COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY

(Concurrent Sections)

HIGHWAYS AND TRANSPORTATION

Mr. Chairperson (Gerry McAlpine): Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This section of the Committee of Supply will be considering the Estimates of the Department of Highways and Transportation. Does the honourable Minister of Highways and Transportation have an opening statement?

Hon. Glen Findlay (Minister of Highways and Transportation): Mr. Chairman, yes, I do. I would like to spend a few minutes making a few comments for the member opposite. My comments will not relate specifically to elements in any great amount that are in the exact Estimates but just to give an overview of what the department is doing to try to position itself for the circumstances that this department is dealing with and certainly that the transportation industry is challenged with in these days that we live in right now.

Before I get into the general comments, I would just like to indicate to the member, as he can see from the Estimates book, that in our budget this year our Estimates are a total of $222,120,000 which represents a decrease of 1.4 percent from the previous year's Estimates of $225,284,000. The staff components has been reduced by 31 staff in this Estimates cycle from the '95-96 level, and of the 31 SYs eliminated, 14 staff were affected. Of the 14, five staff accepted alternate positions, three retired, two accepted permanent layoff and four have been placed on the government's re-employment list.

In the area of planning and priorities, you have probably heard the expression, there is nothing more certain about the future than change. I assure you this adage could not be truer in any other department than the transportation sector today. We have recently seen a dramatic change in trade patterns and alliances, increased global competition, rapid technological developments and unfettered growth of information systems and pressure on governments to reduce their debts and deficits, and that is true right across this nation.

There have been more changes in the transportation sector in the last five years than there had been in the previous 25. As a backdrop to this change, we continue to face conflicting demands to reduce the size and cost of government while maintaining high levels of service and even adding new services. All of these factors combined are forcing us to rethink the traditional role of government and explore new ways of doing business.

We at the Department of Highways and Transportation are acutely aware of the rapid pace of change that is affecting every aspect of our operation. I am pleased with the way my department has tried to keep pace with the change we have been experiencing. We do not have a crystal ball to predict with much accuracy what will happen in the next five years. We are attempting to anticipate and prepare ourselves for the changes we can foresee. We have been doing this through the development of an ambitious strategic planning process which I believe will help us to anticipate some of the change we will be confronted with in the very near future.

We want to put ourselves in the position of being able to direct and control our future rather than being swept along by it. We know we must adapt to this change by continuously improving the way we conduct our business, by exploring new methods of service delivery and by even questioning the business we should be in. The department's strategic planning process recognizes that we must be forward thinking in order to create a competitive advantage for Manitoba's transportation sector. To maintain this sector's strength, Manitoba must adapt to economic change and preserve the quality and efficiency of its transportation infrastructure. This requires continual review of the department's operations to determine which activities will accomplish our goals.

Our process is somewhat unique because of the extent to which we have involved our stakeholders, customers and department employees. Over the past year, we have met with over a hundred individual stakeholders representing 50 groups, and I will read the list which is not completely conclusive. There are other parties that could be added to it, too.

The department has met with shippers and carriers, UMM, Pool Elevators, Manitoba Motor League, Snoman, Society for Manitobans with Disabilities, Canadian Paraplegic Association, Transport Canada, Repap, Isobord enterprises, Manitoba dump truck association, CN Rail, Manitoba heavy construction industry, law enforcement agencies, Manitoba Safety Council, Motor Dealers Association, Insurance Brokers Association of Manitoba, Age & Opportunity, People in Equal Participation, National Transportation Agency, WINNPORT, Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, National Research Council, Manitoba Trucking Association, Manitoba Chamber of Commerce, Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, Recreation Vehicle Dealers Association, bus companies, airlines, various government departments, University of Manitoba Transport Institute, Pine Falls Paper Company, various utility companies and a number of engineering firms. That is not a complete list of the various parties that the department deals with.

We asked these groups for feedback of what we were doing right, where we should be improving. We also asked for input on trends in their fields and the impact that these trends may have on the direction of transportation in the province of Manitoba in the future. We conducted a survey of some 6,000 road users and 3,000 driver vehicle licensing customers to find out not only what we are doing right, what we should continue to do, but, more importantly, how we should change to better respond to their needs and expectations.

We also solicited input from employees at every level within the department because, as you know, some of the best ideas for change and improvement often come from those who are closest to the work. We scanned the external environment to see what social, economic, political and technological trends are occurring which will have an impact on the transportation sector. Synthesizing all of this information, along with my government's priorities for transportation, the department has created a vision for how it will influence the future direction of transportation within Manitoba.

This vision involves first, ensuring Manitoba's transportation infrastructure is safe and economically sustainable; second, ensuring that our policies and programs support Manitoba's economic development and role as a global transportation centre; thirdly, having regulatory services which ensure public safety while promoting the competitiveness of our transportation industry; fourth, measuring our performance and exploring alternative forms of service delivery to make sure Manitobans receive best value for their tax dollars; five, working with our stakeholders, consulting with our customers and balancing their diverse needs; and, six, having a workforce with the skills, technology and authority to do their jobs.

In order to achieve this vision for the Department of Highways and Transportation, we also identified areas where we will concentrate our efforts over the next several years. We have come up with six areas of strategic focus that involve, first, conducting research and analysis, developing measures of performance and designing management information systems that will lead to better decision making; second, exploring alternative ways of financing our deteriorating transportation infrastructure in order to catch up with needed preservation work and develop new infrastructure which supports economic development within the province; third, identifying strategic infrastructure investments, public-private partnerships and interdepartmental initiatives that will optimize a sustainable economic development of the province; fourth, building on a consultation process developed for our strategic planning initiative; we will be looking at innovative ways of providing better support to public policy decisions through greater public participation; five, consulting our customers to determine their expectations and then reworking and improving our systems to meet customer service needs; six, recognizing that human resources are instrumental in achieving any of these goals, we must retrain and acquire skilled staff, give them latitude and tools to do their jobs and acknowledge their accomplishments.

The work on these areas of strategic focus will continue over the next several years. However, we have already begun work on better decision making. The goal of this area focuses in creating mechanisms for gathering and generating the information necessary to allow decision makers at every level within the organization to make more rational and defensive decisions, to streamline decision making and operational processes so the staff have the necessary authority to make decisions and to ensure that the proper approval processes are not overly complicated.

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So far, three initiatives are underway which will contribute to our focus on better decision making; first, process improvement initiative. The first of these initiatives is called process improvement. This involves the mapping or flow charting of all departmental programs or processes in order to gain a better picture of the activities that are involved in providing service or producing an end product. Using this approach, we will be able to identify activities that are unnecessary or overly time-consuming and where improvements can be made to simplify the process.

The next step in process improvement is to cost out the process and to benchmark or compare our costs to those other service providers. The people who deliver the programs or service are very much involved in the mapping and the process redesign since they are often the ones most keenly aware of what improvements can be made. To make decisions about cost-effective service delivery options, departmental programs are being reviewed to determine the full cost of delivery, examine the range of delivery options and study delivery methods used by other jurisdictions.

Secondly, performance measurement. The second initiative which is underway involves developing indicators and measures of our performance. We have recognized that if we hope to accomplish our goals, we must measure the work effort and resources to be used to produce the results. Performance measurement will let us know whether we are moving in the right direction by measuring effectiveness and efficiency of what we are doing in by helping us to make decisions about the best use of our limited resources.

Third, business planning. Another initiative that will be implemented this fiscal year is the preparation of integrated operational financial plans by business units. Business plans are written documents that outline the proposed resources and strategies the business unit will use to accomplish its goals. The plan integrates resource allocation, including staffing and budgeting, operational planning and performance measurement to ensure that all business units work in a co-ordinated and concerted effort toward accomplishing the strategic aims of the department.

I am very pleased with the progress that we have made on these initiatives with the overall system of our strategic planning that has been implemented within the department. As I mentioned earlier, I believe these measures are going to enable the Department of Highways and Transportation to respond to the rapid rate of change that we are all experiencing. The economic prosperity of a community, region or nation is dependent on the availability of adequate and reliable transportation services at a reasonable cost. For this reason, transportation has been identified as a cornerstone of Manitoba's economic development strategy. As such, the department is committed to maintaining and enhancing Manitoba's strategic position as a major hub of transportation. The department plans to utilize resources to the best advantage to accomplish this mission.

We are dealing with a vibrant transportation sector within Manitoba, a sector that has been instrumental in much of the province's past prosperity. With the government contributing to the development of transportation policy that is conducive to growth and development and with proper planning and management of our transportation and distribution system, the transportation system can continue to contribute to the revitalization of our economy.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my comments in general, but I would just like to identify for the critic some of the really significant things that we are facing in the form of change. I will identify four of them that cover different parts of the province, and, clearly, one of them is Churchill in terms of the significant initiative that is going on right now from Gateway North Transportation Inc. A resolution from the opposition was supported in that context, and we are all hoping and expecting that the federal government and CN can reach agreements with this group of entrepreneurs to not only keep Churchill alive but to promote its viability more significantly into the future.

Another major activity that is going on right now is the local airport authority in terms of the process involving the federal government, particularly of a local group taking over management of the airport to improve its economic activity within the context of Winnipeg and Manitoba. Very closely affiliated with that is the big economic potential initiative of WINNPORT that could create some 6,000 jobs. Clearly, the mode of transportation of goods around the globe has changed, is changing, and air cargo is a very viable option of moving many goods long distances. There is no question that Winnipeg is strategically located between Europe and Asia as a location with a 24-hour airport and with almost unrestricted access of expanding it to the west and the north in terms of development of whatever kinds of buildings or infrastructure are necessary to support a global transportation intermodal system at the airport.

The last one I want to identify for the member is changes that have happened in particularly rural Manitoba, and that is the elimination of the WGTA payment that used to--well, certainly, over the course of almost 100 years--stimulate the export of raw product. Now with that gone, although we have been talking about diversification of value-added industries in rural Manitoba, it is really taking off. I am sure he has noticed many announcements of a lot of value-added industries wanting to locate, some of them in the process of construction right now, in various locations in rural Manitoba.

What that really means is that a tremendous volume of bulk raw commodity will have further value added to it before it is exported from the province. The challenge behind that opportunity is the fact that unbelievable tonnages of goods, particularly raw grain, oilseeds and special crops products are going to go on the highways of this province in every which way, to go from production point to processing point, ultimately then to export point. I think anybody who travels rural Manitoba will see that the volume of trucks has definitely increased.

We have always thought of the grain industry in particular as a producer hauling bulk commodity to an elevator. The elevator then loads it onto a railcar and the railcar takes it to whatever location it is going to, normally export. What we see now is of that product going into the front end of the elevator, about 25 percent of it leaves that elevator by truck and that percentage is going to rise continually. I dare say five years ago it was no more than 5 percent that left by truck.

The elevator companies are confirming what we see happening and that is that trucks are a bigger and bigger element in the movement of grains, oilseeds, special crops, and they will also be involved in the movement of the value-added products that come from these various processing locations. So there is going to be a tremendous stress and strain on that infrastructure we currently have, both in terms of its capacity and in terms of its efficiency to accommodate all those activities.

With those kinds of comments, I would want to conclude by saying there is tremendous opportunity to expand Manitoba as a significant transportation hub in every aspect, but also there are some significant challenges to achieve that to its maximum. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairperson: We thank the Minister of Highways for those comments. Does the official opposition critic, the honourable member for Flin Flon, have any opening comments?

Mr. Gerard Jennissen (Flin Flon): Yes, Mr. Chairman, perhaps a very short comment.

First of all, I would like to thank the minister for his rather fulsome background material that he gave to me because it puts things in context a little bit more for me. In fact, on many of the points that he raised with regard to Churchill, local airport authority, WINNPORT and the Crow rate, they were issues that I was going to address, as well, and that should come as no surprise.

I might add that I will be meeting with one group interested in the Churchill line and the Port of Churchill and have dinner with them on Thursday. I will get some background from Doug Webber and his group on what they are proposing to do, so that fits in with the minister's statement.

I do not disagree with the minister saying that transportation is the cornerstone of Manitoba's economic development. We are located, I think, strategically geographically in a very good part of North America for trade. Transportation is in a sense our lifeblood, and we want to have a strong transportation sector. There is no doubt about that. At the same time, I think there are a number of challenges and, specifically, I notice ironies associated with these challenges.

As there is more north-and-south flow of goods, of traffic, transportation, I still feel that the northern part of that north-south transportation flow has not been adequately looked after in terms of infrastructure. Perhaps it is coloured by the fact I am from the North, but I always feel that northern roads are underserviced. I suppose, looked at from a different perspective, it makes sense to only devote 4 or 5 percent of a transportation budget or a highways budget to northern roads, but looked at from our perspective, which is that the North creates tremendous wealth, more money should be devoted to northern infrastructure, northern roads, specifically, as well as airports.

I am saying that because we are looking at a billion-dollar mining industry, we are looking at hundreds of millions of dollars that are generated by hydro power, not to mention pulp and paper and wood--that is also in the millions and millions of dollars--and, of course, taxes and so on. So if we take a look in terms of the total economy, I think the North is not getting its fair share. If you look at it in terms of population, then of course I see the argument. I also see the counterargument because if you want to be democratic, you look at bodies, but somehow or other in the North that is not well served. We feel that because of our special isolated circumstance we cannot treat it just on a per capita basis. More money has to be devoted to the North because the wealth we produce is much larger than seems to be reflected in the budgets for fixing northern roads, airports and so on. I do not want to belabour this issue, but it is an ongoing concern with us up there.

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I want to keep this very short because I am mindful, and I hope the minister agrees with me, that we have limited time, that there are time constraints. Part of the reason there are time constraints is because we spent a lot of time in Estimates on Health and Education. I think that was for a very good reason; those are two extremely important departments. I am not suggesting that Highways and Transportation is not important, but perhaps we could agree that the time frame appears to be today and tomorrow till noon, so that gives us roughly four or five hours, if the minister thinks that is reasonable. I think that is reasonable.

If we go that route, though, can I propose a few approaches that I hope the minister will agree with? One of them is that under Executive Support, I would be asking most of the questions under five main headings, and maybe to help the minister or his staff, the headings would be Engineering Aides 2, provincial gravel road initiatives, used vehicle inspection program and truck safety, northern roads issue, which is fairly broad, and future trends. The minister has alluded to some of those future trends already.

I would like to ask specific questions, but I think at some point my colleagues will come in and will also have questions and that will restrict me from asking all the questions on those five broad areas. So I wonder, if we are running short of time, if the minister would entertain the possibility that I would just read them into the record, and he and his staff would supply me with written responses, let us say, within three weeks or a month? Would that be agreeable? In other words, I will take this as far as I can. If we run out of time, I would like to read it into the record and then get written responses for those questions. Would that be acceptable to the minister?

Mr. Findlay: In the broad answers, I guess, yes. Some of them you may want to have a little bit of dialogue on them. It is always helpful for us to have some dialogue on different points of view, but in the broad context, as you head each of those, you just maybe indicate a written answer would be sufficient or whether you want a little dialogue. I am very flexible, however you want to use scarce time.

Mr. Chairperson: Just for the clarification of the committee, is it your wish to have dialogue or discussion on 1.(b)(1), a broad discussion, or do you want to go each one line by line?

Mr. Jennissen: Under 1.(b)(1), I would like to ask most of the questions. If we run out of time, I will then ask my remaining questions just on the record and expect written responses for the ones I read into the record, and then still go line by line, but there will be very few. I would not be asking detailed material from there on in. Most of the stuff will be front-end loaded right now under 1.(b)(1).

Mr. Chairperson: Is it the will of the committee? [agreed]

For the benefit of the committee, I would just like to draw your attention, after the opening remarks which we have had today, all speeches of any member are limited to 10 minutes under subsection Rule 74.(1) and (2). Under the Manitoba practice, debate of the Minister's Salary is traditionally the last item considered for the Estimates of the department. Accordingly, we shall defer consideration of this item and now proceed with consideration of the next line.

Before we do that, we invite the minister's staff to join us at the table, and we ask the minister to introduce his staff present.

Mr. Findlay: Mr. Chairman, I want to introduce my deputy minister, Andy Horosko, and Mr. Paul Rochon, Executive Director of Administrative Services.

Mr. Chairperson: We thank the honourable minister, and we now proceed to line 1.(b)(1) on page 80 of the Estimates booklet.

Item 1. Administration and Finance (b) Executive Support (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $438,900. Shall the item pass?

Mr. Jennissen: Could I go back to, in my booklet, it is page 11, which is the Department of Highways and Transportation's five operating divisions, and just ask a couple of questions on that? That is this power chart or flow chart or hierarchy of power, if you like.

I noticed that under Construction and Maintenance and under Driver and Vehicle Licensing, both Mr. B. Tinkler and M. Zyluk are acting. Does that mean that these people will inherit this position or about to be appointed as fully heading this position, or is this just an interim position?

Mr. Findlay: In both cases they are replacing individuals who have retired. In the case of Construction and Maintenance, Doug Struthers has retired within the last month. In the case of DVL, Dan Coyle retired, again within the last month. So they are both acting at this point in time, and ultimately the positions will be filled by competition.

Mr. Jennissen: Under Engineering and Technical Services, I notice what was called last year Northern Airports and Ferries has been changed to Northern Airports and Marine Operations. Is Marine Operations implying something broader than Ferries? I am not sure what the reasoning was to change that.

Mr. Findlay: We have a couple of big lakes in the province, and we do run some ferries, so that is the marine component.

Mr. Jennissen: Under Policy, Planning and Development, Don Norquay, there was a new category added, that is, Policy Co-ordination and Administration. What was the reasoning for that?

Mr. Findlay: The intent was that we had policy people in the Department of Highways, policy people over in DVL, and they have all been co-ordinated in the one unit so that all the policy people in the overall department are together in one location for administrative purposes.

Mr. Jennissen: Before I go into the five broad groupings that I talked about earlier, just one question is in the back of my mind. It comes out of the minister's earlier opening statement. That is, if the Crow rate is abolished, and has been abolished, in fact, and we are expecting great growth in trucking, then is it not contradictory to spend less money on highways?

I mean, on the one hand, we are saying, hey, we need more bucks because of the stresses on our road because of the Crow rate being gone, and if trade is increasing, obviously we are going to have to put more money into our road system, yet the total amounts seem to be going down, perhaps not dramatically, but 1.4 percent is still a cut.

Mr. Findlay: Well, I guess I tried to indicate to the member that the impact of the Crow is going to have unbelievable long-term challenges for the transportation industry and most particularly our highways. I would say places like the city of Winnipeg and most of our municipalities will also face like challenges, smaller dollars than ours but still significant challenges nonetheless.

The method of funding our provincial system, of course, is that we argue within the context of government to allocate funds, and I think every member will recognize it does not matter what province you look at now or it does not matter who is in power in any province across this country, everybody really got elected on the basis of fiscal responsibility, controlling costs and pursuing a balanced-budget process. It has really been achieved in eight out of ten provinces. So when you argue that some things more should go out of something, that means you have to take something from somebody. That is very difficult, while everybody is sort of downsizing in their costs and trying to limit the levels of expectation, whether it is in health or education or whether it is in justice or wherever it is, to dedicate more money to highways.

The angle we have argued, and I hope the member would support us in this context, is that in the overall principle--I think Manitoba and Alberta are probably close to this, maybe even B.C. is in this category--the dollars collected from the road system in terms of fuel taxes, licence fees and that sort of thing basically are reinvested back into the road network. We spend on capital, as the member can see, around $100 million a year and on maintenance, around $60 million a year. That is $160 million which is very close to what we collect from the system, so what is collected goes back into the maintenance or the rebuilding of the system.

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At the very same time, the federal government has a fuel tax in place right across this country wherein after last year's, a year ago's budget increase of a cent and a half per litre, they collect right across Canada some $5.5 billion a year out of the road system, and they are investing back into that road system right across the nation less than 10 percent of that. It is probably fair to say, sizably less than 10 percent.

In the province of Manitoba, our calculations would indicate that they collect far in excess of $200 million each year out of our road system, and if he looks in the budget he will see that federal money coming to the province for highways was $6 million last budget, $3 million this budget. So for over $200 million they are collecting out of the system, they are putting only $3 million back in in this budget that we are talking about.

This argument has been going on since '88, and all provinces are onside on this trying to get the federal government to realize they have a responsibility to this national infrastructure network called highways. A national highway program has been proposed. This province, the Premier (Mr. Filmon) and myself have taken leadership positions trying to get commitments from the federal government. In October of '94, ministers of Transportation met here, and I got a commitment from the then-federal Minister of Transport Doug Young that he would make a yes or no response to us as provinces by December 15 of that year. His response was no to the question, will the federal government match in any way dollars that the provinces are putting in. He said, well, I will only match what you are prepared to put on the table.

Nine out of the 10 provinces, every province other than Quebec, actually were prepared to commit over a five-year period some $2.6 billion worth of road infrastructure money, and we wanted the feds to respond in some matching fashion. There had already been a formula generated, but we were not worried about whether they lived up to the formula or not, just commit something, and their answer was no.

We continue to lobby. Every group that I am aware of involved in highways use or construction, from tourism to trucking to heavy construction, all support the principle of an NHP, a national highways program, because it is just like the infrastructure program. The federal government gets its dollars back within a year or year and a half in the form of taxes paid, and the province gets its money back in the course of two and a half to three years in the form of taxes paid, so it would seem like a logical place to invest money in an infrastructure sense in the future. We still hope that eventually they will, but I think that is the best alternative we have to source more money, in other words acting on the principle that the money that is collected from the system should go back in some form to capital or to maintenance.

At this time, the federal government, as part of the WGTA, has said that there is $140 million available for infrastructure, and this province has clearly identified that the infrastructure component that that money should go to is roads, and this had been confirmed in a letter from a federal deputy minister, that $26 million will come to Manitoba for infrastructure, and with the UMM, the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Enns), Minister of Rural Development (Mr. Derkach) and myself, we sent a jointly signed letter to the federal government saying our identification of infrastructure in the province that is hurt by WGTA is roads and all that money should go to roads.

Just today the Honourable Jon Gerrard has announced that, effectively, he has not accepted that offer and that he is starting a process to have hearings in four locations in the province to decide how that money should be spent. His first hearing is tomorrow in Brandon, I believe, and he has three other locations.

So that is $26 million out of $140 million for this province. The rest goes to Saskatchewan and Alberta. All provinces are saying the same thing I have just said. We are short of money; we need some federal support.

I think I have told the member in the past that on my desk right now is at least $1 billion of requests for capital projects in this province. I have $100 million every year and that is a lot of money, but every year when we spend $100 million, there will be another $200 million of requests come forward next year because of the use of the infrastructure, people seeing need for heavier-built roads, heavier-built bridges, repaving, new roads needing constructed, accesses to new plants to be built, culverts to be put in to handle water.

I mean, the requests just never end and they are monstrous. I say regularly to all the different groups and particular municipalities that come and talk to me, I know what your needs and wants are. I would love to be able to serve them but, simply, as a province by itself, we do not have sufficient resources, given the fact that the federal government is taking money out of the system and not putting it back in. We are asking for support everywhere we can to keep the lobby up with the federal government.

They have a responsibility here. They have a national highway network which they are not putting anything much towards and expecting the provinces to continue to build the roads east and west. The member has identified that more north-south from a trade point of view is more significant to us now than what used to be just an east-west system. That is my feeling on the process, and I do not have a magical answer, but we must continue to keep working to get some federal dollars into the provinces.

Mr. Jennissen: I understand all of us want the federal government to give the provinces more money, but I guess the feds are wrestling with their own demons because, what are they paying, 38 cents to the dollar for the national debt? So I can see their argument, as well, whereas in this province we are paying, what, 12 cents of the dollar on our debt. Perhaps our picture relative to theirs is rosier and that is maybe why they are hanging on to the dollars a little more tightly. However, there still appears to me to be a contradiction to say on the one hand, as the Minister of Finance (Mr. Stefanson) has done, that our economy is steamrolling ahead, if that is the term he used, and trade is booming and at the same time cutting back on infrastructure money for transportation. It seems to be inconsistent to me.

Mr. Findlay: I do not think we are cutting back on dollars for infrastructure. We are holding in that $100-million category. Saskatchewan, the last I heard, were down around $50 million, and they have got two and a half times as many roads as we have got. These are the realities we live with. Yes, the economy is steamrolling ahead. I think the member goes out and sort of talks around in the agricultural industry, and I am sure it is the same in the mining industry, because I have heard they are both basically in a boom cycle in terms of prices. New mines are opening in the North, and that is very, very good.

Certainly the grain prices in southern Manitoba are the best anybody out there farming today has ever seen in their life, certainly the best in the last 20 years. They are having a little trouble getting the crop in because it is wet and all that, but all these announcements of capital investment, whether it is in a pasta plant or an oilseed crushing plant or a hog slaughtering plant or french fry plant expansion or Simplot nitrogen fertilizer expansion, all that means more activity, more construction jobs, more jobs in those plants once they are open. It means more jobs particularly in trucking and moving products to and from there. I think it also is a positive thing for the rail industry in certain context. So, yes, the economy is rolling along.

The demands on us in the infrastructure sense, the stakes have been raised. I think if a year ago I would be saying to municipalities that come in and say, I have $100 million available and they have $600 million in requests on the table. As I mentioned earlier, it is a billion now, and likely said to me yesterday, it is $1.1 billion. The list of projects that are needed just grows.

For instance, a bridge over the Red River is $10 million. There are interchanges that can be built for $10 million. There is another interchange that is going to be wanted very soon, and it is going to cost $29 million. You know, grading a road is $100,000 a kilometre. By the time you put RTAC pavement on there, you have added $250,000 a kilometre. The costs rise.

We have got 2,600 bridges, and sometimes the next weakest link in the road is the next bridge. It is a tremendous challenge for the department to meet all the expectations. But I can promise the member that, yes, the economy is rolling. The challenge is for us to have the infrastructure that serves our needs will never lessen.

Within the city here we are promoting very strongly the trucking industry, the airport and the intermodolism between trucking and the airport, and I think there is a certain element in intermodolism with rail there possible too. So the private sector in certain respects has to put their investments in and in some cases they are, particularly in rural Manitoba. You see a lot of activity around the WINNPORT initiative, and that is private sector driven. Their business plan we expect to see before too long which certainly we will need. If it is to work it will require a lot of private sector investment.

But the city, all the municipal jurisdictions and the province are going to have a continuing process of trying to be sure we meet the essential infrastructure needs in the intermediate term. That tight circumstance we are in will not let up for a long time to come. I do not think any Minister of Transportation across this country will say anything different than what I just said.

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Mr. Jennissen: I would like to turn to the five areas that I mentioned earlier. I think at some point one of my colleagues will join me and ask specific questions. The member for Swan River (Ms. Wowchuk) had some specific road questions, and she only has today to ask them, so there will be a slight interruption.

Turning then to the first category, and it does not have to be this category we start with; it is Engineering Aides 2. If that is agreeable to all, I would like to start with that particular category.

The first question is, what is the exact number of Aides 2 that were affected by the layoff January 1, 1996, to April 1, 1996?

Mr. Findlay: Mr. Chairperson, 120 people were affected. Two people accepted permanent retirement, so effectively, 118 people were affected by that.

Mr. Jennissen: How many Aides 2 have taken the permanent layoff package, and how many have found other jobs? You said two were retired.

Mr. Findlay: Two took permanent layoff.

Of the 118 who were called back, certainly some had found other jobs and did not respond to the recall. We do not have the exact number, but if the member wants to know, we can get that exact number as to how many of those who were hired in '95 accepted the recall in April of '96.

Mr. Jennissen: In December 1, 1995, layoff notices, Aides 2 were told they would be offered seasonal work no later than April 1, 1996, yet regional administrators are telling workers on December 15, 1995, that nonseasonal status will be maintained until the beginning of 1997.

Is that a contradiction to have nonseasonal status and yet to be given seasonal work? I was not quite clear what was meant there. Could you elaborate?

(Mr. Edward Helwer, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)

Mr. Findlay: I will try to give the member an understanding here. It is a long process, but this is the department's interpretation of the collective bargaining agreement, that those individuals who were permanent in '95 will be permanent seasonal in '96 and '97, and they stay in that category for that two-year period, which then allows them to revert to be called seasonal workers in '98, and that is following the collective bargaining agreement, to go from permanent to seasonal.

Mr. Jennissen: Just to paraphrase what the minister said then, next year, those workers can expect to be laid off again for a three-month period but will be recalled in April. Is that correct?

Mr. Findlay: Those employees called back were guaranteed a minimum of eight months work; I say a minimum of eight months work. Whether there is more than eight months work, whether it is nine or 10 or 11 or 12 will depend on whether there is work available. That, generally speaking, has a lot to do with weather and how the construction season goes.

So eight months is their minimum guarantee, and it could be longer depending on the work needs that unfold over the course of the season.

Mr. Jennissen: After 1997, would those same workers, now seasonal workers, still be guaranteed eight or nine months of work a year?

Mr. Findlay: At this stage, barring the unforeseen, that is the plan at this point, that it will continue to be the minimum of eight months. In this day and age of change, nothing can be locked in stone because circumstances might change, but the intention is the minimum of eight months on a seasonal basis.

Mr. Jennissen: So within the next several years in the interim, the short future, Engineering Aides 2 can expect at least a guarantee of eight months by the department, possibly more, in the region of nine, 10, 11 or 12, and so those workers should not face any major problems in terms of longer layoffs stretches before 1998. Is that correct?

Mr. Findlay: Yes, that is a fair conclusion to what I said.

Mr. Jennissen: I have talked to quite a number of Aides 2, and many of them are upset, obviously, because they felt they had worked for the department for many, many years and had taken for granted--perhaps in this day and age, one should never take one's job for granted--that they would never be working, let us say, a nine-month year.

Because they were never laid off until this year, I guess I need to know, is the minister trying to suggest that the weather last year was somehow unique or that all the work was election related, or is this an attempt to phase out Aides 2 entirely? I am not clear what the general thrust seems to be.

Mr. Findlay: Mr. Chairman, in this area, like many other areas, technology comes along, and a lot of automation gets into the system. Automation generally means less manual work, less need of hours of work. Another way to put it, more work can be done per hour of employee activity.

For two or three years, as regards that process, it was becoming evident to the department that there was a lot of period of time when there was not any work for these people to do, as there was, say, five or 10 years ago. Then in '95 the very good weather conditions allowed a lot of projects to be completed well ahead of what we call a normal schedule. It became very apparent, between automation and a fast summer, that a decision had to be made as to whether we continue to pay these employees when there is not work to do or we have to be rational in the department, to have layoffs in place when there is no work for certain groups of employees. So the decision was made to start the layoff process and to look forward. I am saying that the minimum we can guarantee is eight months of work per year. That is just a reality of a changing workplace, a changing way of doing some of the business and what automation and improved technology bring to us.

I think the bottom line for the department is always to maximize the amount of dollars we can spend on road maintenance, road construction, and improve safety for the users of those roads, so it is very hard to rationalize that you keep employees for a period of two or three or four months when there is not effectively work for them to do.

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Mr. Jennissen: I realize that we are working under tight fiscal constraints, or restraints, I guess, but still if I take a look at the senior executives in the department, at least some of them, or one of them has a raise of over 22 percent over two years, while these workers are taking Filmon Fridays, being cut three months from the year, and so on. I guess that does not sit well with me because I think we are given the wrong message.

I guess the question I have for the minister, I mean, symbolically, does that look good when the top echelon gets these massive, or at least appear to the average public, although, Lord knows, I know the minister is probably underpaid, but it appears in terms of percentages, you know, a huge raise, and yet Engineering Aides 2 are taking cuts, taking home less pay in the year.

Mr. Findlay: Well, the member has identified a senior executive. Would he like to say who, so I can respond as the reason why the 22 percent?

Mr. Jennissen: I am sorry, I think they have all had modest raises, and, of course, I know that some of those raises may be out of the jurisdiction of the minister himself, but I am saying the public out there only sees increases for senior administrators and decreases for workers on the line.

Mr. Findlay: Well, I can assure the member that, if we did not respond to be sure that our senior people were paid commensurate with so-called industry norms, private sector offers or what the City of Winnipeg pays, we would lose an awful lot of our senior executives. I mean, we have to respond to the marketplace out there, and if somebody gets an increase as he has mentioned, somebody he has not identified yet, at 22 percent, I am sure there is a change in classification involved there; it is not that they stayed in the same job.

Each job is classified, as he knows, through the civil service process. There is a range of salary, and if you move somebody into a new job and it is a higher paying job, you cannot pay less than the range. I mean, we have to be responsible as to how we pay people that is consistent with other offers they might have, or we would not have our senior people, which we desperately need, to run the department effectively.

Mr. Jennissen: But would the minister not agree that the same argument could also hold true for Engineering Aides 2? If you cannot hold senior people because we are not paying them enough and we have to increase salary in order to retain them--I am not debating that. They are probably well worth every penny of it.

The question I have is, why does that argument not hold true for Engineering Aides 2? Why are we not pricing them out of the market by paying too little?

Mr. Findlay: I think there is a dramatic difference between the two that the member has not recognized, and that is that, for the senior executives, there is a workload there 12 months of the year. It does not let up. For the Engineering Aide 2, as we have identified, the department identified three to four months where there was not sufficient work to warrant continuing to keep them on the payroll. Certainly, the door was open to recall them.

So there is quite a difference between work available and you come to work and you are paid versus a situation where there is not work, therefore, we have to use the layoff process to be sure that we are efficient in the process of the jobs we are doing.

Mr. Jennissen: But the fact still remains, Mr. Minister, that these Engineering Aides 2 for years and years and years were putting in 12 months. At what point could we say there were no longer 12 months of work for them? Did it just happen accidentally that it was in 1995?

Mr. Findlay: Mr. Chairman, I already answered that question earlier when I said that five or 10 years ago there was work basically year around. As technology crept in and automation started to take place, there was less need for man hours to get the same volume of work done.

Another way to put it, you can do more work per man hour because of the automation. That had already been happening for two or three years prior and, I mean, the department had not responded. Add to that, in '95, the good weather season, a lot of the field work got done much quicker, you had two reasons why there was no work. One is automation, increased technology; secondly, the good season, and the department could no longer justify keeping them on 12 months when there was only eight months of work, and I call that good management by the senior executive.

Mr. Jennissen: I guess I am just wondering out loud, and the minister can answer this, why would it not be phased in more slowly; in other words, taking away three months is quite a large chunk. That is a quarter of your working year.

Why could it not have happened that we are starting this slowly, that this year we have to let a month go and then possibly a year or two later, maybe two months, but this was dramatic, this was all of a sudden, one-quarter of your work year, and that seemed a little abrupt as if there was no preparation or whatever. That was my concern, like, why this sudden, dramatic change?

Mr. Findlay: I think the member has to understand that the department for two or three years knew that there was a developing circumstance here, and we were tight like we were last year on the financial side, and we have a budget and we have to live within it. There was a lot of good weather, a lot of work got done, and the other senior people in the department had a tremendous challenge last year trying to keep that capital budget at the $103 million. If I could think, we went a million over in the final analysis, so they had to scramble to find every dollar they could save in the overall process to be sure that we had the budget to cover the capital activity out there, and the capital activity means building roads and bridges. So that has to be our focus, building roads and bridges.

The member wants more roads and bridges built, so the department cannot serve two masters, cannot be keeping people employed when there is no work and still meet that demand to maximize the dollars for roads and bridges. You might say, well, we should have phased it in. That is a legitimate statement, but it piled up on them last year in terms of the good weather and, as I say, the automation that had replaced man hours of work, so they had to make a decision and, as I say, they made the right decision, although it is tough on employees, no question about it. But there is a guarantee of a minimum eight months on in the future and, depending on circumstance, it could be eight, it could be nine, it could be 10, it could be 11, it could even be 12, but the department has to have flexibility on how it manages its human resources.

(Mr. Chairperson in the Chair)

Mr. Jennissen: I guess I may be showing my ideological bias, but it always creates problems though if the principal gets a raise and the teachers get a cut. In the same sense, I would have preferred to see no raises while, you know, people further down are being hurt economically. That is just a statement I am making.

If I could go on and ask the minister also, has the department considered the impact on the morale of aides, many of whom have worked for the department full time for decades who now feel that they are expendable? And has the department equally considered the economic impact in small communities when their Aides 2 are being been laid off or are being moved or even leaving?

Mr. Findlay: Well, Mr. Chairman, no government or no minister in this day and age can be all things to all people. We clearly understand the impact on small communities whenever jobs come to an end no matter whether it is in Agriculture or whether it is in Highways and Transportation or where it is. I think the figures are that over the course of the last eight years we have downsized the workforce in the civil service by 2,200 people. In that group, there would be far less than 200 actual layoffs.

There has been a very humane process of trying to retire people or early retire people to decrease our workforce. In response to the same circumstance that I mentioned earlier, for a given hour of work in every department, more can be done in an hour because of technological aids, and that is a reality. Whether you are in CN or CP, whether you are in a trucking company or whether you are in manufacturing, jobs are being replaced by technology and the jobs are moving to where that technology is produced, by and large. That is the changing economy.

We have said to communities across Manitoba that these changes are happening and there is no government that has the dollars to stem the flow of those kinds of decisions that some of the old technology as it requires fewer people you have to aggressively work to bring the new technology to your region or your town.

I use some statistics, and I will launch off on a bit of a tangent for a moment here, but I use statistics in different speeches I give in different places, in that back in the 1900s, this was an agrarian society, where 80 percent of the people worked and lived on farms; today 3 percent.

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In the '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s and even in the '80s, we were in an industrial age, when 55 percent of the jobs were in manufacturing. I am told that shortly into past the year 2000 it will be down to 15 percent of the jobs there, and we are now in what is called the information age and, again, by the year 2000, 45 percent of the jobs will be in the information age in data handling, moving, those kinds of jobs and customer service with data. That is dramatic change.

What we say to communities is, go out there and aggressively pursue that new technology, those new jobs. Say in rural Manitoba, it is the valued-added jobs of taking a raw product and converting it to something of higher value. It is pasta plants, it is oilseed crushing plants, it is hog processing and on it goes.

In the mining sector in the North, clearly we have put in place incentives to expand exploration, and it has led to opening of new mines. Communities have been very aggressive in that and formed economic development boards and chambers of commerce, and they get together and collectively go out and try to pursue bringing an investor in or a person with an idea, and they use such things as Grow Bonds to facilitate the raising of the capital locally to bring an initiative there that creates the jobs of the new economy. So that evolution is going on, and it will not stop. In my era, you graduated from whatever and you got a job for the rest of your life. That was the norm. What we see in my case and my grandchildren is they will get an education and any job they may get might have a duration of two, five, 10 years, but they will definitely be turning over what they do and retraining.

You are in a constant process of learning, retraining, responding to what the world challenges are that come to our doorstep and because of the Internet, as an example, and it was part of an announcement yesterday, you try to bring more Internet access through MTS to people in Manitoba because that gives you a global contact. If we get global contract, all our competitors get global contact to compete with us. That is the changing world. As long as man has got this up here, he is going to keep driving that forefront of knowledge at that challenge.

I think the bottom line to my discussion is I used to say that the amount of knowledge doubles in 16 months and that is called scary, and a librarian walked up to me a couple of weeks ago and said, you know, in 15 years that is going to double in 23 days. I said, oh, my gosh. That is change, and we have to all be understanding that and moving along.

Instead of trying to go back and hang on to the old, we have to say, okay, where are the new opportunities of the future? We aggressively want people to retrain, get up to date in terms of what the new technology opportunities are in government, out of government, because if we do not, the world is going to pass us by.

I think Manitoba and Canada have been pretty successful in that, but we just can never stop. We have to bring every means of technology to our people, particularly young people, to be able to understand that and respond to it and everybody is challenged with that. So the department and the little things they are doing here with the Engineering Aides 2 is responding to that very big initiative that is just not going to go away and that is change, adaptation. If you do not change, you are going to be left standing in the dust.

Mr. Jennissen: Well, I agree up to a point with the minister, but I think governments can be more aggressive in managing change, as well, because if you just go along for the free ride in the sense of this is the way it goes, free enterprise runs rampant, a lot of people get hurt, a lot of workers get hurt. Those changes are definitely coming, I understand, but sometimes you have, I think, a more positive or powerful role to play in mitigating what works against workers and ordinary Canadians. I know one can argue we lost about 16,000 or 160,000 jobs--I forget how many--in the auto industry in Ontario, and a lot of women are doing it in the maquiladoras working for five bucks a day or three bucks a day. Now that is not good change.

We can sit back and say, well, that is inevitable, or you can say, we have to manage it somehow that our own people are hurt less. I do not think it makes us old-fashioned, although I notice that the New Democratic Party which was once considered the radical forefront of things is often labelled now as being behind or trying to go back to an earlier era. I do not think that is true. I just think we want to mitigate the damage that the system seems to be inflicting on people. I do not worship change for change sake. I think we have to be very careful how we manage it, but we are getting into an ideological debate and I guess I should get off this.

Mr. Findlay: Within the concept of managing change, I want to go back to what I said in my opening comments in terms of we reduced the number of staff by 31, but there were only 14 positions that had staff in them, so only 14 affected. Of that 14, five accepted alternate positions, so that is an accommodation for those five for which their job effectively was no longer needed. Three retired, so nobody is affected yet. Two accepted permanent layoff. So there is an effect on two people, and four are placed on the government reployment list and may well find jobs. So out of that whole group, two people were affected directly in terms of layoff. I do not know whether they had packages that went with it or not, to a certain degree.

At the same time, I want to remind the member that in Saskatchewan in Highways and in B.C. in Highways they laid off over 200 people just like that. When Glen Clark came in as Premier in B.C., he just laid off 200 staff. He was formerly in charge of that department.

So in terms of managing change to minimize the impact, I think we have done an incredible job, not only this department but the government as a whole. We are trying to be as responsible to people as possible, but we still have to move along and everybody has to move along. I do not care where you look, it is happening. I think in the government we have been very humane in the process to try to minimize the number of people who actually are laid off by all kinds of vehicles. It has worked, but it takes time and it has been slow. We have not walked in and laid off 10,000. We have not walked in and laid off a thousand. We have not done any of those things. We have given packages, and many people have stepped up and taken early retirement. I congratulate them because they open the door for younger people to stay in the workforce which is so critical to the management of our overall economy.

Mr. Jennissen: Sometimes, though, change, even positive change, has to be taken relative to what happened before, and I was reminded of the fact that the minister mentioned mining in the North. It is true that mining is very active right now and is doing very well and I am very glad. I mean all of us are glad that it creates jobs. The reality is though we have a thousand less miners working now than we did a number of years ago. So although it is a positive move, it is only a positive move in the sense compared to what it was a few years ago. It had been better at one time.

Mr. Findlay: I dare say you could take any sector and go back five or 10 years and there were more people employed then than now. That is simple reality of technology replacing people. But had we not done the aggressive things to promote exploration in the mining sector, think how bad it would be today as per I read in the Globe and Mail a day or two ago where the mining companies had had a meeting in B.C. and they are moving to Chile, moving out of B.C. to Chile simply because of a lot of concerns, maybe concerns of the potential outcome of the election there. They think that is not a place to invest their capital, not a place to do their exploration. They feel Chile is better, and B.C. has such a tremendous potential in the mining industry.

I know when we were bringing in our incentive programs for exploration, and this is something we should not be talking about here, but now that you bring it up, I have to mention it, there were a lot of companies saying, we are getting out of B.C. because of the climate, and Manitoba is a great place to explore. So we have more jobs today than we would had had we stood still. Yes, it is not as many as before but that is nothing new. Every sector is in that category. You just look in the trucking industry and the length of trucks today and the efficiency of those trucks. Probably one man can truck as much today as three did 15 years ago. It is just a change in the industry. It is just a reality.

Mr. Jennissen: A last comment and that is that I am very happy that mining is doing well in northern Manitoba, and I am sure that the government had something to do with it. But equally on high base mineral prices and new technology, and I will just mention the spectrum airplane being used by companies such as HBM&S.

They have done some fabulous stuff, but at the same time, when you do have a deposit like, let us say, Photo Lake in mining deposit, they are talking about automating that mine to the point where only four or five people are working, so it is not a great creator of jobs, but we are certainly happy that it is there.

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Mr. Findlay: But the minute that you take some product out of the ground and it does not matter how many people taste it, it has to be processed, it has to be transported, it has to be further utilized, so there is an unbelievable spinoff, but I say, as long as man has got this grey matter here, he is going to keep making things more efficient as everybody is in an industrial economy that tries to achieve maximum economic efficiency. We have done well as a country, but, boy, if we stand still we are falling behind and I think in the transportation sector here in Manitoba.

All the players have been aggressive over the course of time and the department has to be aggressive in ensuring that the services we deliver are as cost-efficient as possible, as they are through in the strategic planning process. That challenge is there constantly, be more responsible, more efficient, get out of doing things that are no longer serving any useful purpose, but get more aggressive in the things that can help us expand what we are doing, and bring those opportunities like WINNPORT here or like allowing the trucks to access the mines that are necessary in the future in the North. That is just a reality. We just must respond to challenge those opportunities just in the future.

I can tell the member quite honestly, no Minister of Transportation in this province in the next 20 years is ever going to have enough money to meet all the needs. That is a very safe statement. Unfortunate, but probably 10 years ago he did not have either; but he did not understand how bad it would be 10 years later.

Mr. Jennissen: I am quite aware of that, Mr. Minister. I just want a quarter of that budget up North, that is all, whatever the budget is.

Mr. Findlay: As I meet with all the different regions everybody says, spend more money. They just take it out of the other person's region, and my constant statement is, cannot, will not do that.

Everybody has to get some of the benefit and share a bit of the pain, so we will do a little bit, little bit, every region, and the member says based on population. Really, we base a lot on road miles, miles driven, that sort of thing. It is not a precise science, but I will never take all from one region and put it all in another. If you take 25 percent in the North, I ask you, where are you going to take it from? I know right away. It is all through the south, and you are really going to short their ability to respond to the economic opportunities, so it is a balancing act. If you ever got to be in this position, you would find that statement would be very difficult to live up to, very difficult.

Mr. Jennissen: I would like to get away from the possibility of things I may have to live up to someday, but we will hurry onto a different topic.

The provincial gravel initiatives, I know my honourable colleague for Interlake (Mr. Clif Evans) has a number of questions on that. He cannot be here with us this afternoon, but I would like to ask of you myself. The first question is, according to the Keystone Municipal News, spring 1996, of the approximately 70 municipalities, only 28 have agreed to enter into contracts with the government regarding the maintenance of gravel roads, and of these 20, 12 were conditional. What is the department's proposal now regarding the gravel road initiative seeing that most municipalities are not willing to participate?

Mr. Findlay: This initiative came out of a broad desire to find out if there was a way to be more cost-effective in the way we did things. If you look across the province, particularly southern Manitoba which I am more familiar with and I think it is 116 municipalities and 12 LGDs, everyone of those have equipment to handle their roads for maintenance. They drag the roads in the summertime, and they plow snow in the winter. At the same time, we have roads running throughout all those same jurisdictions and we have dragged the roads, dragged the gravel in the summertime and we plowed the snow in the winter. So, theoretically, there is no question there is a duplication of equipment out there.

Municipalities had over the course of time been saying to me, we can do it for a portion of the cost, or, we are deadheading down there, we may as well be doing your roads as ours. We have had a lot of different contracts with the municipalities, I think 80 or 90 subcontracts, large and small, various portions on bits and pieces of road where we hire them to do work. So given all these requests and challenges from different municipalities at different points--and the member said if they could do it more cost-effectively, let us find out.

The department under Barry Tinkler, acting ADM, went out and had a series of meetings. You had a number of, what, seven regional meetings with different groups and municipalities to explain conceptually what we wanted to talk about and that was that they would do the winter and summer maintenance, apply the gravel, do a bit of the other auxiliary activities. We would always own the road and always be responsible for capital upgrading of the road.

After that series of meetings, a further meeting was held with the UMM executive. I guess there had been at least one more previous meeting with the UMM executive, altered and polished up the offer and then sent a letter to every municipality saying, here are the roads that are in your jurisdiction, here is the average three-year cost of maintenance of those roads, and given that we expect you to be more cost-effective in certain regards--I think you paid 100 percent for the gravel component and a different percent for other components, but the overall average was that the offer was about 90 percent of our cost.

Clearly, if we are going to do this initiative, we have to save some money, so that there is more money for additional maintenance elsewhere or for capital. We said, if we can save some money here we will have to put more on the capital side, which is something they really want, and as the member opposite also wants. So the offer went out on 90 percent. Well, really the municipalities really started to look at their costs then. Some who were saying, huh, you are so expensive we can do it cheaper, started to realize what their costs really were. They had to sit down and make a decision as to whether they could accept this proposal to take over this, the provincial gravel road maintenance component, or not. We said, we explore, put it out in front of you, you say yes or no. So the responses have been coming back in, some saying yes, some saying no.

That process is still going on. We are not negotiating side agreements with anybody. It has been clear and simple. It is as it is laid out, no special deals added on the side, because that is just not fair to everybody else. We will see how many we can accept and how many we will look for other ways to save money in the delivery of those services, because there is also, no question, there is a private sector out there, large contractors, a whole variety of small contractors in all the communities who have the same equipment, and, again, who in certain cases we do business with on different kinds of contracts all over the province.

So our drive here is to find more cost-effective ways as I described in our strategic planning process, more cost-effective ways to get the job done, and the municipalities have been given the first option to say no, and clearly some are saying no. Some, I said earlier, who said, oh, yes that is great, we will do it, and then when they started looking at the numbers found that the costs were a little higher than they had conceptually thought previously.

So we helped them in their accounting process, if nothing else, and we had not made any decisions as to how we will respond because we had said a start-up time would be, at earliest, the fall in November 1 of '96 or January 1 of '97, so there is some time yet to figure out whether it will work. But we are looking at more cost-effectiveness, which everybody, I am sure, is in support of.

Mr. Jennissen: I did talk with some of the reeves and people involved with, you know, possibly getting involved with the provincial gravel road initiatives. One of their concerns was that you were offering them 92 percent of the total cost. They thought, well, if it is costing you 100 percent and you just want to offload it, in a sense, why do we not get 100 percent? I guess you do not save anything that way, but their argument is if it costs you 100 percent, why do we have to take 90 percent or 92 percent? I think you have answered that partially.

Mr. Findlay: We are in this initiative to save money, pure and simple. Absolutely have to, and I said earlier, all the challengers came to me, well, let us do it, we are cheaper, we can do it for half your cost, two-thirds your cost. I heard those statements so regularly, I said, time to put the challenge out. So, I said, now we have put it out and they have responded as they see fit. I mean, all we are trying to do is find more cost-effective ways. We have no magic wand. We are not offloading anything. If they accept it as an economic opportunity in their community or their municipality, so be it. If they choose not to, so be it.

We are searching for ways, and there is no magic here. It is just a matter of trying to work together, and the department has had incredible hours of meetings with municipalities. I think over the course it has definitely improved the liaison and the understanding between us and them, and that you cannot measure in dollars, but it has been a positive consultation process. But nobody is going to be asked to do something they do not want to do.

Mr. Jennissen: I do have a concern though in the sense that being cost-effective maybe, you know, does work for the department up to a point. It is cost-effective but not necessarily good in terms of quality of service, and I am just sort of postulating the possibility that some private contractor, let us say, removing snow and they are half a foot above the ground level. They are high-blading. Sure it is costing you less money than if you had done the job properly, but this person is also making money because they are not wearing the blade out. They are out to make a buck. So how do you check that? How do you know you are going to get quality of service?

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Mr. Findlay: Well, Mr. Chairman, in terms of doing a contract with anybody in the private sector, there are always very specific specifications laid down which they must live up to, and there are penalties if they do not live up to them. We do it costly in all our capital projects, whether it is grading or gravelling or paving or whatever it is. We lay out specs and they have to meet those specs; otherwise, there are penalties. The same would be done on this kind of a contract. I mean, we have a number of those contracts now that they do. Sometimes when there is a big storm, you need additional equipment. Other times there is just a piece of road that because of the department's strategy, it is more efficient to hire somebody to do it, wherever it is located.

There are a lot of good contractors out there. They are humans like us. They are Manitobans. They feel responsible because they know if they do a bad job on this contract, they are not likely to have a chance the next time. So there is a driving force out there in the private sector that makes them do a very good job, because there is a serious consequence if they do not do a good job, job after job, year after year. There is no question about that. That is how the marketplace works.

When you call tenders, I mean I get the constant argument that they are bidding at cost, period. There is no plus in the contracts anymore because it is kind of lean out there, and we are getting good prices for our projects, and that would apply in this case too.

Mr. Jennissen: Some municipalities feel that the gravel roads in question are already poorly maintained, and they have no interest in inheriting existing problems, at least that is what some of the municipalities told me, some of the reeves and so on, or taking on future problems.

Would municipalities receive a higher compensation for maintaining gravel roads that would be used extensively? Let us say if Louisiana-Pacific were to use that road extensively, would there be a built-in incentive to pay them more?

Mr. Findlay: Earlier when I mentioned to the member how the price was struck, the department took the various roads--I do not know how many categories there were, but there are different levels of use.

The levels of use is where there are trucks, there are cars, or how many vehicles per day, that kind of stuff, was translated into a maintenance guideline which you mentioned, graded it so many times, or the history had been that you spent so many dollars on snowplowing on this road, and all that was calculated over a three-year basis. The third year was 1995-96, so it is very current. That is how we calculated our cost, how the department calculated the cost, the amount of money spent on a very bad road, depending on use, and I guess to some degree, the quality of the road, which, you know, poorer quality of roads required higher maintenance.

That was all reflected in the figures that each municipality got, and they will find different figures for different roads with respect to the degree of maintenance that was necessary to keep it up to an acceptable norm. I know municipalities do exactly the same on their own. They grade the roads of higher use more often than they grade the roads of low use. They add more gravel to the roads of higher use than the roads of low use, and that is just the way you operate.

Mr. Jennissen: Does the minister then in the future foresee sort of a hybrid system in which some of the roads will still be handled by the department, some of the gravel roads, some by municipalities and some by private contractors? Is that what we are looking at, say, in a couple of years down the road?

Mr. Findlay: I cannot comment, you know, because I would be speculating, but we have gone through an initiative to see what the municipalities felt they could do. We have the responses back now. We will continue to find the most cost-effective way, whether it is utilizing the private sector more or whether it is the department, those are analyses that will continue. What the conclusion of those analyses are would be prejudging, and I do not want to prejudge, but our mission is maximum quality of maintenance for the lowest dollar, so that we can have the most dollars left over at the end of the day for the capital side of our department's initiatives.

Mr. Jennissen: Some of the reasons the councillors that I have talked to seemed to feel that this gravel road initiative was a thin edge of the wedge that will ultimately lead to privatized highway maintenance programs. I do not know if it is true or not, but if it should be true or if that is the direction we are going, I would ask the minister and his staff if they have read the preliminary report about that program as it exists in B.C. as submitted by Burton, Parks, McCullough, Ernst &Young and Harvey. That report points out that in B.C. privatization was not cost-effective and was ideologically driven.

Mr. Findlay: I can only restate what I have already said, that we are looking for greater cost efficiency. Whether there are other service providers with equipment that can do it more cost-effectively than us, we should not say no to those alternatives. We have given the municipalities first crack. It is not offloading on them in any respect.

That is not our intention nor will it be our intention, but we will look for the most cost-effective way on an ongoing basis. We will pay attention to what anybody else has done to learn from what they have done. We will naturally want to plug from those locations that have done things, what works and what does not work, so we will go at it carefully and effectively to be sure that our roads are maintained to the best possible standard in the province of Manitoba.

Mr. Jennissen: So what the minister is saying then, he is entirely driven by pragmatics and there is never any ideological component to any of this. Just if you save a buck, you do it. If that is the case, then you might as well save a buck at one level, but there may be tremendous damage at another level. I am trying to go back to Aides 2 again. It might be okay for you up here, yes, and will things balance, things fit, but the structural damage you do to a family or to a worker laid off, or to a community where this person no longer lives, that is another factor that cannot be ignored, I would assume.

Mr. Findlay: This is exceptionally pragmatic. It has nothing to do with ideology whatsoever. If we want to talk ideology, I am maybe on the opposite side to the member without doubt because he talks about the impact on the family of the worker. I talk about if we have to go out there and increase taxes, think of the impact on all the people who are working in terms of taking money out of their pockets. We are looking for a balance to minimize the resources we have to take out of the working people's pockets and maximizing our delivery of services in the most cost-effective way, and it is exceptionally pragmatic. We are looking for cost-effective.

I am not going to guarantee that everything we try will work perfectly, but I will tell you, if you try nothing, you are going to lose big time over the course of time. You must look at more effective innovative ways. If people challenge me they can do things better, maybe I will call their bluff, and I think in this case we have, trying to find if there is a more cost-effective way. They have responded as they see fit and more power to them. I think most of them understand their costs more effectively now and are probably less likely to criticize us in terms of our cost in the future than they have in the past.

We will, in a pragmatic sense, continue to move on to be sure we give an adequate level of service and maintenance and capital upgrading of our roads within the existing envelope of dollars that is available to us, and we will not go out and take more taxes out of people's pockets to achieve these. We will work within our envelope as eight out of 10 governments in this country are doing today, regardless of political stripe.

Mr. Jennissen: I was just hoping that we were never going to get to that slippery slope which eventually leads to the kind of stuff that Grant Devine was doing in Saskatchewan, where the public machinery for building roads was being sold off--I do not know, Mr. Horosko would know more about it than I do, I am sure--for a quarter million dollars to some friends, I believe. Those are the end results sometimes of sort of edging towards that privatization direction and that concerns me.

Mr. Findlay: In terms of the Department of Highways, the major activity they are involved in is the capital component, and the capital is all tendered to the private sector and it has worked very, very well. We have the standards, we have the specs, and we will be sure that the contractors in their bidding know them and when they build the road or pave the road or gravel the road or whatever that they abide by those specs.

It has been a very effective system, very cost-effective. It is done elsewhere too, of course. I think it is probably done in every province across this country, the capital is done by the private sector. It has worked well. The private sector employs people, pays them well and they always want more work from us, but the member is opposed to the private sector and I think the private sector is the driving engine of this province.

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Mr. Jennissen: I would not go as far as to say that I am opposed to private sector, I just think there are some rules and regulations that have to protect the ordinary consumer, the ordinary person in the province. If we are totally ideological and let the private sector make all the decisions and the government intervenes not at all or takes the attitude that the least intervention is the best, then sometimes we lead to situations that create two-tiered systems, one for the rich and one for the poor and that is what I am trying to avoid.

So basically it is not that I am against the private sector at all, I just want us to be always democratic and not simply say, well, economic forces make us slide a certain way, but the end result of that slide is some pretty harsh and undemocratic systems. I am not suggesting we are there, but I just caution the minister that sometimes we can be gently pushed in that direction.

Mr. Findlay: In this province we have a very good balance between regulation and freedom, and that is why we have labour laws, we have, you know, our construction guidelines, our tendering specs. It is the balance. There is no such thing as total freedom and anybody can do whatever they want. That is why we have laws, why we have police to enforce those laws; we have a number of people in the department here to enforce safety regulations. It is an ongoing balance. We clearly work towards that balance, and nothing we are doing here will alter that balance.

Our mission is cost-effectiveness and to be sure that there are people out there working. The downside to increasing taxation, which the member would have to do to meet his objectives, is you steal jobs away from people. As an employer who currently employs 40 people, if you increase his taxes, he may be down to 38 people or 35 people, so that is the negative impact of taking more taxes from somebody who is a job creator.

Mr. Jennissen: I would like to go on to the next section which is the section on the used vehicle inspection program and truck safety. I know already from the outset that the minister and I will probably not see eye to eye on this one, but it is definitely one that we are going to have to deal with.

Mr. Findlay: Let us park it then, let us park it.

Mr. Jennissen: Since it is one that I get most of my correspondence on, I would feel I was letting down those letter writers if I were to “park” this issue. So I will start somewhat provocatively right at the beginning by asking the minister, given that there is an inherent conflict of interest when the garage inspecting the used vehicle is also, because of the $40 fee, likely to be the garage to be fixing the vehicle and certifying the vehicles as safe, how is this protecting the consumer?

Mr. Findlay: How does it affect the consumer?

Mr. Jennissen: How does it protect?

Mr. Findlay: Oh, protect. The consumer is a pedestrian, a citizen, a driver of a vehicle. If he is purchasing a vehicle from the broad context of citizen interest, our mission, and it is fair to say the mission of many provinces across this country, is to ensure that the vehicles out on the roads are as safe as possible. The member is fully aware of public concern of big trucks on the road, and we employ a lot of safety inspection standards there. Over the course of time, we have gone from big trucks down to medium-sized trucks, to smaller trucks, now down to cars to try to maximize a degree of safety of those vehicles on our roads. So in terms of protecting the public, improved safety does protect the public.

What we have, in the broad sense, going on, or had going on, is that Autopac had a random inspection process. It may have inspected 25,000 vehicles a year and only in Winnipeg. This will inspect all vehicles that are changing ownership because if you are going to re-register a vehicle, you have to have this inspection certificate. Certainly, we are going to be in the vicinity of 150,000 to 200,000 vehicles inspected per year, which means an awful lot more vehicles have been inspected. I can also guarantee the member a lot of vehicles will never reach that position because those previously sold will not be sold anymore because they are called junkers. The seller and the buyer are not going to come to any agreement because the costs of repair are too high, so the junkers come off the road. Plus, if we do not act in terms of some kind of program in the province here, junkers from other jurisdictions are going to come in here for registration. We will be the dumping ground for the junkers to be registered here.

So this program protects the purchaser in a very broad sense. He will have a safer vehicle, and the member talks about the vested interest of the garage inspecting. We took measures to ensure that the customer gets the inspection done in the garage. He can take it to another garage to get the repair work done so the garage doing the inspecting has no guarantee of the work whatsoever.

Just for the member's comfort, the degree of inspection in terms of variances, there was over and underinspection. The member automatically assumes they will overinspect. It was not the truth. They were over and underinspecting in terms of the variance and the department certified all these stations, some 800 all over the province, so that consumers had good access everywhere in the province for inspection. They will continue to work with those garages to be sure that we narrow the degree of variance. It is being done everywhere in the country. We absolutely had to respond.

There is no sense of setting up a whole series of bureaucracy in inspection stations when already the private sector has all the equipment, garages, and they are exceptionally responsible people too. So we have improved safety in the very broadest sense for the consumer.

Just another sidebar, the member is aware that there were lots of vehicles that were being restored, rebuilt, repaired on the corner lots, could go get registered without any requirement for safety. That unsuspecting customer could get the real junker and face a bill of $1,000 or $2,000 just down the road to protect his family. The brakes were bad, the tires were bad, the steering rods are bad or whatever else, so we have significantly improved the safety of that vehicle for the person buying and for the rest of the people on the road and the pedestrians in terms of that vehicle losing control and causing an accident.

For $40, it is a tremendous investment in safety, and the handbook that is being used here is very similar to the one being used in places like Saskatchewan and B.C.

Mr. Jennissen: At the same time though, Mr. Minister, when you say that it only cost $40, if you do want to get a second opinion or a third or a fourth, that will cost you another $40 each time, so the person buying a used car probably is not exactly flush with money to start with. There are still a series of concerns. I am sure you have seen the buyer beware program.

Mr. Findlay: If you are buying a car, you should only buy it when that seller has supplied that certificate.

Mr. Jennissen: And garage A says, I want 600 bucks, and garage B says 100 bucks--

Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. I would remind the honourable members of this committee that any remarks or comments that are being given back and forth, that they do so through the Chair.

Mr. Jennissen: I was just reminding the minister that if I am to sell a used car and I am not happy with what garage A says, then I go to garage B, which will charge me another $40, or garage C, which will charge me another $40, and according to the program that we did see, buyer beware, the variance could be up to 600 bucks. That does not sound like a good deal for the average person.

Mr. Findlay: The member identified, we will agree to disagree on this. I feel that I want the citizens of Manitoba to have an assurance that they are mechanically safe from a safety point of view, mechanically safe vehicles out on the road. The member is an advocate that there should be no inspections, there should be no safeties done, and we will become a dumping ground and there will be a lot of junkers that are now off the road that will come back on the road here and they will pour in from all over the place, the U.S., east and west, pouring in here.

Then he will be crying about why we are not doing anything to protect the drivers and buyers of vehicles. You just cannot have it both ways here. We are promoting safety as every other jurisdiction is doing to combat what was going on, corner lot, backyard, fixing up vehicles and selling them, certainly taking some people for a ride in certain processes in terms of not having a safe vehicle, preventing and dumping of the junkers in the province and got the junkers off the road all in one swoop. That is an incredible record of improving safety.

Our mission is to improve safety. The Motor Dealers Association also wants to have a record of maximizing and improving safety, and they are full score behind us. The member can argue about glitches. We worked hard to solve those glitches but, at the end of the day, I guarantee you safer vehicles on the road and a greater degree of buyer comfort in buying cars if that vehicle meets certain minimum safety standards.

We know everything wears out over the course of time, but for a period of time after he buys it--I think our safety is good for two years--that person is in a good position. In Ontario, I think your safety is good for 30 days, so if you want to sell a car 45 days after you have your safety certificate in Ontario you had to have another one. Here we have a two-year window.

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We have looked at other jurisdictions and what they have done and we feel, in all fairness, this is the best way to go. I would have to think that this Ontario one was there during the five years of Bob Rae's administration or it was brought in during his period, one or the other. So it does not matter what political stripe. He also mentions Saskatchewan and B.C., both NDP governments, recognizing the same thing.

We must move to protect citizens, buyers and travellers on the road from unsafe vehicles. Clearly they are out there. They are around. There are people wanting to sell them to unsuspecting buyers, and the Motor Dealers Association I think are responsible people, that they want also to have a good representation that the vehicles on the road are safe and safe for everybody.

Mr. Jennissen: The honourable minister has certainly opened up a can of worms, because there is a lot of stuff there that I do not agree with. First of all, let us clarify the record in the sense that I am not against inspection. I do not think anybody is against the motherhood statement, we want safer cars on the road. We all want safer cars on the road, but I would just remind the minister that statistics seem to indicate that if you are talking about mechanical safety, less than 2 percent, I think it is 1.2 percent, of accidents are caused by mechanical defect. We cannot pretend that this is a massive panacea for everything because it is obviously not going to be.

The critics of this program say it is the Bob Kozminski bill. It was done as a sop to the industry. Now, they may be wrong but that is what I am hearing from a number of people.

The feeling is out there that there could have been a different system, that the conflict of interest that now exists could have been avoided if we had centralized inspections. Now I know we probably did not have the money at the time or did not have the machinery, but that could have been financed and could have been financed with the photo-licensing system. In other words, we could have removed the problem area, which is the person doing the inspecting is probably likely to be the person doing the fixing, and I think that creates the potential for gouging.

We could have removed that, and right now that is there. That is what the public sees. I get letters, it is not my own imagination, I get a number of letters, not just from angry used-car buyers, but also from mechanics who say, you know, this garage or such garage is ripping off consumers, ripping off customers. So I think there are problems with it, there is no doubt about it in my mind.

Mr. Findlay: I wanted to again remind the member that wherever there are difficulties and problems, the department, DDVL particularly, will work aggressively to be sure it works to the best of human capability. The member mentions 1.2 percent of accidents caused by mechanical defects.

I would like to ask the member if he knows of any case where an accident happened that the RCMP or the police inspecting did any kind of analysis to determine whether it was a mechanical failure, because the 1.2 percent the member mentions is self-declared. I do not think the member would argue with the fact that if you have poor braking power, it is going to take you longer to stop and you will be apt to hit the tree or that car or that pedestrian. There is no question about that. I mean, engineering, common sense all tells you, if you have poor brakes you cannot stop fast enough. You will rear-end somebody or kill somebody or yourself.

So one of the major elements of this is braking capability, and if you have old worn out brakes and you run into the back end of somebody, who goes to check the brakes of the offending vehicle? Nobody. So he should not stake his claim on that statistic. It is not representative or factual, nor do we ever have the resources to go check all the vehicles. If the car is smashed and half of it is gone, how are you going to tell what was the faulty part? You cannot.

I do not think you would find anybody that would argue that improving the quality of brakes, steering, tie rods and a number of other components, nobody will argue that that does not improve the safety of that vehicle for that driver, that owner and the rest of the citizens on the road. No question about it. We may differ on the mechanics to how to get it done. We have 800 garages inspected, sorry, certified to do the inspections. The vast majority are capable, responsible and there are some growing pains. We are working our way through it. I do not think there is any other jurisdiction that has a ghost car program.

Then suddenly some people felt, whoa, that was pretty tough on us to do a ghost car, but I tell you, we are getting the desired result. They will do a better and better job. The people that did a good job got good commendations, and there are a lot of good people out there. We have got to pick off the people who are not doing a good job. We are working to continually pick them off, again, for consumer and customer confidence.

Again, the automobile dealers’ association, people like that, are full score behind it. We must continue to have safer vehicles and give the public a perception that they are accountable and responsible, and those who are not get suspended. Over the course of time, we will definitely have safer vehicles on the road. There is no doubt in my mind about it.

We may disagree on process here, but this was the most cost-effective way to get it up and running. The member’s idea that we have an inspection station in Brandon and two or three in Winnipeg, government-run, well, what about the person who lives in Melita or Killarney? Does he have to drive 50 miles? And he cannot get it registered until he gets it there, until he gets the inspection, sorry. Tremendous inconvenience for the majority of citizens. If the inspection station in the North is in Thompson, what are your citizens in Flin Flon going to do? A terrible inconvenience.

You have garages right in town with all the equipment and training to get the job done. We will certify the garages to do it as we certify a vast variety of garages and trucking companies to do the inspections on their trucks. I tell you, the transportation people believe in safety in the trucking industry. We have to now move that concept into private citizens’ cars and small trucks and we are doing that, because if we did not we would become a dumping ground for the junkers. The member will have us reflect on what would happen if we just stood still over the last two years in that respect. There are people out there trying to make a buck with junkers, looking for a place to get them registered. Once you get them registered you are licensed to rip off the public. We are preventing that here in Manitoba as they are in many jurisdictions.

Mr. Jennissen: But at the same time the minister would admit he is handing the garages also sort of a golden opportunity, at least some of the more less scrupulous ones, a chance to make money that they would perhaps not otherwise have made. I am in favour of the random, mandatory inspection because that way you have an equal chance of hitting any given car over a certain age. This way, if I have a used car and I do not sell it, who is going to compel me to actually have an inspection?

Mr. Findlay: Well, if the RCMP stop you on the road and find certain serious faults, under The Highway Traffic Act they will give you a ticket. Then you cannot take that back on the road until you have fixed it. It is your own life you are putting at risk here. I mean, there is a certain onus on people. We will be sure that when the onus moves from you as the driver of that vehicle, and you want to sell it and somebody else is going to drive it, that buyer is protected from the standpoint of the general safety of that vehicle.

That is the extreme difference between you keeping it forever, and, boy, if you get involved in an accident and somebody does decide to, well, maybe even Autopac, pursue that you had terribly bad brakes, I think you have got a problem on your hands. So there is an onus on you as a citizen to keep your unit in decent repair, and there are certain things laid out in The Highway Traffic Act that can be used by the law enforcement agencies, and they do on certain occasions and times.

Mr. Jennissen: Since I received numerous letters from used car owners saying that they are being gouged by people doing the inspecting, what more is the minister prepared to do to protect used car owners? Also, how many consumers will get refunds from all those who have been ripped off by the program, and what will happen to consumers who had repairs at the garages that were suspended?

Mr. Findlay: From a seller or a buyer's point of view, you are getting a certificate and you are going to get your $40 inspection, and let us assume there is a list of things you have to do. You can take it home and do it, take it to a garage and have it done. I think the member talked about rip-offs or whatever. I mean, the department will respond and has responded to many enquiries of people that feel they are in that category, and we have identified the telephone number, and the department has responded to many concerns to be sure that we can do as best a job we can to be sure that there are not, you know, real rip-offs happening.

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If you go to a garage and somebody says you have to have the brakes done and they do not meet the spec, that should happen in every garage. It may cost you a few hundred dollars to get the brakes done, but, by gosh, for the public interest, those brakes better be up to spec or that car should not be registered so that it can come back on the road.

Mr. Jennissen: Is the percentage correct that was mentioned by one of the local newspapers, I think it was the Free Press, that out of the 800 garages, X number were being inspected by your department and, out of that, 15 percent were found to be remiss, either they were suspended or had their licence revoked for certifying used cars? Is that percentage correct?

Mr. Findlay: In the ghost car program, which I think the member is referring to, 128 stations in Winnipeg were evaluated with the ghost car. Three stations out of the 128 were decertified because of serious variations, plus and minus, that is over and underinspection, and three-month suspensions were issued to 16 stations, and they can get recertified if they take a retraining course, and that three months can be shortened up if they take the retraining which is provided by our people. So the idea is to improve the quality of their work in the suspended ones. Warnings were issued to 59 stations, satisfactory to 36 stations and commendations to 14 stations.

As I say, I am not aware of any other province to have the courage to do that, to send a clear signal to garages and the consumers that we are after increased excellence in this process of inspection.

Mr. Jennissen: Is the minister saying then that 14 garages were working beyond and above the call of duty, so to speak, out of 128?

Mr. Findlay: In terms of satisfactory and commendations we are talking about 40 stations. Satisfactory is good, and commendations is exceptional.

Mr. Jennissen: So we are talking about more than just a few glitches. We are talking about, you know, that a lot of the garages still have to improve.

Mr. Findlay: We are talking about over and under variations, and the garages say, well, you know, you have the book, you have the inspection manual. It is multipaged, and you have a lot of things to check. We are sending a signal to them, you better check very carefully. Some are saying, well, you know, if I measure here or measure there on the brakes, it is a difference. But follow the manual, that is the clear message, follow the manual. Training had been offered along the way, and training is being offered now. An ongoing response to citizens' complaints also will allow our people to deal with certain garages and try to continually improve the outcomes to improve safety on the roads.

Mr. Jennissen: I believe two of the garages were decertified or suspended and later it was discovered that mistakes were made. Could you elaborate on that? Like, what would have happened there?

Mr. Findlay: The inspection form is something like this, Mr. Chairman. It has a lot of categories, and the staffperson who read it did a misreading, and the two garages involved had actually identified things that they had been recorded as not identifying. So there was an error made in the assessment of the form by staff.

As I say, there are a lot of categories there, and on quick reading somebody makes an extra little mark that, you know, was not there, you have to look, yes, he marked the right thing, but it was just across the line. That was the variation, and it is unfortunate that happened. But as soon as staff had identified that there had been a mistake made in those two cases, they then moved them from a suspension category to a warning category, and they were quickly recertified.

Mistakes happen, unfortunately, but mistakes happen. I can assure you the staff is going to be very sure that those kinds of errors do not happen again.

Mr. Jennissen: Did the garages pursue this any further? Could they possibly sue the department, or was this sort of amicably resolved?

Mr. Findlay: I think the member can appreciate why the garages are upset, as anybody would be. We offered to put ads in the paper for them to identify that they were not in the suspended category and that sort of thing. At this point nobody has sued us. Neither of them has. After a few days, I think business gets back to usual, and maybe they understand, well, I am better off to keep on working here and have my shingle back up again as opposed to pursuing the legal route. Clearly, we have an opinion that we are not liable in this case, but it is unfortunate for both those garages. Yes, they were upset in the beginning, but things happen. Life goes on.

Mr. Jennissen: Was Mr. Hrabinski's redeployment connected to this?

Mr. Findlay: In the course of senior executives managing the department, they chose that that was an appropriate thing to do at this point in time for all involved.

Mr. Jennissen: You do not feel that he was being made the whipping boy for, perhaps, faults in the program itself.

Mr. Findlay: As a minister, no. I do not think it is fair or appropriate to discuss personnel matters, maybe in a broader context.

Mr. Jennissen: I agree with the minister. It was a grey area that I really did not want to proceed in, but on the other hand I do not want to see any worker being blamed for something that is perhaps not their fault, or any administrator, for that matter. So I will not pursue that any further, and I thank the minister for the information that he has given me.

Back to the main point, though. Even if we did eliminate Autopac write-offs from being bought as normal used cars by unsuspecting buyers, how does the minister propose to limit the numerous write-offs from other provinces, specifically Quebec, from entering the province, because that appears to be an ongoing problem?

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Mr. Findlay: Clearly, that is true. Write-offs that get fixed and get into a position of being registered are a major concern. Through CCMTA, Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators, a proposal has been worked up which would have them identified right across the country, so that a write-off in Quebec would not show up in Manitoba without some notification when it arrived. For that to work, for that proposal to work, every province or the vast majority of provinces must participate. That process, the department staff here and other jurisdictions are actively working on trying to get that nationwide CCMTA policy on write-offs in place in Canada. So that is being aggressively pursued because, again, it is another step forward in improving safety and consumer protection for people who move these kinds of vehicles around the country looking for some place to market them.

Mr. Jennissen: I am not sure of this , but I would like to ask the question anyway. A vehicle coming from another province, let us say Quebec, could we not, as we have in Manitoba, make it mandatory that there must be a total loss inspection? I mean, is that even on the books when it comes to an outside vehicle?

Mr. Findlay: I do not just totally remember what the question was, but I just want to say that, in terms of the CCMTA proposal, the department personnel actually met just a week or 10 days ago in Regina to further develop the concept. There are certain costs associated with implementing this in every province across the country. Everybody has gone back home with the idea of trying to find a way to program the costs and do the further work as necessary to institute this record exchange right across the country. To be effective, as I said earlier, every jurisdiction has to be in. They have a process that clearly identifies these vehicles physically and in the record exchange process.

Mr. Jennissen: Since one in every five used vehicles sold in Manitoba has been written off elsewhere, is there not merit in the idea of a titling system, like a vehicle passport, requiring all vehicles to carry a certificate of ownership that would travel with the vehicle and, if it is a write-off, the passport is destroyed?

Mr. Findlay: If I understand it right, over the course of time, when this full registry is in place, all jurisdictions right across the country will be able to identify the history of that vehicle in a cradle-to-grave process so that any purchaser down the road would have knowledge of where and when it might have been a write-off. Obviously, if you are a purchaser, you would want to be darn sure that it had certain certificates. So, in a fashion, that is the certificate the member is asking about, that follows that vehicle. Our ownership document now goes with the vehicle. That came in amendments we did in '95 in the province of Manitoba.

The broad context is that we get something like that that follows that vehicle on a national basis. That is what CCMTA is working towards.

Mr. Jennissen: I would not want it to be an all-or-nothing kind of a thing like we are waiting for everybody else to join us. I think some states and some provinces already have this certificate of ownership that travels with the vehicle. I think Manitoba could certainly also follow that pattern. Otherwise, it seems like we are waiting till everybody says yes, and that could be a hundred years from now.

Mr. Findlay: I do not think the member is very accurate. He says you have to wait a hundred years. The staff of our department and the other jurisdictions are working aggressively to be sure that what is in place fits all the criteria and meets all the needs for citizens, for myself, and for the member opposite. There are two provinces, Quebec and B.C., that have probably a head start in terms of doing this process, and now we are trying to get all the rest of the provinces in. They met in Regina a week or 10 days ago and also talked about a North American process, as well as just a Canadian process. I think that is constructive, because vehicles move across the border too, more freely now than ever before. So it is coming. I guess we would hope that in the next fiscal year it is here for consumer protection in the very broadest sense.

Mr. Jennissen: I thank the minister for that answer. I would like to go on now to truck safety, the large rigs on the road. Road Check '95 found that 59 trucks out of 116 in Manitoba should not have been on the road. That was 36.6 percent. I think it was the third worst record in Canada actually last year.

Has the department taken steps to improve this dangerous situation?

Mr. Findlay: Well, the member refers to a statistic collected in a CVSA program that is done North America-wide every year, where it picks a point, stops trucks, does random inspections. I think the member is doing the same thing the media did. They took those results way out of context. He says, 35 percent were identified that should not be on the road. What he fails to recognize, and what I said in the House and I said to the media, is that 90 percent of those vehicles, 90 percent of that 36 percent were roadside repairable. It was doing a select adjustment on the brakes. There is a means by which they can adjust and turn up the brakes. Light replacement, they can do it there because they have got spare lights with them, and tires, they have spare tires. I mean they can be made so-called roadworthy again right on the side of the road, over 90 percent.

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At first blush, those figures look scary. You know, not long before that some dual tires had come off trucks in Toronto and I think one person at least was killed in that. That is serious stuff. These results were interpreted as these vehicles were going to instantly cause an accident. I think the member has to look at the statistics of accident-causing. If you take the number of accidents involving cars, the number of accidents per thousands involving big trucks, cars cause accidents at three times the rate of big trucks in terms of actual statistics of being involved in accidents. That is a clear reflection of the operational capability of those trucks, which is the real judgment of safety.

You have to really look at what happens to those trucks out there. There are strict semiannual inspection requirements on these vehicles. They have to have the certification stickers in place, they have to do pretrip inspections and if they are ever stopped, and these sort of things, all the components have got to be up to snuff. These vehicles run long hours, steady miles, and these roadside inspections do put an onus on the company and the driver to do all the right things.

I think we have a very good record in terms of accidents caused when big trucks cause accidents at a third of the rate per thousand units as cars do. That is a pretty good record at the end of the day, but we are ever diligent and make sure, working with the industry on an ongoing basis, to understand the value of safety.

I will tell you, the industry also believes that safety is their number one item, and they have got to constantly give the public a perception of safety and that they respect it, not only the owners of the units but the drivers of those units too. There are more and more of them on the road on a continuous basis and today's trucks are mechanically more capable than the trucks of 20 years ago too, but those inspections must continually be done.

That statistic the member mentioned, I am trying to put it in context to what it really meant. A driver could do the repairs on the roadside in over 90 percent of those cases, which is pretty decent.

Mr. Jennissen: I just want to remind the minister that those statistics did come from a magazine, the national magazine for truckers and for heavy industry, so it was not like it was an antitrucking figure that came out of that.

Mr. Findlay: But clearly the interpretation the media gave it here was an antitrucking concept. These things should be off the road, they are a danger out there, they are time bombs waiting to cause big accidents, and we say, well, they are all over North America by the tens of hundreds of thousands, so why are we not having those accidents? The truth is we are not because of consciousness towards safety, and these random inspections continue to promote that kind of context.

Let us face it, those trucks, they were stopped in Manitoba but where did they come from? Big trucking companies here, some of them run 95 percent of their miles in the U.S. and the U.S. trucks are here, B.C. trucks, Ontario trucks, from all over, so when you are talking trucks, you cannot say Manitoba is worse, because they come from all over. You have a constant mix all the time. Trucks just go anywhere on the North American continent. So all jurisdictions are in that, if I am not mistaken, 33 percent to 40 percent range of trucks that required some activity to make them totally roadworthy, and 90 percent of it could be done right on the roadside by the driver as part of his job.

Mr. Jennissen: Well, there may well have been some mitigating circumstances in the sense that not all of those trucks pulled over were not roadworthy and maybe those repairs could have been done on the roadside, but the fact still remains that in other jurisdictions the percentages were considerably lower than 36.6 percent.

Mr. Findlay: That is what I have tried to explain, the fact that the truck stops, the trucks by Headingley, it does not mean they were Manitoba trucks; they could have been from anywhere, and there could have been more Manitoba trucks picked up in Saskatchewan than in Manitoba, that kind of thing.

Mr. Jennissen: Still, the chances of it being a Manitoba truck in Manitoba is a little higher than if it were Montana or something, but apart from that, I would like to get on to my last question and give my colleague a chance to ask some questions also about vehicle inspection.

This question again deals with Road Check '95, which lasted three days in June. Within those three days, Saskatchewan checked 405 vehicles, Ontario 2,436, Alberta 789, but Manitoba only 161. That is indeed a very small sample, and it could be skewed many different ways. The question I have though, compared to those other statistics, do we have enough inspectors in this province?

Mr. Findlay: I can tell the member probably some of the people in the trucking industry think we have too many.

In June of '94, we had nine staff that were trained and certified as inspectors. Today we have 46 trained and certified as inspectors, plus we do training for City of Winnipeg police and the RCMP members so that they are skilled in doing that sort of certification, too, if they deem it necessary to pull a vehicle over.

Mr. Jennissen: I would like to turn it over to my colleague.

Mr. Jim Maloway (Elmwood): Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the minister some questions regarding the inspection program. Since his program came in last July, I would like to know what statistics he has available that would indicate the number of inspections that have been carried out under the program and what the government has taken in in revenue.

I am not sure whether it goes into Finance, general revenues, or whether the money comes back that is remitted by the inspection stations, just where the money goes. So if you could give me an update on your latest stats, that would be good.

Mr. Findlay: Since July 1 of '95, just over 100,000 inspections have been done. Each garage--there are some 800 garages which are certified--pay the certification fee of about $200 which went to general revenue. The $40 inspection goes to the garage for the time and effort that they put into that inspection process.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, I believe though that in addition to the $200 certification fee that the inspection station or garage would pay to the government, out of that $40 there is a $3 fee, or close to it, that goes to the government. If it is $3, where did that $3 times 100,000 go, which would be around $300,000? Who has it?

Mr. Findlay: Each vehicle that is certified has a decal. The garage will buy the decals ahead of time. Let us say they buy 100 decals at $3 each. That $3 goes to general revenue also. In the overall scheme of things, the $200 and the $3 more or less over the course of time covered our staff time, our costs for the inspections and the setting up of the program. So it pays for itself.

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Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, so the $200 is a one-time fee. It is not an annual fee. It is a one-time fee, and the government then gets $3 per inspection; $3 times 100,000 as of last reporting date which presumably would have been the first of last month or thereabouts. I got that confirmed as a yes, from the minister, I gather.

Mr. Findlay: Yes.

Mr. Maloway: I would like to ask the minister a couple of questions about how this program works. The minister knows that there have been some problems associated with the program.

I would like to ask him what sense does it make to require car dealers who I am told have to inspect new cars directly from the factory--I got an inquiry from a car dealer in town who cannot understand why it is that on brand new cars that have just come off the truck, they have to remove the tires. I have seen this done. They take the tires off because they have to visibly inspect the brakes, and they do not understand why. They blame it on being a government cash grab, because their assessment is that they have to pay--well, they do not have to pay the $40 per inspection for each new vehicle. They have to pay the $3 per tag, I believe, that the minister is referring to. So they see this as totally counterproductive because obviously if the car is not safe from the factory, it should never have left the factory in the first place.

Could the minister explain to me why this sort of out-of-control system here that he has developed has elements to it like this?

Mr. Findlay: With the start-up stage, certainly the feeling was that there has been evidence that cars sometimes are not as completely as good as you might like them to be. Whether that practice will continue is under review by the department as to whether that has been sufficient evidence that there have been cars that come in new, that going through the process uncovers anything.

So it is under review as to whether that is a practice that should continue, but for the time being from the standpoint of the broadest possible consumer protection, when my vehicle goes off that lot or gets registered, then it is done. Certain safety activities have been done to give the customer complete confidence. The continuation of it will be an ongoing assessment.

Mr. Maloway: I would like to ask the minister then, has he even heard of this before? Has anyone complained to his department about this practice?

Mr. Findlay: Certainly, we are aware of it.

Mr. Maloway: You are aware of it.

Mr. Findlay: As a minister, I am aware of it, the department is aware of it. Neither the acting director of DDVL or deputy or myself have had direct complaints, but we are aware of that going on, yes.

Mr. Maloway: Is the minister telling me that he is going to review this practice with a view to perhaps terminating what I would think is a pretty nonproductive exercise and a costly one?

Mr. Findlay: The department has indicated that practice, that aspect is under review, and they will respond as they deem appropriate relative to what is found in the period of time in which they will review it.

Mr. Maloway: In answer to my colleague the member for Flin Flon (Mr. Jennissen) regarding the titling system, the minister is aware of countries like England where the car when it is built has a book that follows it through its life and all repairs and so on have to be noted in there, and you cannot sell the car without the book and so on. It was my understanding that largely because of the odometer rollback fiasco that we uncovered a couple of years back that this government was bringing in this new tracking system for vehicles.

Now in the last couple of weeks we find some evidence that there are some vehicles coming in from outside the province that are evidently not being picked up under this, quote, new foolproof system that you people have implemented.

I want to know why are these things getting around this foolproof system, and when is this full registry going to be brought in. You indicated that it was being brought in, but I would like to know what is holding it up. What is the time frame?

Mr. Findlay: I think the member is referring to the transfer of ownership document which works within Manitoba, but then the member is also talking about vehicles coming in from other jurisdictions, which to his colleague the member for Flin Flon (Mr. Jennissen), I told him that the department is working with Transportation departments in other provinces on this CCMTA program that hopefully will be nationwide in the very near future.

All the elements of it take some work. There is some cost and there is some program development necessary, and they are working towards that aggressively.

Mr. Maloway: So then I gather the minister is saying that all 10 provinces have agreed, including Quebec, and they have some sort of a timetable perhaps this year where this will be put in force.

Mr. Findlay: I cannot comment for other provinces but is in process, involving them all. We clearly would hope that they would all participate. The discussion in Regina last week or 10 days ago was also talking about a North American model which obviously would be important in the long run that we not only do that within 10 provinces and two territories but we do it within North America to track that vehicle.

Mr. Maloway: What steps have the minister and the government taken to remedy this disastrous program that it brought in, which, as we have said in the past, is nothing more than a big payoff to car dealers? We predicted all along that this program was going to run into the mess it has run into. I understand the minister is stuck with this problem now and I understand he is trying to make it right, but I would like to know what specifically he is doing to make certain that articles like we have read in the past two weeks, two months, do not appear in the future.

Mr. Findlay: We have already gone over this issue with the member for Flin Flon (Mr. Jennissen), if he wants to fill his member in, but I will just try to briefly recapture it.

The member has just identified cars travelling from across the country and coming in here that are bad vehicles that consumers should not have. They get junkers coming off corner lots in Manitoba. We have junkers coming from Saskatchewan, Alberta or Timbuktu, coming in here for registration. The process was, okay, these junkers have to go through a safety inspection. If they do not pass they cannot get registered, so that takes them off the road. That is the driving force behind it.

In that process, some 800 garages across the province were certified, and to be sure that they are doing are what they are supposed to do using the handbook, the ghost car process was used which went through a number of garages, unbeknown to them. Some succeeded and some did not. I think three are being charged and 16 are suspended unless they go through a retraining process. They are suspended for 90 days, and they have to go through retraining to get recertified.

This program is working well in the broadest sense, because I think I mentioned they have already done over 100,000 inspections. The department responds to complaints from citizens, whether they are over or underinspected, and works with the garages on an ongoing basis to be sure that they understand the book and how to do the inspections, because at the end of the day with 100,000 inspections, we have more safer vehicles on the road, junkers off the road, and you cannot bring junkers from another jurisdiction and get them registered here.

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Mr. Maloway: I am not going to disagree with the minister with the intention of the program. I mean, I think we agree that the intention of the program is good. Where we disagree is with the method of conducting the program. We felt that the previous program of random inspections should have been continued and should have been expanded so that we would be inspecting more of the 700,000 cars a year than we were. We did not agree that what we were inspecting was good enough. We thought we should be inspecting more, but that should be the method that we follow, not the method of the payoff to the car dealers where we turn this over to the car dealers.

Now, under this new system the minister has set up, I believe it is possible, and can the minister confirm this, for a person who does not change the ownership of their car, they could buy a car today, they can drive for 10 years without ever being called in for inspection, whereas under the old random system that car would eventually have been called in. Now is that not true?

Mr. Findlay: The member for Flin Flon asked exactly that question. The inspection was picking up 25,000 vehicles a year, all in Winnipeg. I have driven a lot of vehicles in my life and I have never been called in, mainly because I do not live in Winnipeg, so I am free and clear out there. If you own a vehicle today and you drive for 10 years, you had better consider your safety in terms of what you do with that vehicle. If you get stopped on the roadside by one of the RCMP officers, and I mentioned that we have done some training with them, and they go through and do a quick inspection on you and find your brakes significantly in error, you may well be charged under The Highway Traffic Act for an unsafe vehicle.

So you have personal responsibility for yourself and for the public according to the laws that exist today. You cannot drive a junker and cause an accident and get off scot-free. I do not think the member would dispute that poor brakes lead to poor reaction in terms of stopping and accidents can happen. So there is an onus and existing laws in this province for responsible maintenance of a vehicle, and if you worry about your own safety or your family’s safety, everybody does their own, you know, they know the brakes are in poor shape or failing, they get them rebuilt.

Mr. Maloway: That is just what is wrong with the program. I mean, that cuts to the heart of it. Before you had a random system where eventually over 10 years you would probably be called in, you would be inspected. We said that that should be increased, you should be inspecting right across the province not just in Winnipeg. You should be vastly increasing the amount of cars that you inspect, but the inspection should be done by the government.

Today you have this possibility. You have a possibility of two identical cars, one being bought by one owner and driven for 10 years or plus and never being inspected versus another car that changes hands every two years. After 10 years you would have one vehicle inspected five time because it changed hands and another identical vehicle never inspected at all. I just ask the minister to consider that because that is a point that we brought up in defence of our approach which was to expand the existing system. We did not think that the car dealers deserved this payoff and that is how we saw it, that is how we continue to see it.

I would ask the minister to comment on that, and then I have some other questions in other fields that I wanted to ask.

Mr. Findlay: Let us look at the landscape in its whole here. We have 800 stations certified right across the province for doing these inspections. The person who goes in and gets his vehicle inspected can have the repairs done there or elsewhere or he can take it home and do it. Then he has to come back, of course, and get a recertification.

The member says, well, the government should do it. Okay, well, the government can afford to set up five locations in the province. Some people might have to drive three, four or 500 miles to get this certification done. Now, if you go there and the government inspection says, this is a list of things that you must do, where are you going to go to get them fixed? The private garages, right? The entire process is terribly inconvenient, costly, and our program has inspection stations equally available all over the place. We do not tie anybody to have to get it done at a garage where you had the inspection done. The work can be done at home or elsewhere. So there is a lot of choice there for the consumer, but, at the end of the day we want to be sure that that vehicle, when it is registered, has met certain safety standards.

Mr. Maloway: Our system does not involve throwing the fox in the chicken coop and that is what your system has done.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I want to ask the minister about the area of electric vehicles. I do not know whether the minister is aware of the current planned introduction of a GM electric vehicle this summer, and actually production models are coming out in the beginning of 1997 in a truck form for GM and also Honda and, yes, there are three manufacturers that are going to actually have production models out this coming year.

Mr. Findlay: Prototypes?

Mr. Maloway: No, a production model is one that would be coming right out of a factory assembly line. So this is where the electric vehicle, or EV, situation is at right now. Now, in the state of Arizona there is a $1,000 tax credit for the purchase of one of these vehicles, and there is also a reduction in the registration fees. So, as minister of this department, I think the only area of the electric vehicle area that would be of interest to you would be the possible reduction or elimination of registration fees for people who purchase these electric vehicles. It is not something the minister is going to have worry about until August and later because no one will have one here, but eventually it is going to become an issue, and we want to encourage this kind of approach.

Mr. Findlay: I did not gather a question in that other than you are asking if we would consider something in the way of a lower registration. There is no request in front of us and no initiative at this stage to do that.

I just asked staff to come up with some idea of how inspections are done in other provinces. They have got six here, B.C., Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, P.E.I. and Newfoundland, and they all use the private sector. For instance, B.C. has 1,500 stations; Saskatchewan, 200 stations; Ontario, 5,400 stations. So people do it precisely the way we do it. They use the private sector and do the certification and the follow-up inspection.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, what I was asking the minister is given that Honda and Toyota beginning 1997, that is only six, seven months from now, will have production line models, GM has models available in August of this year, and in January next year they too will have a production model of their truck available for sale. I would ask the minister whether he would look into or take this as notice a request from us to look into a reduction of the registration fees for anybody purchasing these vehicles because, as I indicated to him, the state of Arizona already has that measure in place. It would just show some leadership on the part of the minister to encourage this type of initiative on the part of these car companies.

Mr. Findlay: Mr. Chairman, I would have to say the member's concern is the standpoint of reducing air pollution, and that is why the state of Arizona or California might be highly interested because they have a certain air pollution problem. That type of problem we do not have here. So if we were to look at it from the standpoint of whether we want to promote something that reduced air pollution, it would be looked at in a much broader context than just the registration cost for those vehicles.

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Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, well, that is the point. I mean, it is not only just air pollution, but it is the excessively high prices of gasoline and other areas. I will be taking this up with the Minister of Government Services (Mr. Pallister) who has a 3,000 fleet, you know, and he is aware that I am going to be asking questions. I just thought that this was one element of the whole picture that fits in with this minister's purview, and I thought that he would like to hear about it.

My last question deals with the Ford recalls which were fairly large last year. It was clear as time went on that Autopac was aware that Fords were combusting on their own and burning up in people's garages and outside of their garages and so on. So Autopac became aware of the problem as time went on last year. The minister's department is in charge of the recall process. It gets notice of the recalls, as I do, and I would like to know why it is that the minister never found it necessary to issue any warnings to the public through the government press release service because it did become public through Autopac having press releases when cars were burning up.

But the point is that the minister's department was getting--and if the minister wants the very name of the person who gets these recalls, I certainly have had it for a year or so, and so the minister would have information of these recalls coming through every couple of weeks, would know how large and how big a problem it was, would be aware through the press of Autopac being aware of the problem, and I am just wondering why there was not any warning sent out.

Mr. Findlay: Mr. Chairman, we are not in charge of recalls here. I mean, the company involved does the recall and they do it under federal authorization. We get notice, but that does not mean that we run out and start fearmongering. There is a process where, through federal legislation, the public is to be informed, and the public is informed by the manufacturer when the time comes. If they are having trouble tracking somebody down, through our registration process we can facilitate that wherever. To whomever that vehicle, that certain serial number is registered, we can facilitate that. That is the role we play, and I do not think that the problem was astronomical in any sense whatsoever.

An Honourable Member: You do not drive a Ford.

Mr. Findlay: That is true.

Mr. Chairperson: Excuse me, could the honourable member bring the mike forward, please.

Ms. Rosann Wowchuk (Swan River): I thought you could hear without a mike.

I have a few questions that I would like to ask the minister and, in the interest of time, perhaps I will go through a few of them and, if the minister does not have to answer to them, then maybe he or his staff can get back to me in writing and let me know what specifically is happening.

In particular, I want to talk to the minister about Highway No. 275. This is a road west of Swan River where there is a lot of controversy right now. There has been discussion about upgrading for some time but there has not been an agreement between the R.M. of Swan River and the Town of Swan River. The R.M. of Swan River has not been in agreement with what the government is proposing.

An Honourable Member: Is not in agreement.

Ms. Wowchuk: Was not, until this year. In the last year, I should say, it is my understanding that the Department of Highways went to the R.M.s and said, either you take our proposal or nothing is going to happen, so the R.M. agreed to go with the new position of the highway.

An Honourable Member: The new location.

Ms. Wowchuk: The new location, that is right. The people of the area are not happy with the new location, what is being proposed, and, in fact, there has been a petition with well over 200 signatures that has been given to me that I will be passing on to the minister in the very near future, because they think that where the department is proposing to put this road is going to cost too much money, it is not what the farmers want, it is not what Pool Elevator wants. I would ask the minister if he would look into that situation and, perhaps, hold a meeting with the people of the area to get the local views in on it. So that is the one area that I would like the minister to address and respond to. If the local people are not happy, they think that it is going to cost too much money and it will not meet their needs, perhaps there is a better way that it can be done. It is in the design stage, I believe, right now and a consultant has been hired already to look at it.

Nothing has been done. There has been money set aside to buy properties already, but I am hoping that none of the properties will be bought until this is all resolved. So if the minister could look into that and let me know so that I can get back to the people in my area as to how that is going to be addressed.

Mr. Findlay: Because time is short, let me look back into it. Normally when we do things like this, there is a fair bit of public process involved. I will find out what took place and verify or otherwise respond to what the member is saying.

Ms. Wowchuk: I appreciate that. I would also ask the minister if he received a letter on May 4 from a Mrs. TerHorst. I am sure the minister remembers Mr. Joe TerHorst, who has been at the minister's office many times to talk about the completion of road 487. This is starting at Highway 83 and, in her letter, she says, this project was started by Sterling Lyon and has never been completed, and there were plans to have that road upgraded and it has fallen by the wayside, as well. So if the minister could look into that one, as well, and respond.

The other issue that I would like the minister to address is, I understand that there have been proposals put to municipalities to take over the maintenance of roads, and I wonder if the minister could let us know whether he has been in contact with any of the bands, as well. I understand a couple of the bands, in particular Indian Birch Band and Pelican Rapids, have been in contact with the minister's office to look at how they fit into this scheme and whether the minister has had any contact with them, what consideration he has given.

I have raised with the minister many times the poor quality of the road into both Pelican Rapids and Indian Birch. In desperation, because of the conditions of these roads, these people are now saying, if we put forward a proposal to help look after these roads, will you consider that? I would like the minister to address that one, as well.

The other issue I would like to ask the minister to look in is a long, ongoing issue, and that of course is the Lenswood Bridge, which has been the subject of many election promises by many people who have run in that area. In fact, I did not promise it, but my opposition in both the last elections did. Those Conservatives promised it and, in fact, in the last election, they made a big joke about saying, we can promise this bridge another few more times and the people will still vote for us, but I am more serious about, it and I would like to know what the status of that bridge is, because it was my understanding that there would be some work done on it, if the minister could let us know what the problem is, why the construction is not going ahead.

If the minister could address those few questions for me, I would very much appreciate it.

Mr. Findlay: I will just quickly cover the last point, the Lenswood Bridge. Yes, it has been around for a long time. I have been there, seen the bridge; it is a serious obstacle to movement, particularly of farm equipment. It is all programmed; and, with budget considerations, we hope to get on with the approaches very soon.

Ms. Wowchuk: This year?

Mr. Findlay: I said very soon. I mean, there are a lot of factors. We do not even know the impact of the flood down there yet. Remember how we responded to Swan River a few years ago, massive floods, bridges washed out. We responded by taking dollars from other parts of the province, so we have a major consideration down here. We do not know the impact, so I cannot give you an absolute yes, but the intention is to be able to budget very soon.

Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. The hour now being 5:30 p.m., I am interrupting the proceedings of this committee. The committee will recess until 9 a.m. tomorrow (Thursday).