Now that the member has used up her three
questions, if she has any more, would she please send them over to me?
Child and Family Services
Fee Collection Policy
Mr. Doug Martindale
(Burrows): Mr. Speaker, when children are taken into
care by a Child and Family Services agency, the parents are expected to pay
part of the costs based on an income threshold test.
Can the Minister of Family Services confirm that a policy
directive will be issued to Child and Family Services agencies so that
collection from parents will be done on a more consistent basis across the
province?
Hon. Bonnie Mitchelson
(Minister of Family Services): Mr.
Speaker, indeed, in this year's budgetary process, we looked at the issue of
collection of fees, and we will be trying to more aggressively pursue that
option.
Mr. Martindale: Can the minister confirm that the main change
is that agencies will now be able to keep the revenue that they collect, which
last year amounted to approximately $150,000 to $200,000, and that the agencies
will have total discretion on how they can spend the money?
Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Speaker, in the overall change in vision
for child welfare in the province of Manitoba, which indeed does talk about
family support, family preservation and family responsibility, we have changed
the method by which we fund our Child and Family Services agencies so that
indeed they do not have to take children into care in order to receive money,
but that they can use some of those dollars that previously went for Level I
children to refocus around keeping children in their families and providing
that support for children.
One of the things that we have done along with that is try
to more aggressively pursue collection of payment from parents who voluntarily
place their children and that the agencies keep those dollars to deal with
early intervention and early child development and family support.
* (1355)
Mr. Martindale: Why is this minister trying to pursue this
money more aggressively, as she says, at a time when families are under stress
because their children are in care? Is
it a cost benefit to the agency, given that the legal costs of going after the
money may amount to more than the money that they collect?
Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Speaker, quite to the contrary, I
think. Along with our vision‑‑and
I will state it again, because I think we are talking about a new way of doing
child welfare in the province of Manitoba.
We are talking about family support, family preservation and family
responsibility. Along with parenting
comes a responsibility.
I know that from time to time, in many instances, families
for one reason or another are unable to cope with difficult circumstances
surrounding their parental responsibility.
When there is a voluntary placement into an agency where parents say,
will you please take our child and do something with them, I think it is
incumbent upon that family, if they have the financial resources, to provide
for some of that support. That is only
fair to taxpayers in Manitoba.
Norwood Bridge
Environmental Licensing
Ms. Marianne Cerilli
(Radisson): Mr. Speaker, once again, this government has
allowed The Environment Act to be ignored and broken, particularly the
environmental impact assessment provisions.
This time, it is the City of Winnipeg that has begun construction at the
Norwood bridge prior to even when the deadline for the public environmental
notice has been completed in the paper.
For the Minister of Environment: Why has the Department of Environment allowed
this to happen? Why is the City of
Winnipeg in such a rush to take down the overhead rail bridge that was to be
used as a bike path and link the recreational walkway and the river?
Hon. Glen Cummings
(Minister of Environment): Mr. Speaker, I will
take the details of that question as notice.
Ms. Cerilli: Mr. Speaker, can the minister also investigate
why the overhead rail bridge which was to be used as part of the bike path was
decommissioned and was not considered part of the developmental and
environmental impact assessment? Can the
minister describe what provisions there are going to be for a bike path and
recreational walkway link between Churchill Drive and The Forks?
Mr. Cummings: Mr. Speaker, I am a little puzzled about the
connection that the member is attempting to make with environmental licensing
for the redevelopment of the Norwood bridge, but I will certainly take the
details of her question regarding the old bridge and the further questioning of
the process for the Norwood bridge. I
will take all that as notice.
Ms. Cerilli: Mr. Speaker, can the minister answer the
question of why this government is continuing to fund studies at the City of
Winnipeg for the TransPlan 2010 transportation plan for the city of Winnipeg,
when they are pushing ahead and allowing for the bridge construction prior to
there being an environmental impact assessment?
Is this not a waste of money for the study from Urban Affairs to the
City of Winnipeg for TransPlan 2010?
Mr. Cummings: Mr. Speaker, I am disappointed that once
again the member would come to this Chamber raising concerns, the same as she
did suggesting a couple of weeks ago that there had been a second spill at
Abitibi‑Price. Her credibility in
bringing questions of that speculative nature to this Chamber is not good.
Mr. Speaker, this city does need quality transportation,
and this government is committed to making sure that is done in an
environmentally sensitive way.
Education System
Clinical Services
Ms. Avis Gray
(Crescentwood): Mr. Speaker, in a letter to the Winnipeg
School Division No. 1, the Winnipeg Regional Mental Health Council, a council
established by the Department of Health, expressed extreme concern about the
elimination or proposed elimination of Child Guidance positions, i.e., clinical
services for children. The letter goes
on to say that the model of clinical services provided in the school is
recognized in Winnipeg and other jurisdictions as one of the most cost‑effective
ways of providing services to children.
* (1400)
My question to the Minister of Health is: What are his plans to ensure that accessible,
available clinical services are provided to children so that these children do
not end up costing the mental health system much more later on?
Hon. James McCrae
(Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to discuss further
specifics at a later time.
I also point out to the honourable member that we have in
Manitoba announced future programs for child and adolescent mental health
services here in Winnipeg and a number of other services throughout the
province. Certainly in Winnipeg we are
going to have a clinic. The Departments
of Family Services and Health working together are working on programs to co‑ordinate
child and adolescent mental health services in the future.
Ms. Gray: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question
to the same minister.
If the Minister of Health would perhaps attend one of the
Winnipeg Regional Mental Health Council meetings, the chair of that council
will tell the minister that these new services he is now adding are not as efficient
as providing the clinical services right in the school. One of the reasons is, it is discriminatory
to lower‑income families.
My question to the Minister of Health is: What are his plans to ensure that those
clinical services are available in the school system so that we are doing early
intervention and we are not spending many dollars later on when these children
need more help?
Mr. McCrae: Well, the honourable member has made some
interesting points in her question. I
would be happy to discuss the matter she raises with the chair of the Mental
Health Council. There is certainly no
disagreement on my part that early intervention can be a very valuable tool in
terms of the long‑term situation.
I am quite happy to hear further proposals, further comments to be made
by the Mental Health Council.
Ms. Gray: Mr. Speaker, I have a final supplementary to
the Minister of Health.
Will the Minister of Health be prepared to sit down with
the Minister of Family Services (Mrs. Mitchelson) and the Minister of Education
(Mr. Manness) to talk about the kinds of services that are currently not being
offered by school divisions and to develop a plan to ensure these treatment
services, these early intervention services will be available? Will he be prepared to do that and sit down
with his colleagues and report to the House?
Mr. McCrae: My colleagues and I, Mr. Speaker‑‑well,
one of them sits right beside me, so I am obviously quite willing to discuss
these things with my colleagues.
When it comes to anybody else interested in health care
generally in Manitoba, I think we have demonstrated the last number of months
that we are very open to listen to what people have to say, whether they be
providers of health care services or recipients or potential recipients of
health care services. So we have been
very open in our willingness to hear what people have to say and will continue
with that approach.
Federal Property
Property Tax Freeze
Mr. Clif Evans
(Interlake): Mr. Speaker, the Mulroney government's freeze
on federal property tax payments to municipalities has been extended by the new
Liberal government, despite a promise to end this inequity. Today, the federal government announced that
the '92 freeze will be lifted for Crown corporations, which still leaves many
small municipalities with large federal departmental property holdings on the
hook for millions of dollars in taxes.
My question to the Minister of Rural Development: What action is the provincial government
planning on this matter?
Hon. Leonard Derkach
(Minister of Rural Development): Mr.
Speaker, as the member opposite knows, in March of this year I wrote a letter
to the federal government expressing our concern with respect to freezing taxes
or grants in lieu of taxes. Our position
certainly has not changed.
Municipalities which do not receive those grants in lieu of taxes have
to go to their taxpayers to make up the shortfall. Indeed, we would encourage the Liberal
federal government to reinstate the grants in lieu of taxes so that
municipalities can indeed pass those on to where they are most needed in their
municipalities.
Mr. Clif Evans: Mr. Speaker, given that the Federation of
Canadian Municipalities found that with the federal government not paying their
taxes, local homeowners and businesses have to pay over $15 million across
Canada more in property taxes to subsidize this shortfall, can the minister
tell this House what percentage of this $15 million is it costing Manitoba
taxpayers, and will he request a meeting with the federal minister to discuss
the concerns of Manitoba taxpayers?
Mr. Derkach: Mr. Speaker, I think I just gave the answer
to that question.
With respect to the specific number that the member asks for,
I certainly will research that and get that information for him.
Mr. Clif Evans: Given that small municipalities like Emerson
which have a disproportionate number of federal departmental property holdings
are being particularly hard hit by the federal government's refusal to lift the
freeze, will the minister agree to lobby the federal government for a special
settlement package for smaller municipalities which are shouldering a great
deal of the burden of this unfair withholding of taxes?
Mr. Derkach: Mr. Speaker, I do not want to repeat my
answer again. I will simply send this
letter over to the member so he can read the position that was taken by myself
with respect to the freeze of grants in lieu of taxes.
Let me say that I understand there is hardship in
municipalities when grants in lieu of taxes are not paid, because that burden
certainly is then passed on to the local taxpayer. This is the objection that I raised with the
federal minister, and that position has certainly not changed at this time.
817 Main Street
Parking Lot Construction
Mr. George Hickes (Point
Douglas): Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Acting
Minister of Housing.
A little while back, I had a meeting with the residents of
817 Main Street. We were meeting about
the parking lot that they had been promised would be put in. They have not heard anything new. The summer season is here, and we would like
an update on the process of the parking lot for 817 Main Street. When will it be built for the residents?
Hon. Gerald Ducharme
(Acting Minister of Housing): Mr.
Speaker, I will take that question under advisement for the Minister of Housing
(Mrs. McIntosh).
Mr. Hickes: Mr. Speaker, my second question is to the
Acting Minister of Housing again. [interjection] I did not hear my colleague
ask for an environmental assessment on the parking lot. I am asking a very serious question here from
the residents who have been waiting for years for their parking lot.
I would like to ask the Acting Minister of Housing if he
will ensure that there is a meeting set up with the residents to explain to
them why there is such a long delay in the building of this parking lot.
Mr. Ducharme: Mr. Speaker, I am sure the minister takes all
her work seriously. I will take that
question as notice.
Home Renovation Program
Tender Process
Mr. Steve Ashton
(Thompson): Mr. Speaker, there have been a number of ads
running in terms of the Home Renovation Program brought in by the government.
I would just like to ask the minister responsible for the
program what the successful bidder is in terms of the contract and what the
amount of the contract is.
Hon. Gerald Ducharme
(Acting Minister of Housing): Mr.
Speaker, I will take that as notice for the Minister of Housing (Mrs.
McIntosh).
Mr. Ashton: Mr. Speaker, in fact, maybe I should restate
it. Was there a tender held on that
contract? Is it being directed by a
Saskatchewan company known as the Film Crew?
Mr. Ducharme: Mr. Speaker, again, I will take that question
as notice for the Minister of Housing.
Mr. Ashton: Mr. Speaker, while the minister is taking
that question as notice, perhaps we could get some indication from the minister
if, indeed, as we have received information it was not a tendered contract, why
the government proceeded with an untendered contract. Particularly, not only why was it not
tendered, but why, in this particular case, were Manitoba firms not given the
opportunity to put in a bid under the normal process of the tendering process?
Mr. Ducharme: Mr. Speaker, again, I will take the question
for the Minister of Housing.
Smoking in Public Places Legislation
Amendments
Mr. Dave Chomiak
(Kildonan): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister
of Health.
We have been approached by many individuals requesting and
asking when amendments to the act concerning smoking in a public place, et
cetera, brought in unanimously by this Chamber, will be brought in, Mr.
Speaker. Can the minister outline when
those amendments will be brought into this Chamber?‑‑because I
believe they were promised last year as well.
Hon. James McCrae
(Minister of Health): Very soon, Mr. Speaker.
* (1410)
Mr. Chomiak: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary to the
minister: Can the minister indicate whether
or not those particular amendments will include a provision providing for the
licensing of individuals or organizations that sell tobacco products?
Mr. McCrae: Mr. Speaker, I was just checking my Order
Paper to see if it was on the Notice Paper yet because that is how close we are‑‑
An Honourable Member: That is how imminent it is.
Mr. McCrae: That is how imminent it is, in terms of
getting the legislation before the House, and as we used to say to the
honourable member for Brandon East (Mr. Leonard Evans), it will not be very
many more sleeps before we are able to answer that question in more detail.
Mr. Chomiak: Mr. Speaker, can the minister indicate,
because we will be meeting with organizations and groups today, whether or not
the bill will contain provisions dealing with vending machines for children as
well as the licensing of premises or individuals to sell tobacco products?
Point of Order
Hon. Jim Ernst
(Government House Leader): Mr. Speaker, I would
think that questions relating to bills that might be tabled in the House
certainly in my mind would be out of order.
Mr. Steve Ashton
(Opposition House Leader): Mr. Speaker, I do
believe the member for Kildonan (Mr. Chomiak) was referring not just to the
bill, but also the government's policy, if indeed it does have a policy, and,
in fact, while the bill did appear on the Order Paper yesterday for notice,
there is no bill currently before the House, but the clear question was in
terms of policy. If it had been strictly
on the bill, it might be considered out of order, but we are asking a serious
question of policy on this issue that I know you are very personally concerned
about, Mr. Speaker, the rights of nonsmokers.
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. I have just been informed, yes, indeed,
notice has been given on said bill.
Therefore, the honourable member's question is out of order, because you
are anticipating that the‑‑[interjection]
* * *
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Now, the honourable member for Kildonan will
rephrase his question.
Mr. Chomiak: Mr. Speaker, I will rephrase my question to
the minister.
Can the minister outline what the government's policy is
with respect to tightening up the legislation in dealing with the issue of
providing tobacco to people under age and the problem of smoking in Manitoba?
Mr. McCrae: I am sure the honourable member will feel
duly chastened as a result of his asking an inappropriate question in the House
in the way that he has and that he will do a better job of framing his questions
in the future.
The federal government has proclaimed legislation that was
passed by the previous government dealing with vending machines, and it already
has an impact on any locations that are age‑restricted. That we hope will be helpful in the whole
problem of limiting access of tobacco products to young offenders, or young
people, I should say. [interjection]
Well, we just want to keep them from becoming young
offenders. That is all‑‑[interjection]
They are young offenders‑‑
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. I would remind the honourable minister to
deal with the matter raised.
Mr. McCrae: I would love to deal with the matter raised,
Mr. Speaker, but honourable members in the Liberal Party tend to want to
distract me from this issue. I think I
know why, because they have had such a hard time with the federal decision
about the taxation of tobacco products.
I know they are a little embarrassed by that, but that is understandable
considering all of the circumstances.
If the honourable member will wait just a little while
longer, we will share with him the contents of the bill. I remind him that the bill has also been the
result of significant consultation with interested parties.
Mr. Speaker: Time for Oral Questions has expired.
Introduction of Guests
Mr. Speaker: I would like to draw the attention of
honourable members to the Speaker's Gallery, where we have with us today His
Excellency Tadeusz Diem, the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland, accompanied
by his wife Ada. On behalf of all
honourable members, I would like to welcome you here this afternoon.
NONPOLITICAL STATEMENT
Manitoba Junior Hockey League Awards
Mr. Speaker: Does the honourable member for Niakwa have
leave to make a nonpolitical statement? [agreed]
Mr. Jack Reimer
(Niakwa): Mr. Speaker, on the weekend, a special awards
banquet was held here in Winnipeg to pay tribute to the outstanding players and
coaches of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League.
The event was highlighted by the naming of individual award winners of
personal achievement in the various categories of hockey excellence along with
special recognition to the St. Boniface Saints who won the Manitoba Junior
Hockey League Championship for 1993‑94.
Individual award winners which I would like to mention
are: Ryan Smith of the St. James
Canadians, who was the scoring champion for the Manitoba Junior Hockey League
with 125 points. He was also the leading
goal scorer with the Manitoba Junior Hockey with 58 goals. He was also the most valuable player for '93‑94,
and he was the runner‑up for the Junior A player of the year in Canada
which was between 119 Junior A teams across Canada.
Also, Cory Cyrenne of the St. Boniface Saints won the Vince
Leah trophy as the rookie of the year.
Ryan Tempel of the St. Boniface Saints won the top goaltender
award. Bob Miller was the coach of the
year from the Portage Terriers.
Also, Mr. Speaker, I would just like to read out the all‑star
team for the Manitoba Junior Hockey League for '93‑94. In goal was Ryan Tempel of the St. Boniface
Saints; defence was Laird Lidster of the Portage Terriers, also Cory Francis of
the St. Boniface Saints; the forwards were Ryan Smith of the St. James
Canadians, Jason Gudmundson of the Winkler Flyers and Darcy Pelletier of the Southeast
Blades.
Mr. Speaker, I would ask all members of this House to join
me in congratulating these excellent individuals in the Manitoba Junior Hockey
League. Thank you very much.
ORDERS OF THE DAY
House Business
Hon. Jim Ernst
(Government House Leader): Mr. Speaker, would
you canvass the House to see if there is unanimous consent to set aside the
Estimates of the Department of Justice in the Chamber in order to consider the
Estimates of the Department of Highways and Transportation for today and for
Thursday, June 9?
Mr. Speaker: Is there leave to set aside the Department of
Justice in the Committee of Supply for today and Thursday and bring forward the
Department of Highways and Transportation for today and Thursday? Is there agreement?
Some Honourable Members: Agreed.
Mr. Speaker: There is agreement. Okay.
Mr. Ernst: Mr. Speaker, would you again seek unanimous
consent of the House to set aside the Estimates of the Department of Industry, Trade
and Tourism being considered in Room 255 in order to consider the Estimates of
the Department of Environment for today and for Thursday, June 9?
Mr. Speaker: Is there leave to set aside the Department of
Industry, Trade and Tourism which is currently in Room 255 for Estimates review
for today and Thursday and to bring forward the Department of Environment for
today and Thursday?
Some Honourable Members: Agreed.
Mr. Speaker: There is agreement? There is agreement, sir. That is done.
Mr. Ernst: Shall we go for waiving private members'
hour?
Mr. Speaker: Is it the will of the House to waive private
members' hour?
Some Honourable Members: No.
Mr. Speaker: No, you do not have that one.
Mr. Ernst: I move, seconded by the Minister of Family Services
(Mrs. Mitchelson), that Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair and the House
resolve itself into a committee to consider of the Supply to be granted to Her
Majesty.
Motion agreed to, and the House resolved
itself into a committee to consider of the Supply to be granted to Her Majesty
with the honourable member for St. Norbert (Mr. Laurendeau) in the Chair for
the Department of Environment; and the honourable member for Seine River (Mrs.
Dacquay) in the Chair for the Department of Highways and Transportation.
COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY
(Concurrent Sections)
ENVIRONMENT
Mr. Deputy Chairperson
(Marcel Laurendeau): Order, please. Will the Committee of Supply please come to
order. This afternoon this section of the
Committee of Supply meeting in Room 255 will resume consideration of the
Estimates of the Department of Environment.
* (1430)
When the committee last sat, it had been considering item
2.(a)(1) on page 52 of the Estimates book.
Ms. Marianne Cerilli (Radisson): Mr. Deputy Chairperson, well, coming out of
an interesting Question Period, it is now apparent that at Oak Hammock Marsh
the government has stopped counting birds, and they are now counting tourists
and people. [interjection] They are flocking to the site.
Point of Order
Hon. Glen Cummings
(Minister of Environment): On a point of order,
the birds have taken up residence, and the tourists are flocking to Oak
Hammock.
Mr. Deputy Chairperson: The honourable minister did not have a point of
order.
* * *
Ms. Cerilli: The question of the hour is, where are the
birds?
Mr. Cummings: The Minister of Natural Resources is
responsible for the bird count‑‑[interjection] This is a serious
issue.
Mr. Deputy Chairperson: It is a serious question. She wants to know where the birds are.
[interjection]
Order, please. Could
I ask the honourable members to add just a little bit of decorum, and let us
get on to the business of 2.(a)(1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $4,157,100.
Ms. Cerilli: We are in section 31.2 (a) Environmental
Operations. Am I correct?
Mr. Deputy Chairperson: That is correct.
Ms. Cerilli: I do want to pick up from where I started off
in the House in Question Period and see if the minister does have any more information
with respect to the development at The Forks.
The Forks development has become, I think, one of the success stories of
Winnipeg, and we are very concerned that there is going to be environmental
consideration‑‑
Mr. Deputy Chairperson: He is listening.
Ms. Cerilli: The minister has escaped his seat. I will wait.
I am concerned about future development at The Forks,
particularly with respect to the expansion of the Norwood Bridge and plans for
south point and how those two things are going to converge and potentially take
away from what has become a real asset to the city. I think that we want to retain the integrity
of the access to the walkway and to the riverbank, and we want to make sure
that there is not going to be a lot of concrete that is going to run over the
walkway and turn it into a tunnel, which is one of the concerns that has been
expressed to me from some of the proposals that are put forward to go through
at The Forks.
I want to give the minister a chance, if he has some information
now, to expand upon the consideration to ensure that there is a recreational
walkway and bike path that is going to connect from The Forks to the Churchill
Drive park area, another beautiful park site within the city, and that we are
going to have this kind of integration of environment and development concerns,
that we are not paying for a study at the City of Winnipeg for a transportation
policy, but at the same time we are forging ahead and beginning construction
without due consideration of environmental green space, recreational use, all
those kinds of issues.
Mr. Cummings: Mr. Deputy Chairperson, this has reached a
long and torturous end from the original concept of The Forks and all of the
debate we had about environmental hearings that occurred when The Forks was
originally being developed.
I do not have Hansard in front of me, but unless I am very
mistaken, the member for Radisson or some of the former members, particularly
the former member for Wolseley, the Liberal member for Wolseley, were on my
case and everyone else's about environmental hearings and the process regarding
the establishment of The Forks in the early stages to the point where
environmental process bogged down the rejuvenation, if you will, of the
refurbishing and the rebuilding of The Forks and the development of The
Forks. In fact, during the summer games
when Prince Philip was here and he was to canoe down the river and come up to
the dock, that dock did not exist, because it was held up because of the fight
that was taken through under environmental assessment with the Clean
Environment Commission, and he had to wade in over top of mud flats to get up
on the banks of the river.
I find it quite ironic that we now have a position put
forward on behalf of the NDP that this development is now very desirable and
that a good job in fact has been done in the way The Forks is laid out. The boat dock was very controversial‑‑the
boat basin I guess is a better way to describe it. The delay that caused some considerable embarrassment
in completion of that project that I described earlier was as a result of
everyone trying to make sure that all of the correct environmental examination
had been done of the site, any potential burial that might have been
inadvertently uncovered or covered over, saving of any flora and fauna that
might be legitimate from our history.
Basically what they found, when they began digging along
the banks there, was that was where the railway used to dump their cinders out
of their tenders. We had a large buildup
on the bank of, not what was sensitive ground or sensitive burial ground even,
but an old garbage dump essentially, where the railways had unloaded their
cinders and other waste and built up, strengthened the banks.
Now we are into examination of the Norwood Bridge. As I understand the process, the Norwood
Bridge proper will be going through an environmental review. The removal of the one bridge that the member
referred to in her earlier question, I suppose those who are doing planning in
the city and in The Forks redevelopment area are going to have to answer for
how they see that development of The Forks unfolding.
For a moment I thought she was referring to the other
bridge which is over closer to the point.
I believe it is still there, and I do not think there are any plans to
remove it. It is part of the ongoing
planning for the development of the area.
I do not think the member should consider, every time there
is an environmental review of a bridge in the city of Winnipeg, that this
constitutes another opportunity to do a traffic flow study through the Clean
Environment Commission.
We went through that discussion, long, arduously and in
great detail over the Charleswood Bridge.
We were even so simon‑pure on that thing that we brought in a
chair from outside of the commission who had some experience and some knowledge
on the municipal side of the issue. I
know that certainly his thoughts after the completion of the process‑‑and
he did everything very carefully and very conscientiously in reviewing the
process, but the process is ill equipped to deal with a traffic study. Of course, the city has its responsibility
with its own plans to do the due diligence in providing long‑term
planning for traffic corridors, traffic flows, rapid transit.
* (1440)
I could go on at great length in the sympathy that I have
for the City of Winnipeg in designing transit corridors, rapid transit
capabilities. The city is not quite big enough
to be able to afford some of the more expensive types of rapid transit that
might at some time in the future be feasible.
Certainly the overhead railways, monorails are probably not affordable
in the near future for the City of Winnipeg.
Certainly the bus corridors, the Pembina Highway potential for more
rapid transit along there, I understand that those are all things that the city
is actively considering.
I really think, if the member wants to get into a debate
about public transit in the city of Winnipeg, that she should seize the
opportunity during Urban Affairs Estimates to get into it. I am more than willing to discuss it, but
frankly it does not fall directly under Environment or environmental licensing.
The Norwood Bridge will be licensed. The Norwood Bridge is in some serious
structural difficulty. We cannot
continue to ignore it. In the early
stages of preparing for construction, I understand that there is a lift station
that they are going to have to relocate.
That has some environmental consequences because they will be tinkering
with the bank.
But once you get beyond the impacts on the banks of these
rivers, the traffic flows and how that is designed is really not an area that
the Department of Environment or the Environment Commission can properly deal
with it. It does not mean that they are
not important; it means that there are other venues certainly within the city's
own structure.
The member would be somewhat out of place, I think, if she
is suggesting that the provincial government should be meddling in the design
of the traffic corridors within the city through the environmental
process. If she feels that strongly
about this issue, she might well also want to appear at City Council as a
citizen of the city and explain her position either personally or on behalf of
the NDP party and how they view the unfolding of rapid transit or improved
traffic flows within the city.
It is an issue that the city has spent a lot of time‑‑and
they have lobbied for support on some of their studies. I see nothing wrong with the province being
supportive and their looking at developing plans and supporting them in that
process. Ultimately, in infrastructure
construction, I guess it is a shared expenditure through the block funding of
the city. I do not think I am prepared
to make any further comments on this issue in that respect.
Ms. Cerilli: There are a number of issues that I want to
pick up on from what the minister has said.
First of all, I want to clarify for the minister and for the committee
that the comments I made with respect to The Forks were that I think there are
a number of things there that are very positive for the city. It is a very popular, urban, downtown green
space. That is one thing. The market centre, the open market, is very
popular and provides needed grocery shopping for downtown part of Winnipeg,
which does not have a lot of access to grocery shopping. These are a number of issues, I would also
like to emphasize for the minister, that are Environment issues. As we start developing toward a more
sustainable development approach, we have to realize that has implications for
urban planning to a large degree.
I think, as I said in my opening statement, that we have to
start‑‑I do not know the word to use‑‑deconstructing
some of the rigid boxes that are departmental and jurisdictional boxes that we
find ourselves in. I hope that the
minister will continue to discuss the plans for this very exciting and
important area for the city and for the province.
I am concerned about overdevelopment. I am concerned about our not ensuring that
there is going to be an ongoing, large amount of green space there,
recreational space, and I am concerned that there is going to be no blockage to
public access to the riverbank, that there should be continuous access to the
riverbank. I think all of these are in
Plan Winnipeg.
I would emphasize to the minister that he referenced the
environmental impact assessment that was done on the Charleswood Bridge. That is not one of the assessments that I was
very much involved with, but I think that there is a role for the province to
play. The City of Winnipeg does not have
its own environmental impact assessment provisions, and it relies on the
provincial government on these kinds of developments, particularly class
redevelopments, to fulfill that role. I
think we do have a role to play as guidance.
One of the questions I have initially was from the House
with respect to the elimination of the overhead rail bridge. I am hearing conflicting reports that there
still is going to be continuous access for cycling and recreational use, and
that overhead rail bridge was not important to ensuring that that access is
going to be there. On the other hand, I
have people telling me that the rail bridge was significant for the kind of
cycling and recreational use that is intended for The Forks or is desired for
The Forks, and that it makes us wonder why the deconstruction of that rail
bridge was done with such haste. Why was
it done before April 22, which was the deadline for appeals to the environment
notice that was in the paper?
All of these kinds of things are, I think, legitimate
concerns for people, and they want to be involved in this process. There have been a number of people, as the
minister has referenced, who have been very active and involved in trying to
have some community input into the developments at The Forks. So I will stop there and let the minister
respond to my concern about the need for this particular rail bridge to be used
to ensure that there is going to be cycling and recreational access
continuously from The Forks to Churchill Drive, a proposal which, as I
understand it, was accepted by the city and is in keeping with Plan Winnipeg.
Mr. Cummings: Well, I do not need to defend my position in
terms of support of The Forks. When I
was first an elected member, my city colleagues took a bag lunch and took me
down to The Forks, and there was nothing but a bunch of decrepit buildings and
some large acreage of gravel and cinders and pointed out the vision that they
had for the development of this area.
In relationship to the bridge that has been removed, I do
not think that should necessarily be unexpected. I think that the member might better address,
if she believes in the concepts and the principles of sustainable development
as she professes to, then she might also recognize that that means that other
responsible authorities also have to take their share of responsibility for
environmental matters. It does not mean
that one level of government is totally coming in over another.
In development of a bicycle crossing there, I would think
that might well be something that the general public might want to discuss with
the city in terms of its long‑range plans, and those will be presented as
part of the environmental hearing and what spans they intend to have, how they
intend to manage foot traffic, how the foot traffic and bicycle traffic can be
merged, if that is what has to happen. I
would certainly encourage that that occur as part of that process.
I think that we have just received one of the nation's
premier awards for The Forks and its status as tourism in an urban development,
an urban redevelopment project. So The
Forks board is held in very high regard, based on the record that it has been
able to produce up till now. The city,
the province and the federal government all have representation there, as I
recall the structure of that board.
I am not familiar with the bridge that has been taken
down. I make that very clear. I think the member is perhaps pushing the
wrong buttons in terms of what she would like to see this evolve into under the
reconstruction of the Norwood Bridge.
The province does not necessarily dictate, but they certainly run the
process and will, from the environmental point of view, provide the answers
that may be raised around the reconstruction of Norwood Bridge.
* (1450)
I would take it even a little bit further. This is not just an environmental issue. It is also an issue of tourism, of community
access, of developing downtown bicycle corridors.
When the member says that Environment has a role to play in
the urban area, I agree wholeheartedly.
I sit as a member of the Urban Affairs committee. I communicate regularly with this
municipality and others. That is why I
constantly reference the fact that I am very pleased to have had a chance to
spend a year in Municipal Affairs so that understanding and those lines of
communication were there before I ended up in Environment, because really that
is one of the major client groups the Department of Environment has to work
with. The connection is very
obvious. The principles of sustainable development
all apply, but that also means that other departments, other responsible
jurisdictions have to also apply their planning and their best judgment for
environmental protection and enhancement.
We are talking about a seriously altered environment,
however, when we are talking about the area around the Norwood Bridge. We are talking about redeveloping it into
what may well be a very attractive area, but I do not think that from the
environmental point of view we are going to be talking about saving of
sensitive plants. We will be talking
about making sure the riverbank is not damaged, or that if it is that it is
repaired, so it is kept in as close to a practical and original setting as
possible.
I am not sure where the member wants to take this
questioning. If she is asking, will
there be a hearing on the Norwood Bridge, I anticipate there will be. If she is asking me to go back and horsewhip
the city for taking removal of that bridge, I do not think that I am in a
position to do that.
Ms. Cerilli: I will start off by asking if the minister
has reviewed or been briefed on the proposal for the Norwood Bridge. To be more specific, he said there will be a
hearing. Can he be more specific to
describe what type of an environmental impact assessment process this
development will have?
Mr. Cummings: I have been involved in a discussion at the
early stages about what the city wanted to do.
The specifics of the reconstruction I am not familiar with. I will check to see if staff has received
anything that resembles a proposal.
The proposal has been brought forward, it has been put on
the public registry and is proceeding through the process. In fact, there has not been much feedback at
this point, and I suppose that raises the question about what I said earlier. If there are no significant objections that
are raised, then there will be a decision point as to whether or not a further
public process will be required. But
they are going through the process as required.
Ms. Cerilli: I think we are going to be spending some time
on this issue then, because as I understand it, when this project was initially
presented, there was an ad in the paper and there were numerous, like hundreds,
of objectors.
Now there has been a second notice and there have been
fewer, I would even say quite a bit fewer, numbers of people. I think that those members of the public were
under the impression that they already had sent in their letters and let the
various governments know, the city and province know, that they were very
concerned about this development and that they would like to have input through
a hearing.
This sort of leads us back to the questions I was asking
yesterday about when there is a development and the public are the ones that
have to intervene, so there is going to be a thorough assessment‑‑it
is their responsibility, they are the ones who carry the can in ensuring how
extensive the process is going to be‑‑what kind of information do
they get?
As in this case, it seems that they are either misinformed
or misled because they are under the impression that they have already done
their job and sent in their letters and made their position clear. Then there is another notice, a new process,
and they are told that there was not enough objection and they are going to
have to be satisfied with not having a full hearing on the development.
I find this is totally unacceptable. This is completely unacceptable. If the minister would go back, I think that
there are probably hundreds, over a hundred letters that the public has sent in
with respect to this development. I
think there is an obligation to have a thorough public, environmental impact
assessment process on this development.
Mr. Cummings: So the member is clearly stating then that
she wants a public hearing.
Ms. Cerilli: That is pretty clear. Does the minister have any question about
that or any reason to believe that is not warranted under this case?
Mr. Cummings: I just wanted the Environment critic for the
NDP clearly on record as to what she thought should happen in the case of this
bridge.
Ms. Cerilli: Is the minister now prepared to tell us what
the government's policy is with respect to this bridge? Are they going to follow a process? Are they going to make it clearer at the
committee today what that process is, so the public of Manitoba can read the
Hansard and be sure of where this government is going in terms of environmental
impact assessment and in terms of the development related to The Forks?
Mr. Cummings: This project is going through the process as
laid out by The Environment Act, which was written by the preceding government
and ultimately passed after we came into office, which allows for the
information to be brought forward for licensing purposes, put on the public
record. There is a decision point,
whether or not a public hearing process will be necessary, based on the
feedback that comes from that process.
It is the director's decision actually at that point, and
then there can be an appeal to that if people believe the director has somehow
recommended a course of action that is not in line with what they want. I suspect that what the member is referring
to is that the city has its own series of open houses. In fact, that was the problem with the
Charleswood Bridge situation where the city held its open houses and felt that
it had in fact an opportunity for public input.
The process, therefore, does have a bit of a duplication, but not one
that I think the member can too easily point to as being anything more than a
case of overkill because really there are two opportunities for people to be
involved.
Frankly as I understand the issues that were raised
earlier, and I did not follow it precisely, most of the issues that were raised
at the open houses were matters of planning, of traffic flows and those sorts
of things, so the environmental process sometimes gets abused in that respect.
If we are talking about environment problems, then that is
the appropriate venue to deal with them, but I think there are an awful lot of
other side issues that get thrown into these questions and are generically
called part of an Environmental Impact Statement.
Once you get passed the immediate vicinity of the bridge,
then the city has processes and a responsibility to follow its own processes in
order to deal with those issues.
* (1500)
Ms. Cerilli: Mr. Deputy Chairperson, so the minister is
now saying that urban planning issues related to traffic flow and volume are
not environment‑related issues for assessment consideration. I mean, is that what the minister is saying?
Mr. Cummings: If the commission is being charged to look at
a bridge or if a broader traffic, that does not mean that we are charging the
commission with a broader traffic study.
The member is picking up the cudgel for an awful lot of
other groups out there who want a city‑wide environmental study‑‑for
lack of better words‑‑of traffic flows on how we manage traffic in
an urban setting. So if she wants to get
into urban traffic management and those impacts, then I think she might want to
get into the discussion with the Minister of Urban Affairs (Mrs. McIntosh), who
will be very willing to discuss what some of those problems are and how the
city and the province are moving to address them. But to say that every time we deal with a
bridge in this jurisdiction, we need to have a complete assessment of traffic
flows across the city does not seem to me to make a great deal of common sense.
Ms. Cerilli: I would say to the minister that he is
missing the point in a number of areas.
The point I raised in the House today in Question Period was we have the
traffic study coming down the pipe from the city; this government has funded it
through the Department of Urban Affairs TransPlan 2010.
My question is, why is the government allowing developments
to go ahead before that plan is presented from the city? Why do we have all of this bridge
construction and traffic routing going on before the plan is presented? Why is the government giving up its authority
through the environmental impact assessment to try and make sure that this
planning is going to be done in keeping with environment provisions because we
do not have the plan and the survey that is being done through the city?
So that is the issue.
The other side of it is, in the environmental impact assessment the
government does have the ability to address all of these issues. I am not saying that we should have a traffic
study done for each bridge that is being looked at in the city, but what I am
saying is that we should be waiting for the entire urban traffic plan to be
developed before we go ahead and take down old bridges and build new bridges.
I drive over that bridge pretty much every day. I know about the congestion problems with the
double traffic lane that goes across that bridge. I am familiar also with the access problems
to The Forks that could be developed if one of the proposals that is being
presented goes forward, where you are not going to be able to access The Forks
coming from the north.
You know, I guess I would just beg to differ with the
minister that these are all environment‑related concerns. These are part of the urban environment, and
we have to be concerned about traffic volume and traffic flow, and that is the
purview of environmental impact assessment and the Environment department. I do not know what kind of expertise the
department has on the commission or through the department to make sure that
these kinds of issues are going to be considered in an environmental impact
assessment, but certainly in this day and age, I do not think the minister can
be safe to say that these are not issues that should be addressed in an
environmental impact assessment on a project of this magnitude in the centre of
the city.
I mean, we had an assessment on the Charleswood Bridge, and
it just makes sense that we are going to have similar consideration in the
downtown area at the core of the city where we have, I think, increased volume
of traffic, it would be safe to say. We
have to get with the '90s, I would say to the minister.
He has raised other issues that I wanted to talk about too,
but I will leave it there, and I want him to respond to this issue of examining
the study that the City of Winnipeg is doing prior to having the department
withdraw its requirement for environmental impact assessment without having the
study there and the study completed.
Mr. Cummings: The member chooses to ignore the fact that
the bridge is in poor structural repair.
It needs to be replaced and it has begun the process. The city has had its open houses, the
Department of Environment has now given notification and published information
that it has, and it is moving along. I
am interested that at this late juncture the critic for the New Democratic
Party is now suggesting that no matter what the public has said, there must be
a large public hearing to deal with this issue over the next period of time.
The traffic studies will not do away with the need for a
bridge at that location, and everyone knows that there is a limit to how much
automobile traffic you can pile into a particular area. I appreciate the member putting her party's
position on the line, but it does not detract from the fact that we are well
into a process which is, I think, quite a credible process despite the member's
protestations to the contrary, and we will wait and see what feedback we have
received.
Ms. Cerilli: The minister is talking about the wonderful
process that has been conducted on this, and I would ask the minister, has
there been a public hearing on this project?
Mr. Cummings: The city held an open house. We have not.
Ms. Cerilli: So the minister is saying that because there
was an open house run by the city that there has not been a public hearing
under The Environment Act, and seems to be implying that is not necessary and
that somehow it is going to be replaced because of an open house where there
has been no, I think, opportunity for members of the public, who have the right
and who certainly have the understanding, to present an alternative vision for
what the city is proposing there.
I think that in this day and age we want to make sure that
we are going to look at those ideas that come forward from the community that
are going to raise concern about the direction that urban planning or any kind of
planning and development is going. So I
would just ask the minister to clarify if my assessment of what he is saying is
accurate, that he is saying that there is no need for a public hearing on this
development because the City of Winnipeg had an open house.
Mr. Cummings: Mr. Deputy Chairperson, the member is
deliberately misrepresenting my comments.
There is no connection in terms of the environmental hearing process
between the city having a public open meeting and whether or not we will
eventually call an environment hearing.
I said earlier in reference to the Charleswood Bridge that there was
confusion caused around that, and I thought we cleared that up as a result of
the process that we went through with the Charleswood Bridge. I really resent the member attempting to
twist this, that for some reason there might be some lack of concern on our
part about whether or not there needs to be a hearing.
If the public is not as disconcerted as the member appears
to be about having a hearing, then that will obviously impact on the decision
one way or the other. I hope she is
prepared to write the City of Winnipeg and write me, go on the public media and
demand a public hearing on the bridge. I
hope that is the route she is now embarking on, if that is what she really
believes.
* (1510)
Ms. Cerilli: I think that it is the minister that has been
trying to twist what I have been saying a number of times today. I will go back then to asking the minister if
he and his staff can clarify the notice in the paper that was for an EAPF. I am not familiar with that
abbreviation. Can the minister tell me
what that abbreviation means, if it is a city process or a city board that put a
notice in the paper on this development, and can he also tell us the number of
people that responded under that public notice in the paper?
Mr. Cummings: Unless the member has something she would
like to share with me, as far as we can recall, it would not be included in any
kind of notice that we would put out. It
might be something that the city would have publicized.
Ms. Cerilli: Can the minister then clarify for the
committee the number of appeals under the public notice that was in the paper
regarding this project? The deadline, I
think, was April 22, '94. How many notices
or how many letters of concern were submitted to the department?
Mr. Cummings: I believe there was only one.
Ms. Cerilli: Will the minister endeavour to get for me the
number of other submissions regarding this project that were sent in prior to
the notice that the Department of Environment put in?
Mr. Cummings: If the member is asking me to report on who
may or may not have sent information to the city, I suggest she should ask the
city.
Ms. Cerilli: Has he been in contact with the city, and is
he aware of the number of groups or individuals from the public who have
written to the city with regard to this project raising concerns about this
project?
Mr. Cummings: Have I had direct communication with the
responsible bureaucrats in the city? No,
I have not.
The member is now taking up the cudgel of that NDP gimme
group, the Choices, which is the only objector that filed with the Department
of Environment, to the best of my knowledge at this point. So now it is very clear what the strategy is. They want to delay and they want to confound
the process in the name of the environment.
In fact, it is not environmental issue, once you get past the specific
core responsibilities, that we are dealing with. It is a planning issue, and if she has a planning
problem with the City of Winnipeg, then for goodness sake, talk to the City of
Winnipeg.
Ms. Cerilli: Mr. Deputy Chairperson, has the department
had any contact with the city that would have received numerous letters of
concern regarding the Norwood Bridge project?
Mr. Cummings: I would assume that at the staff level we
actually work fairly closely with them.
Ms. Cerilli: So then the department would be aware of the
number of letters of concern and letters of appeal that were sent in to the City
of Winnipeg with respect to this project.
Could he tell the committee the number or the volume?
Mr. Cummings: That is not something that either party would
be under obligation to be in discussion with or be providing to each
other. I frankly cannot tell you whether
the city would have shared that information with the department or not.
But the member is attempting, in fact, might even be
succeeding, if someone were to be listening to this inane conversation, to
confuse the public out there in the difference between the city, municipal
responsibility and their planning and environmental responsibilities that they
have to take responsibility for and the Manitoba Environment Act
responsibilities that we have a greater responsibility for in the specific
development of the bridge itself.
I really think the member should stop trying to confuse and
confound the process. If she does not
like the process let her say so but do not try and alternately flip back and
forth between the city's process and the province's process. Once they have gone ahead with their‑‑they
have started their planning process, they have then triggered the environmental
process within the provincial jurisdiction, and we are dealing with that.
If the member is attempting to make some kind of a case
that we are pulling the wool over the public's eye, I think she is on very weak
ground.
Ms. Cerilli: I beg to differ with the minister. I think that I am on very strong ground
because I‑‑you know, I have been quite amenable over the Estimates
so far with the minister. I think that
we have gotten along fairly well, but I also think that this government has a
horrible record on environmental impact assessment, and they may go back and
say, well, it was better than yours but times are changing and this is not
acceptable.
It is not acceptable for this government, on project after
project, to continue to manipulate environmental assessment process, and I am
afraid that is what is happening here again.
The minister talked about having responsibility only in a certain area
in terms of assessment, and I would say that I saw the notice in the paper with
my own two eyes. I cut it out of the
paper. It clearly said it was a Manitoba
environmental notice of appeal for an environmental assessment, and the
deadline was April 22.
Crossing that bridge before April 22, I saw that there was
construction going on prior to any public opportunity to be completed for
appeal to the department. So that is
where this is coming from. That is where
this is coming from, from my own observation that there was one thing in the
paper which said the public had the opportunity to raise issue until April
22. Before that deadline was even up
there was construction going on on that bridge project. Now the construction seems to have stopped.
The overhead bridge is gone and I have had phone calls to
my office from a number of people who have a lot of time and effort invested
into this area, who, I think because of their expertise, have something to
offer. I think it is legitimate that I
raise these questions here because, as I just said, under the department's
authority, as indicated from that notice that was in the Winnipeg paper, they
have a responsibility.
If the minister says I should just go and talk to the city,
I think that he is wrong, that I can raise this issue here because this
department has a responsibility to conduct an environmental impact assessment
on this project that is going to be thorough, that is going to look at all the
issues related to this environment and development question and is going to
make sure the city is not going ahead with the construction prior to fair and
thorough consideration.
The member for Riel (Mr. Ducharme) seems to be having some
difficulty with my statements. If he
wants to put some information on the record, he can have the opportunity to do
that. I know that he also represents a
constituency.
Point of Order
Hon. Gerald Ducharme
(Minister of Government Services): I would just
like to say that people in the south end of Winnipeg have long waited for this
bridge, and they expect this bridge. It
is a good project. She should maybe go
back to the city and talk to the city in regard to their engineering designs
and what they have planned.
They have hired engineers.
It goes back five, six, seven years they have been working on that
project. She should go back and gather
that information instead of bringing it up here.
Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please. The honourable minister did not have a point
of order.
*
* *
Ms. Cerilli: For the information of the member for Riel, I
do talk to the city on a regular basis, but I would also inform the member for
Riel that his government has a responsibility under The Environment Act.
* (1520)
Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Could I ask the honourable member to put her
remarks through the Chair and not open debate with the honourable Minister of
Government Services? It will not help
the circumstances that we are in this afternoon.
Ms. Cerilli: Mr. Deputy Chairperson, this is but one
project that the government is involved with, in terms of environmental impact
assessment, that seems to be presenting some problems. I said in my opening comments and again today
that I think that this is an area that the government has really, really not
been in compliance with The Environment Act, that there have been a number of
incidents where there are grounds for court action, there are grounds for,
well, legal prosecution, I guess, for violation of The Environment Act. I think that this is one of the areas that‑‑it
is the real record of this government on environment issues.
In terms of responding to some of the other issues raised
here, I also represent an area of the city that relies heavily on this
bridge. As I said, I cross the bridge
myself pretty much every day, unless I come the other way, over
Provencher. But I think that we also
want to make sure that this development is going to be done in keeping with a
forward‑looking vision of The Forks and of environmentally sound urban
planning and urban traffic flow.
The government continues to claim that it believes in
sustainable development, in change, but yet on issue after issue, as
exemplified by the way that it mishandled environmental impact assessment, we
see that it continues to just push through development and do things in the
same old way.
I think that, you know, there are groups out there. The minister has made disparaging comments
about some of the individuals who have put their thoughts forward to the city
and to the department with respect to this development. I would just suggest that perhaps it is time
that we started taking a second look at some of the alternative vision, because
certainly we can all see that it is necessary, that there are serious problems
in the city and in the province in terms of environment development, and we
have to start doing things differently.
I, for one, believe that the environmental impact
assessment process is one of the best tools that we have to start doing that,
and we should start respecting it and following the legislation more to the
letter and make sure that we are not going to be compromising the process in
order to try to get developments pushed through that are on some other agenda,
other than a sustainable agenda.
I would just ask the minister to, you know, not try and put
words in my mouth, and I will not try to put words in his mouth with respect to
these kinds of issues.
I want to ask the minister if the Manitoba government through
any avenue, be it through The Forks Corporation, through the department
directly, through appointments that they have, if they have any influence into
the planning of The Forks, particularly in terms of environmental concerns.
Mr. Cummings: The Manitoba government has its shared
responsibility as part of the Forks, now the combined board, Forks and Core
Area, but where they have an environmental issue that needs to be dealt with
through our process, they are a regulated body the same as anybody else.
Ms. Cerilli: I did not follow that answer. Will the minister repeat the answer, please?
Mr. Cummings: What I said was the Province of Manitoba has
input through its membership on The Forks board, the same as our other two
partners do, but if the member is asking, what do we do in terms of
environmental matters, they are a regulated entity, the same as other
independent organizations might be, or other individuals, or other corporate
bodies.
Ms. Cerilli: Can the minister tell the committee who is on
that Forks Renewal Board as appointed by the Province of Manitoba, or the
government of Manitoba, and how were they selected?
Mr. Cummings: No, I cannot, nor do I think it is
necessarily pertinent in relation to the environmental issues. I cannot off the top of my head name the
members of the board. [interjection] Well, yes, I think that they are appointed
the same way that the federal representatives that Mr. Axworthy appoints are
brought forward. The member for Riel
(Mr. Ducharme) has pointed out that in fact the Pawley administration would
have used the same route to appointment that this government does.
Now if the member has information that she wants to bring
forward about something the board is or is not doing in relationship to
environmental matters, I would be more than glad to try and answer her.
Ms. Cerilli: I do not want to belabour that issue too
much. I know that the committee is
coming up to look at The Forks development.
I am just trying to get some background information. Just to clarify then, these are the folks on
the committee appointed by the government who are there to take forward the
perspective and the vision of the provincial government with respect to The
Forks. Is that correct?
Mr. Cummings: I would hope they carry forward‑‑in
a broad sense, when this government particularly appoints people to boards and
commissions, we attempt to appoint quality people who are prepared to bring
forward their own intelligence to bear on the topic in front of them. I think that they would resent being at least
notionally referred to as puppets of this government.
Ms. Cerilli: The minister is going to talk about my
putting words in his mouth when he has just said that about what I asked. Now, let us get real here. I did not use the phrase, puppets of the
government.
Mr. Cummings: That was the implication.
Ms. Cerilli: No, the implication is in terms of
policy. I would think that this
government has some vision for The Forks, I would hope. It may be a vision that we agree with; it may
be not. There are a number of issues
related to The Forks where we could have the debate. The question that I am asking right now is,
is it the expectation that these people are there to bring that vision, which I
hope would include some sense of the environmental concerns, the sustainable
development aspects of The Forks?
Mr. Cummings: The member is determined to make the
discussion around The Forks solely an environmental issue.
Ms. Cerilli: Sustainable development.
Mr. Cummings: Well, the member says now that refers to
sustainable development. Then, if it
refers to sustainable development, it would follow that it is not just the
Department of Environment that has input into the ultimate planning process
that The Forks Corporation embarks upon.
They spend an awful lot of time in the early formative stages. There were public hearings; there were open
houses, ad nauseam, as I recall, over the vision that they had for The Forks.
* (1530)
I was not deeply involved.
I became involved where there was an environmental issue that was raised
regarding the boat basin and marina, or whatever the title was, at the near end
of The Forks. I really am disappointed,
I guess, that the member is following this tactic in terms of trying to alter
whatever plans might be in place for the Norwood Bridge. If there is ever an abuse of the
environmental process, it is when it is required to deal with a very broad
range of issues that are not part of the mandate that is given to it in a
particular situation.
There is no question that people have a lot to say about
how The Forks might develop and where the redevelopment of the bridge will
ultimately take that area. That is not
necessarily a direction the Clean Environment Commission is equipped to direct
the city on. The concepts of sustainable
development means that you have a broad consensus‑based solution to your
planning that respects the business and environmental concerns that are raised,
so you can have a healthy community and a healthy environment. You can have jobs and a healthy environment.
I really am puzzled and disappointed that the member now
appears to be putting herself in a position where she wants to be
obstructionist in terms of how the process will unfold around the Norwood Bridge
and The Forks.
Ms. Cerilli: Now the minister is calling me
obstructionist. I have been called a lot
of things by this government. We will
add that one to the list.
I would just like the minister to clarify. I was going to ask the minister this question
at the outset of these Estimates as we move into the area of sustainability, so
to speak, if he would define his definition of development from a sustainable
perspective, because I think it is important here. I mean, he has made reference to that himself. So I would like him to clarify that for the
record. How does the Minister of
Environment define sustainable development?
Mr. Cummings: Well, the member knows as well as anyone else
the range of definitions that people like to apply to sustainable development
but, in fact, it means that we have development in a way that we are able to
protect the sustainability of the environment and at the same time have the
opportunity to develop our society so that we have a sustainable lifestyle as
well.
Now, this is a perfect example of where the member is
mixing and matching to suit her own purposes, and when we look at the Norwood
Bridge and the reconstruction of a bridge that has been there since when, 1914
or somewhere in there? There was
probably a crossing there before this one was built. It is now being seen as some sort of an
attack on the local environment to replace that bridge.
The bridge needs to be constructed so that it is compatible
with the immediate area. Part of that is
an environmental question, and that will be dealt with, but the larger plan
that the city brings to bear on how it will unfold its traffic, how it will
direct the traffic, whether it is to that bridge or to others, and how many
spans it should have there to accommodate the traffic that is available, will
be handled through their planning process.
Ms. Cerilli: Well, I am going to leave this section now,
this issue, but I would just like to see if the minister would agree with me
that sustainable development, in a way, is about mixing, is about starting to
connect environment, economic development, health and justice issues, and that
all of these areas, in terms of urban planning, certainly have implications for
the urban environment. The minister had
said that we have had such an impact on the environment in the urban area, but
creating a healthful sustainable urban environment, I think, is going to have
implications for all sorts of government departments and government services
and industries including transportation, including urban planning.
You know, this is where we will have to depart and, I
think, agree to disagree, but I guess that is why we are on different sides of
the House. [interjection] The member for Riel (Mr. Ducharme) says it is a good
thing.
I am going to take a break now and pass it over to my
Liberal colleague, and we will go from there.
Mr. Cummings: Mr. Deputy Chairperson, the member challenged
me and then obliquely ignored the comments about sustainable development. It seems to me that if you are talking about
an opportunity for sustainable development anywhere across Canada, this
province is one of the areas where that is achievable. We have an environment that is in pretty good
shape despite all of the criticism and all of the concern that is raised from
time to time, some of it legitimate, some of it perhaps overstated. At the same time, we have tremendous
opportunity for our economy, which is still maturing, to grow in a way that is
very sustainable.
(Mr. Bob Rose, Acting
Deputy Chairperson, in the Chair)
When we look at the opportunities for lifestyle enhancement
in the city in terms of how the city wants to develop its core area and how it
wants to develop its traffic lanes, then I think you can look with some
confidence to Plan Winnipeg and the long‑range planning that they have
started in conjunction with the Province of Manitoba, in conjunction with their
surrounding municipalities as to how they will develop over the next quarter
century.
We have an unprecedented state of co‑operation I
think between the surrounding municipalities and the City of Winnipeg. That does not mean that there are not ongoing
examples of friction, but it is a much better working arrangement than it was
six years ago, which I am very confident is a result of this government and the
City of Winnipeg and the surrounding municipalities recognizing that if they
are going to have an opportunity to benefit from a sustainable development,
that it starts with working together and it starts with having long‑range
plans. The reconstruction of this bridge
is not incompatible with their long‑range plans.
The member, in my view, far too often likes to insert
process instead of planning. Planning
does need to be brought forward, examined for where it will take us, examined
for the impacts it will have on the community and on the environment, and,
ultimately, planning decisions are very often what we end up arguing about
rather than environmental matters. If
the planning is done properly up front, there would not be environmental issues
associated with it.
Ms. Cerilli: I just want to respond. If planning is not process, I do not know
what is. If urban planning is not a
process, then the minister can debate me on that one.
I just want to refer to a document developed by the acting
general manager for the Parks and Recreation Department with respect to the
river parkway system priority for the development of sections of riverbanks
along the Red and the Assiniboine.
There are five criteria.
One of them is linkage potential.
One of them is ownership, public benefit, costs, and other factors which
are being considered. This paper
outlines a number of areas and talks about a plan for how to make sure that we
are going to develop our riverbank property in a way that is going to fit it
into a context of sustainable development for this city.
* (1540)
I come from a background in health education. To me, if we are going to have healthy
communities, we have to have opportunities for preventative health care. That is how I fit this into my vision of
sustainable development, that we have to have places in our city where people
can go and have as much as possible a natural setting to recreate, to do some preventative
health care and get some exercise, and that we have to invest in that.
In the long run we were going to save money in terms of
health intervention through hospitals and very expensive technology and all
that kind of‑‑[interjection] This has a lot to do with the Norwood
Bridge as the minister is indicating, because if we do not have the assessment
that is going to ensure that we have this kind of vision included into the
development at The Forks, we are going to have concrete around the river, and
people do not want to go and ride their bikes and enjoy nature because there is
none there. They just have concrete.
Mr. Cummings: They could not ride their bikes by the river
if we did not do riverbank enhancement.
Ms. Cerilli: The Minister of Environment is speaking out
of turn that what I am wanting to do is ensure that we are not going to
compromise the good things that have happened at The Forks, that we are not
going to now, as I just said, turn part of the walkway into a tunnel with
concrete and block part of the access to the riverbank and green space by
putting in a monstrosity of an overpass and a bridge system that is going to
compromise the integrity of The Forks development as a green space and natural
setting in the centre of the city.
So I think the issues that I am raising‑‑
Mr. Cummings: . . . the water that they have there, because
you have a dam at Lockport. That is why
you have got water that is as high as it is at The Forks. Talk about an unaltered . . . .
Point of Order
Ms. Cerilli: On a point of order, Mr. Acting Deputy
Chairperson.
The Acting Deputy
Chairperson (Mr. Rose): Order, please. The honourable minister will have his
opportunity to respond.
*
* *
Ms. Cerilli: Thank you, Mr. Acting Deputy Chairperson, for
calling the minister to order. I just
want to finish my comments by continuing to clarify for the minister how this
fits into my vision for sustainable development and for environmental impact
assessment. I am fully aware that, as
the minister says, we often end up debating process.
But I would also say to the minister that is the business
we are in. We are in the business of
developing policy and that comes from a process, in my opinion, not often
enough of consultation to the community.
That again ties into environmental impact assessment where we have a
tool where we can bring the community in and listen to what they have to
say. They have a lot of good ideas. They have certainly a perspective that often
gets lost, I believe, in government, when we stop looking at how development
actually impacts on people's lives, on their daily experience of living in that
habitat that we are creating in the city.
I hope that the minister can understand now where I am
coming from. I would ask him to clarify
for me if he has seen, or if his staff have seen, this document that is being
presented from the city. I know that
there has been some concern because of budget restraints about moving in this
direction at this time, but I hope that I have clarified how I look at it in terms
of providing the facilities for preventative health and providing the
opportunity for people to have a safe and natural place to recreate, something
that I think is really important in an urban environment. Thank you.
Mr. Cummings: I had an opportunity to spend some time with
a group that referred to themselves as urban architects, and I could not agree
more with the member in terms of what she is saying about the responsibility
that we have to create a hospitable environment downtown. When you have a heavily populated area, you
inevitably end up with a core area which might well be the older part of the
city and anything you can do to enhance that area.
I am simply telling the member that if she is truly
committed to the issues that she is bringing forward here, she is only getting
part of the answer from me because the environmental hearing process is only
part of the answer. There is a larger
planning process of which the environmental impact of this bridge and the
hearings or the process‑‑that could lead to hearings or might not
lead to hearings for that matter‑‑that surrounds it are only part
of it. There is a larger responsibility
for those who are in fact the urban planners and the City of Winnipeg and their
environmental plan that they have for the core area of the city.
I guess we can probably debate this until the river freezes
over and we are not going to agree, but I think the fact is that the member is
only catching part of the responsibility when she brings the concerns to this
table. There is also a significant other
jurisdiction out there that has in fact the lead on a lot of these concerns,
and we would be more than glad to hear from her regarding her concerns.
Ms. Norma McCormick
(Osborne): I would like to proceed into some of the
detail of the Environmental Operations appropriation and ask some questions
specifically on pages 29 and 32.
I note that the staff turnover allowance is cited at 53.9,
which is in excess of 10 percent. Can
you give me some information as to why you are anticipating such a high staff
turnover?
Mr. Cummings: Unless I am reading the numbers incorrectly,
that is actually a relatively small number.
That is $53,000 as compared to $4.151 million. So that is a particularly small amount of money
that is left there as an allowance.
Ms. McCormick: Can I ask then, just in raw numbers, what you
are anticipating, what figure you are using to calculate your staff turnover
allowance?
Mr. Cummings: The rule of thumb is around 1 or 1.5
percent. If it would provide the member
with some confidence, I was quite amazed at what was a fairly high rate of
turnover in government when I became aware of the larger picture in the
provincial government. The rate of turnover
is actually far beyond that. So this
department is actually quite low, although I would suggest that the other
departments, their numbers are shrinking as well, but I do not think they are
that low, or at least the larger ones certainly are not.
Ms. McCormick: Dropping down to the Other Expenditures, I
note that there is a line for Other Operating.
Is any of this amount presumed to be used for the purchase of laboratory
services with the transfer of the environment labs to EITC?
Mr. Cummings: The Other Operating, I suppose, to some extent,
some of it could be unanticipated, but what is referenced is everything from
meals to computer‑related charges to loss, damage, insurance,
extraordinary costs, some publications that might not have been anticipated
earlier on, assistance reallocation, transfer costs, some membership fees and
registration. It is a bit of catchall,
but it is not a big number in relationship to the total number. The laboratory dollars are allocated on page
32 under Supplies and Services at $1.7 million.
Part of that will be the laboratory costs.
Ms. McCormick: Actually, that is where I was going with
this. I was curious as to whether there
are laboratory expenditures anticipated in the Environmental Operations side in
addition to the Environmental Management side.
Mr. Cummings: They are all allocated in the management
page.
* (1550)
Ms. McCormick: So any of the expenditures which were
incurred on the operation side which would require lab analysis would be run
through the Other appropriation.
Mr. Cummings: Yes.
That is only for this year, mind you.
In the changing of the labs to independent operations, amalgamated labs‑‑the
lab has been gradually moving toward more of a cost‑recovery system. You would probably be familiar with the fact
that certain fees and services have increased the last few years.
But for this year, in the interim, to establish what would
be normal needs and what even might be their normal fee structure, as I
understand it, there is an agreement being struck between the new independent lab
and the department to provide the same services that we received last year for
roughly the same dollar. In other words,
our appropriation for what it cost us to run the lab, we were able to redirect
that, in the appropriate numbers, to cover our costs for this year, but as we
get a better understanding of what real costs are, those numbers will
undoubtedly have to be adjusted.
Ms. McCormick: Mr. Acting Deputy Chairperson, so what I
understand then is there is a commitment to a rate structure in this fiscal
period which makes you confident that the amount appropriated for the purchase
of lab services will be enough for the department to operate and that there
will be in a coming fiscal period some perhaps upward revision of the rate
structure which the department will be subjected to along with all of the other
commercial clients.
That being the case then, I would like to turn to the lines
on page 32 with respect to the staff years.
I note that there is a drop from 87.44 down to 51.44. Does that indicate the transfer of the lab
staff?
Mr. Cummings: Yes, that reflects the numbers, 36, with the
lab staff. The member made a leap of
faith saying that next year the cost reflection might well go up. That might well be right but I do not think
we are positioned to acknowledge that one way or the other yet. I would presume that the member agrees with
the philosophy behind this. That is, not
only does there need to be well‑serviced laboratories out there competing
for business on a basis that is founded in solid business approach and cost
recovery, but it is the same as our Fleet Vehicle change that we made to a
Special Operating Agency. It does
require all of us to look at what our real costs are.
You could argue that there may be situations where people
might think twice before they order a certain test to be done. At the same time, that is probably not a bad
thing because there may well be some rationalization of the work that is done
when you reflect the real cost of doing it.
That was probably reflected in the manner in which the lab prioritized
its work up until the changeover came.
The high priority work was done in as a quick a turnaround as possible,
but there were matters that did not get done on as high a priority. All of that will, I hope, start to shake down
over the next few months.
Ms. McCormick: The minister has also made a leap of faith,
Mr. Acting Deputy Chair, with respect to my anticipated support without
equivocation for the new SOA.
On one level I can understand the rationale the minister is
operating from, but I do have some concerns that I would be prepared to discuss
at a later point. For right now the
transfer of the 36 staff positions accounts for the reduction in staff
years. I wonder what then accounts for
the increase in staff dollars on this line.
You will note that it was $2,499,000‑plus for salaries on the line
and then it goes up in this Estimates expenditure to $2,530,700. I am kind of curious how you have managed‑‑I
think this is very clever‑‑to get rid of 36 staff positions and
even get an increase in the allocation.
Mr. Cummings: The dollars have already been deducted. The 36 are not included in the calculation of
the salary. The staff numbers are the only
numbers that are changed there. It is
not 36 less and the payroll the same size.
The payroll for the numbers that were left was a certain size, and then
the . . . payroll for those numbers that were left is a certain size. The calculation already reflects the
downsizing, but there is a small increase there which‑‑and it is
small, $37,000, that reflects increments and other normal entitlements that
would go with salary benefits.
Ms. McCormick: So if I understand correctly, the $2,499,000
indicated as the expenditures for '93‑94 is not true. That is not an accurate expenditure
figure. That would be almost a proration
basis.
Mr. Cummings: I suppose it depends on how you wish it
reflected. It is adjusted so that you
are comparing apples and apples, is what it really is intended to do. It did not mean to confuse the issue, but it
was meant so that the bottom line, at least as I read it, is so that the bottom
line figures are, in fact, comparable.
You do not need to adjust them.
Ms. McCormick: I can see what you have done. I just think that it is a bit of a
misrepresentation to imply that you have got 87 staff years for the one amount,
and then you get 51 for an increased amount.
It does provide for some confusion.
Mr. Cummings: I understand what the member is saying. I guess it is not unusual, however, with
having seen a number of these types of representations before. You can have a staff year‑‑and it
is not meant to have happened here‑‑but you can have a staff year
with no dollars attached to it. All this
was meant to reflect was the number of staff years that were allocated, but the
dollars are meant to be compared on a staff‑to‑staff basis. There was actually an increase of $31,000 to
pay the same number of staff this year over what those staff got last
year. If you calculate the columns
vertically, you do get a balance as well.
Ms. McCormick: So all I need to do, Mr. Acting Deputy
Chairperson, through you to the minister, is pretend in my mind that the 87.44
is in fact 51.44, and I will have it, right?
Mr. Cummings: I am not sure if the Auditor agrees with the
term "pretend," but that is fine by me.
Ms. McCormick: You have given me the invitation to offer you
my comments on the process of transferring the lab to an SOA, and I was wanting
to make sure that one of the essential considerations in the first run is
covered off, and that is the issue of accreditation. If the lab's services are to be fully useful
to those people who are looking for the analysis of environmental sampling,
there is a process for assuring accreditation.
Equally there is a process for occupational safety and health sampling
analysis, done generally through the AIHA.
Has consideration been given in the transfer of the mandate from the
Department of Environment through to EITC with respect to ensuring that this
laboratory facility in its new incarnation remains accredited in both systems?
* (1600)
Mr. Cummings: Mr. Acting Deputy Chairperson, that is a
requirement of their charter.
Ms. McCormick: The other concern that I would have with this
private sector entity is the possibility that if it operates under the Board of
EITC that many of the people who are on the list‑‑I do not know if
they are called directors, or at least the council‑‑are people who
are potentially going to be people whose organizations may submit samples for
analysis. For example, we have Bristol
Aerospace, Simplot, D.W. Friesen, Standard Aero, some engineering firms,
rolling mills, Inco, Western Glove.
Does the minister see any possibility for a conflict of
interest with respect to the lab being accountable to people who are in fact
the community who may be seeking analysis or submitting samples to this
organization?
Mr. Cummings: Interestingly enough, one of the accusations
used to be that because the department had the lab housed within the department
that therefore you could not trust the results that came from the lab. The accusation was the department was covering
its own backside because its own lab would not condemn tests as a result of
something they may or may not have been controlling themselves, which, frankly,
was a crock.
I do not see shadows behind every bush on this issue. The member raises an issue that undoubtedly
needs to be examined, but certainly in the interim and in the first year as
this transition is being completed, it is not something that I have been
troubled by. I have not spent a lot of
time following through what relationship there might be in terms of looking for
work.
We have a situation where just getting on with the
amalgamation, I think, is going to be the major struggle between the three labs
here, and how it will evolve from there, I suppose, is probably still somewhat
of an open question. This is not being
driven by any one of the originating departments. I would think the member might agree that
there is some validity to taking that approach as well. I hear the question and it will not go
unnoticed.
Ms. McCormick: I think I would feel more comfortable if this
had been driven within the lab groups themselves. Now the Department of Environment is in fact
going to be more a client of this new group than the provider of the
service. For that reason, the purpose of
my questioning on this line is to ensure that the department continue to have
access to the quality and timeliness of analysis that was there before.
I guess that is another area for questioning. If a commercial lab goes into competition
with other labs in the marketplace, will this then mean that the department
will also be free to seek laboratory analysis from other private sector
labs? If it works one way, does it work
the other way as well?
Mr. Cummings: I think the member would likely appreciate
that that is not likely in the initial stages.
It is no different than the fleet vehicle. By the way, this is not a special operating
agency inasmuch as it is set up slightly different, with reporting to the
agency that it is. By comparison,
however, in the transitional stage, there are mutual grounds for wanting to
support each other, if you will. The new
entity needs the business.
The departments that used to do business with their own
labs need the assurance of budget and timeliness as you raise. So there is a mutual support mechanism there
in the early stages. There is a lot of
complex possibilities that evolve from this when you talk about timeliness
without really addressing it. I am not
sure that I am equipped to address it completely, but I talked about
prioritization within the work the lab was doing for the department.
We got timeliness, but we also‑‑through
prioritization, there was other less important water sampling work, for
example, that was pushed back. Those
who, from the outside looking in, wanted to or had a different vision of how
they thought the labs should be working were quite concerned about the issue of
timeliness, whether it is this lab or any other. So it is something that the new manager and
the administration are going to have to work out.
Ms. McCormick: I guess I am just kind of interested in this
new status then, with the department having almost preferred client status to
this new organization. I am
surprised. I had read early documentation
when this was an idea, and I had understood that the preferred option was to
create an SOA, but I must have missed something along the line if that is not
how it turned out.
I guess the other question then is, with respect to the
ability to compete in the private sector, what assurances would be there in
fact if your department is both the preferred client but also the captured
client, you know, one that they know they have no matter what? What is going to ensure that the service
continues to be as affordable and as timely to the department as it is to the
people who can take their money and walk down the street and use another lab?
(Mr. Deputy Chairperson
in the Chair)
Mr. Cummings: It is being addressed by contractual
arrangements in the short term. I think
that my personal view is, and I am not deeply immersed in this issue because of
the management structure that it now has, that we are a client. But I think that as with other situations,
some of them SOAs, there is a period of maturity and evolution and then the
question becomes, what is the next step?
Is the next step, in fact, the one that you are referencing where the
department seeks out the best price it can get for best turnaround, or does it
have some kind of a preferred client status on an ongoing basis? That is possible and might well be practical
considering the nature of some of the things that we do, but that would have to
be decided by a contractual agreement for an appropriate reimbursement and
level of productivity at the lab, is the way I would see it unfolding.
Ms. McCormick: Mr. Deputy Chairperson, I have a couple more
questions. One is with respect to the
capitalizing of this endeavour. What
mechanisms would be in place to ensure that the services that are offered by
this new corporate entity would, in fact, continue to grow and meet the different
and potentially expanding needs of the department?
* (1610)
Mr. Cummings: Well, I think if the concepts of
competitiveness are there and fee for service and the department prioritizing its
own needs as well, then there needs to be capitalization. One of the problems that we have had in the
last few years is, frankly, that we probably should have capitalized the lab
more, but because there was some thinking and certainly there was a tight
budgetary situation all the way around, whether it was this lab or whether it
was other departments, there needed to be some broader discussion about the
position of labs in the future of the province.
If we want to have a development in a certain area in the province, we
need to have aggressive laboratory services.
This is one way of coming at it.
The issue that the member raised earlier‑‑I
have had it pointed out to me that the EITC board does not, in fact, become
involved in the day‑to‑day operations of the lab. If there was any potential for interference
beyond the broader policymaking aspect, that certainly would be minimized. It was recognized at the start and some more
capital is now being made available through EITC for the labs to be able to
provide better services because, in fact, there were some tests that I believe
we were ill‑equipped to perform, frankly.
Ms. McCormick: Mr. Deputy Chairperson, what will be the role
of the department in the recruitment of a permanent chief operating officer for
this entity? Will there be any
involvement, or will that be solely the responsibility of the board of EITC?
Mr. Cummings: Up till now, it is varied somewhat maybe from
the original conceptual thinking a year ago, but at this point the department
is not deeply involved in that aspect of it.
Certainly, in the development stages of this plan, the department was
consulted and was part of the process, but I am not sure that I could advise
that we would likely be part of that selection process.
I am not sure that it is necessarily critical that the
department be part of that, and I think that demonstrates the change in
roles. Now more important to the
department is what kind of service are we going to get, and that will be
defined by an agreement.
Ms. McCormick: I am not suggesting that you would want to be
part of the recruitment, but I think in the answer you have given, it is
important that someone who has a familiarity with the operations of
laboratories be in place, you know, the CEO.
So I can trust that EITC will recognize that fact.
I want now to ask some questions about the relationship
between the amalgamated laboratories and how it will relate to the development
of laboratory facilities at the MEC. You
and I have had some discussions about whether there would be still an ongoing
need for the very sophisticated laboratory facility that was proposed in the
first licensing agreement with the Manitoba Hazardous Waste Management
Corporation.
Can you see the new MEC being also a client or a captured
client of EITC?
Mr. Cummings: I do not have all of the facts in front of me
to be able to answer that question, but I would anticipate that the new centre
will want to have some laboratory capacity of its own. They will not want to be a captured client.
One of the reasons that the investors whom we are
negotiating with were chosen, was that they brought a vision that did speak to
looking at a lot of new and perhaps different approaches. If they in fact evolve in that manner, it
would certainly seem to me that from a business point of view, they would want
either a contractual arrangement or a capacity of their own.
We are still under some discussion, as the member knows,
regarding the development plan for the facility at Montcalm. I have not had my weekly update. I can probably envisage what the answer is,
but I do not have the precise answer in front of me.
I am reminded that certainly the kind of work that they are
doing, they are going to have some onsite capacity of their own. They are not going to be running back and
forth to another lab with their day‑to‑day operations, but the
scope of that lab I think will be revealed in their development plan that we
will ultimately approve.
Ms. McCormick: That opens a whole new series of questions
that I am not sure we would want to get into today. It does relate to the importance of having
ongoing sampling, particularly with this soils remediation facility. I guess I can leave it at the minister's
discretion whether he wants to move into that area now or wait for a later line
in the appropriation where we will be speaking about the corporation.
Mr. Cummings: Well, I will leave it to you, whatever you
want.
Ms. McCormick: If you have no concern about getting into it then,
one of the things that is operational on the site now is the bioremediation
facility, and there has been some stated concern. I know, when we brought the corporation
before the committee, I had raised some issues around the frequency of testing
of samples. There was a concern in the
community that in fact there was air stripping going on.
The concern that I addressed at the time was dispelled out
of hand by the corporation's officials, but I want to know now, from the
perspective of the Environment department, whether the department believes that
the activities going on with respect to soil bioremediation are within the
terms of the licence, or is there any concern in the department that there are
soils that are being accepted for treatment that are contaminated with
substances which are not included in the licensing agreement?
Mr. Cummings: There are two aspects to your question. One that we touched on yesterday is that as
the corporation becomes increasingly active, our own monitoring and sampling
process needs to be picked up accordingly so that we are satisfied that they
are living within the conditions of the licence. We have no reason or no evidence that they
are not within their licence at the operations that they are undertaking
now. Certainly, from my uneducated eye,
any operations that I have seen occurring there do not strike me as being in
violation of controls that we might have envisaged with the licensing process.
I think there is always a very extreme situation that can
be discussed, even the transportation of material. I have had people indicate to me that simply
transporting material that you are allowing it to volatilize. Every time you transfer gasoline from your
pump to your car, there is always a bit of volatilization that goes on. We are dealing with materials that
volatilize, plus a lot of heavier stuff that does not, so as I understand it,
very often the more concentrated contaminated soils that they are looking for,
certainly our regulatory regime indicates that is what should be going to them
rather than a lot of the light stuff.
Ms. McCormick: Is the department taking a reverse‑onus
approach to ask the corporation to provide any sample results? For example, the concern has been raised that
they are taking soil contaminated with PAHs, with heavy oils, extractables,
things that are not within the scope of the licence. Is part of the enforcement of the conditions
of the licence a requirement for the corporation to report on the frequency of
sample analysis and the findings from the analysis to demonstrate in any way
that they are staying within their licence?
* (1620)
Mr. Cummings: I am told yes.
Ms. McCormick: How is this reported? Do the analyses of the samples go routinely
or on an as‑requested basis?
Mr. Cummings: It is handled through the local office in the
region, and that is one reason why we are double‑checking what our
understanding was of which way it is, in fact, handled. It is one of the things referred to yesterday
as well that we are increasing our capacity in the region to control what the
corporation may or may not do as they become increasingly operational.
I think that the process, you will recall, is one that was
brought forward from a proprietary process that we are involved with in the soil
remediation at this point. It seemed
that there was actually a very good acceptance of the process and the amount of
product that went through there last year.
Certainly, the fact that you are raising the issue that
someone had raised concerns with you, this is the first indication from anybody
that it has been brought to my attention, that local or otherwise were
concerned about the activities onsite.
Of course there is a pretty detailed monitoring system being set up that
ultimately should provide the security that the community might be seeking in
terms of what is being operationalized there.
At the same time the province is going to have actually a
much cleaner role, approximately after the 1st of July in terms of that
question that was raised several times about being the regulator on the
regulatee, if you will, the relationship between the department and the
corporation. In my view, we have always
been the regulator and they get regulated the same as anybody else.
Ms. McCormick: So I guess if your department has not
received the concerns around soil contaminated with substances for which the
bioremediation technology is less than powerful, it indicates to me that it is
either a malicious allegation or that the people who were bringing this to my
attention chose only one route and perhaps not the more appropriate route. So I will go back and endeavour to have the
concern that has been lodged with me lodged within the department, if in fact
there is substance to it.
Another area I am interested in is the statement in the
annual report of the Hazardous Waste Corporation which says that a
comprehensive environmental monitoring program was developed for MEC comprising
base‑line data collection as well as ongoing and operational
monitoring. The environmental quality of
the site and within an eight‑kilometre radius will be watched on a
continuing basis. Is the department the
recipient of this ongoing monitoring data?
Mr. Cummings: Yes, we are.
Let me add one comment on the previous point. What I said was that I had not received any
concerns. I am not aware of whether or
not the department may have, though. We
will both check our files.
Ms. McCormick: So the question then, answered affirmatively
that the department is in receipt of the base‑line data collection‑‑how
is this done? Is it done in the form,
for example, of an annual report made by the corporation to the environment?
Mr. Cummings: That is more or less correct, but bearing in
mind that it is only the last year that we are getting up and going and that we
get regularized information. The format
that will end up being public knowledge, I suppose, will likely end up being in
an annual report or an annual piece of information that is published, because
certainly that is what we are committed to.
That is what the corporation is committed to in terms of keeping the
community comfortable with what is going on at the site, but it has not been
much more than a year that it has been operational, I assume.
Ms. McCormick: Perhaps we can come back to this at a future
time, but just for now, does the department prescribe any form within which
this data is expected to come back, either through the licensing condition or
through the department's own protocols?
It is just very interesting that we dealt with flora and
fauna monitoring around Oak Hammock Marsh today and that seems to have been
altered a little bit, and now we have a licensing condition placed on the
corporation for monitoring, and again, your answer that it has only been up and
running a year, seems to me kind of begs the question about whether or not, if
there is going to be an impact, it might immediately be seen, so you would want
to know immediately to correct it. So I
am just curious if there is any kind of protocol that the department sets out
on the regulated bodies when in fact they are asked to do reporting on an
annual basis.
Mr. Cummings: I am told that the reporting requirements, as
they are spelled out in the licence, are quite onerous and your question was,
do we prescribe the nature of the testing or are we prescribing the nature of
the reporting. I think that from our
recollection that is largely spelled out already and that we will be following
the procedure. But I think more
importantly, when I said that it had only been operating for a short period of
time, that does not mean that the information has not been forward. I was referring to getting it the same as we
were talking about the air quality reports from the province. They are not necessarily in a format that you
are ready to publish, although I do not think they are going to be too
complicated or too voluminous yet in the early stages of the operation.
Ms. McCormick: Just a final question before I turn it back
to the member for Radisson. What I am
hearing then is that I could go into that licence and I could take the criteria
placed on the corporation and then go back to the department and find some kind
of compatible match between what was expected to be provided and what is
available with the department.
Mr. Cummings: That is correct.
Ms. Cerilli: Mr. Deputy Chairperson, this is the area that
has the Expected Results: To ensure that
no planned activity or development takes place until the proper permits,
approvals, are secured and appropriate limits, terms and conditions are imposed
to ensure adequate protection of the environment and public health. So this is a rather onerous responsibility, a
serious responsibility, and I have talked a fair bit already today and
yesterday about making this connection between environment and health and how
we can develop tools in our governments in our various other procedures to make
this connection.
* (1630)
I would like just to start off by asking the minister to
indicate to me what his government has done to ensure that this environment and
health connection is going to be made and that we are going to have more of a
movement to preventative health care. I
have made comments in the House as well about health reform means that we start
eliminating pollution at source and realize that a lot of our costs in health
care are related to the slow and insidious encroachment of environment
degradation and how increases in cancer and immune‑related illnesses,
respiratory illnesses, allergies, all of those kind of things are being shown
to be related to environmental contamination, either water, air or other
changes in foodstuffs, cigarettes‑‑[interjection] Booze, the
minister says.
So I would ask the minister to indicate how this division,
specifically in this department, is moving to start to ensure that we are going
to do all that we can to start putting some emphasis at the front end in terms
of public health.
Mr. Cummings: Mr. Deputy Chairperson, certainly that is an
important aspect of how the Department of Environment has to deal with these
issues, and we work quite closely with the Department of Health. The Department of Health is part of the
Technical Advisory Committee, wherever one is struck on our licensing
issues. We get advice and seek advice
regularly from the Department of Health.
So it is not an unusual or incompatible concept that the member puts
forward, because I think we, to a large extent, are practising it now.
Ms. Cerilli: What I am asking the minister is just a brief
explanation of how, other than having one person from the Department of Health
on the TAC committee, which, you know, I would like to know who that person is,
if it is always the same person or if it changes, and just some other
explanation of concrete actions, policies or initiatives that the department
has in this area.
Mr. Cummings: I think the question begs a pretty far‑reaching
answer. It varies all the way from the
Conawapa review, where the Department of Health had a lot to say about how it
thought that should be structured and some of the questions that should be
asked, through to rather mundane day‑to‑day operations. We do have a Health‑Environment review
committee, along with the technical advisory committees. Certainly, we have restructured ourselves in
terms of a Pollution Prevention branch, where initiatives are being sought out
in order to provide preventative measures rather than reactive.
We have preventative public health programs that are
developed by the Department of Health.
It is worth reminding ourselves at this juncture that we in fact have 38
public health inspectors that are part of the Department of Environment today,
so really the public health issues are very much part of our day‑to‑day
menu.
Ms. Cerilli: I thank the minister for that answer. So the 38 public health inspectors are part
of the Department of Environment?
Mr. Cummings: Yes, this is one of those areas that, I suppose,
comes from various forms of government reorganization over the years. All public health officers outside of the old
boundaries of the city of Winnipeg, I think‑‑is that the right way
to describe it?‑‑are employees of the Department of
Environment. The City of Winnipeg itself
is responsible for public health administration within the boundaries of the
old city boundaries.
So there really was a recognition right from the start‑‑and
you will recall that there was a joining of Environment and Workplace Safety
and Health at one point in the early years of our mandate, and there was some
logic to that, except that the workload was very onerous in the number of
issues that were evident in both departments, I suppose. But there was a lot of overlap as well, which
is another area that we are attempting to reduce, and that is why I referenced
earlier, we have an awful lot of people from various disciplines who are also
signed up as environment officers.
An example perhaps that helps demonstrate public health
overlap with environment issues, it is very evident in rural Manitoba, when a
lot of the regional staff are there representing Department of Environment, the
local community to a large extent probably has always thought of them as public
health inspectors. It is only recently
they started calling them public health inspectors and environment officers.
Ms. Cerilli: I am looking for the section in the annual
report that lists the number of areas that the health inspectors are
responsible for.
Mr. Cummings: Page 37.
Ms. Cerilli: Can the minister give me some direction on
the staff?
Mr. Cummings: Page 21 of the Supplementary or, pardon me,
the annual report‑‑and the question was?
(Mr. Bob Rose, Acting
Deputy Chairperson, in the Chair)
Ms. Cerilli: Mr. Acting Deputy Chairperson, I just want to
take a look at, as the minister said, the onerous responsibility, the heavy
workload, the number of different areas that these people are responsible for. We have 38 individuals throughout the
province, and the minister has made the comment that they are doing some
reorganizing to try and reduce the workload.
I would like an explanation of that.
What is the department doing to try and reduce the workload?
Mr. Cummings: Mr. Acting Deputy Chairperson, first of all,
a number of times I have referenced the fact that we do bring other people in
or other disciplines in to act as environment officers as well, but at the same
time, I think one of the ways that we think will help reduce workload is to put
an increasing onus on those who are regulated so that the officers can get on
with enforcement and checking for violation if that is what is needed. But I referenced earlier, even the licensing
process, where you go through a rather onerous licensing process as opposed to
perhaps an equally rigid but less complicated permitting process, where the
standards are laid down‑‑here are the regulations by which you must
operate; if you want to operate, you have to agree to meet these standards‑‑to
some extent, that is a demonstration of how you can reduce the workload in the
regions.
* (1640)
Ms. Cerilli: The minister has made reference to putting
the emphasis on enforcement. We were
sort of getting at this yesterday when we were talking about how these are connected,
that even, I think, the average citizen has the sense that there are people who
do inspections and then enforcement flows from that.
Is the minister saying that there is going to be more onus
on the industries or the sites that are regulated to do self‑monitoring
or self‑regulating? Is that the
direction that the minister is implying?
Is that what is happening?
Mr. Cummings: I would not maybe go so far as to say self‑regulating.
One example is the ozone regulation changes we made, where
some of the educational responsibility lies with the industry. Another aspect is that we probably have a
fair number of outdated responsibilities that we can prioritize our regulatory
regime and the enforcement of it based on the level of risk that is associated.
For example, even the increased workload that occurs with
stubble burning, obviously there are certain parts of the province where
enforcement is much more important. In
fact, that can lead to some, I suppose, discrepancies across the province, but
it means that the risk and the level of exposure that is potentially there from
certain activities needs to be looked at in terms of the amount of resources
that we apply to them. It also explains
why I do not think there have been any examples of where there has been a
shortage of resources that have been applied under emergency situations.
This department, the Department of Health, Natural
Resources, EMO, over my experience anyway, have bent every effort to respond
under emergency situations, and that is an example of simply prioritizing your
work responsibility. They were not out
expecting hog barns, for lack of a better example, I suppose, during the
Oakville derailment. It is the same as
any other reasonably competent enforcement agency, prioritization goes a long
way towards helping to make the workload manageable, and particularly if you
look at it from a risk‑management perspective.
Ms. Cerilli: So if I am understanding correctly, you are
saying that there is prioritization that is being done that is based on the
risk presented to the public by that specific site. Is that correct?
Mr. Cummings: The public and the environment, of course.
Ms. Cerilli: Okay.
So we have 83 public health inspectors, some of these
people I think, if I remember correctly, are also responsible for Environment
Act inspection and enforcement, as well.
Are there any other additional people besides those 83 then that are in
the department who are doing this kind of inspection enforcement function?
Point of Order
Ms. Cerilli: On a point of order, my dyslexia is catching
up with me. I have reversed the
numbers. It was 38 that you quoted to me
as public health inspectors. I am sorry.
* * *
Ms. Cerilli: Are there any other people in the department,
then, who have this function of environmental inspection and enforcement in
public health inspection enforcement?
Mr. Cummings: There is about an equal number of what would
be classified as environment officers, but they would not be doing public
health inspections. They would not be
qualified in that area.
Ms. Cerilli: I am working from page 21 for the annual
report from '92‑93, so it is safe for me to put in on this chart that
there are approximately, or there were, perhaps, approximately 38 individuals
who are responsible for The Public Health Act inspections, and then there are
approximately 38 who are responsible for all those items‑‑13 listed
under The Environment Act, as well as The Dangerous Goods Handling Act, as well
as all those other smaller requests.
Mr. Cummings: A total of 70, 38 and 32.
Ms. Cerilli: Have there been any changes to how these
inspections are done and this enforcement is done? I mean, this is an area I have commented
before that is expanding. There are more
areas that are being regulated and designated for having standards set, and the
big concern that many of us have is that we have 70 individuals responsible for
this in the province.
I am looking at the chart and seeing that in some of the
areas there are more inspections done than establishments that exist. I am wondering if some of these are going
back to the same place and following up, and if there are examples where we
have operations that are going uninspected.
Agricultural operations, for example.
There are 41 establishments listed in the chart, and there have been 21
inspections; manufacturing and industrial plants 205, and 196 inspections;
recreational operations, there are 31 establishments and 17 inspections;
incinerators 199 and 23 inspections.
Those are some of the ones that are under the line.
So the question I am asking is, are there some of these
that are duplicate inspections and follow up, or is this some kind of a
systematic inspection system where the public could look at this and have some
confidence in some of these figures? It
looks like, in some cases, we are keeping up but then in others it looks like
we are not.
Mr. Cummings: I am told it is a combination of complaint‑driven
spot checks. You will notice that one
item partway down there, scrap dealers, there are only 17 in the province and
there were 177 inspections, but of that, 87 may have been caused by complaints
or at least that was the number of complaints that were registered‑‑84,
pardon me.
Agricultural Operations, I am not sure what that would even
refer to. I am told that it would have
been seed cleaning, feed mills, that might have dust emissions in a populated
area, that sort of thing.
But if you look across the top, the member had referenced
Public Health, Food Service. There are
3,187 establishments and 3,945 inspections.
I am told, as I recall the numbers by comparison between the services,
that we were able to provide in the city of Winnipeg where there is a split‑jurisdictional
responsibility, that the City of Winnipeg actually spends a significantly
higher amount of money on food inspections, et cetera, but it is probably
partly driven because of the density of the number of restaurants within the
area.
Ms. Cerilli: One of the comments the minister made is that
they are dealing with this heavy workload by prioritizing based on risk. Can I ask the minister to indicate what the
priority areas are for all of these on the two pages, pages 21 and 22.
* (1650)
Mr. Cummings: Before I ask the department to give me further
information, I think it is worth looking at No. 9, Swimming Facilities. The numbers would indicate that potentially
every swimming facility that we know about was inspected three times. I suppose those numbers do mean something.
We do not have the list with us, but one does exist, and
that the regions, in consultation with central administration, lay out their
priority workload and establish their priority lists jointly in the area that
they are going to concentrate, so if the member is, we can provide a partial
list, I think maybe if the member will give us another minute or two.
Ms. Cerilli: You can provide that to me another time. I will just carry on with my questioning
because we only have seven minutes left for today.
I would be interested in talking about how the regions
established these priorities and how much of it is complaint driven. On the next chart, it looks like there is an
awful lot of complaints related to private sewage, to unsanitary conditions, to
private water supplies, lots to dwellings and buildings, and I wonder if that
is the way priorities are set, or if there is some other way of looking at
health and environmental considerations.
One of the other concerns that I have, I alluded to earlier
that I hear some horror stories of industries or sites being informed before an
inspection is done, particularly in the city of Winnipeg, maybe this is more
where they are inspecting restaurants.
Restaurants know when the inspector is coming, and they sort of clean up
their act. Then we have the inspector
come, and after that, things go back to a not‑so‑safe
situation. I am wondering if the
minister has any comments related to that and if we can be assured that this is
not the case.
I have heard, similarly, with dangerous goods that oil has
been flushed out of an industry down the sewage system, and when the inspector
comes, it is made to look like that has not been happening, so I would just ask
the minister for some comment there to reassure us, reassure the committee. What is the policy?
Mr. Cummings: First of all, I think we take some pride in
the fact that we attempt to respond when complaints are raised, to make sure
that we are not overlooking something.
Certainly, when occasionally we are accused of not responding to
complaints, upon reviewing that, we usually find that that has not been the
case.
As for the spot inspection or prior notice of showing up
for inspection, I would not expect that that is a practice that is followed, or
certainly would not be good enforcement policy if it were. On page 21, there are a number of issues that
the department has ticked that they consider priorities, and frankly, the first
nine items at the top of the page under Public Health, temporary food service,
retail, mobile, food processors, uninspected meat processors, water supply,
semi‑public water supply, swimming facilities. Then under The Environment Act, waste
disposal grounds and livestock production operations, municipal wastewater
facilities, and other Environment Act licensing have been the four areas that
we would likely have that are quite high on our list, and we have not gone
through some of the other items.
We have a priority consultation going on with the
Department of Health, through Health‑Environment committee. There are efforts being put into regulatory
reform, particularly on the drinking water side. A high level of public concern obviously
surrounds that latter issue, but the high levels of public concern also drive
some of our enforcement priorities. If
in this specific area you have‑‑and we have had examples of where
domestic sewage has been a problem.
Obviously that becomes a priority for the officers in that area because
you have to be seen to be, as with any enforcement program, enforcing it at the
same time as you are carrying out enforcement.
I suppose that we are also spending a fair bit of time,
centrally at least, in trying to work on the establishment of some national
priorities, areas of interest that reflect nationally, public‑‑or
drinking water, pardon me. Water for
human consumption is one of those areas that we actually have a significant
ongoing interest in at this point.
Air emissions is one that we referenced not that long ago,
and we spent a fair bit of time on that issue and contaminated sites. All of those are‑‑contaminated
sites have taken up probably the most amount of departmental effort this past
year in terms of getting on with establishment of a regime to deal with them in
a fair manner.
Ms. Cerilli: Would the minister agree to provide me with a
list of the contaminated sites that are indicated, 390, in the report and
appreciating that that is from '92‑93 and there may be more identified
now?
Mr. Cummings: It is public information on the
registries. Sorry. We have a registry of contaminated sites
which is not on the public registry. You
will get a copy, however. Anytime you
are absent in the House, should I suspect you are out checking out another
contamination site?
Ms. McCormick: Just do not buy one.
Ms. Cerilli: I will try not to buy one, as the member for
Osborne suggests. One of the other ones
that I think is problematic in the province, especially considering the new
regulations that were brought in, is the waste disposal grounds. I know that as I travel around in rural
Manitoba I often come across fires burning.
I have some photographs that have been sent to me from different sites,
and sometimes you do not even know which ones they are‑‑[interjection]
I talk to some people, but I think it is the department's
job to do that work, and I will leave it to them. I will certainly raise the issue now. I think that this is an area that deserves
some attention. What I would like to get
in the remaining minute and a half is some indication from the minister of how
this inspection enforcement is being done.
Mr. Cummings: Well, I suppose in rural Manitoba this has,
in fact, caused about as much controversy as any. Again, as government, we inherited a
situation where traditionally waste disposal grounds have been left alone.
The Acting Deputy
Chairperson (Mr. Rose): Order, please. The hour is now 5 p.m. and time for private
members' hour. Committee rise.
* (1700)
IN SESSION
Committee Report
Mrs. Louise Dacquay
(Chairperson of Committees): The
Committee of Supply has considered certain resolutions, directs me to report
progress, and asks leave to sit again.
I move, seconded by the honourable member for La Verendrye
(Mr. Sveinson), that the report of the committee be received.
Motion agreed to.
PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Mr. Speaker: Private Members' Business, second readings,
private bills. Are we proceeding with
Bill 300? No. Are we proceeding with Bill 301? No.
Second reading, public bills. Are we proceeding with Bill 207? No.
Are we proceeding with Bill 210?
No.
PROPOSED RESOLUTIONS
Res. 16‑‑Friendship Centres
Mr. Gregory Dewar
(Selkirk): Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the
honourable member for Rupertsland (Mr. Robinson), that
WHEREAS Indian and Metis Friendship Centres have a long
history of service in this province; and
WHEREAS 1993 was the International Year of the World's
Indigenous People and the theme was "Indigenous People: a new partnership"; and
WHEREAS the federal government cut funding to Indian and
Metis Friendship Centres in 1993; and
WHEREAS the provincial government withdrew all funding to
Indian and Metis Friendship Centres in the 1993 provincial budget; and
WHEREAS these cuts resulted in the loss of jobs and
services in friendship centres in Winnipeg, Selkirk and many other communities
across the province; and
WHEREAS Indian and Metis Friendship Centres provide
valuable services and programs, including counselling for families in crisis,
educational programs, recreation and cultural programming, court assistance and
counselling, assistance to the elderly, youth programming and many other
services.
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Legislative Assembly of
Manitoba request the Premier to consider restoring funding to the Indian and
Metis Friendship Centres of Manitoba.
Motion presented.
Mr. Dewar: Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to rise
today to speak on this particular resolution.
Last year in the provincial budget the Filmon government made a number
of different cuts to different groups in this province, and one of the more
insidious cuts, as far as I am concerned and members on this side of the House
are concerned, is this government's 100 percent withdrawal of provincial
funding to aboriginal Indian and Metis Friendship Centres here in this province
of Manitoba.
It was always our contention that Indian and Metis
Friendship Centres provide many, many services to both native and non‑native
individuals in our province, and we were extremely disappointed that the
government took this action last year, considering, as you could go through the
resolution itself, last year was the International Year of the World's
Indigenous People. We find it incredibly
ironic that the government chose at that time to make this attack upon Indian
and Metis people in our province.
Mr. Speaker, as a matter of fact, I know there was a
resolution brought forward by members opposite to recognize the year of the
indigenous people, and we saw that as again quite ironic, considering that,
instead of celebrating the contribution and the lives of the indigenous people
here in the province, they simply cut a program which was very, very beneficial
to both, as I mentioned before, native and non‑native individuals here.
It is not only the provincial government. Last year the federal Conservative government
cut funding by 10 percent. That was a
funding cut to their core. They had
three different sources of income. There
was the core level of funding from the federal government. This was used to provide friendship centres
with money for capital, certain positions within the organization, the
director, the assistant to that director, and other staff, and the provincial
government provided a grant through the Department of Family Services, which
was used by friendship centres to hire counsellors and to provide programming
to native and non‑native individuals in communities throughout this
province.
Mr. Speaker, last year, during the federal election,
individuals who were running for election during that time, during that federal
election, some Liberal candidates, and I want to make a quote here. An individual by the name of Dr. Jon Gerrard
was at a meeting, a rally, a public rally in Portage, where he had the
opportunity to raise the issue, and at that time, naturally enough he spoke
about the great merits of the friendship centre movement. As a matter of fact, in quoting from a paper,
he blames it on a mix of poor policies by the Canadian government. As well, an individual by the name of David
Walker, I believe, gave a commitment to aboriginal, Metis people and to the
friendship centre movement that he would enhance the program by enhancing the
capital budget in terms of the capital budget of friendship centres.
Of course, since now they are in government, they have
reneged on that promise. They have
reneged on that promise, and it is quite sad for all of us to see that, where
they campaigned on a certain position, and once in government, they follow the
line brought forward by the federal Conservatives. As a matter of fact, they have not rescinded
that cut, but they allowed the cut planned by the Conservative government to
follow through. So, instead, this year
again, friendship centres were attacked by the federal Liberal government. Again, it is another example of the Liberals
as they campaign like New Democrats, and once they get into government, they
quickly change their minds.
So that is clear that not only do the Conservatives not
recognize the work of friendship centres, and that is pretty obvious by their
blatant attack upon friendship centres and aboriginal people over the last
number of years. My colleague the member
for Rupertsland (Mr. Robinson) raised the issue of the government inaction on
the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry just yesterday.
Once again, we have got nothing but empty rhetoric from the Minister of
Justice on this particular issue.
We held a little bit of hope, and I know that Metis people
and aboriginal people held a little bit of hope, for the Liberal federal
government to at least try to reinstate some of these cuts, but, unfortunately,
we are seeing the same thing, the same pattern once again from the Liberals.
Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned, the cuts in Selkirk. Last year there was a loss of three
individuals. Two of them dealt directly
in counselling a wide variety of individuals in our community. They dealt with youth, with families in
crisis. I know, I have letters here from
the executive director of the Nova House in Selkirk, which is the women's
shelter. She once again raised the issue
of the importance of the friendship centre and questioned why the government
would do such a thing.
* (1710)
The friendship centres are recognized not only by groups
such as Nova House and other service groups out there, but, for example, we
have got the letter from the mayor of Selkirk:
The friendship centres are well recognized throughout Manitoba. This is the case in Selkirk where again the
mayor and council wrote a letter to the Premier, again asking him to reverse
the decision, reverse the cuts and reverse the attack on friendship
centres. Many other letters were written
by groups from throughout the province, Mr. Speaker, and not only in Selkirk,
who really question the government's commitment to aboriginal people and Metis
people with this particular cut.
You can just go through the list within the WHEREASes in
the resolution, where the families in crisis, as I mentioned, the work they
have done with the individuals in Nova House, for example.
Educational programs.
I know in the Selkirk Friendship Centre‑‑I had the honour of
working at the Selkirk Friendship Centre and serving on the board of directors
of that particular organization. We used
to have a counsellor there who would go into the school system to provide
counselling directly with aboriginal youth, and I was speaking recently with
the teacher of that particular school, and she mentions that her school and the
students there really do miss this service because it was providing a very,
very valuable service for young people within the Selkirk school or Lord
Selkirk School Division.
Recreational and cultural programming. Again all these programs were cut because of the
government's rescinding of this funding.
Court assistance and counselling. Here we have, again raised by my colleagues,
the high level of problems that our youth are having with the court system and
the legal system, and the friendship centres used to provide a service, a way
to deal with the issue before it became a problem, before it actually had to be
dealt with by the courts.
Assistance to the elderly.
I know, again in Selkirk, that they used to provide counselling and
support to our elders in our community.
It is unfortunate now that because of the government's cuts it cannot be
done.
Youth programming.
We had a youth worker, and it was one of those individuals who lost her
job. Her job was specifically to deal
with the problems that youth encounter, whether drug or alcohol or many other
problems, youth alienation.
We see the government's answers‑‑boot
camps. I know in the Selkirk Friendship
Centre we used to sponsor a camp, and the camp was in the Victoria Beach
area. It gave the opportunity every
summer for individuals to leave their community and to go up to enjoy the
activities associated with the camp. So
there was a program out there that actually helped and dealt with aboriginal
youth, but this government chose simply to cut it, again because it is our
contention that they simply do not understand or have never been to a
friendship centre. I really doubt if
members opposite really do understand the fine work that friendship centres do
in this province. It really was quite,
quite shocking to us.
The other thing, of course, it was clearly a political
move. Friendship centres are in NDP
constituencies except the one that is in the constituency of Portage la
Prairie: the member for Riverton, Swan
River (Ms. Wowchuk), Brandon, Dauphin (Mr. Plohman), up north, Thompson (Mr.
Ashton), so on. Of course, the Liberals,
since they hold no seats outside of the city and they hold no seats in northern
Manitoba, have no friendship centres in their communities either. So it is pretty obvious that they have very
little interest in aboriginal issues, and when you consider what their federal
counterparts have already done, you recognize that they are prepared as well
not to stand up for the needs of Metis or aboriginal people in this community,
in this province, Mr. Speaker.
What this resolution will do‑‑and I know that
all my colleagues on both sides of the House will support this resolution, Mr.
Speaker, because it is right, and it is just.
We know that deep down we are all committed to doing what is right for
the people of Manitoba. I know we will
get the support of the Liberals on this one.
They will have to, of course, unfortunately‑‑I am sure they
will support us, but they will be running contrary to the position of their
federal counterparts.
I think we will ask of you to stand up for aboriginal,
Metis people in the province. It is
unfortunate that the federal Liberals will not do it, but we are hoping for
them. This is their opportunity for them
to do it by supporting this resolution, Mr. Speaker.
So, with those few brief comments, I look forward for the
quick passage of this particular resolution so that the friendship centres in
Manitoba can continue the fine work, the fine tradition of that particular
movement. Thank you very much.
Mr. Eric Robinson
(Rupertsland): Mr. Speaker, it is indeed an honour to second
the resolution that is come before the floor of the Legislature.
Friendship centres have played a meaningful role in this
province for a number of years, as some members may not be aware of in this
House. The first friendship centre to go
up in Canada was in 1958 here in the city of Winnipeg, and we are all very
proud of that in Manitoba that the first friendship centre was established
here. It was located at 276 Donald
Street with very limited resources. The
executive director at that time was a lady by the name of Joan Adams, and the
original concept of the friendship centre movement was to assist migrating
native peoples adjust to urban environments as they moved from their reserves
and also from their native communities, and adjust, in their eyes and in their
thoughts at that time, was to hopefully have a better life for themselves and
for their children as they moved into areas like Winnipeg.
Over the years we have seen the friendship centre movement
evolve into 11 friendship centres plus satellite operations throughout the
province of Manitoba. Nationally, at one
point, we had 111 friendship centres located in different urban communities
throughout Canada. Today we have roughly
66 friendship centres located in small towns and cities across Canada.
As my colleague who moved the resolution indicated, it was
created with the thought in mind of bridging the gap of communication that does
exist, and we are all very aware of, among native and non‑native
people. Even though terminology has
somewhat changed over the years, that we are now referred to as aboriginal
people, the friendship centres played a meaningful role in the city of Winnipeg
and, indeed, other locations throughout Canada in trying to create a better
understanding between native people and non‑native people, and really the
work started from there for the aboriginal advancement of people throughout
Canada.
Some members will know, as well, in the city of Winnipeg,
in the late '50s, the early '60s, when people could no longer maintain a living
off the land and particularly in northern Manitoba where I am more familiar
with, and as they moved to Winnipeg hopefully to provide a better future for
their children, we saw people moving into Winnipeg, and unfortunately, some of
the expectations they had did not come to full reality. Consequently, many of our people wound up in
worse condition than they were in as they left their reserves.
An example I would like to give you, and some people in
this House may remember where the Slaw Rebchuk Bridge is now on Salter Street,
around the track area there, there used to be called a shantytown. That is where the first people of this
country, and migrating aboriginal people from this province moved into,
congregated in that area. This little
village was nothing more than tarpaper shacks, in some cases, plastic dwellings
where our people lived in, and our people with the thought in mind, thought they
were going into a better environment, but the result was not that, of course.
I remember stories that have been relayed to me in recent
months about people who are now in a little better condition than they were
back then, of having to fight off house rats that were as big as cats in order
to allow their children a good sleep so they would be in good shape the next
morning to go to school.
The friendship centre, about that time, came about to
provide the service of counselling and referral. Soon the situation of the aboriginal people
and the First Nations of this country started to change, as the friendship
centre was able to advocate on behalf of migrating aboriginal people to the
various levels of government, the need and the poor conditions that our people
had to live in and soon governments came to that understanding and governments
were a little more willing to be helpful.
* (1720)
We have to remind ourselves that alcoholism‑‑as
our people left their reserves and in 1960 when First Nations' people across
this country were given the right to vote and for the first time in history
were acknowledged as human beings and for the first time acknowledged as
citizens of Canada, our people were then allowed to be in drinking
establishments and alcoholism started taking its toll on our people. Legally, First Nations' people have only been
given the right to vote in the last 34 years and the right to be recognized as
Canadians in that same period of time.
Alcoholism took its toll on First Nations' people when they
first wound up in the cities like Winnipeg, but it was through the efforts of
the friendship centres that played an instrumental role in being able to
advocate and to assist these people and some of our people were able to sober
up as a result.
From the friendship centre movement evolved the Manitoba
Indian Brotherhood and the Manitoba Metis Federation between 1967 and 1969, to
enable aboriginal people a better voice, more possibilities and brighter
futures for our people.
We will also take note that over half of Canada's treaty
and Status Indians live off their home communities, live off reserves. In Manitoba, about 40 percent of the total
treaty and Status Indians live off reserves and are in urban environments in
Winnipeg and in Brandon, Dauphin, Flin Flon, in urban areas of Manitoba. The friendship centres have continued to play
a role in assisting people adjust to an urban environment over the years. I think we should all take into consideration
that the meaningful role the friendship centres have played over the years
certainly has facilitated the advancement of First Nations' people and Metis
people in this province.
I want to mention as well that the National Association of
Friendship Centres recently met in Winnipeg to talk about self‑government
initiatives with respect to off‑reserve aboriginal people. I think that there is room, and I would ask
members of this House to look at themselves and to have a look at the
aboriginal people.
Friendship centres have indeed played a meaningful role in
the advancement of all aboriginal people, including myself and the honourable
member for Selkirk (Mr. Dewar), because when we first arrived in this big
jungle that we know as Winnipeg and other major urban centres like this we at
least had a place to go in order for us to find our way off the streets. It was friendship centres that assisted us by
providing us proper direction to appropriate resources to help us deal with
some of the issues that we wound up with after moving to areas like Winnipeg
and elsewhere.
Mr. Speaker, I would urge members of this House to show
some respect to aboriginal people, all of us collectively, and support the
resolution that has been introduced by my colleague the honourable member for
Selkirk. I would like to conclude by
saying that friendship centres have been around the longest. They have a proven track record, and no
matter what happens, they will be there in the time to come. I think that we should all stand together in
this House to support a very worthy and a very meaningful movement, the
friendship centre movement. I think that
is worthy of the support of all members of this House, for it has saved a lot
of lives, taken a lot of people off the streets.
With those few words, Mr. Speaker, I would to thank you and
members of this House for allowing me to speak on this resolution.
Hon. Darren Praznik
(Minister responsible for Native Affairs):
Mr. Speaker, today's debate on this very important issue is one of those
rare moments in this Chamber, I think, during private members' hour where we
get to speak about an issue of great importance and to have a fair and
reasonable exchange of views on circumstance while at the same time recognizing
the importance of an organization such as the friendship centres.
I quite enjoyed the remarks of both speakers from the New
Democratic Party, particularly the member for Rupertsland (Mr. Robinson). His commentary on the history of the
friendship centres, its development in Winnipeg, I think, was one that reminds
us again of a great deal of the work that has gone over the past number of
years in the aboriginal community in Winnipeg and in Manitoba, dealing with the
involvement and creation of opportunities for aboriginal people as they
entered, as he described it, the jungle, I believe, of Winnipeg and other urban
centres of our province.
Mr. Speaker, my own involvement with friendship centres‑‑members
opposite may be somewhat surprised at this information‑‑but when I was
an assistant to one of Manitoba's Members of Parliament, the Honourable Jake
Epp, M.P. for Provencher and the national Minister of Health and Welfare, one
of the projects that I worked on in that particular period was the
establishment of a friendship centre in the community of Powerview.
I remember at that particular time that the federal
department that was responsible for funding the creation of new centres was in
the process of closing down its funding for new centres. I travelled down to Ottawa on behalf of my
boss, Mr. Epp, and I met with my equivalent from the minister of Indian and
northern affairs office. Over a
breakfast one day we managed to work an arrangement where we were able to
secure some start‑up funds for that particular centre in Powerview, which
I believe was an offshoot or tagged on and became an offshoot of the Selkirk
Friendship Centre. Certainly, one of the
reasons I pursued that was because of the work that I had witnessed take place
in Selkirk and other communities and the need for that particular centre.
Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt that, when this government
made its decision a year ago in a budget of the last fiscal year to remove
funding for friendship centres, it was done with great regret, and it was one
of those very difficult decisions that all governments across Canada are having
to make. I do not say that with great
pride. No one takes pride in having to
make difficult decisions that affect organizations that have delivered a
service in their communities over the last number of years.
There is no doubt, and we have been through this debate
many times in this House about the fiscal situation that faces not only
Manitoba, but all provinces in Canada, our federal government to an even
greater degree as they struggle with one‑third of their budget now going
for debt financing. We in Manitoba are
somewhere around 12 percent of our budget.
Certainly, most countries in the western world, to a greater or lesser
extent, are struggling with those same difficulties.
* (1730)
One criticism I do offer to the member for Selkirk (Mr.
Dewar) in his remarks is it is very easy to rise in this House and to call for
increased funding or funding for a particular organization. It is another to offer the ministers and the
Treasury bench alternatives as to where we can find those particular dollars
that are realistic. Mr. Speaker, it is
always easy to spout off a quick political comment about a particular grant or
program that may sound good for the 30‑second clip on television, but if
members opposite would study the budget books of this province over the last
number of years, what they will find is virtually every department of
government outside of Health, Family Services and Education has been giving up
portions of their budgets to go into certain parts of those departments whose
increase has been well above the rates of inflation and well above, quite
frankly, what the province can continue to sustain, particularly health care.
I say this to members in the gallery who may have an
interest in this, because they do not have the opportunity to read through
those budget books, but on the first budget, of which I voted as a member of
this House in 1988, this Legislature voted the sum of $1.3 billion for health
care. This year, we voted the sum of
almost $2 billion.
That is an increase in six years of over 50 percent in our
funding to health care, and yet our population has not increased by that
amount. The true demand for services has
not increased by way of an aging population, and yet the draw is there. Members opposite, particularly the member for
Kildonan (Mr. Chomiak), day after day in this House gets up and asks for
more. The point is, choices have to be
made.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I say very clearly to the members opposite,
they can throw out some of the Workforce 2000 grants, the training programs
that went there, but I am sure if they added up some of those differences, they
would be nowhere near what they are asking for in other areas of expenditure. Their math is indeed very faulty on many
occasions, and if one is to have a realistic discussion of these issues, I
think you have to be able to add one and one and get two, and that seems to be
a deficiency from some members of this House from time to time.
Mr. Speaker, having said that, I must say that as Minister
of Northern Affairs and of Native Affairs, and indeed colleagues such as the
Minister of Family Services (Mrs. Mitchelson) have recognized that the role of
the friendship centres in our province is a very valid one. We have started a process. I as minister last‑‑I believe it
was in December, where I had my first meeting with the Association of
Friendship Centres. It was a rather
large gathering. We had a very frank
discussion on the roles of friendship centres and the opportunities that they
provided and ways in which we as a provincial government could find additional
sources to be able to assist them in their work and provide funding to
them. We had a very good exchange of
views. I know members opposite may not
be interested in this part, in this discussion‑‑except for the
member for Rupertsland (Mr. Robinson), of course‑‑but there was a
very, very good exchange of views.
One of the suggestions that I made, and again it is one of
the opportunities that difficult times offer to us, was that if we could find
areas where the friendship centres could deliver services that the Province of
Manitoba was currently delivering, and if they could do them in a more
efficient and economical way, we were interested as a government. We were‑‑
Ms. Becky Barrett
(Wellington): That is nonsense, and you know it.
Mr. Praznik: Well, the member for Wellington (Ms. Barrett)‑‑and
I would like to put that on the record‑‑says this is nonsense. But that is exactly the type of approach that
government took in the past with the Manitoba Metis Federation and the
provision of housing services, where we as a government contracted out as a
provincial government the delivery of housing programming to the Manitoba Metis
Federation, and they deliver it, in my opinion at least, more efficiently and
at lesser cost than what we could do through our own provincial
bureaucracy. That has proven to be a
great success.
(Mr. Ben Sveinson,
Acting Speaker, in the Chair)
The member for Wellington says it is not possible, but it
is possible. It is being done every day
by Manitoba Metis Housing. Perhaps the
member for Wellington is really saying we want to have it done by MGEU members
as opposed to members of the Manitoba Metis Federation. Perhaps that is her position, and she will
have an opportunity to put that on the record in the debates.
Point of Order
Ms. Barrett: Mr. Acting Speaker, I would like to call the
member for Lac du Bonnet (Mr. Praznik) to order on relevance. We are discussing the issue of Indian and
Metis Friendship Centres, not‑‑
The Acting Speaker (Mr.
Sveinson): Order, please. The honourable member for Wellington does not
have a point of order. It is a dispute
over the facts.
* * *
Mr. Praznik: I notice whenever members of this side get
talking of some alternative ways of doing things, the members in the NDP say
they are not relevant. Mr. Acting
Speaker, this is highly relevant because we have had some very good
discussions. In fact, I want to indicate
very clearly to the members of the New Democratic Party that one area we are
working on actively now with the Manitoba Association of Friendship Centres is
developing a plan in our whole area of the reform of social services.
I am very much convinced as a minister‑‑and
perhaps I am putting myself a little bit out front on this, but I very much
believe that the friendship centres, and I point out to honourable members last
winter in my tour of the North as Northern Affairs minister, I managed to drop
into a number of friendship centres and spent some time getting a sense of what
they do. I am very much of the belief
that the friendship centres can be a very effective delivery mechanism in the
reform of our social welfare programs.
I believe they can reach out to a client base, that they
can work with that client base more effectively than any provincial government
office can ever work with that base. I
think they can be more effective in the use of public dollars in support of
social allowance recipients, finding jobs for them to do and work for them to
do whether it be in the community or it be in the regular labour force.
We have had meetings over the last number of months. We have begun a process where my Department
of Northern Affairs and Native Affairs and the Department of Family Services is
working with the Manitoba Association of Friendship Centres to develop a
proposal that we intend to work into the whole reform process on social
allowances. I think, Mr. Acting Speaker,
this will provide the friendship centres with an opportunity to have a new
source of revenue, while at the same time deliver services more effectively to
their constituency base and people of this province than we as a provincial
government will ever be able to do.
I make this commitment as minister, and my colleague the
Minister of Family Services (Mrs. Mitchelson), want to develop this kind of
program. Really, it is interesting when
we got into some discussions last winter, kind of in our open discussion and
where we have had some now with the executive of the association, that the
opportunities to provide people with meaningful activity and work in their
life, meaningful training in a setting that fits those people and makes them
comfortable, is there with the friendship centres more than any other mechanism
and certainly any bureaucracy governments can develop.
So we are very, very much committed to working with
them. I say to honourable members
opposite that I hope, quite frankly, that through this program, through the
development of this joint effort and maybe several others that we can find‑‑because
my offer to them was a very open one.
Let us find areas where we can hire them as delivery agents which gives
them a source of revenue and ultimately provides more efficient delivery and
better delivery of services to our clients and our citizens. We can find them. We are prepared to make those commitments
just as we have done with the Manitoba Metis Federation with the Housing
Corporation.
Although it may not be ideal, it may not be the
unconditional grants that used to come, we recognize that there is a valid role
to play within the financial constraints with which we have to live, not the
kind of imaginary land in which our friends in the New Democratic Party in
opposition are in, although in government they are doing the same thing. We want to find ways of working with the
friendship centres to put more dollars in so they can deliver the service.
One comment that was made to me by some involved with the friendship
centres is they have access to a host of people now who are looking for things
to do, and they have work that can be matched to those people, work in the
friendship centres. It is making that
match and providing the mechanisms that allow that to happen, because the
public in Manitoba is spending a lot of money now‑‑I am talking in
the area of social allowance‑‑for people whom we pay to be at home
while there is work to be done in the community which the friendship centres
can organize and know about. It is our
responsibility to match that and allow the friendship centres to be a vehicle.
* (1740)
My question for members of the New Democratic Party: Are they going to allow those types of things
to happen, or are they going to rise in this House day after day and oppose
that kind of innovation because it might offend some other principle on which
they base their view of social allowance?
So time will tell if that is where we want to go. Mr. Acting Speaker, I would like to thank you
for the opportunity to address this matter.
It is a very interesting debate, and again my compliments to the member
for Rupertsland (Mr. Robinson) for a very interesting discussion on this matter
and history of friendship centres.
Hon. Harry Enns
(Minister of Agriculture): Mr. Speaker, I will
certainly provide the opportunity for the honourable member for Inkster (Mr.
Lamoureux) to add his contributions to this resolution, but I welcome the
opportunity of speaking very briefly to the resolution put before the Chamber
by the member for Lakeside, and seconded by the honourable member for
Rupertsland‑‑
An Honourable Member: Selkirk.
Mr. Enns: Selkirk‑‑I thank the honourable
member for the resolution.
Quite frankly, it is my contention, my belief that we spend
inordinate time on several central issues in this Chamber and do not find the
time to speak specifically to the issues that address‑‑I do not
know what the exact percentage is, but it has to be up around 10, 11, 12
percent of the population of our province of Manitoba who are being addressed
in this resolution, and we speak of aboriginal First Nations, Metis matters.
I would like my colleague the Minister of Northern Affairs,
the Minister of Labour (Mr. Praznik)‑‑I want to be careful not to
get too far ahead of the government that I am part of. I appreciate that this is private members'
hour, and, as such, all of us should be free to speak as private members or as
MLAs. I am well cognizant of the fact
that it is difficult for a minister to ever do that in this Chamber or indeed
outside of the Chamber, and I am part of the government that is currently
responsible for civic affairs in the province of Manitoba.
I share, and I want to speak in support of the
resolution. I believe genuinely that the
member for Selkirk (Mr. Dewar) and the member for Rupertsland (Mr. Robinson)
bring to the attention of all members, a program, an issue of considerable
importance to the aboriginal community in Manitoba, and it is deserving of our
attention.
Mr. Acting Speaker, I want to be very careful of how I say
the next few things that I feel very strongly about‑‑the members of
my own cabinet and caucus are aware of that‑‑because I certainly do
not wish to say that to in any way offend the honourable member for Rupertsland
or any of my First Nations brothers and sisters in the province.
I want to choose to single out a little bit in this
resolution, because the resolution affords me the opportunity to do so, that in
my judgment, over the years, it is particularly the Metis community that has,
quite frankly, not the kind of support, not the kind of political clout that
the First Nations people have, and that is not to say that things are well for
the First Nations people.
I am well aware that there are serious discussions going on
right now between the federal authorities about the devolution of authority,
the power, maybe the eventual elimination of the federal Department of Indian
Affairs, that massive bureaucracy, and the kind of work that Grand Chief Phil
Fontaine is engaged in on behalf of the First Nations people in bringing about
the transfer of those funds to more directly come under the control and under
the direction of the First Nations people in their move towards self‑government. That is occurring as we speak.
It has been my observation and, quite frankly, not just in
the Chamber and in the councils of government, but certainly of course in my
own constituency of Lakeside, where I am privileged to have some substantial
and significant Metis communities of St. Laurent, St. Ambroise, St.
Eustache. It has always been a deeply
held feeling that I have had that in many ways the programming dollars, the
assistance programs are considerably more difficult for the Metis community to
access because of their status in this country.
I see in the resolution brought before us, and I am aware
that there is a coming together in the friendship centre organizations, that
the definition is not that finite. There
are people, there are friendship centres that cater and are supported by and
are utilized by many people whom we classify as Metis as well as First Nations
people. But the funding cutback, in my
judgment, impacts more severely on those who are principally of the Metis
community, simply because they do not have the federal government to fall back
on. They do not have the current levels
of federal monies in support of their program.
Mr. Acting Speaker, allow me simply to put those few
comments on the record. I will lend my
support to the Minister of Family Services (Mrs. Mitchelson), to my friend the
Minister of Northern Affairs (Mr. Praznik) in the discussions on this matter as
we prepare and look forward to coming budgets.
I believe that I genuinely feel that, among the many dollars that
governments have to spend, both federal and provincial, surely we can
prioritize. We can look hard at where we
are spending some dollars.
There are some suggestions coming forward from members
opposite who challenge us as we challenge them.
There may not necessarily be more dollars available in the overall pie,
but I think we ought to challenge ourselves as to how we can best spend those
dollars. Where possible, in fact, we
should go the extra mile to ensure that when we have organizations like we have
in this instance, established friendship centres that just did not come about
yesterday or the day after‑‑they have been established over a
period of years, and we just heard pretty good statements of the kind of
service they provide and the need for them, and most of us understand
that. Then we should, in all
seriousness, apply ourselves to finding the necessary funds to ensure that they
continue to provide that very critical service that they provide.
It is indeed a very difficult situation for our brothers
and sisters of the First Nations or of the Metis community, more so even for
the First Nations in this instance. They
leave, very often, remote locations in and about different parts of Manitoba
and find themselves in urban centres, most of them in the city of Winnipeg, but
not just exclusive to the city of Winnipeg‑‑Selkirk and other
centres or wherever they occur, in Brandon, and then come to grips with that
kind of a lifestyle, that kind of an environment. I, for one, can understand the comfort, the
assistance, the help that they provide to our aboriginal community and will do
what I can in support of the principle of this resolution.
I do not ask the honourable member for Inkster (Mr.
Lamoureux) to take umbrage at the resolution because he happens to be part of
the group that is now the federal government, but he is first and foremost a
provincial politician who has to stand up and speak for the concerns of
residents of Manitoba and our aboriginal community are very much that. They are a significant percentage of the
population of Manitoba and deserve our attention.
Thank you very much, Mr. Acting Speaker.
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux
(Inkster): Mr. Acting Speaker, it is with pleasure that
I can stand up and comment on the resolution.
To start off with, the principles of the resolution and the
message, at least in part, that the member for Selkirk (Mr. Dewar)‑‑not
entirely, because I do disagree with a number of the things that the member for
Selkirk has put on the record this evening.
The principle of the resolution is something which I am sure we could
support as a Liberal caucus.
Mr. Acting Speaker, I have had the opportunity in the last
six years to meet with different individuals that have volunteered, that have
been paid to operate and to run and to organize a number of different
friendship centres. Through that I think
you get a better appreciation in terms of the commitment that is there to help
out, as the member for Lakeside (Mr. Enns) has pointed out, a significant
portion of Manitoba's population, because there is a need to assist in terms of
where we can to help individuals.
* (1750)
In the area that I represent, we have Gilbert Park. Gilbert Park is predominantly aboriginal,
made up of Metis and Indian‑‑and it is predominantly, not entirely,
Mr. Acting Speaker. I look at the sorts
of things, the services that the friendship centres provide for the aboriginal
people. As members were speaking, and
particularly the member for Rupertsland (Mr. Robinson) was speaking on the
resolution, I was trying to do a comparison in terms of the friendship centres
to what we have been able to do in the Gilbert Park area, where we have gotten
a resource centre built into the community.
Some of the things that we are hoping to bring into the resource centre
really and truly are very reflective of the sorts of things that are being done
in the friendship centres, I would imagine, throughout the province of
Manitoba.
Mr. Acting Speaker, we see that there is a need for that
financial assistance. Yes, it would be
nice to be able to provide that assistance.
Hopefully, we will see the federal government looking at its priorities
and, hopefully, be able to find the resources to be able to reinstate some of
the funding cuts that the previous administration had made. Hopefully, we will see some form of
reinstatement of funds from the provincial government. With the experience, the first‑hand
experience that I have had in dealing with the Gilbert Park resource centre and
the benefits of that particular resource centre and what it does for the
individuals that live in that community, because many of them are there in
transition also, coming from a reserve into a major urban centre, the support
services that are given out, I believe, really and truly assist those
individuals.
If the resource centre did not come into being, Mr. Acting
Speaker, I do not believe that the level of participation in terms of bettering
that very significant portion of the population would be as enhanced, if you
will. That is, when I look at the
friendship centres today, the friendship centres enhance the opportunities of
the aboriginal community, if you will, to better the lifestyle of many
individuals from within that community.
I have seen direct benefits, as I say, in discussions that
I have had with both the volunteers and workers; and, reflecting in terms of
the riding that I represent, and a good portion of that riding being that of
Gilbert Park, I have seen first‑hand some of those benefits.
You know, Mr. Acting Speaker, one could comment, I guess,
at length on them. It is, in fact,
pointed out quite well in the last WHEREAS in terms of some of those benefits,
and I concur especially with that particular WHEREAS.
For that reason I believe that it is encouraging to see
resolutions of this nature come before us because it is always valuable to get
some of the insights that have been expressed from different members and share
some of the concerns that the member for Lakeside (Mr. Enns) says, where as a
private member it would be nice to be able to comment without having to worry
about the discipline of a political party.
I do believe that there is a consensus, Mr. Acting Speaker,
that no one calls into question, at least I would hope that no one would call
into question, the benefits of having friendship centres. There might be some differential opinion in
terms of how they might be financially assisted.
Hopefully, whatever political stripe is in the government's
chair will acknowledge that what has to be first and foremost on the minds of
elected officials, that we recognize the importance, that we do what we can to
enhance the friendship centres, to ensure that we are not doing something that
in a long term is going to be to the detriment of what is a very valuable
resource in just the sheer number of individuals that commit so much of their
time and effort trying to make that very important and significant percentage
of our population more a part of society as a whole.
With those few words, Mr. Acting Speaker, as I say, we do
not have any problem in terms of supporting the principle of this resolution.
Hon. Bonnie Mitchelson
(Minister of Family Services): Mr.
Acting Speaker, I rise today to put my comments on the record and indicate very
much my support for the work that friendship centres do right throughout the
width and the breadth of our province.
I have had, over the last number of years since I have been
in government, before in my last responsibility as the Minister responsible for
the Status of Women and now in the Department of Family Services, the
opportunity to meet with many women from our aboriginal community from north to
south, Mr. Acting Speaker, and, also, now in my new responsibility for Family
Services, the opportunity to meet with members of the friendship centres, along
with my colleague the Minister of Northern Affairs (Mr. Praznik) who, I
believe, has established a very positive ongoing dialogue to see how we can
work as a government in partnership with the friendship centres and focus on
initiatives that will be of major benefit to those in our Metis and Status
communities.
I want to echo my support for the concept of what
friendship centres do for those whom they serve and what benefits there are to
the community at large as a result of some of the ongoing activities.
We have indicated as a government that during very
difficult economic times, what we want to do is use our dollars very wisely and
focus on areas that we believe change may need to happen. How can we use the dollars? How can we look at programs that are ongoing,
evaluate those programs, enhance those ones that are working well and refocus
resources around programs that might need to be changed.
No longer can a government of any political stripe have the
luxury of leaving programs in place that have not been evaluated and have not,
in all instances‑‑sometimes have been in place for 20 years with no
evaluative mechanism in place, and when dollars are flowing freely and governments
have the opportunity because of additional resources to make decisions to add
on new programs that is well and good, but today we know the economic reality
is that there are no new dollars and the dollars that we do have‑‑
The Acting Speaker (Mr.
Sveinson): Order, please. When this matter is again before the House,
the honourable Minister of Family Services will have 13 minutes remaining.
The hour now being six o'clock, the House is now adjourned
until 1:30 p.m. tomorrow (Wednesday).
HIGHWAYS AND TRANSPORTATION
Madam Chairperson
(Louise Dacquay): Will the Committee of Supply please come to
order. This section of the Committee of
Supply is dealing with the Estimates for the Department of Highways and
Transportation.
At this time, I would ask if the honourable minister has an
opening statement.
Hon. Glen Findlay
(Minister of Highways and Transportation):
Yes, Madam Chairperson.
Some Honourable Members: Oh, oh.
Madam Chairperson: Order, please. The committee has been called to order, and
the minister is attempting to give an opening statement. We are all experiencing difficulty hearing
the honourable minister.
Mr. Findlay: I will make just a few casual comments to
open the Estimates. I know the critics
probably have a shortage of time and would like to devote their attention to
particular issues of interest to them.
Just in a few general comments, transportation as an
industry has been integral to the development of Manitoba, the development of
Canada, particularly because of the wide‑flung geography that we live in
and because we are so export oriented we have to move commodities of people
over vast distances inside and outside the country.
Our initial transportation certainly started with water,
particularly here in Winnipeg, and it evolved to rail connecting the country
from sea to sea. The road system has
been developed over the last number of decades and certainly the air industry
has been a critical component of transportation the last 40 or 50 years.
I think there is one thing we can say about transportation;
it has evolved in response to need in terms of movement of people and
goods. It has gone through dramatic
change over the course of time. I think
all members in this House will understand that change has not stopped at any
point in time; change will continue.
We have a lot of jobs associated with the transportation
industry in Manitoba. It is probably
fair to say we have 4 percent of the population, but in most sectors we have
more than 4 percent of the jobs in Canada, whether it is railroad or air. We have a very good system, particularly in
the road sector. Our rail sector, as we
know, is undergoing a lot of discussion about the future. The word "rationalization" comes up
quite regularly and we have had major discussion in terms of the future of the
air industry. I think agreements struck
by the major carriers now would indicate there is probably greater strength in
terms of the viability of that sector in the future.
I see nothing but opportunity for us in the transportation
sector. I do see a lot of challenge in
terms of dealing with the elements of change that we must address. We are in a global community, global
marketplace and we cannot tell our people who are dealing in that environment
that they have to pay costs if they cannot pay and still be competitive in
terms of selling goods or services to other parts of the world.
I think both members of the two opposition parties are
probably aware that this is Transportation Week. It is very fitting that we would do
Transportation Estimates in Transportation Week, and the theme of
Transportation Week is Intermodalism:
The Perfect Fit. I guess the
question is: What is the perfect fit in
intermodalism? We certainly have a lot
of intermodalism, have developed in the past number of years. It is not just intermodalism between road and
rail. It is intermodalism between air,
rail, road and water.
I have had discussions in the last couple of weeks with
different members of both the rail sector and the road sector, and I would like
to report the good news of that discussion.
I have been told that there is such demand for movement of commodities
on rail, there are not enough locomotives to meet the demand at this point in
time. That is very encouraging
news. I have also heard that there is
such demand for movement of commodities by truck that they are having trouble
finding enough drivers to meet the need.
That tells me two things.
One is that the transportation sector has got some health in it;
secondly, that the economy has some health in it, because goods are
moving. That means, somebody is selling
and somebody is buying. So hopefully,
over the course of time, that does translate into more jobs throughout the
economy.
Fundamentally, in the global economy net we now live in,
any job of the future, and I dare say, most of the jobs presently must be
justified on the ability of somebody who can afford to pay for goods and
services on the basis of what the wage is paid for that job. I think we have adjusted reasonably well in
Canada, and we have seen some comments made last Friday by the federal
minister, Doug Young, which would indicate he sees considerably more change in
terms of the transportation sector of this country, in fact, rather drastic and
sweeping change.
He is talking about heavy commercialization in activities
now conducted by Transport Canada. It is
a very sweeping statement. It does not
have a lot of definition of what they mean in that context, but we will be ever
vigilant that whatever they mean by commercialization in the overall activities
of Transport Canada, it does not end up in an offload on the provincial
government of Manitoba. There are
certain longtime traditional activities that they have been involved in that
they must continue.
I think that is all I would like to say at the outset to
the Estimates. I see opportunity
here. I am learning in this new role,
and I am sure I will learn some more in the next few hours we spend on
Estimates. Andy Horosko, my deputy, it
will also be his first round in Highways and Transportation Estimates as the
deputy.
So with that, I will let the opposition critics make a few
comments, and then we will bring in staff and start.
Madam Chairperson: We will now have the customary reply by the
critic for the official opposition, the honourable member for Transcona.
Mr. Daryl Reid
(Transcona): Madam Chairperson, it is my pleasure to take
part in the Estimates once again for the Department of Highways and
Transportation. I am not sure if this is
the fifth or the sixth set of Estimates for this department that I have taken
part in.
A lot of the comments that the minister makes will be
obviously areas that I personally will be asking some questions on with respect
to their impacts on Manitoba, dealing with the service portions as well as the
jobs related to those particular industries or segments of our transportation
sectors. There are also other areas that
I will be asking questions on pertaining to the maintenance program, the
highways program as well.
The minister said that it is fitting that this happens to
be the National Transportation Week. I
think it is fitting that we are conducting our Transportation Estimates debate
during this week because there have been so many changes that have taken place
within the transportation sector since I came to this Legislature. I know that some of those changes had been
initiated prior to my coming here and that they are still ongoing at this
time. I make particular reference to
some of the changes in the railway industry.
The minister referenced the fact that there were changes in
the airline industries. That is
true. There seems to have been a lull in
the activities, in the battles that have been taking place over the last year,
year and a half. I hope that there has
been some stability returned to the airline industries and that we will see, as
much as possible, a co‑operative effort on the part of our Canadian flag
carrier airlines, and our regional carriers as well, to meet the needs of the
travelling public.
We hope that we can retain the jobs within the province in
the airline industry, as well, without seeing further erosions of those
jobs. Some of the questions that I will
be asking of the minister will be under the policy section dealing with the PWA
and the Air Canada debate that took place at the end of last summer and into
the fall and also dealing with the monies that were coming forward to support
Canadian Airlines. Also, we will be
asking questions pertaining to Gemini and what is happening with the Gemini
jobs in this province. We have heard
some reports of what has taken place, but we would like some more details on
that.
* (1430)
The minister made reference to the fact that the railways
are very busy now. That is my
information, my understanding, as well.
I know I try to keep contact with the railway industry every couple of
weeks to find out what is happening internally there, to find out how the
traffic is, how the business is, to find out if there are a number of trains
moving. I am told, and have been told
now for a few months, that the traffic is increasing steadily and that there is
a significant amount of traffic at this point to the point where, as the
minister indicated, there is a shortage of locomotives. That is my information, my understanding, as
well.
The unfortunate part of this whole process‑‑and
the railways have made a point of this over a number of years now‑‑they
have seen a flattening of their revenues.
While their traffic level may be increasing, there is a flattening of
their revenues, their return on their investment, even with this increase in
business, and this is not allowing them to capitalize any of the programs or the
changes that they want to bring about.
That is unfortunate.
On our side of the House here, we think that is as a direct
result of some of the impacts of the deregulated environment and the Free Trade
Agreement, as well, putting our Canadian flag carrier railways in direct
competition with U.S. class one railways.
I think we can have some debate on that when we move into the policy
portion of the Estimates. I know I have
many questions on that aspect.
The minister made reference to the fact that there is a
shortage of drivers in the trucking industry.
I know that I have raised questions in this House before in reference to
trucking‑related issues dealing with owner‑operator
situations. I have asked for‑‑and
I know the department has gone through the process, and the deputy minister's
predecessor, Mr. Hryhorczuk, was actively involved in the council of transport
ministers' meetings, I believe it was, in setting up a program where we could
bring in contract standards and have some protections or some assurances put in
place on a national basis to protect owner‑operators. I see advertisements. I get the trade papers for the trucking
industry, and I see advertisements in the trucking newspapers regularly calling
for owner‑operators, people to get involved in the trucking industry.
It is no wonder there is a shortage of drivers out
there. The traffic may have increased,
but I think that the shortage in some part is due to the fact that we do not
have any protections in place to protect some of the owner‑operators, to
encourage them to, first off, to get into the trucking industry because there
is a significant financial investment involved, but at the same time to keep
them involved once they are there, to show them that they can make a half‑decent
living within the trucking industry.
There have to be some protections put in place for these
people to allow them to stay in there so that they are not having a portion of
their earnings withheld unnecessarily, or they are not being charged extra
expenses with no explanation, or they are not having the Workers Compensation
premiums charged against their earnings when it should not be taking place.
There are many issues that I have raised here in the past Estimates
and in questions, as well. So if we need
to look at the shortage of drivers, maybe that is the area we need to bring
some legislation in.
The predecessor of this new Minister of Highways and
Transportation has said that he will not interfere in that aspect of the owner‑operators
in their dealings with the carriers. He
said that we have to wait for the lead of some other province, some larger
province, preferably, to take the lead in bringing forward legislation to
protect owner‑operators and those who are employed as drivers within the
trucking industry.
If something is not right from a principled point of view,
I think we should be taking the necessary steps to make sure that there are
protections put in place. I think that
there are enough carriers out there who are responsible carriers who would look
upon any initiative that the government might take with respect to legislation
to protect owner‑operators as the right thing to do. I would hope the carriers in this province
would understand that you do not treat employees in a way that would cause them
to leave the industry because it creates future hardships for that company, as
well.
Any company worth their salt will look at wanting to do the
right thing for their employees, to foster a good working relationship with any
employees, whether they be unionized or nonunionized. We will be dealing with questions relating to
that as we move into policy.
I have raised questions here with this minister relating to
rail car shortages, and we will be dealing with some aspects of that as it
relates not only to the export of our grain products but also in dealings with
the Port of Churchill, because we have seen it has been an ongoing struggle.
I know the previous Minister of Highways and Transportation
has said that this has been one of the major areas while he was minister in
trying to resolve this issue, and I know previously, ministers have had similar
problems in other governments, as well.
We were hopeful on this side that with the change of
government during the federal election we would have seen some initiatives to
allow for further export or enhanced exports through the Port of Churchill and
to make some changes to increase the amount of exports. We are also looking for information relating
to the potential for import‑export traffic through Churchill, and I will
be asking the minister questions relating to that, as well. I want to know what progress has been made on
that.
We will have questions relating to VIA Rail because now the
federal government is saying that they are looking at the elimination of all
support funding. I just looked at a
press release that was out from the Financial Post just this week, I believe it
was yesterday, indicating that the federal government is now talking about
eliminating all of what they call or reference the transportation subsidy, some
$1.6 billion.
Now, that was a blanket statement from what I can see. I do not know how we are going to maintain
some of the services in this province, in particular to the remote communities,
if we do not have some funding in place to support that, because I have
travelled to the North many, many times and have talked with many of the people
there. I have utilized every means of
transportation available in the North when I was travelling there. I do not know how we are going to ask the
people of the North, who are in large numbers essentially unemployed for the
major part of the year, to pay more for the services that are there that allow
them to come from their remote communities into the larger centres for whatever
reason, be it medical or otherwise. I do
not know how the federal government anticipates they are going to meet the
needs of the North and at the same time cut the funding support for those
areas.
I am also going to be asking questions relating to the
Winnipeg International Airport. There
have been some changes taking place there with respect to the movement that had
been initiated by the previous federal government, wherein they wanted to move
away from federal government controlled and operated airports and move into the
privately controlled commercial ventures, where we would put the airport
operations into the hands of a private group.
I have had the opportunity to attend the first of what I believe
will be annual Winnipeg Airport Authority meetings. As a result of those meetings, many questions
came to mind. I had the chance to talk
to some of the management people who were involved with the Winnipeg Airport
Authority, and they have answered some of the questions, but not all of them.
I will be asking the minister some of those questions too,
to find out from his department where we anticipate going with this change,
what the policy is of this government and also what we can do to involve a more
public participation with respect to the airport, so that this is not solely
just placed into the hands of those who have specific business interests, but
also to recognize the fact that we have some over 2 million passengers a year
who use the airport, and that they too should have some representation on the
Airport Authority board.
With those few comments, Madam Chairperson, I will conclude
my opening comments at this time and look forward to the chance to ask
questions on the specific sections of the Estimates.
Madam Chairperson: We will now have opening remarks from the
critic for the second opposition party.
Mrs. Sharon Carstairs
(River Heights): Madam Chair, the minister opened his remarks
by indicating that this was his first time in Highways and Transportation
Estimates, as it was the first time for his deputy minister. I think I have now managed to be the critic
of almost every department of this government at some time or other since I
came here in 1986, but I must say this is the first time that I, too, have done
Highways and Transportation.
* (1440)
The particular interests which I have, clearly, are for the
future of transportation in the province of Manitoba. Whether be it by air, be it by rail, or be it
by road, I think that we must be concentrating on the network of communication
in terms of transportation for the 21st Century. I think that that must be the thrust of our
discussion and our debate. Therefore,
like the critic for the New Democratic Party, I am very interested in what is
happening with the airport and the future plans of the federal government and
the participation of the provincial government because I too was at the
Winnipeg Authority meeting, and it appears that there will be some representation
of the province now, which is an improvement in the right direction, but I
question whether there is still enough of the consuming public represented on
this board. It still seems very business
oriented. It is obviously a business
board, but there must be a consumer input into that board, and it still is very
small in number.
In addition, I am concerned about the operations of the
Department of Highways and Transportation in and of itself. One of the things that struck me, and I want
to get into some debate with the minister so I am alerting staff to that point,
is the presentation of the Estimates. It
is clear that we always have some changes.
The expenditures are never identical to what they are in the first‑published
release of Estimates, but I have never seen a department in which the variance
is quite as dramatic as this particular department. The original Estimates of Expenditure for
1993 and '94 as compared with the actual Estimates of Expenditure as produced
in schedule 3 of the new book vary by 6.9 percent which is a very high
variance. I think that it is worthy of
some discussion and some debate as to what happened in the department during
that year that would result in such changes in expenditures.
One small, granted, but Transportation Policy &
Research actually spent 40 percent more than the original estimate indicated
that it was going to spend. One spent
5.6 percent less; the rest all hovered around 5, 10, 7 percent. I think it is interesting to take a look at
that and find out why it is that the Department of Highways seems so out of
whack.
There is also an interesting issue with regard to staffing,
and there may be a very reasonable explanation for this, but it seems to be a
department in which staff more or less goes up and down like a yo‑yo. If one looks at two years ago, the staffing
level was almost equivalent to what it is going to be this year, but then there
was a great influx of staff and the question has to be why that was in place at
that particular point in time.
So, Madam Chairperson, with those few remarks, I would like
to get into the question‑and‑answer session.
Madam Chairperson: Would the minister's staff please enter the
Chamber?
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, I would just like to
introduce the staff who are currently with us:
Andy Horosko, Deputy Minister, first time around‑‑take it
easy on him; Doug Struthers, Assistant Deputy Minister of Construction and
Maintenance; Bill Dyck, Assistant Deputy Minister of Administrative Services;
and John Hosang, Assistant Deputy Minister of Engineering and Technical
Services and Planning and Design divisions.
Madam Chairperson: I would remind members of the committee that
debate on the Minister's Salary, item 1.(a), is deferred until all other items
in the Estimates of this department have been passed.
Mr. Reid: Madam Chairperson, I heard the minister's
words with respect to his new deputy minister.
I look at some of the changes that have taken place. I welcome his new deputy minister here and, of
course, his staff who have been with the department for a long period of time.
Before we move into the full Estimates, I think it only
fair and fitting that I take a few moments to recognize the services and the
contributions of one Dennis Schaefer, who had been with the minister's
department for a fairly long period of time.
I know Mr. Schaefer was here when I first came to the Legislature in
1990. I had many opportunities to talk
with Mr. Schaefer with respect to policy discussions on different areas of
transportation affecting Manitoba. He
was always very co‑operative and provided as much help as he possibly
could in answering the questions that I had posed.
It is my understanding that Dennis Schaefer has now opted
to take retirement from the department and from government service, and I think
it only fitting that we recognize his services to the Department of Highways
and Transportation and also to the public of Manitoba in trying to make sure
that we have an effective and efficient Department of Highways and
Transportation but also a transportation network within the province as well.
Maybe I should save this for later, but I will risk it
anyway. It is my understanding that the
new deputy minister has come to us from the province of Saskatchewan and moved
first into the departments of Planning and Design and spent a period of time
there. Can the minister just give me a
bit of background on our new deputy minister so I have some understanding?
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, the member has given me
his history, and he is getting older as I go down the list here, but the deputy
was born in Beausejour, so he is a Manitoban come back to Manitoba. Along the way, he received a Bachelor and
Masters in Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan. He worked for Chevron and Standard for two
years, for the Saskatchewan provincial government for 17 years. He was on secondment to the National Academy
of Sciences in Washington for two years, then joined the department in Manitoba
here, the Department of Highways and Transportation, as the executive director
of Planning and Design in 1992 and assumed responsibilities of deputy minister
July of last year, just a little less than a year on the job.
Mr. Reid: Madam Chairperson, I appreciate that understanding
of the deputy minister's work history.
As he has a great deal of experience, I take it, in all areas of
transportation, I look forward to his input into these Estimates as well.
I believe, Madam Chairperson, am I correct, are we on
section 1.(b) now, Executive Support?
Madam Chairperson: That is correct.
Mr. Reid: Can the minister tell me who his current
staff are, how many political staff he has and their names, please?
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, two political staff, a
special assistant, Jeff MacDonald, and executive assistant Monica Bazan.
Mr. Reid: Under this section, Executive Support,
Activity Identification makes reference to reviews and directs needed changes
to the existing organizational structure.
Now, there have been some changes over the course of the last two years
that have been taking place within the department; in particular, I reference
13 districts down to five regions. We
see once again in this year's Estimates where there are staff impacts as a
result of that reorganization of the department. Can the minister tell me, since this is the
section that reviews the organizational structure, are there any further
organizational structure changes that are anticipated, and will we see any more
staff affected as a result of any of those changes? In other words, what is in the long‑term
plan for the department structure?
* (1450)
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, we are not planning to
replace the person who was in Planning and Design but will be amalgamating that
position with Engineering and Technical Services. Other than that, there are no other changes
expected.
Mr. Reid: The minister references Planning and
Design. Can the minister tell me, is
that coming out of the managerial section or will it be professional and technical
staff that will be affected?
Mr. Findlay: Managerial.
Madam Chairperson: I do not believe your response was
audible. Did you hear it? No.
Mr. Findlay: Managerial.
Mr. Reid: In the Salaries and Employee Benefits, while the
staff levels have not altered, the SYs have not been altered, there have been
changes in the Managerial and Professional/Technical dollar amounts. Is that related to merit increases for the
employees that are holding those jobs?
Mr. Findlay: Yes, they are both general salary increases
and merit increases.
Mr. Reid: One last question, then. It makes reference to the strategic program
directions for the department that would be undertaken by the Executive
Support. Can the minister tell me what
strategic programs are currently under review by the department?
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, if everybody does not mind
I will sit once in a while and stand once a while so nobody feels that they
have to stand or sit.
We are at the beginning of a very strategic analysis of the
department at this point in time.
Mr. Reid: Maybe the minister could elaborate on the
term "strategic analysis of the department" then? What areas is he looking at within his
department, what subdepartments are impacted?
I know that there was some consideration being given as well to the
rewrite of The Highway Traffic Act. It
is my understanding that there was supposed to be some initiative coming
forward this session. We have not seen
it to this point by way of legislation, and I am just wondering if that is what
he is referencing or are there some other changes taking place within other
subdepartments as well?
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, I think all I can tell the
member is there is a department‑wide strategic planning process that is
underway. If the member looks, he will
find a similar exercise undertaken in Agriculture which ended up in a document
being presented which laid out the strategic direction of the department as it
saw its future over the next number of years, working particularly with the
private sector.
With regard to The Highway Traffic Act, it has been in a
state of rewrite for a period of time, and still remains in that position.
Mr. Reid: When can we expect to see that strategic plan
document come out?
Mr. Findlay: It is a long process. There will be a fair bit of consultation in
that process. One would not expect it
before another year and a half is up.
Mr. Reid: Can the minister tell me, this strategic plan
that he is working on, is that in reference to all segments of transportation
in Manitoba, or is that only dealing with the internal department itself and
the employees of the department?
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, this internal department strategic
planning naturally has some implication on services provided to the broad
transportation sector, but the planning exercise is his department.
Mrs. Carstairs: So that the staff are familiar with exactly
what I am, in fact, using to compare because I know sometimes that is
difficult, I am using the yellow book that was released last year which is The
Detailed Estimate of Expenditure for the fiscal year ending March 3l, 1994, as
well as the one that was distributed by the minister just a week or so ago.
Beginning with this particular department, because here we
have a 5.5 percent differential, in the Estimates as provided last year in the
House this particular Executive Support Branch was planning on spending
$468,700 in total. It appears that they
spent $505,900 in total, the $12,000 differential in Salaries and Employee
Benefits and a $25,000 differential in Other Expenditures. What was the cause for this 5.5 percent
expenditure increase?
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, what we are dealing with
here is a change in I guess we will call it recording process. Employee benefits, which were previously
printed under Civil Service, have been moved from Civil Service appropriation
to our appropriation. The adjustments
occurred between last year's print and this year's print, so that what you see
in this year is those employee benefits printed in last year and this
year. The other variance is general
salary increase. It is a change in
method of recording employee benefits.
Mrs. Carstairs: So just to clarify, the additional $12,000 in
total salaries and employee benefits would have been formerly found in the
Civil Service Commission expenditure and is now seen in the Highways
expenditure.
* (1500)
Mr. Findlay: There is a combination of factors at play
here. There are things like
transportation, communication, supplies and services and other operating
functions. Some are up. Managerial salary is down, and the Employee
Benefits has appeared for the first time.
So a combination of, in particular, the Managerial salary going down and
the other expenses going up lead to the difference that the member sees.
Mrs. Carstairs: Well, let us put aside the staff and Employee
Benefits for a moment. The Other
Expenditures for this particular branch were supposed to have been $64,500
according to the original Estimates figure.
The Estimates figure as printed in this book was $89,000.00. That is a difference of $25,000 or 38 percent. Now that is a significant change.
What caused the expenditures for Transportation,
Communication, Supplies and Services and Other Operating to go up by 38 percent
between the publication of the Estimates for last year and when you obviously
were preparing this Estimates book?
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chair, we will bring some detail
back. They do not have the specifics on
those, what the specific increases were caused by.
Mrs. Carstairs: Madam Chair, I am not trying to find a
boogeyman. I am really just alerting the
minister that there seems to be some percentages that are significant here that
I do not have an explanation for that maybe he would like to have an
explanation for when he is preparing his next set of Estimates.
I would like to move on to some other broader policy issues
though. In terms of the infrastructure
announced by the federal government, which the municipalities and the
provincial government participated, were any of those monies found from the
Department of Highways and Transportation, or was that all additional monies
then filtered back to the Department of Highways and Transportation for
expenditure purposes? Exactly how did
that work with respect to the Department of Highways, because a number of the
infrastructure programs were Highways related?
Mr. Findlay: Of the announcements in the infrastructure
program, none of the monies announced come out of our budget, nor are they
funnelled through our budget in terms of expenditures that are on highways or
road‑related or bridge‑related activities. Most of the infrastructure activities are not
road or highway related, but any municipality that brings in streets or
projects like that that were approved, it did not come through the Highways to
budget, nor is it funnelled back through the Highways budget.
Mrs. Carstairs: So in fact there is no co‑ordination
going on by the Department of Highways and Transportation with respect to
projects in the infrastructure program that would be highways related.
Mr. Findlay: I think the member is aware that somebody has
been hired, Mr. Bruce Birdsell, to co‑ordinate all the infrastructure
activities, and we provide technical information or assistance as requested,
but beyond that, that is our only involvement.
Mrs. Carstairs: Presumably, however, in coming up with a five‑year
plan for the department of future highway construction, it is imperative that
you are aware of what the infrastructure program might do with respect to
highways in the province of Manitoba. Is
there an ongoing liaison between the infrastructure office, in essence, and the
Department of Highways?
Mr. Findlay: I can assure the member that there is co‑ordination
between our department and the infrastructure office to be sure that projects
that are funded there, we are not double‑funding them in any
fashion. This can occur certainly in grant‑in‑aid
streets, where municipalities have made applications for grant‑in‑aid
streets. We are vigilant to be sure that
we do not give grant‑in‑aid streets on streets that they have
received infrastructure money to upgrade.
So there is good co‑ordination, and I think what you
will see in the end is an overall improvement of a lot of the sewer, water and
road‑related infrastructure in towns and villages, which will complement
what we are doing. We never have enough
money in the grant‑in‑aid area to satisfy all the demands or
requests from cities, towns and villages.
Mrs. Carstairs: I thank the minister for that. That really was what I wanted to ensure‑‑was
that the proper communication was in fact taking place.
One of the other functions or activities identified by this
particular branch, of course, is communications. I have recognized that they do not deal with
their own communications because of the changes in the communication over the
years.
On the 27th of May, this particular Department of Highways
released not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but six separate
press releases. The paper chase is on,
and I must say to you that it drives me crazy, not when just this department
does it but when every department does it and feels that they have to take the
first page of the press release and change one line of it and then off we go
again.
Is there not some way in which we can better co‑ordinate
the press releases that go out from this government‑‑and by the
way, it was done by the previous government too; there is nothing new about
this particular strategy‑‑in order that we can save paper, that we
can save staff time, that we can save the costs of mailing, so that we can
bring more efficiency to communication strategy?
* (1510)
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, the member might like to
say we should streamline things and decrease paper, the reason for doing that
was that there are five regions, and one press release is done for each region. So that the major release, which had an awful
lot of projects in it, we knew that the local media people, the paper people,
would not go through and pick out the projects relevant to their area. So we gave them the projects in region 1,
region 2, region 3, region 4 and region 5, to help them go through it and find
out the projects that are relevant to their area. So that is why it was done that way.
It was a pretty thick document done all as one, but by
breaking it up into the different regions, it helped the people reporting to
the public to understand that there were projects in there that related
specifically to their area. So you can
counter whether you should all do it as one for efficiency, or do it as
separate ones so you improve the ability of public to find out what is in the
major document pertaining to their area.
I think it worked reasonably well, because I certainly had contact from
one or two media people and they liked the way it was broken out. It was easier for them to find. They could find projects of relevance to
their area without having to search through several pages of one document.
Mrs. Carstairs: I still have considerable concerns about the
amount of paper that we disseminate from all three caucuses, I might add, to
the people of the province of Manitoba and would hope that the minister would
look at ways, quite frankly, to cut down on the paper chase as much as it is
possible to do so for the purposes of the efficient use of taxpayers' dollars.
Mr. Findlay: I understand exactly what the member is
saying, and I cannot disagree with what you are saying, but the other side of
the coin is we often get asked, just tell us what is going, give us the
specifics‑‑and you try to serve two masters at the same time.
Madam Chairperson: Item 1.(b).
Mr. Reid: Just along that line too, I know this is the
first time for both the minister and the critic for the Liberal party, but in
past years, what we have had is the Capital Projects list booklet that would
come out. It would be one booklet that
would be provided to each of the critics, and then they in turn would take it
back, and whichever one of the colleagues wanted to have a copy‑‑and
it would be done in our caucus rooms‑‑we would be provided. I know we would do that for our rural
colleagues to keep them aware. Is there
any way that we can get a copy? Does the
department now have copies, or have we done away with that past practice where
we had the Capital Projects Listings provided to the critics?
In addition to that, the minister has provided in past years
information relating to the contracts that had been let from his department
pertaining to both the spring and the fall construction program. I am wondering if it would be also possible
to get a list of those as well before we get to the portion dealing with
Capital Expenditures.
Mr. Findlay: We will supply both at the next sitting, the
spring project listings in one document and the successful bidders I guess is
what the member wants on the various contracts.
Mr. Reid: I know that the department has gone to press
releases spring and fall now. From what
the minister is saying then, do we only have a spring Capital Projects
List? We do not have one document
showing what our projects are going to be for the complete construction year?
Mr. Findlay: The document we will provide will have both
spring and fall. It will be one
compilation for '94‑95.
Madam Chairperson: Item 1.(b) Executive Support (1) Salaries and
Employee Benefits $416,900‑‑pass; (2) Other Expenditures $89,000‑‑pass.
1.(c) Administrative Services.
Mr. Reid: Under Administrative Services it is my
understanding that any freedom of information requests that come into the
Department of Highways, I believe, would be handled by Administrative Services. Can the minister give me some indication on
the number of inquiries that the department would have received over the past
year?
Mr. Findlay: In '93‑94 the department received seven
applications for information under FOI and four applications were carried
forward from the previous year. The
disposition was that three applications were granted access, three applications
were denied, three applications were partly denied and two applications were
withdrawn. That makes a total of 11.
Mr. Reid: Can the minister give me some general reasons
why we would exclude the release of any information to the public that might be
requesting information from the Department of Highways, and are any of those
requests or inquiries related to the dust abatement program?
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, the member asked about any
denials of FOI requests related to dust abatement, and there were none. Those that were denied were done on the basis
of third‑party confidentiality that had to do with somebody requesting
what information was supplied from the medical profession with regard to
conditions on a person's driver's licence, and we deem it appropriate not to
release that information.
Mr. Reid: I thank the minister for that. In the previous section we talked a bit about
The Highway Traffic Act rewrite and any legislation with the department, and I
know we currently have Bill 5 before us which is, I guess we could characterize
it as being housekeeping even if it has a component in there dealing with the
Autopac 2000 changes.
* (1520)
It almost leaves one with the impression, and I know the
previous Minister of Highways had indicated that at least for two years now,
from my recollection, we were going to have that rewrite coming to us. I know it is probably a very extensive piece
of work trying to pull all that together, but it leaves one with the impression
now that since we have this new bill before us that has a portion of the act
that is being rewritten, it almost looks as if we are going to piece the act
changes together.
Can the minister give me some indication when we can
anticipate to see this change coming forward, and are there any segments of it
that are being held up for various reasons of which I may not be aware that
maybe he can indicate to us?
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, in order to facilitate
what obviously had to be done for Autopac 2000, it was deemed appropriate to do
the amendment we are doing, and Bill 5 accomplishes that objective, facilitates
the introduction of Autopac 2000.
But the entire act in terms of its rewrite is a very large
job and it will occur over the course of time.
The member says it is a clip‑and‑paste kind of process. Maybe, but you have to do what is urgently
needed to be done on the broader picture.
You cannot just rewrite it without a fair bit of input from a variety of
players, and that process continues on, and we have done what we had to do for
this session with regard to Autopac 2000.
Mr. Reid: I know we had a piece of legislation before
us as well, and I believe this is the section that we can talk a bit about
this. It was Bill 6 this time, I
believe, dealing with the winter roads.
That piece of legislation had been introduced in the last session.
Can the minister give me some indication on why we have had
now two pieces of legislation which I believe are essentially dealing with the
same subject, both of them now being withdrawn from the House, give me some
indication on what the reasons were for withdrawal of both pieces of
legislation?
Mr. Findlay: Yes, there was legislation introduced last
year to deal with winter roads and the intent was to control speeds and weights
on those roads. The minister at the time
withdrew it because he wanted to have further discussion with the native bands
that were involved with roads going across the land. I think it was a total of nine bands
involved.
This year, certainly that discussion had gone on. We felt that there was some understanding of
the two different points of view with the different bands, but this year, as we
looked at trying to control speeds and weights on those roads, there is a
simple question: Is there a major
problem there that requires introduction of rules and regulations under the
act? Really, there are not enough
incidents or problems to cause us to have to implement the act on those roads
in northern Manitoba.
I think the member and I had a discussion on this
previously, and I said that I felt that these people in a lot of these
communities are isolated 9, 10, 10.5 months a year. When the winter road goes in, they enjoy
their freedom going between communities.
They do not live in the same kind of world up there that we live in
here. To implement all the rules and
regulations and controls and restrictions of The Highway Traffic Act on those
roads is an unnecessary imposition on their lifestyle, in my mind.
I will not say that the issue of controlling speeds and
weights on those roads should not be done, but I do not see that it is fair to
implement all the other aspects of The Highway Traffic Act upon those people
and those locations in Manitoba that live in an entirely different environment
that we live in down here. For that
reason I am not going to proceed with it this session, and whether it is
proceeded with in the future remains to be seen.
Mr. Reid: I guess I should do this at the beginning of
the Estimates. Throughout the whole
document here we have‑‑and I do not recall this from the last
Estimates or the ones previous where we have made allowances for staff
turnover. I know the department, I
believe, used to do it internally, but we are now showing it in here where we
have a fixed dollar value of staff turnover.
It seems to vary throughout the department. I have not done any percentage calculations
on it.
Is there a percentage calculation that the department has
done based on the number of employees, the historical experience of the
department on the subdepartments for staff turnovers? What criteria did they use for the
calculation of the staff turnover dollar value?
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, the figure that the member
will see for each department or each branch will vary, and it is based on the
historical experience that each branch has had.
It will vary‑‑some will be high; some will be low‑‑because
simply just historically there has been little or no turnover or lots of
turnover in other branches. So that is
what is reflected there, the expectation that history will repeat itself branch
by branch.
Mr. Reid: I appreciate that. Can the minister tell me‑‑and
this is one of the discussions we have had in past Estimates on more than one
occasion, and the department seems to‑‑there seems to be a fair
amount of turnover in some of the subdepartments. Can the minister tell me, since we had some
extensive discussion that is past, and the department we found out had from
time to time been leaving certain jobs vacant and never filling those jobs, and
when it came time for the regionalization of the department, there were a fair
number of jobs that had been vacant for a period of time. Do we have any vacancies under the
Administrative Services?
So to make it easier I suppose on the minister and the
staff, if there is any kind of a listing that he might have, because I am going
to be asking this question in each of the subdepartments to find out where any
existing vacancies may be, I am going to be asking that question throughout
unless he has a list that he can provide.
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, with regard to Administrative
Services, there are no vacant positions at this time.
I can tell the member that we will supply him a list of the
vacancies in the different branches throughout the book for his understanding,
but the actual position that will be vacant now versus three months from now
versus nine months from now, that the positions vacant will change because the
department does manage vacancies to try to respond to workloads that are
currently here and anticipated workloads that might occur just down the road. So we will supply the list of the vacancies
as they exist but recognize that the department does manage them to respond to
workload that is expected.
Mr. Reid: I referenced the fact that there were
vacancies because the previous Minister of Highways‑‑I will use his
term, "warm bodies" were laid off when we looked at the
regionalization changes and the impacts upon the staffing levels. He made reference to the fact that, even
though going back even two years, there were some 114, I think, jobs that were
lost. He said‑‑while that
was the actual number of potential jobs that were there, there were only X
number of "warm bodies" and the number was significantly lower. So that is why, since that point, I have been
asking to find out about the number of vacancies because it was always curious
to me why we would have jobs that were vacant and not being filled.
* (1530)
We historically had been performing that work. I was interested to know what changes in the
operations were taking place that we would leave those jobs vacant for a period
of time, and that they could then be counted as part of the job elimination
program or in the total numbers that were being used. So that is why I am interested in the
vacancies, and I know that the vacancies will change by department as people
for whatever various reasons decide to leave or change their employment or
transfers within departments. I
understand that, but I am just interested in the numbers per subdepartment plus
the overall total number and any historical comparisons the minister's
department might have.
I have no further questions on this section.
Mrs. Carstairs: Madam Chairperson, again, I am trying to get
some understanding of this. In the last
Estimates or the Estimates filed last year, this particular branch was supposed
to expend or expected to expend some $536,000 on salaries, and it appears in
the most recent book that they spent $468,900 on salaries and yet there does
not appear to be a staff reduction. So
where is the explanation for that?
Mr. Findlay: I will have to ask the member to wait till
next day. We do not have last year's
numbers, and there has to be a logical explanation, but we do not have it right
now. So if he can just hold off, we will
bring back an understanding of those variances on every category, wherever they
happen, for next time, so if there are any glitches, we will talk about it
then.
Mrs. Carstairs: I thank the minister for that, because there
are a number of glitches throughout the thing, and it just did not make any
sense to me as I compared the Estimates I was given last year with the
Estimates I received this year as to what the expenditures in this particular
department were. For example, just to
highlight for the minister again, the Other Expenditures in this area goes up
32 percent over what was indicated was going to be spent by this department
just a year ago.
I want to just congratulate the department. As the minister knows, I have put in an FOI
request recently, and I do not think that the individual who wanted the
information is satisfied, but that is absolutely no reflection on the staff and
the willingness of them to sit down with my staff and provide them with the
information. They were very
straightforward and very giving of the information that they had at their
disposal to give.
So if that is typical of the way FOI requests are handled
by the Department of Highways, they are handled extremely well, and if the
individual is not going to be satisfied because the information is not what the
individual wants, I cannot do anything about that, nor can the department of
highways. I just wanted the minister to
know that from someone requesting that information, the FOIs are handled very
well by his department, and that is the only question I had, other than these
inconsistencies which I will get an explanation for next time we sit.
Madam Chairperson: 1.(c) Administrative Services (1) Salaries
and Employee Benefits $476,700‑‑pass; (2) Other Expenditures
$162,300‑‑pass.
1.(d) Financial Services.
Mr. Reid: In the last couple of Estimates I do not
think I really understood the functioning of the Financial Services, and I
would like to ask a few questions, because this I believe will provide the
basis of some information. It might help
me understand the effects of some of the boards and committees and whether or
not we are moving towards self‑sufficiency of some of those boards,
financially I am talking.
The Financial Services subdepartment, in my understanding, takes
care of the revenues for the department and keeps control of some of those
revenues. Maybe I should just ask the
minister the question, to provide me some explanation so I can better
understand the functions of the Financial Services branch.
Mr. Findlay: The Financial Services branch provides
central accounting, budgetary and financial reporting services to effectively
support program delivery and ensure appropriate utilization of resources.
Activities include processing and monitoring of accounts
payable and receivable, co‑ordinating preparation of the department's
annual Estimates submission, as well as preparing quarterly cash flow
projections and monthly expenditure reports.
I would say it is an ongoing financial management process.
Mr. Reid: In this House, as members of the opposition
we only see the year‑end statements or the budget projections of the
government. I take it then that the
minister receives reports from this department pertaining to the expenditures
and the revenues to ensure that the projections that the budget was based on
are indeed coming to pass. Can the
minister tell me, to this point, I know we are just a short time into the new
budget year, but have there been any changes on the projections as the
department sees it, both on expenditures and the revenues? I know in past years there were some
deviations pertaining to weather and other factors that came into play, but
does he anticipate any difficulties in any of the areas or any downturn in some
of the, in particular, revenue generations?
Mr. Findlay: At this stage, at this early part of this
budget, there is no anticipated change in revenues or expenses from the current
projections. The member is right, there
is a quarterly report supplied by the department to the deputy and to Treasury
Board. So it is a constant ongoing
surveillance, more so by the deputy and Treasury Board than by myself
particularly.
Mr. Reid: Then in dealing with that, since projections
seem to be on track, I would be interested to know in looking under the revenue
section for the Estimates of the province for the budget it indicates that the
Highways and Transportation has certain segments of the department that
generate revenues for the government, and it is my understanding that those revenues
are then turned back into the general revenues for the province.
I would be interested to have a breakdown on some of the
revenues that the department derives as part of its operation pertaining to the
automobile and motor carrier licences and fees, to break those down into
separates because they are both lumped together under the revenue heading. I would like to know motor carrier licence
fees that are generated and then the automobile as a separate component of
that. If the minister has any other information
pertaining to drivers' licences as well, a breakdown in any of the various
categories of licences, I would be interested to see any of the information
that he has pertaining to the revenues that would be generated for that. I know he may or may not have that
information here today, and if he does not, then he can indicate and provide it
at another opportunity, hopefully within the next short period of time.
Mr. Findlay: No, we do not have it now, but we will get a
breakdown when we get to the DVL section and we have Mr. Coyle here who will be
able to supply that information. When
you talk about drivers' licences, are you referring to Classes 1, 2, 3, 4,
5? That is your breakdown? Okay.
Mr. Reid: Also, there are motor carrier licences and fees,
as well, not just the driver's licence component, but I believe it is another
section maybe of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing that I am seeking information
on.
* (1540)
I will be looking for information‑‑and I guess
I can ask that under Boards and Committees when they come before us‑‑on
the activities for the fees and the charges that they have, as well. I am just indicating ahead of time for the
minister so that he can hopefully have the information available.
There was also a change in this under Financial Services,
and it indicates here two and a half positions were eliminated due to
regionalization. Can the minister
indicate if these jobs were filled that were eliminated, and if they were, what
happened with the people who were filling these jobs? Were they reassigned to other departments,
other subdepartments of Highways, or were they laid off or moved to some other
government service?
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, the two and a half
positions, the people who were in those positions are currently working
elsewhere in government, some in the department but all within government.
Mr. Reid: These people who were employed in the
administrative support functions, it was my understanding that some of the
activities in the subdepartments that were affected from the regionalization
would be transferred into the regions themselves instead of transferring right
out of the department. Is there a reason
why the administrative support staff here that are affected were not
transferred within the department to the regional activities?
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, the pre‑audit
function, in which these people are employed, was eliminated as a function
because the pre‑audit function was already being done in the region. So what essentially was happening was a
duplication of the pre‑audit process in Winnipeg that had already been
done in the regions. So there was no
opening to transfer them to the region because there were already people
performing that pre‑audit function in the region.
Mr. Reid: I do not fully understand that. I know that there were some departments
throughout the course of the year, or subdepartments, that are audited, and I
believe that there is an ongoing five‑year program to do audits of all of
the subdepartments. so I take it then that these people were no longer required
as part of the audit process.
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, maybe the member does not
understand the difference between the financial audit, which we are talking
about here within the department, and the management audit, which is the five‑year
that he is referring to. The audit that
these people were doing, as I said earlier, is currently done in the regions,
and we do not need to do the audit again in the central office here. The five‑year audit you refer to is a
management audit. These are financial
audits.
Mr. Reid: I thank the minister for that. There was some indication in the last
Estimates, too, where we were looking at changing the method in which we paid
suppliers for the goods and the services that they would provide to the
department. Has that taken place? Are we now processing some of the payments
through the regional offices to the suppliers for whatever services or goods
they are supplying, or is it still done under the main Financial Services
department?
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, with regard to supplier
payments, they are still all done by the Department of Finance. The paperwork will be done in the regional
offices, but the eventual writing of the cheque will be done by the Department
of Finance.
Mr. Reid: Correct me if I am wrong then. It was my understanding from the last
Estimates that we were looking at, with the regionalization of the department,
streamlining or making more efficient, I think were the terms that were used at
the time, processing of payments to allow for the orderly processing of the
operations. I thought at the time it was
explained to me that they were going to move some of that processing into the
regional offices and that some of the activities would be taking place there.
Now, I take it that the minister is saying to me that that
is not going to occur, that they are going to continue to take place under the
main department, the Financial Services department versus the regional offices,
or is my understanding of what was explained last year wrong?
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, there is a difference
between the processing of a claim and the issuing of the cheque. What I said earlier, the cheque will be
issued, has been and will continue to be issued by the Department of
Finance. What the department is doing is
shifting some of the processing of that claim from head office to the regional
office to streamline it somewhat so that the regional office has done the
processing to allow the request for payment to go directly to Finance. There is less of that processing done in head
office.
So it is the processing of the actual claim that will be
streamlined, but the issuing of the cheque always has been and will continue to
be done by the Department of Finance.
The department's handling before it gets to that position is being
streamlined with more of it being done in the regional office.
* (1550)
Mrs. Carstairs: Madam Chairperson, I just have an information
question about the pre‑audit function that the minister alluded to. Certainly I can recognize that much of the
processing should be done in the regions because that is where the work has
been done and then obviously, clearly, it goes to the Department of Finance because
nobody else issues a cheque except the Department of Finance.
What is entailed in this pre‑audit function? Is that then the records of all transactions
processed by that particular region audited so that it is ready for the overall
departmental audit and the Provincial Auditor's audit?
Mr. Findlay: We are getting a better understanding as we
go through the discussion. The
convoluted world of paper track is not my strength. If a bill comes in, it goes to the region for
processing. They will process it and
then sign the appropriate appropriation, and it will move on to Finance for
issuing of a cheque.
The Provincial Auditor does a pre‑audit along the
way. We used to do a pre‑audit. We no longer do it because it is not
necessary within head office. The member
mentioned the Auditor and the Auditor does do a pre‑audit.
Mrs. Carstairs: Well, if I can put it in simple terms, and as
the minister knows, I was a teacher, as he was, by profession, and I just love
to teach people. Is this now just an
ongoing process of record keeping to make sure that if at any time an audit
needs to be done there is accuracy in the region of the accounts?
Mr. Findlay: Well, Madam Chair, definitely there are good account
records kept by the regions, so that if there is any reason to go back and
investigate or check by the department or by the Auditor or the department of
finance, there is a very clear record of whatever has taken place.
I would have to say, our financial accounting process is
first class, there is no question about it.
Mrs. Carstairs: But it is fair to say that it is now more
regionalized than it used to be in the past.
In terms of one of the expected results then, the timing
and accurate customer invoicing, is that still a function of this department or
is that an oversight? It seems to me
that from what the minister is saying that this is now being done primarily by
the regions rather than this particular branch.
Mr. Findlay: Well, the member certainly has a good
question. If most of the work is being
done in the regions, why do we have Financial Services, is really what she is
asking. Really, their job is to be sure
that the regions are doing their job, a bit of overall management as the
regions go through the process of learning the process that they must follow,
how to manage it, to keep it running efficiently and effectively. So it is overall management I guess you would
say over top the regions is still the role that is being played here.
Mrs. Carstairs: In line with that question then, is it the
job of some of these technical people within this branch to be specifically
assigned a region to ensure that that region is financially accountable, or is
a mixed function of a number of the staffpersons? And how much travel is involved between these
people and the individual regions?
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, the individuals have
overall function responsibility not assigned to particular regions, and there
is virtually no travel involved. It is a
matter of paper trail and telephones and fax.
Mrs. Carstairs: Then perhaps the minister can explain then
what the $79,000 figure for accommodation is for.
Mr. Findlay: It is building rent accommodations, meaning
building space rentals as opposed to person accommodations.
Mrs. Carstairs: So most of the communication then now that is
taking place between Financial Services and the regional offices then is of the
fax machine telephone variety.
Mr. Reid: One last question in this area. The departments, I know, in their annual
reports have always made reference to the fact of the number of invoices that
they process, and since we have a decrease in the number of people there now,
could he give me an indication of the number of invoices we would have
processed in '93‑94? Would you
have that information at this point?
Mr. Findlay: We do not have the number of invoices with
us, but we will get it for next time and supply it.
Madam Chairperson: 1.(d) Financial Services (1) Salaries and Employee
Benefits $624,800‑‑pass; (2) Other Expenditures $157,100‑‑pass.
1.(e) Personnel Services.
Mr. Reid: Under Personnel Services it is my
understanding in looking at the Supplementary Estimates that they take care of the
competitions for the departmental vacancies.
Can you tell me how many competitions that we have had for the vacancies
over the course of the last year?
(Mr. Ben Sveinson,
Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)
Mr. Findlay: We do not have the number of positions that
were filled by competition, but I can assure the member that every position is
filled by competition, with the exception of those where people come off of the
re‑employment list within government, but if they do not come off of the
re‑employment list, the position is filled by competition.
Mr. Reid: Then when the competitions are there, and I
appreciate that the minister will bring back the information a little bit
later, with the competitions that are filled from other than current government
staff, whether they are within the department or other departments, who does
the final selection? Is it the
department managers there? Does that
have to come right back to the minister for approval?
* (1600)
Mr. Findlay: Mr. Acting Chairperson, the hiring decisions
are made by department managers, usually the department managers in conjunction
with Personnel Services, and the selection process will involve at least two
people, in most cases three, and in some cases more people. As one staffperson said, positions filled in
the North, usually you fill with a minimum of two staff doing the appropriate
analysis and the decision making.
In positions down here, most often the selection process
involves three or in some cases more staff people but involving department
managers and Personnel Services through the interview process, the selection
process.
Mr. Reid: The reason I ask that question is that for at
least two years now I have, and I am sure most members of this House would have
had inquiries coming into their offices relating to jobs or people looking for
jobs, and my office I am sure is no different from that, and what I have
undertaken from time to time is to provide copies of the job bulletins that may
be applicable to the experiences or the interests of the individuals that are
seeking that type of work that come to talk to me.
I would send them copies or make available to them copies
of the job bulletins or the notices.
That is why I am inquiring as to how the selection process takes place
and whether or not there are people that are preordained, can we say, for some
of those jobs, or is there actually a true open process for any of those jobs
that would be available. That was my
reasoning for asking the questions.
Maybe the minister wanted to comment on that.
Mr. Findlay: The member is taking a bulletin and making an
individual looking for a job relative to that position, making it available to
them so they can respond to the bulletined position. That is exactly the right thing to do. Nobody is preordained to a position. The competitions are there. If you are doing that, you are doing the
right thing, making them aware of a chance to apply, like anybody else who will
read that job description, have a chance to apply and go through the process,
the selection process.
As one can appreciate, in certain jobs there can be 20, 30,
40, 60 applicants for a particular position.
It is not uncommon in government.
So the process has to be kept very clean. Everybody who is interested must apply
through the regular process.
Mr. Reid: I was becoming a little discouraged because I
have not seen too many of the people that have contacted me be successful in
the applications that I know that they have put in to this point. In fact, none of them have been successful,
so that is why I am inquiring on this aspect of it.
Mr. Findlay: Well, the member must take my comments
before, just to reiterate them again, he may be surprised that somebody sent
into the process has not been selected, but the numbers are there and it is a
one chance in 20, or one chance in 30, particularly for general jobs. More highly technical jobs there are
obviously less people applying, but my experience in a previous department was
exactly that, a tremendous number of people applied for pretty well every
position that comes along, so that is probably why you are not seeing success
of the people.
Probably anybody who is in the process is a little
frustrated at the fact that they may apply for five or six jobs in government and
not win any one of them. It is maybe no
reflection on them, it is just a reflection of the realities. There are a lot of good people out there and
there are managers and Personnel Services who do the selection. Their job is to interview and review everybody
and come up with what they deem is the best person for the job. So the competition is very tough.
Mr. Reid: Personnel Services, I believe, is responsible
for training the little over 2,200 employees in the department. Can the minister give me an indication of
some of the training programs that are undertaken by the department? Are they part of the Red River Community
College programs, are they part of the Keewatin Community College or do we send
staff to other training facilities? Do
we do in‑house training? Can the
minister give me some indication on what the department undertakes with respect
to that?
Mr. Findlay: The best answer to the member's question is
all of the above. I can assure the
member at different times and opportunities we do use all of the community
colleges, Red River, Keewatin and Assiniboine.
As well, we do in‑house training and in certain instances
consultants are used for training processes, so any and all of the vehicles of
training are used.
Mr. Reid: What type of training would we undertake for
the employees where we had to use existing facilities, educational
facilities? What type of training would
we send our employees there for? Would
it be the technical people for upgrading, would it be other programs for people
that are operating equipment, heavy equipment?
Can the minister give me some idea of the types of training programs
that are undertaken?
Mr. Findlay: Most of the training is done with technical
staff, people that work as engineering aides, positions like that, the recent
example is Red River where materials testing training was taken by some staff.
Mr. Reid: So this is an upgrading, a continual
upgrading program that goes on within the department, I take it, for new
materials as the minister's example, to use his example, that may be coming
along, that the employees may not be familiar with or new techniques. It is also my understanding that the
department receives and exchanges information with some U.S. Departments of
Transport as well.
Would this be some of the undertakings that the department
would do for training, some of the new techniques that maybe come in from other
jurisdictions that we want our employees to be aware of?
* (1610)
Mr. Findlay: I can assure the member the department uses
the most cost‑effective training vehicle that is available. We use the Transportation Association of
Canada, who will give training courses at different locations across the
country. In other cases the member, as
mentioned, where there are individuals of people or associations in the United
States that can supply the training that is appropriate on new techniques in a
more cost‑effective way, we will use them.
Mr. Reid: The minister referenced a few moments ago too
the fact that there is some contract training that takes place, I guess tongue
in cheek, we could always apply for grants under Workforce 2000 for some of the
training programs. I am not sure if the
minister's department has considered approaching the minister's colleague the
Minister of Education (Mr. Manness) for some of those monies, but maybe that
would be an area that the department could access for some of the
training. There does not seem to be any
criteria, so I am sure that the department could utilize some of those
monies. I say that, of course, all
tongue in cheek.
My other question relates to the contracts themselves. Can you give me an indication on the contract
people that you bring in for training?
Is that what the minister referenced when he said the Transport Association
of Canada or U.S.‑based associations?
Are those the contract people you are referencing or are there
others? How do we go about paying these
people for the services that they perform?
Does that come under the Personnel Services as well, and where is that
shown in here?
Mr. Findlay: The process has got a lot of different
aspects to it. It is fair to say the
majority of the contracts are negotiated by the Civil Service Commission and
then somebody is hired. We pay a fee for
the people that take the course.
The Transportation Association of Canada probably in most
cases will charge you per diem for training programs, and other contracts are
done through Treasury Board, particularly if it is over $10,000. The contract is negotiated and the decision
is made through Treasury Board whether to accept or reject a particular
contract, to do the particular training services that are part of the contract.
Mr. Reid: So, if the monies are coming under Treasury
Board approval, then it would not show up under this appropriation for Highways
and Transportation. Is that correct?
Mr. Findlay: Yes.
The various expenditures will appear in the various portions of the
different appropriations of our budget, wherever. If it is in engineering for services, it may end
up in the regional areas. It will not be
in the Financial Services; it will be in different parts of the budget where
the expenditure will show up, where the actual employees work.
Mr. Reid: Can the minister, then, give me an indication
of how I would‑‑looking at the document here, under the
subappropriation 15.1.(e)‑‑determine where employee training would
take place? There does not seem to be
any section here that I could see that relates to any type of training, if we
have any extensive programs or training that you are undertaking in the
subdepartments.
From my understanding of this book, it would not show up
here, and how would I as a critic know to what extent training is taking
place? Can you give me some idea of how
I can understand that?
Mr. Findlay: For the member's knowledge we will supply
next time a list of the training activities that took place last year, so he
knows where they were and who was involved.
Mr. Reid: I thank the minister for that. I was happy to see in one of the recent
publications of the Manitoba Heavy News, I guess it was the Annual Report for
'94, where one of our professional engineers in the department had done an
article with respect to Manitoba goes through smoother roads.
This young woman wrote it.
She is obviously working for the department. Can the minister, because this is the segment
that deals with the affirmative action programs too‑‑and I know I
asked this question last year, but I want to see if there has been any progress
within the department itself. Can you
give me a year‑over‑year comparison on the number of women that are
working within the department in various functions, including the
administrative functions, but also I am interested in the professional and
technical activities, and also the managerial capacities?
For the other categories relating to First Nations'
peoples, people with disabilities and visible minorities, if the minister maybe
does not have the copy readily available, maybe he can provide a copy of that
information for us, because I think that was the way it was handled last year.
* (1620)
Mr. Findlay: I will give the member the March '93 percent
of employees in each category and then the March '94. For females, March '93, it was 18.9 percent;
this year it is 22.1 percent. Aboriginal
category, last year was 4.7 percent; this year it is 5.56 percent. Disabled last year was 1.18 percent; this
year it is 1.22 percent. Visible
minorities, last year it was 1.05 percent; this year it is 1.12 percent. Particularly in the female category, which
the member was talking about, there is an increase of 3.3 percent year over
year. So at this point there are 434
women employed in the department.
Mr. Reid: I thank the minister for the
percentages. Maybe he can break that
down into actual numbers for me in addition to the 434 women, if he has that
number available there.
Mr. Findlay: The number of aboriginal employees is 108;
the number of disabled employees, 24; and visible minorities, 22.
Mr. Reid: I thank the minister for that
information. There appears to be some
slight progress in some of the areas there.
Do we have any other further activities ongoing to look at recruiting
the appropriate people so that we can see a change away from what I believe has
probably been essentially a white, male‑dominated industry, and
particularly because it is, I would sense, related to heavy industry? What activities do we have to indicate that
we are making further steps in that direction?
Mr. Findlay: Personnel Services conducted 10 cross‑cultural
awareness workshops. It conducted nine
workshops on affirmative action and 17 career‑planning workshops at
aboriginal schools.
Mr. Reid: I appreciate the information. I am trying to sensitize existing or current
staff, but my question was relating to the activities where we have vacancies
that are existing within the department on our staff turnover. What efforts are we undertaking to change the
ratio that we have within the department to bring in people, whether it be
First Nations, women, disabled or visible minorities to fill some of these
jobs? Are we getting the number of
qualified applicants coming forward that would allow us to choose from those
areas, and are we able to pick or to select people for employment within those
categories or those areas?
Mr. Findlay: The department has one person who is hired as
an affirmative action co‑ordinator whose job is to attempt to attract
people in those various categories to apply for the positions. I am sure the member is aware that within
government there is a point process applied for each applicant, and there are
additional points if you are a woman or if you are an aboriginal or any of the
affirmative action categories.
I think the member was asking if there were enough people
coming forward in those different categories that were qualified, and it is
certainly always a challenge to find people that are qualified, but the hiring
of the affirmative action co‑ordinator, hopefully, will facilitate people
that are qualified being aware and complying and being successful in the
process.
As the member can see, our percentages are going up, albeit
small, but going in the right direction.
Mr. Reid: Did I understand the minister clearly when he
indicated that we now have an officer responsible for the affirmative action
program? Is that a new individual or has
that person been there for some period of time?
If they were just hired recently, when were they hired?
Mr. Findlay: The affirmative action co‑ordinator has
been there for some time, more than three years.
* (1630)
Mr. Reid: Just to go back to a few moments ago when we
were talking about the education aspect of Personnel Services, because we
contract out for some of the training, does the University of Manitoba Transport
Institute, which has undertaken some studies for the department in the past‑‑is
it possible to utilize any of the facilities of this Transport Institute for
some of the training activities that the department may need? I know they are struggling this time because
the department over past budgets has cut back on some of the support, as has CN
and the federal government. They are
having some difficulties. I am wondering
if there is any way that we can take some of our training component and maybe
utilize the University of Manitoba Transport Institute to do some of that work
for us.
Mr. Findlay: Mr. Acting Chairperson, the member asked
about UMTI, the University of Manitoba Transport Institute. They are not really in the training business
per se, the kind of training we want for our staff. They are more into doing consulting
contracts, research activities. We
certainly used them in the research area, the consulting area; for instance,
last year, we believe it is around $15,000 was paid for logistics, educational
course, and a training seminar that they did more with the industry than with
the department.
The training you are talking about that the department is
more involved in day to day is not the forte of UMTI, but certainly the
research and the consulting area is.
(Madam Chairperson in
the Chair)
Mr. Reid: I thank the minister for that. I will ask questions later on in the
appropriate section dealing with the institute.
Personnel Services, I believe, also deals with grievances
that might come forward within the department, and I believe to try and handle
them internally within the department before they get out to the arbitration
process or the mediation process. Can
you tell me the number of grievances that we would have had within the
department in the last year, '93‑94, and are any of those currently
moving towards arbitration, towards either mediation or arbitration?
Mr. Findlay: We do not have the exact number of grievances
that have come forward to the department.
We will supply the member with a number next sitting. We are not aware that any of those grievances
that are in process are moving towards either arbitration or mediation, but we
will supply the number next time.
Mr. Reid: I am going to raise this question because I
have had the opportunity to take part in some training in the past myself. Does the department undertake to make any of
their managers aware of or do they have them partake in training programs
dealing with labour relations issues so that we do not move into the grievance
or the arbitration‑mediation process?
Mr. Findlay: Our managers take advantage of any Civil
Service Commission training that occurs in that direction. In Civil Service Commission training, our managers
take part in civil service training, in conflict management, and those sorts of
items.
Mr. Reid: Can the minister tell me, since we have
eliminated one position here under the Professional/Technical staff‑‑it
indicates in the Supplementary Estimates that it was due to consolidation of
Human Resource Services. Can you explain
what consolidation, was this position filled, and was this person redeployed
into another segment of the department or other departments?
Mr. Findlay: There has been some consolidation of Human
Resource Services between Highways, Natural Resources, and Energy and
Mines. The person or the position that
was being eliminated here, the person has retired.
Mrs. Carstairs: Madam Chair, I would like to go back to
affirmative action for just a moment because it is not the numbers I am
particularly interested in as where are those individuals placed within the
department. Can the minister indicate
how many women and members of other affirmative action programs are in
administration?
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, we do not have the exact
number that are in administration, but we will provide it. There are a fair number in the administration
area, but we will supply the exact number next time.
Mrs. Carstairs: Staff is aware of what I want. I want to know how many are within the
Managerial, Professional/Technical level as opposed to support staff, and how
many of them and what percentage increase that represents year to year. It is also important in that figure to
indicate the number of vacancies. I am
not suggesting that people should be fired in order for administrative
positions to be filled. So, if there had
not been a lot of changes in administrative and managerial support, then
presumably there would not be any change in the affirmative action numbers of
people there as well. So that is the
kind of data that I am looking forward to, and with that I am prepared to pass.
Madam Chairperson: Item 1.(e) Personnel Services (1) Salaries
and Employee Benefits $840,200‑‑pass; (2) Other Expenditures
$214,900‑‑pass.
1.(f) Computer Services.
Mr. Reid: Under Computer Services we had some
discussions on this in last Estimates. I
will not spend too much time, but I am interested in the activities of the
Computer Services in dealing with the departmental long‑range systems
plan. Maybe the minister can bring us up
to date on what changes are anticipated, what plans, what long‑range
system changes are anticipated. Are they
working on specific studies for the department at the current time? If so, what studies are they undertaking?
* (1640)
Mr. Findlay: The member asks if we are doing any system
changes and, yes, some long‑range planning on some system changes. I will just give you a listing we have of
system changes that are under development.
The regionalization moving to an open system, the Bridge computer‑aided
drafting and design, electronic mail and upgrading the head office of computer‑aided
drafting and design, and electronic field data capture, and Autopac 2000. So it is a number of areas where the
development is going on.
Mr. Reid: Are any of those costs transferred back to
other departments? The minister
referenced‑‑
Mr. Findlay: Other departments of government?
Mr. Reid: Yes, because the minister referenced the fact
that we are doing some work probably under the DDBL, possibly on behalf of
Autopac. Are any of these costs
transferred back to Autopac? Is there
offsetting transfer of funds for some of this work?
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, there are our systems
changes, so there are our costs. So what
we talked about none of these are transferred back to other departments of
government‑‑our systems, our changes, our costs.
Mr. Reid: The past Minister of Highways in our discussions
last year indicated that we bring in programs from other jurisdictions, other
states or provinces that might have programs that would be applicable. When the minister referenced some of the
computer‑assisted programs that we have here, we brought these in from
other jurisdictions, and have we purchased any upgrading of any equipment? I know there are some discussions in this
province in dealing with issues relating to Wang and the computer equipment. Are we purchasing any equipment from them for
the computer services here?
Mr. Findlay: Madam Chairperson, we continue to upgrade our
computer system. It has nothing to do
with the Wang system that is used administratively here.
Mr. Reid: I take it by that statement that we are not
utilizing any equipment from Wang or any of their services.
Mr. Findlay: The only connection to the Wang system is the
deputy's office and my office as part of the government administration process,
but the department is not involved in the Wang system.
Mr. Reid: I am looking at the appropriations here under
Other Expenditures, and I see Hardware Rentals.
Are we making any purchases of equipment, or is it not efficient for the
department to undertake purchases? Is it
more efficient to rent the equipment versus the outright purchase?
Mr. Findlay: Overall in the department as a whole there
are some rentals, some purchases. What
you see here is rentals more likely of mini computers; certainly in different
branches of the department, personal computers will be purchased. Here you see rentals of mini computers, and
elsewhere there are purchases of the personal computers. So there is a combination of both going on.
Mrs. Carstairs: There seem to be some staffing changes. They do not show up here, but it appears that,
if one looks at the past history of Computer Services, there were, in fact, 23
Professional/Technical people and four administrative people. Now, that seems to have been changed to 21
professional people and six Administrative Support people.
Can the minister indicate why those changes were made and
when they were made?
Mr. Findlay: What the member sees in front of her is 21
and six. I think she mentioned 23 and
four. The numbers total the same. Exact detail of why the numbers are different
we will bring back next day, but the total is still the same.
Mrs. Carstairs: The total is the same and has been the same
consistently for a number of years. Both
'92‑93 and '93‑94 Estimates books show that, in fact, there were 23
technical people and there were four Administrative Support people, and that
seems to have changed.
Now, obviously, the functions of what those people did are
different, and that is what I would like to know. I am prepared to pass this and wait for the
information at the next session.
* (1650)
Mr. Findlay: We will return with a better explanation as
to the reasons next time.
Madam Chairperson: Item 1.(f) Computer Services (1) Salaries and
Employee Benefits $1,271,500‑‑pass; (2) Other Expenditures $582,700‑‑pass.
1.(g) Occupational Health and Safety.
Mr. Reid: Madam Chairperson, I have a number of
questions here. We spent a bit of time
on this section last time in the last Estimates, dealing with Department of
Highways Occupational Health and Safety program for its employees. I am interested again in some of the
statistical data that the minister would have and programs that the minister
would have to ensure the employees' safety and the ongoing audits that they
would have.
Can the minister indicate to me, since we have a fairly
large employment level within the Department of Highways, what the number of
workplace injuries were for the past year '93‑94, and how many employees
are currently on LTD, long‑term disability?
Mr. Findlay: I will give the member three categories of
numbers here. We will start with '91‑92
year, then '92‑93, then '93‑94, so I will give him figures over
three years. First will be injuries
where no medical attention or lost time occurred. In '91‑92 it was 97 incidents, 97
injuries with no medical attention; '92‑93, 85; last year, '93‑94,
49 incidents, no lost time, no medical attention. So there is an improvement there.
Under the category of injuries that involved medical
attention, in '91‑92, it was 92; '92‑93, it is 103; and, in '93‑94,
it is 44. Again, a significant reduction
in the number of injuries involving medical attention.
The Workers Compensation Board cost associated with those
incidents in '91‑92 was $567,000; '92‑93, it is $494,000; and '93‑94,
it is $297,000. So, again, a significant
reduction in costs associated with Workers Compensation.
Mr. Reid: There appears to be a significant improvement
in the number of workplace injuries requiring medical attention, which is a
good sign. I am glad to see that. I take it from that, then, that there must be
some programs that the department has undertaken not only to educate employees,
but maybe has taken some audits then to look at improving the working
conditions and the identification of workplace hazards.
Can the minister indicate what activities have been taking
place in that regard, both with the education of employees, managers, and any
audits?
Mr. Findlay: The department has had a very active training
process under Occupational Health and Safety.
There is an officer in each region.
So the work of the various department managers, people involved in
training and the Occupational Health and Safety officer is obviously paying
dividends in terms of reducing the number of accidents, particularly those, as
the member has mentioned, that require medical attention. So I think the member was looking for what
action there is. There is significant
action, and the results are apparent in the figures.
Mr. Reid: I am also interested in the types of injuries
that the employees are sustaining. Where
we still have injuries, what types of injuries are we seeing, and where we are
seeing reductions, what type of injury, personal injuries for the human body
are being reduced? Is it back injuries,
is it hearing, is it eyes, is it hands?
Can the minister give me some indication on where we are seeing some
successes as far as reduction of personal injuries and the types of the
injuries?
Mr. Findlay: We do have a record of the types of
injuries. We do not have it with us
today, and we will bring it next time for the member's information.
Mr. Reid: Fine, I appreciate that. Can the minister indicate the number of light‑duty
positions we would have within the department?
I take it that we do. Looking at
the Objectives, it is to integrate and return injured employees back to work as
quickly as possible, which, for any operation, should be one of the goals.
Do we have light‑duty positions for employees and, if
so, how many do we have? How do we
accommodate the employees to get them back into work when they are willing and
able to return to active employment?
Mr. Findlay: The department has managed the claims for 25
employees who have been injured on the job or who have personal health problems
that require job modification and reassignment.
Nine employees who received training are reassigned to alternate
occupations. Seven employees'
occupations were modified to meet their restrictions; five employees were able
to return to normal duties following modified work programs. Three employees received pensions or
alternate benefits, and one employee's claim is still active and a
rehabilitation program is being developed.
Madam Chairperson: Order, please. The hour being 5 p.m. and time for private
members' hour, committee rise.
Call in the Speaker.