Mr. Chairperson (Ben Sveinson): Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This afternoon, this section of the Committee of Supply meeting in Room 255 will resume consideration of the Estimates of the Department of Government Services. When the committee last sat, it had been considering item 8.1. Administration (b) Executive Support (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits on page 63 of the Estimates book. Shall the item pass?
Ms. Rosann Wowchuk (Swan River): Mr. Chairman, I would like to take this opportunity to ask the Minister of Government Services a few questions relating to the flood with respect to the farming community.
We have heard a lot of talk about the various compensations. We heard an announcement just when the flood was getting started from the federal government that there would be funds available for unseeded acreage that farmers have not been able to seed, but no detail is available on any of that compensation.
Can the minister indicate what has been negotiated between the federal and provincial governments as far as compensation for farmers as a result of this flood?
Hon. Frank Pitura (Minister of Government Services): In response to my honourable friend's question, probably that question would be best answered by my colleague the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Enns) whose staff have been consulting with the federal staff with regard to agricultural programs.
My understanding at this point in time is that with the federal-provincial negotiations under the Canada-Manitoba agreement, we did sign a concurrence there that there would be included under the Canada-Manitoba agreement, a program for agricultural business restoration and for those producers who would not be able to seed their cropland this year.
Unfortunately, I do not have any of the details that the member is asking about with regard to the compensation package, because my department has not been included in those discussions.
Ms. Wowchuk: Then is the minister saying that he cannot provide any detail about even the business restoration program either, which, I understand, is $5,000 for businesses, but what I am looking for is does that $5,000 also apply to farmers who are not able to get their operations going and have the ability to earn an income?
Mr. Pitura: In response to the honourable member's question, the only details that I can really share with her are those that we both read in the paper, because the federal government announced this business restoration program unilaterally last Friday and had not consulted with us as to the details of the program.
To the best of my knowledge from what I read in the paper, farmers and businesses are eligible to receive the $5,000 cash, if I read that as to be correct in the papers.
Ms. Wowchuk: If it is the case that there have been no negotiations, that it has been unilateral announcements, then I am quite disappointed to hear that. I would think that the two levels of government should be able to work together, and, in particular, the provincial government that is dealing first-hand with it should have some input into the decision making of how funds will be distributed.
I would ask the minister whether he knows anything about the implications of that. If that $5,000 will apply also to farmers, then, surely, there must be some negotiations going on between Government Services through Emergency Measures and the Department of Agriculture as to whether this payment jeopardizes any other assistance that might be available to farmers or whether this $5,000 is part of the money that was announced earlier on when there was supposed to be--and it was just the early part of the flood when we heard that there was money for unseeded acreage. That causes some concern that we talked about in the House yesterday, and, certainly, those have to be dealt with by the Department of Agriculture.
Can the minister give any indication whether his department has looked at the implications to farmers? If this $5,000 is one payment that is coming from the federal government, does this put in jeopardy anything else that has been announced by the federal government?
Mr. Pitura: The member's first comments, I quite agree. I think that it is necessary that when we started this whole process of putting together a pretty full package to address the issue of the flood, that the two levels of government should work together at all times co-operatively to make things happen.
Certainly, I was under that impression that that was going to happen as a result of the signing of that agreement, that our senior officials from both governments would be working diligently to put the entire package together and once that was put together to work co-operatively together to put the details of all the programs that were identified under that agreement with regard to the agricultural--I guess it is called the business restart program that was announced, that, again, from the newspapers that have gleaned the details, the $5,000 that apparently is going to be paid out to farmers and businesses is net of any other program.
I am assuming that to be true. I guess I have concern that until I see the final details of the package in writing, we are not sure exactly what the impact can be or would be with those dollars as to whether they may indeed be taken as an accountable advance against some of the other programs. I would like to see the details of the program as soon as possible.
Ms. Wowchuk: I hope that when the minister receives that package, he will share it with us, so that those people who are raising concerns, we can have them addressed as well.
Mr. Chairman, we have been hearing concerns and they have been raised in this House about people in the Sanford area who had their land flooded or tell us that they had their land flooded because of cuts that were made in roads to alleviate the amount of water that was going to come to the city of Winnipeg. So one group of people is now suffering in order that a larger group of people would be saved, and those kinds of decisions have to be made and that is acceptable, but when the decision has been made, I wonder whether this department, this government, has looked at how those people are going to be compensated.
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Are they going to be given an additional compensation for their losses? There are some very serious losses, people who will not be able to farm for some time, and, again, are they going to be included in this business restoration, or is the government recognizing that as a result of decisions that were made, these people were put at additional risk and suffered losses more than they would have had those decisions not been made? How is the government proposing to deal with that group of people?
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, it is a fairly encompassing question. I think, with regard to the technical details of roads being cut to allow water to pass, that would probably be a question that is best answered by people in Water Resources, as they have the engineering expertise and it was basically their decision to do this in terms of managing the water. With regard to the people at the dike, I would just like to clarify for the members that the area that is affected mostly by the water is an area that is not so much in the Sanford area, but it is in the Domain area where people are along the dike.
Of course, part of the signing of this agreement, the Canada-Manitoba agreement, was in the fact that, because of the magnitude of the flood that we had and the fact that the dike had to be built and the fact that water was not allowed to go into the La Salle system freely, under this agreement my feeling was that their issues with regard to the water problems that they had or have and are facing could be and would be addressed under that Canada-Manitoba agreement. So, at this point in time, without the official blessing, I guess, of the federal government, it is a question to which we do not have an answer to tell these people as to whether or not they would be able to fit into these programs, because right now these programs are still not official.
Ms. Wowchuk: Can the minister indicate then--it is my understanding that the province puts forward proposals of what they think should be covered, and then they will be covered by this agreement--what was the province's suggestion as to how these people should be treated and how they should be compensated and what they can expect if the federal government follows through with the agreement?
Mr. Pitura: There have been, of course, many suggestions as to how the compensation could be dealt with. However, my discussions with the producers that are along that dike are such that, certainly, they would like to see a certain level of compensation. They have come forward and said, this is the kind of dollar value we can see per acre on the land that we were not able to seed. On the other hand, they are saying, we would much rather not receive the compensation but would rather be able to seed our land.
I think that is still the hope, that the water will move off the land in time for it to dry and for them to get their seeding operations done. As well, they also recommended, too, that any type of compensation that may be put in place for producers that were caught in that area, that such a policy or program should really not be shared until after such time as they know that they will be unable to seed. They all felt very strongly that they certainly did not want that personal incentive not to seed.
Ms. Wowchuk: I guess every farmer, every person who is a farmer has an instinct to want to get that crop in, not to try to take advantage of a program, because, no matter what they pay you, many times you hope that you can make more from the work you do rather than from a program, and that is what farmers want, unless they were asking for a compensation that was fairly substantial.
Can the minister indicate, when he met with those farmers, what did they consider to be a fair payment for their losses if they were not able to seed?
Mr. Pitura: I would share with the member that, when I met with the producers as a group and they were putting forth their ideas, the ballpark range for the numbers that they were looking at was somewhere between $150 and $186 an acre, I believe. That would depend on whether they used herbicides as part of their summer fallow program, but that was in the area that they were looking for compensation.
Ms. Wowchuk: Mr. Chairman, we would hope that they will not have to use that compensation, that they can all get out on the land.
I want to ask the minister as well. There are several farmers who agreed to have their land stripped in order to build the dike and, of course, when you have land stripped that has impact on your ability to produce a crop. Can the minister indicate whether that issue has been resolved, and what kind of compensation has been negotiated for farmers who have had their land stripped in order to build this dike?
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, I would just say to the honourable member that, with regard to taking producers land to make burrow pits to construct a dike, that in terms of that area of land, the land use has been changed now and the compensation for that land would be probably carried out under the Department of Natural Resources or the Department of Highways. So, as such, Government Services would not be a part of that except from the standpoint if disaster assistance applied.
Ms. Wowchuk: Mr. Chairman, unless I do not understand it, would disaster assistance not be involved? Would it not be covered under disaster assistance costs or part of the claim, given that the land was taken during a state of an emergency? So, surely, that is going to come under the claim of disaster assistance and will be part of the whole package that is negotiated with the federal government.
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, just let me clarify for the member. What I was referring to was if it became part of a private disaster assistance claim. We also have to remember that within the Department of Highways and within the Department of Natural Resources, we are also working in the purview of disaster assistance and federal-provincial cost-sharing. So, if it was part of the government, part of the program, it would be assumed that it would be part of that disaster assistance claim that would come from the provincial government, which would mean that they would deal directly with the landowner, and it would not be seen as a disaster assistance for the landowner as such. It would be an issue of the acreage of land and what it was used for and how much the compensation would be for either restoring that property back to its original state or, in fact, purchasing that property for the Department of Natural Resources or the Department of Highways.
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Ms. Wowchuk: I think the minister is saying and I hope the minister is saying that this compensation that will be paid to farmers for land will not be part of a flood victim's claim, which is up to $100,000, that the negotiation on that land will not have anything to do with a person's claim if they happen to be also a flood victim and having a cap of $100,000, that the negotiations to settle for land that was used to build a dike will not be part of that individual's claim. Is that accurate?
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, yes, the member is correct. It does not form part of the private individual's claim because it is part of the cost of building the entire dike. So as a result of utilizing that land for purposes of burrow pits for the dike, that would be compensated through those respective departments.
Ms. Wowchuk: Let us just clarify a little bit more. Who will pay the cost of building the dike? Will it come out of Government Services? You mentioned Natural Resources and Highways. When we want to see the price of what this dike costs, where is it going to show up? Under Government Services, Highways, Natural Resources? Where will that cost be?
Mr. Pitura: When you get into a disaster situation, of course, you get a number of government departments that become involved as part of the disaster situation. We know we have the Department of Highways, Department of Natural Resources, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Family Services, to name a few departments that become involved. As a result of the entire disaster assistance, while the disaster is on, the various departments that are participating certainly keep track of all their expenses that they incur as a result of their roles in the disaster. Once that is all done, they accumulate that, collate it together and submit it as part of the emergency funding appropriation within the provincial government budget which is Vote 27. It is called Vote 27. Then that is all put together as one claim that we forward to the federal government under our agreement with the federal government in terms of cost-sharing.
Ms. Wowchuk: Over the past couple of years, there have been disputes between the federal and provincial governments about what should be compensated, what costs should be shared when there is assistance being provided for a disaster and emergency. There were several outstanding issues that were not addressed, and one of them was compensation for beekeepers a couple of years ago. A few people in the eastern part of the province got compensation for losses of their bees--I believe it was in 1993 when this happened--and in other parts of the province they did not get compensation. When we raised it several times, we were told that it was because of negotiations with the federal government and the federal government was not coming through with their share of it. Just recently we heard that there was a completion of some of the negotiations and some of the outstanding issues had been resolved. Can the minister indicate whether or not that issue has been resolved and whether there is now money available to compensate those outstanding claims that leaf-cutter bee owners had been asking for?
Mr. Pitura: I can indicate to the member that with respect to the leaf-cutter bee issue, that issue was not resolved with the federal government to our satisfaction, so the standpoint in regard to that, the federal government is still standing firm on its position with regard to leaf-cutter bees.
Ms. Wowchuk: The government paid out compensation to some of the leaf-cutter bee producers. A balance of them have not been paid out. Has the minister decided how to handle that? It seems unfair that some people did get their compensation and other people are still waiting. It was the province, I believe, that paid out the funds to a portion of the people and now the others are waiting. Has the minister made any decision on how he will--and is he prepared, then, to address that outstanding issue with the Leaf-cutter Bee Association?
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, just to share with the honourable member that, yes, it is one of the issues that I consider outstanding, and I am at the present time looking at the issue. I wish to confer, though, with a lot of the producers in the industry, as well as other colleagues in other departments, before we can officially bring the issue to a resolve. I guess I really cannot add too much more than that, except that I am looking at the issue.
Ms. Wowchuk: Mr. Chairman, it is an issue that is long overdue, and I do not believe it is that substantial amount of money that government cannot deal with it, but it has certainly caused division with people in the industry, because there are some who happen to live in constituencies that are represented by members of the government. I remember very well when one member, the present Minister of Health (Mr. Praznik) said at the time, well, you did not get the claim forms out to your people soon enough and we got our claim forms out, that is why we got compensation for our people. That is really an unfair statement to make to people. I mean, if there is a program that is available, then the leaf cutter bee people should have been notified, and they should all be treated equally.
So I encourage the minister to look very seriously at this and address something that is outstanding and not deal with it in a partisan way. I do not know that the minister, the member intended it to be that way, that they were going to deal with it in a partisan way, but that was certainly the message that we heard and that is unfair. After all, it does not matter who elected you. We are here to work for all the people of Manitoba equally. Some of these people are very small operators, and the losses that they faced in that particular year have set them back quite seriously. So I look forward to the minister working on this and addressing it and having it come to a resolve. It is going on four years now, three and a half years, four years. It is unfair that they should be treated this way. It is unfair that the federal government will not live up to their responsibility on this one either, but I look for the minister's resolution of this problem.
I want to mention one other issue before I turn it over to my colleague here, who has been so kind to let me have this time, and that is, last year in the community of Duck Bay there was a tornado that touched down and it touched down on a very small area. I realize that it may not have a real impact on the province the way the flood did that has affected many people, but by the same token, it did affect these people's livelihoods. Some of the people that were affected were fishermen, and we had people from the Disaster Assistance Board come out to Duck Bay and indicate, yes, there would be compensation that was available. They put their claims in for their boats: some of them overturned, some of them quite badly damaged. In the end, what happened was they were told they would get $1,000 compensation for their losses, or they would get $1,000 to repair their boats, and some of them had greater losses than that.
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I wonder if the minister can indicate why these people were dealt with in that way, why it was not considered a serious situation and only part of their losses would be covered. In fact, the fishermen lost nets, and they did not have nets to continue fishing with, but this was not compensated.
The minister is well aware that fishermen have a very hard time making a living, and it gets quite tough for them, and their livelihoods have been put in jeopardy. They are still struggling and do not feel they have been treated fairly on this one, so can the minister indicate why there was a ceiling of a thousand dollars set, why individual claims were not considered?
Mr. Pitura: With regard to the situation at Duck Bay, I guess there are really two issues. The first issue is the fact that the boats received damage as a result of the tornado that swept through the community. Under that policy, I am advised that my predecessor at that time approved the--in terms of the disaster or the damage that took place with the boats, that they went through the purview of the special area that the minister is able to approve under the Disaster Assistance Policy.
The issue of the nets, of course, goes back a number of years now where fishermen on the other lakes in Manitoba had been suffering net losses or net--I should not say that. How do I say it right? Losses of their nets. They were suffering losses of their nets as a result of storms. So, in May, I believe, of 1996, it was decided, established, that the policy for loss of nets would be discontinued at that time under the basis that because part of the fishing business or the fishing industry was the fact that the longer you could fish into the year, and you could actually push the end of the season, that also the level of risk of losses of nets was much greater.
So it was deemed that if you took a look at the entire industry, part of that risk management that one would take with regard to whether you got that last catch of fish versus the loss of the nets was part of the industry itself. It is very similar to agriculture, where a farmer will take that chance on seeding even beyond the crop insurance deadline to try to get a crop, so, basically, the same thing applied.
So it was deemed that the policy that was in place at that time was to be changed, that fishermen's nets would not be recoverable as a disaster under that program, so, as a result, the fishermen at Duck Bay fell under that section of the policy.
Ms. Wowchuk: I can understand changing the policy when people are trying to extend the season and fish longer, but this is a whole different situation. This was a storm that hit, just like a storm hits in the Red River Valley; it happens to be a flood. This was a tornado that hit. They lost their nets. Even if you had found them, they were so tangled up with branches, and some of these nets were right in the boats, but because of the way the storm came in, they were lost. So I do not think that you can compare what was happening with loss of nets during fishing and what happens when a tornado comes in.
It is two different issues. I think that these people were treated unfairly, that losses of this kind should have also come under the special--if the minister recognized that it was, and it was a tornado. As I said, it did not strike a very large area, but it did affect people who should have been covered. I think that the minister should reconsider, should look at that policy and not cover this under the same policy where net insurance was taken off nets because people were fishing too long. As I say, this is a different situation. It is a storm. It is a disaster that struck them, and I would ask the minister if he would review this and look at whether or not it is possible to reconsider the net loss in this particular situation.
Mr. Pitura: It has been advised that as a result of the damage that was done to the boats at Duck Bay, it is part of the policy to establish to predisaster condition. As such, the boats that were damaged as a result of that storm, monies have not been paid out yet as no repairs have been done to the boats as of this time. I would indicate to the member as well that I will take her comments, and I will take a look at this area again.
Ms. Wowchuk: I would just like a clarification on how coverages apply. I am told that when there is a disaster, only things that are insurable cannot be included in a claim. If a person cannot get house insurance because they live in an area, for example, again, Duck Bay, where I am told some people cannot get house insurance because they are in a flood plain. They are in such a low area that they are not allowed to get house insurance. If they cannot get house insurance, are they then covered under disaster assistance?
Mr. Pitura: Responding to the honourable member, I think the way she put her example was if her house was on a flood plain and could not get insurance. Okay, I am a little bit confused here because as far as I am concerned most of the homes that are built, and especially if they are built in a flood plain, are not able to get flood insurance.
Ms. Wowchuk: I will just clarify for the minister. I am told that there are people in Duck Bay who cannot get house insurance, and I use Duck Bay only as an example. They cannot get house insurance because of where they are situated. Nobody will insure them because they are between water on both sides, so they will not insure them. So if the insurance companies say that they will not insure them, then when a disaster strikes, as our province, do they qualify for disaster assistance just as people in the Red River Valley who cannot get flood insurance are then compensated for their losses because they are not able to buy flood insurance. So what my question is: If there are people who are denied insurance because of where they locate their home--
Mr. Pitura: All types of insurance?
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Ms. Wowchuk: That is what they tell me. I have not checked this out with insurance companies, but they tell me that they cannot buy insurance because of where they are located. So I am looking for clarification of what the policy would be in a situation like that. If they were unable to purchase insurance and disaster happened to strike them, whether it be flood or fire or whatever, would they then be able to qualify?
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, I am advised by staff in the department that, to our knowledge, all homes qualify for insurance. But I would ask the member that, if she does know of a situation where absolutely the home could not be covered for fire insurance or break-in or whatever, she would maybe share that information with us. I am told by my staff that we would take that under consideration at that time under the policy.
Mr. Jim Maloway (Elmwood): Mr. Chairman, since we are on this area of discussing the flood, I think we may as well just continue along the same vein. I did want to ask the minister several questions regarding the flood, but one of them, I guess, concerns the evacuation plan from the 1950 flood. I am wondering why it is that the department was asking for the evacuation plan for Winnipeg the very day that St. Norbert was being evacuated. Was that not a little bit late in the game for requesting such a plan?
(Mr. Peter Dyck, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, with regard to evacuation plans, all municipalities including the City of Winnipeg, as they have their own emergency management committee, each one of those is responsible for putting together their own evacuation plans. So it is not a provincial evacuation plan. It is an evacuation plan that would have been put together by the Emergency Management Organization in the city.
Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, so the people, then, who would have been asking for the evacuation plan for the city of Winnipeg the day St. Norbert was being evacuated, then, would not be the provincial Emergency Management Organization. Is that what he is telling me?
(Mr. Chairperson in the Chair)
Mr. Pitura: Can I just get a clarification from the member? Were you talking about the 1950 flood?
Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, evidently someone from the provincial Emergency Measures Organization requested a copy from the Archives of the 1950 evacuation plan called Project Blackboy, I believe it was called, requested a copy of this and it, coincidentally, was the day of the evacuation in St. Norbert. I, of course, got a copy as well of this evacuation plan, but I just wondered why it was--I could understand myself not getting it until the day the evacuation started, because I am not in charge of this operation--but you being the people who were in charge of it, I am wondering why you would be asking for the 1950's evacuation plan, '50 flood evacuation plan, so late in the game and what possible use would it be at that time.
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, I am advised that none of our staff from the provincial Emergency Measures Organization did a request for the evacuation plan; however, I am advised that the military did have an interest in that plan. In fact, just the other day, I believe, I was in conversation with an individual who had received from the military a copy of that plan. So as far as our information is, it was the military that probably requested that evacuation plan.
Mr. Maloway: So the minister is saying then that the department did not request a copy and turn it over to the military. He has now received a copy of it, I understand. Where did he get his copy from, the department?
Mr. Pitura: I was shown the copy of it. It was not in my possession, but, yes, that would have been the course, that the military requested the plan from the Archives. I do not know--like if somebody from the provincial Emergency Management Organization had requested it, it would have been purely coincidental.
Mr. Maloway: In fact several copies, my memory tells me it was five or six copies, were requested, so I just wondered who requested it and why. Let us say it was the military. Then why would they be interested in this plan at such a late date?
Mr. Pitura: I think the honourable member is probably looking for something that is not there, because a lot of people who were involved with this flood--many of the archived videos, the archived 8-millimetre filmstrips were brought out to share with people what happened during the 1950 flood. So, basically, the main reason probably for most of these copies being asked for out of the archives was out of a purely historical interest and had really no relationship, I would think, with what occurred during the 1997 flood, but I think people were interested as to what happened in 1950 so that they could get an appreciation for history.
Mr. Maloway: I think that I could understand them asking for copies, and how relevant they were or how useful they were would be subject to debate because of the age of the documents, but we knew that the flood was going to happen long, long ago. Certainly, back in January, we knew what the snowfall amounts were in South Dakota and North Dakota.
So it seems to me that one of the first things one would do would be to, as the minister indicated, get all the tapes and stuff from past floods and the information from past floods and certainly an evacuation--certainly after the information of what was happening in Fargo and Grand Forks was made clear to us, you would think that, if there was any need for the evacuation plan from 1950, that would have been the time to get it, and that did not happen. No attempt was made to get it until the morning of the evacuation in St. Norbert. So I thought that was rather odd, and I was just curious to know as to why that happened in that particular order and what became of the plan.
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, I think the very short response is that whoever did request the evacuation plan from the archives, it might be best to ask that individual who requested it as to why they wanted that particular information on that particular day.
I do want to share with the member some of the things that have evolved with the Emergency Management and preparation over the years, and it really makes the 1950 information irrelevant to this whole situation. The Emergency Management Organization, when it works with the provincial organization, works with member municipalities and this is throughout the province. They work with them in terms of establishing a local Emergency Management Organization that is put together to be able to respond very quickly to any type of a disaster that may affect a community, an area, and this could be anything from a flood to a fire to a chemical spill, a rail car derailment, whatever.
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The essence of the whole Emergency Management planning then has the provincial organization basically as its mandate to work with the local organizations to ensure that they have an emergency preparation or an emergency preparedness plan in place and that includes such things as evacuation, having the necessary people around say for firefighting, emergency ambulance services, et cetera, that the whole plan is put into place. Evacuation is part of that. So with regard to any kind of emergency planning for the 1997 flood, most of the Emergency Management Organizations that are functioning through the flood plain would have those plans in place as to how they are going to do an evacuation and essentially when they would get to re-entry.
Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, I think we can probably settle this by having the minister find out who was asking for the five copies and then we will know, because I do not know. That is why I am asking. I just know there were five copies requested and the minister is in a position to find out who was asking for them. What we are doing here is tying up provincial civil servants, some of whom could have been out sandbagging--and I am sure some were--tying them up xeroxing 40-year-old documents that were probably never used. So if the minister would endeavour to find out what was going on with it and get back to us next week when we are in Estimates then we would solve this problem.
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, I am not sure I am able to fulfill the member's request. However, we will give it a shot and see if we can find out who asked for the copies and get that information for the member.
Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, then what was the plan, because the public was never told of the plan. I recall one of the press conferences in the latter days where members of the media did ask what the plan was and I believe the chairman of the group responded that, when the plan was developed, he would find out about it and he would let everybody know. In other words, there was a committee that was an on-the-ground sort of a committee that was in place and they were working on an evacuation plan, and if it became necessary at that point, he was going to be told and then he would let everybody know. It was kind of a need-to-know basis, and it is probably a sensible approach. But the flood is over now and, perhaps, the minister can tell us what would have been the plan or what was the plan that was never announced for evacuation.
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, the honourable member asked a question about the evacuation plan for the city of Winnipeg and my response is that the City of Winnipeg, through its Emergency Management Committee, is responsible for putting the evacuation plan in place. So I think that question could be best put to officials of the City of Winnipeg to determine as to how extensive their plan was.
Mr. Maloway: Well, is the minister saying then that copies of the plan are not filed with his department at all, that his officials are not told what the actual plans entail for each of the areas of the province?
I mean, I understand the minister's point about the local authorities having a role in developing the plans, but he surely must be told what the plans are just in case there are some weaknesses in their individual strategies.
Mr. Pitura: I am advised by staff that with regard to the emergency measures plan that each community puts into place, that, yes, they do file those plans with the Manitoba Emergency Management Organization, and the city of Winnipeg is basically one of over 200 EMO plans that are on file.
Mr. Maloway: Well, Mr. Chairman, there you have it. You have the answer to my previous question about what was the plan that we never heard about for the city of Winnipeg, and the minister suggested that I contact the city, but he has just now admitted that a copy of the plan was filed. So can we have a copy of that plan?
Mr. Pitura: Yes, no problem.
Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, when would the minister be providing us with a copy of the plan?
Mr. Pitura: How soon does the member want it?
Mr. Maloway: Well, Mr. Chairman, sometime before the Estimates of this committee are concluded which could be a long time from now, so I cannot give the minister a precise answer, but he can give me a more precise answer if he wishes.
Mr. Pitura: We will endeavour to have the plan available to you tomorrow.
Mr. Maloway: I take that to mean on Monday when we next sit. However, if the minister does have it available tomorrow, even though we are not sitting, I am available to receive it.
I would like to ask the minister whether there is any procedure for auditing the local authorities' plans, you know, after they have gone through this disaster, whether Emergency Management has some sort of a procedure in place to kind of see what went wrong and sort it all out, because there were reports of at least one municipality just north of Winnipeg where the water was rising all around it, and nothing had been done to declare an emergency. All the surrounding municipalities had declared an emergency, and one of the homeowners who looked out and saw the water coming up panicked, phoned Peter Warren, and said how come my councillors have not done this, and within an hour the municipality itself had declared a state of emergency and got around to doing whatever it was supposed to do to solve the problem.
So that is kind of an indication that not all of the local authorities would be operating at the same sort of level of alertness, I guess. I am just wondering what mechanism you do have in place for going through and finding out just who did what and whether they did the right thing at the right time.
Mr. Pitura: In a situation where there is any type of a disaster, whether it be natural and environmental, that for any type of an event there is a post-event report that is compiled, and this is a normal procedure that takes place after all the events to ensure that, No. 1, you sort of have to take a look at what has been done, certainly all the positive things that were done, but also to highlight the areas that could be strengthened for the future.
Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, when does the minister expect that this report will be filed from this flood?
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, we are in the process of starting the post-event report process for the 1997 flood. However, I would ask the honourable member to appreciate the fact that because of the magnitude of the event and the number of individual local jurisdictions involved in this that the report process, although it is starting quickly--it could take some time before the report is properly compiled and comes back to government.
Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, would the minister speculate as to roughly when that report might be back to government?
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, at this point in time I do not think it would be proper for me to be able to give the member a definitive time line. I think that once the report is started and the process is started and the outline of the report is put into place as to what areas will be looked at from the standpoint of the study, one might, at that time, be able to identify whether it is going to be a matter of three months or whether it is going to be six months or, indeed, longer for the report to be finished. I think it is important that all areas be looked at, and we do not employ a hurry-up process necessarily to get the report back as fast as possible.
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Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, would the minister then endeavour to provide me with a copy of the report when it is filed with him?
Mr. Pitura: Yes, that should be no problem providing that report because I think that report would even be available for the--it has to be available to all the people who were involved in the events so that they can take a look at the analysis of how they operated within this disaster.
Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, I guess the biggest problem at this point is trying to quantify the loss. That is what I detect the problem is at this point. Can the minister give us some indication of how that is proceeding?
Mr. Pitura: It is very difficult to be able to supply the member with that information right now because while for most people in the city of Winnipeg for all intents and purposes the flood is done, it is not done in rural Manitoba. Just a couple of days ago, we were just under the 1996 flood levels throughout most of southern Manitoba, so we have got a time period to go yet before the flood waters are contained or the waters are contained back within the banks of the Red River, at which time we can say the flood is officially over.
But as the waters recede, so does the damage that we are seeing on a daily basis: municipal roads, municipal bridges, culverts, provincial roads, provincial highways. You know, the damage is rearing its ugly head on a daily basis and, as such, it is very difficult at this point in time to put even a best-guess estimate together with regard to the damage. I know that there have been a number of dollar values thrown around, but every time one would mention a dollar value, somebody can always add another 50 or 100 million to that, and you would wonder whether maybe they are right and you are wrong.
Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, I thought that I had heard a figure of $150 million mentioned, and I just wondered where that figure came from. What was the basis of that figure?
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, as the flood progressed, of course, that was one of the questions that was being asked quite frequently, because there is always an interest in what are the total damages that Manitoba is going to have as a result of this disaster, but basically when you take the--you know, right now we have municipal estimates that are in, and they are basically estimates because they are done without documentation, but once the full documentation is done, we will have a better idea of what it cost municipalities, and as time goes on, they will have a better idea how their costs are coming together.
But with regard to the numbers, just the City of Winnipeg alone has indicated that their estimate of costs of damages could be anywhere from $100 million, and I have even heard a number as high as $400 million. So which one is the right number?
Mr. Maloway: Well, yes, the reason I am asking about it is that I recognize that the flood conditions are not over in parts of the province, and we have a desire on the part of a number of political people especially in the province who, for all the right reasons, want to tie this thing down as quickly as possible before June 2 because of previous negative experience with federal governments who tend to be a little tight with the money when they are not pressured.
So I am wondering how the minister can square, or how we square all these announcements of, you know, $25 million from the federal minister and other assessments of $150 million, and how we are trying to get this thing quantified and getting it settled when in fact we are not even at the end of the flood yet.
Mr. Pitura: I guess, in response to that question, I will just outline for the honourable member that when we are talking about costs of the flood on the one side, we are talking about the actual costs of the disaster. When we are talking about trying to get an agreement on some programs, we are talking about an entirely different area that--and certainly we would like to see it happen as quickly as possible, because, for example, with the flood mitigation program with regard to ring dikes or private dikes or what have you for residences and communities, from our standpoint it is important that these programs be on the board and ready to travel in parallel with the disaster assistance program because people have to make decisions.
But, again, I clarify and say that on the disaster assistance side we are talking about an entirely different program there as compared to the Canada-Manitoba agreement.
Mr. Maloway: But in an effort to quantify the loss, and I do not have the figures with me and I have to do it from memory, but it seems to me that, in the year 1996, of the 10 biggest catastrophe losses in the world, the reinsurance industry paid out somewhere between, I think the largest one was $1.2 billion, which I believe was the hurricane in the United States--I forget the name of it right now. Hurricane--
An Honourable Member: Andrea.
Mr. Maloway: Andrea. That does not ring right, but it may be right. And it goes down to the smallest one being around $150 million, I believe it is. So, if the minister is looking at figures already just for Winnipeg of over $150 million, this is certainly going to rank within the top 10 losses--natural disasters on a worldwide basis this year in terms of money if this is true, and that, Mr. Chairman, without any reinsurance component. What you have in these other situations is a question of reinsurance where the insurance company, while it may be paying out a dollar, is only paying out 50 cents of its own money or a different percentage of its own money, and it is collecting it through the reinsurance markets that it buys reinsurance through.
In this case, this loss is being handled 100 percent, as I understand it, by the taxpayers of Manitoba and Canada, and there has been no reinsurance bought on the worldwide market to spread this risk around on a worldwide basis. In the insurance industry, whenever there is a loss anywhere--the space shuttle Challenger blows up, the Bhopal disaster in India--every time you read about a big disaster, 1 or 2 cents of your insurance dollars are going to pay for those losses anywhere in the world. That is done by virtue of the reinsurance mechanisms and treaties that all the private insurers buy.
That is why Autopac, for example, when they have a big hailstorm like they did last summer, Autopac can in a way smile because they know that they are only going to pay a maximum of $5 million because they have reinsured the rest of it. So they do not--well, of course, they care, but if the figure turns out to be $100 million or $200 million, to them it is all numbers because they have reinsured everything over $5 million. They know that they are only going to be putting out the basic amount and it is all reinsured.
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So that is how that system works, and that is why it is reasonably equitable, and it is sort of, in a way, socialism at its best. Every insurance policyholder worldwide is chipping in a couple of cents through the reinsurance procedures for losses somewhere else, and because this is not a covered loss, then the result is that a very small base of people have to assume the entire cost.
We do not have any taxpayers in the United States or Europe or wherever in any way helping us out here. This whole burden is put on a million people in Manitoba and 30 million people in Canada. So this is an enormous loss, an enormous burden. I would just like to ask the minister, then, what his comments would be on that.
Mr. Pitura: The member brings a good point except for the fact that in a case of a disaster, this is a noninsurable type of loss, and it would be nice if it could be covered under a worldwide network of insurance, but, unfortunately, it is not.
When we go through a level of disaster where the costs are accumulated and you eventually get into cost-sharing, if we start at the basic entity of a municipality, for example, when a municipality's costs get up to or exceed $5 per capita in a municipality, they are at that point cost-sharing with the province 90-10, with the province paying 90 percent and the municipality paying 10 percent.
Once that dollar value on a larger geographic area, for example, affects what we saw out here in the 1997 flood, six or eight municipalities, and the cost per capital in the province then exceeds $5 per capita, then we are into a cost-sharing program with the federal government of 10 percent provincial, 90 percent federal, so that, in essence, probably the majority of the cost of the 1997 flood will be borne by the people of Canada, the general population in Canada. The 10 percent of the remainder will be borne by the citizens of Manitoba, whether it be through the province or whether it be through the municipality, but that is a cost that will be borne here.
Mr. Maloway: That, Mr. Chairman, is my point, that the way this system is structured, you have only 30 million people to draw from to pay the losses of a loss that is going to be within the top 10 worldwide. That is why the system will be strained because of it.
I detect that that is one of the reasons why the minister cannot give definitive answers as to how the program is going to be applied, and I will tell you why. If the loss is of such a magnitude that the monies just are not big enough, then, of course, people will get less of a settlement. If the loss is small enough and you have lots of money to cover it, then you can probably afford to be a little more generous with your settlements.
Now, already, the federal government has increased, I believe, the amount that each person can claim to $100,000. Now, is that where it still is, or has it gone up even higher than that?
Mr. Pitura: That is correct.
Just to clarify also, the member indicated that the federal government had increased the cap to $100,000. I just want to clarify for him that it was the province that increased the cap to $100,000, and, yes, it is still there.
Mr. Maloway: So I wanted, from there, to get into the deductible. We have only 30 million people to draw on here, and, sure, they are going to pay 90 percent of the costs, and then you have a million people in Manitoba paying 10 percent of the costs, and then you have the affected people who are already part of those 10 percent and 90 percent who through no fault of their own are being stuck with the deductible.
Let us examine for a few minutes what the reason for the deductible is in the first place. My understanding of a deductible, it is there to prevent nuisance claims. That is why a deductible has been around for generations. The insurance companies do not want the cost and to spend the time chasing around after nuisance claims, so they put a deductible on your policy so that you will not chase around and make claims of very little substance.
Surely, nobody is suggesting that a flood claim is going to be small enough that it is going to be a nuisance claim, and what the insurance industry normally does, or some of them do, is they have what is called disappearing deductibles. When the loss gets big enough, the deductible disappears. It only applies to small losses of $1,000, $2,000. Maybe after a $5,000 loss, it starts to disappear so that if it is a $10,000 loss, there is no deductible.
The other element you want to take a look at here is I believe a lot of insurance companies do not apply the deductible to certain losses. They apply the deductible to something like a burglary to your house or maybe hail damage to your roof, but in the case of a fire where your whole house has burned down, they would not apply a deductible at all, because there is nothing you could have done to prevent that.
So we are talking about a different sort of animal here, and that is what the minister has essentially been saying. When this debate comes up in the House, the Premier (Mr. Filmon) has said many times, well, you know, do not think of this as conventional insurance. It is not really the same thing. It is a kind of, you know, we make it up as we go along sort of approach. We break new ground everyday. Each jurisdiction has different sets of rules and so on.
All I am saying is that I think that the province stands itself on pretty shaky ground when it tries to exact a deductible from people who, in fact, are already contributing. The Premier said, well, they are not making an insurance premium. Well, I mean, that is what your tax money is for: to cover you in case of eventualities. I mean, you go and you pay your taxes so that if you have a heart attack, you are going to be covered right away. They are not going to say, well, sorry, sir, but we have to give you a deductible here on your heart attack before we give you coverage. Is that not tantamount to, you know, in the same league as our health plan and a number of other areas?
So it is not as if people wished the flood on themselves. It is not as though the Premier--I did an interview. I think it was with the Vancouver Province. It did not appear here, but I really could not see--I thought the Premier, who is usually fairly sensible and down to earth, you know, said that people should not be building on a flood plain and stuff like that. Well, you have to recognize that the flood plain varies depending on how deep the water is. If the water is deep enough, the whole province is a flood plain, so I did not think that was a well-thought-out comment. I have not heard him make the argument again.
I guess what I am really pressing for here is to try to--and I know there are people in the Conservative caucus, too, who agree with me on this. I am not alone here; I have allies right inside the caucus who agree with me that this deductible is something that should not apply here. These people did not cause this flood. The flood occurred. They are paying for the damage through their taxes, federal and provincial, and the deductible is just another burden that they should not have to face. Perhaps if there was going to be a deductible, it could be a graduated deductible or a disappearing deductible that would apply to only just a small loss. There are ways that the minister can go to make this a little more palatable. So I would like him to expand at length as to how he could deal with this problem and maybe alleviate the situation for all the people.
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Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, I guess maybe before I get into some of the issues that the member brought up, I might well remind him that in 1984 when his party was in power, they saw fit to bring in a deductible at that time. I am giving them the benefit that they put a lot of thought into this program when they put the deductible in, and there are some very good reasons why it was brought in. In fact, they even brought it in at a 25 percent level. Since that time, it had been dropped down to 20 percent.
I would like to just take a different approach here from the standpoint that everybody that seems to be picking up on this is actually referring to this as a deductible . So the fear from most people is that when they do have a disaster assistance claim, first they must pay the deductible and then they get the rest of the claim. I would like to put it into perspective for you that, when a disaster assistance claim is developed and the eventual claimant is notified as to the extend of the monies coming to them under the disaster assistance program, the deductible or the so-called--I prefer to call it cost-sharing, because it is indeed a cost-sharing program, where they get to take the 80 percent of the disaster award dollars and spend them first, and then they can choose to spend their share, which is the 20 percent, at the end.
So unlike an insurance program, which requires the monies at the front end of the program, this program does not require the individual to spend any monies, if they so choose, if they feel that they can get back to normal within the confines of the award from the disaster assistance program.
The member also made mention about the fact that there were some comments about people who are building on a flood plain, and I would like to just share with the member that, if we take a look at the geological processes that have occurred in Manitoba, the entire Red River Valley is indeed lake bottom. Therefore, in essence, it is all flood plain no matter where you live in the Red River Valley. So anywhere that you live in the Red River Valley is a potential flood plain, and I think that is in essence the reasoning behind the fact that perhaps there should be some responsibility taken by individuals who choose to build on the flood plain without the proper flood protection.
Now we have many, many farmers and many, many residences in Manitoba in the flood plain that have indeed built to protective levels and, in fact, after the 1979 flood many farms raised their buildings up onto pads and others put ring dikes around their yards to protect them to the '79 level, which was the 100-year flood frequency plus two feet. Now I know as well that there are individuals who probably built since that time who thought that because the area that they were building in basically did not have any water in floods prior to '79 or did not really feel that a '79 flood would reoccur built with that in mind. The 1997 flood, of course, proved that even a 1979-plus-two dike was going to be tested in the 1997 flood. I would just share with the honourable member the fact that, as somebody who has been born and raised in that part of the country, that 100-year flood frequency seemed like something that probably would never ever happen, and '79 we thought was the 100-year frequency.
So we were pretty comfortable, and we did not think that we had to really protect ourselves much more than '79. Nobody thought that we would ever hit the 150-year flood frequency. So when we come back to thinking about how we are to adjust our thoughts with regard to future floods the question is, is the 150-year flood frequency now actually becoming our 100-year frequency, because we have had a number of floods over the past number of years, and right now there is nothing to say that we might not have another flood in 1998. I really hope not. I hope I never see another flood like this magnitude in my lifetime but, needless to say, we have to take a look at ways and means of preparing for that type of a flood to possibly occur again.
So from that standpoint, if we take a look at any kind of disaster assistance program--and that is exactly what it is, it is an assistance program. It is not an insurance program, and so it must be always treated as an assistance program. It was never designed as a replacement program for people who were affected by disaster, but it was a program to give those people who were affected by the disaster assistance to get their possessions and to reorganize their lives so that they can continue to live in the community that they are in.
Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, given that information then, why are jurisdictions allowing people to build buildings that do not have flood protection up to the 1979 levels? Why are the various jurisdictions allowing people to do these sorts of things?
Mr. Pitura: I guess that question from the honourable member might well be asked of some of the jurisdictions within the area in regard to building codes, building code specifications and their inspection program with regard to adhering to building codes. That is an important part of any program. I think that municipal councils are really starting to appreciate the fact that having a well-enforced building code program within their municipality indeed brings back tremendous benefits to them when a flood does occur, because they have that assurance that any new buildings that are built are built above that level.
Mr. Maloway: Does the province have any plans to legislate minimum standards, because if they leave it to the local jurisdictions they will get a patchwork quilt of standards I would think? I do not know that for sure, but I would guess that.
Mr. Pitura: The answer to that for my honourable friend is yes. That is, indeed, even in fact spelled out in black and white in the Canada-Manitoba agreement, that provincial land use policies and guidelines for future buildings in the Red River Valley flood plain will be looked at very closely and enforced.
Mr. Maloway: So does that agreement imply then standards that will be put in place that will have to be followed and not just suggested standards?
Mr. Pitura: I would take from the signing of the agreement that once the provincial land use guideline and accompanying policy are put into place that would have to be adhered to.
Mr. Maloway: What about retroactivity? You know, the minister spoke about land use guidelines for the future, but what about all the people that have built and got flooded in this particular instance. Are they going to be required then to adhere to some sort of standards essentially retroactively?
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Mr. Pitura: The area that the honourable member refers to is in the area of flood proofing and flood mitigation measures for the future. Okay, now, if we take a look in terms of the Canada-Manitoba agreement, part of that agreement addresses the flood mitigation measures such as flood proofing individual residences. Residences that are built today would be subject to a flood-proofing upgrade to ensure that they would be protected against future flooding. The residences to be built will have to conform to provincial land use guidelines so that they are indeed protected to a suitable level of flood protection.
Mr. Maloway: What does the minister plan to do with the existing properties that had, say, dikes from 1950 and 1979 and proceeded to build things on top of them or remove them--as was the case in many cases--are they going to be subject to this new standard? I guess, taking the city of Winnipeg as an example again, what you have happening, as we speak, is certain homeowners are leaving their dikes up, others are taking them down, so already you see kind of a patchwork proposition. It is being left up to the discretion of the homeowner to decide whether he or she wants this thing on their property. So, in some cases, one or two of them are getting together and they are agreeing to keep the dike and grass it over and do whatever they are going to do; in other cases, people have just taken the bags out to the street and had them hauled away. So you have two dikes in a row and then you have no dikes for a few houses.
I mean, nothing has been learned by this. We are just going back to the old, you know, patchwork quilt again. At least that is what I have seen around the city. So what I want to know is: I understand having standards for future constructions, but what about all the people that have done all these buildings in the past? Are we going to go back and insist that a dike be made permanent now in these cases or that some flood proofing be allowed to be done so we are not caught with these temporary dikes which, in many cases, were not constructed all that well and did not hold up as well as something more permanent would have?
Mr. Pitura: It is kind of a complex question the honourable member has put forward, but I will try to answer it from the standpoint that, if we are taking a look at somebody who has built a sandbag dike, I would assume that that type of a dike, just due to the nature of poly bags breaking down over time, leaving that up as a permanent dike just will not work.
For those people who have built permanent earth dikes to protect their residences, certainly under the disaster financial assistance program now, those people that have built their dikes in 1997 of earth who wish to leave them remain standing, and upon inspection would be eligible to receive their disaster assistance payment, unlike prior to 1997 where they were required to remove the dikes in order to qualify for their disaster assistance payment. I might add, that is part of the Disaster Financial Assistance Policy that has been put in place by the federal government, and that affects us here in the province.
Mr. Maloway: That certainly sounded like a sensible thing to do. In fact, I was surprised when I heard that they were requiring people to take down the dike before they paid them. I am sure there were good reasons why that idea was thought up, but, I mean, where was the genesis of that idea, and why did they--I was told it was because of property improvements; the government did not want to pay for property improvements, but I mean what kind of an idea, or how did that develop?
Mr. Pitura: I think basically, in a nutshell, the essence of the disaster assistance program that took into account that you had to remove your dikes in order to qualify for disaster assistance was the simple fact that the objective of the program was to return the property back to predisaster condition. So you had the removal of the dike, and, as well, there was some reluctance on the part of our senior partner in government here to actually pay for what could be deemed as part of landscaping. So there were the two issues there, but, basically, the objective was to return the property back to a predisaster condition, so that meant if the dike was put up during the flood, you take it away.
Mr. Maloway: I am glad that you have sorted that part out anyway. That seems to be a pretty sensible approach now to allow the dikes, permanent dikes, to be left. So it makes sense to have consistent building codes be established for future construction, but, once again, I still do not have an answer. At least if there was one there, I did not hear it, an answer to my question about what sort of enforcement is to be done to make certain that we have essentially retroactivity here, that we have flood-prevention measures being put in place, be it permanent dikes or whatever, on existing properties. I am talking about existing properties who have just gone through this experience, and every day you wait, the threat of the water wears off.
I talked to a city engineer earlier on in the game, and the city engineer confided to me that he was sure hoping that the water came up high enough to touch that dike, because if it did not come up that high, the homeowners would just wonder what they had done all this work for, you know, building this dike and the water never came up and that would be the end of it. But at least if the water touched the dike, they would be worried enough about it that they would not have to be argued with about keeping the thing up. At that time, they were proposing that the homeowners get dirt put over their sandbags when it was all over and get it all grassed over. The homeowners were busily lapping this all up and thinking this was a wonderful idea, because they had done all this work and they were going to get a permanent dike out of this whole thing.
(Mr. Edward Helwer, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)
But, now as the threat recedes, there is a certain amount of backsliding going on, I think anyway, in people's thoughts, and I can tell you that, unless some action is taken, you are going to be seeing those dikes disappear over time and we are going to be right back to where we started from. Next year at this time we will be running around trucking truckloads of sandbags and repeating the process again.
So I want to know what sort of activities the minister has planned here for keeping these dikes in place and keeping these flood--I guess instituting a plan of flood prevention on existing, because, granted, on new construction, it will take a hundred years, but you are going to have a lot of well-protected properties, that is what I would guess, in a hundred year's time. But what about all the ones that are here now?
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, I think the response to the member's question--of course, those are two areas, and I just want to elaborate on them again and go over them again. The one area is, under the disaster assistance program right now, if somebody had built or has built an earthen dike and would like to leave it there, they can recover monies from the disaster assistance program without having to remove the dike.
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Now the member is asking about those residences that were affected by the flood now that do not have any kind of permanent protection for the residences. I would like to just share with the member that the major component of this Canada-Manitoba agreement is in regard to a flood-proofing program. It is our intention as government that if that program is eventually approved--and I certainly hope it will be, and the sooner the better--that we will be able to go out to people who have private residences and say, look, here is a program, you can participate or you have to participate, okay, but that is something that probably, in terms of discussion, is--what happens if somebody says absolutely, no, I am not going to or whatever? But basically the flood-proofing program would be offered to individuals to be able to establish a level of protection and to protect them against future flooding, and it would probably be a program where they would partner with the federal and provincial governments.
Now the member says that perhaps somebody who absolutely refuses to have flood proofing done to their residence--and that is something I really cannot comment on, because it is basically in the area and the realm of discussion. My hope would be that, once the program is offered, there will be no problem with uptake on the program with regard to everybody participating.
We had very good uptake in the program that occurred in, I believe, 1980, '81 throughout the valley when people were either doing ring dikes or putting their buildings up on pads. It was identified, I guess, a year ago or two years ago that, out of the total Red River Valley, there were perhaps 200-and-some locations that could have used the program that did not. So then the question becomes: If there is flooding, what level of compensation should there be? But that is a question and, I think, a debate that could go on for years with regard to this whole area of flooding.
So the major component of that program, the Canada-Manitoba agreement, I think it is essential that that program get off the ground as quickly as possible, because we not only have people who want to preserve their residences or protect their residences, we have people who are living in communities who feel that where their houses are located right now would be an area where a so-called proposed ring dike would go. So they are saying to us, why should I come back and fix up my house, get my disaster assistance and fix up my house and then turn around and have the province expropriate my property for the dike when I should be taking my disaster assistance money, leave my house--I will sell it to the province when the time comes--and I will move and get another home.
Without that knowledge and having that program in place, individuals like that are kind of up in the air. They really will not be able to make that kind of a decision. I would be disappointed, personally, if people were forced to have to move back to their homes and repair them to predisaster condition only to find out that, sorry, you are in the way of the line of a ring dike for this community and we are going to have to expropriate your property. So they, in essence, have moved out once. They have moved back. They are going to move out again, and life is in limbo for a lot of these people.
So I hope the member can understand and appreciate why we as government here in this province would like to see this program put in place as quickly as possible, and that is to help a lot of people make some of those choices.
Mr. Maloway: The minister referenced cost-sharing for the flood proofing that is to happen under this program. Just what sort of cost-sharing did he have in mind for the various property owners?
(Mr. Chairperson in the Chair)
Mr. Pitura: It is a question that cannot be answered at this time. The program has to be signed off by the federal government, approved by the federal government, and then details such as that can be worked out.
Those details are all up in the air right now until such time as the program gets the green light to go ahead. As long as there is the inability to be able to say those are the dollars that are available in the program, one cannot very easily move ahead and say, well, this is how we are going to spend those dollars.
So the full dollar amount and the cost-sharing between the federal government and the province has to be put in place, then the details of the individual programs can be put into place.
Mr. Maloway: That, I guess, gets me back to my fundamental point, and that is that the amount of compensation and the province's ability to compensate is directly dependent on how much money is freed up in this agreement and the extent of the loss, because if the loss gets into the billion-dollar range and the amount of money under this agreement is capped or there are some limitations on it and you are only covering a certain percentage, that all of the money will cover to a certain percentage, then you are going to have to make some trade-offs as to what percentage of the loss gets covered.
Mr. Pitura: With regard to the whole area of flooding in Manitoba, and really I do not think it matters where you are in Manitoba if you are subjected to flooding, what we are really in essence attempting to do at this point in time is to put a flood-proofing program in place for those people who are on the flood plain, to get a flood-proofing program put in place for communities and to be able to talk about getting the economic activity returned to the flood area through business restoration, agricultural restoration, to get the entire economy and the people's lives within the flood area back to where they feel that they could be normal.
The important part--and I know that Minister Axworthy has talked about the IJC and now we have wait for the IJC to come back with its report before we realize what we are going to do with flood mitigation. Why argue then on the basis of the fact that if the IJC does a study on something, we are talking about future water management in the entire Red River Valley basin, and as such, we are talking about a very long-term type of project for water management? There are measures that have to be put into place right now, and that is where I basically have my argument with the minister is the fact that we have to do things now in terms of flood-proofing individuals and communities for the future because there is no guarantee that no matter what the IJC comes up with and no matter what projects we have for water management in the future, we could still see a winter like you have never seen before and have a major, major flood.
There is no guarantee that we will never have a flood just by putting in manmade mitigation measures. There will always be that chance, but the overall essence of going in and taking a look at what future programs we can have for water management throughout the Red River Valley basin makes a lot of sense because we have basically concentrated on drainage within that basin. We have not concentrated nearly enough on overall water management from that standpoint of being able to control the flow of water at certain periods of the year so that the water entering a system does not all come at once. So it is a very important program, I believe, that in essence we are striving to have approved and put into place for the benefit of all Manitobans.
Mr. Maloway: Once again, I just want the minister to admit that the reason that he cannot tell us how much cost-sharing will be expected on the part of the homeowners or property owners for flood prevention measures, the reason he cannot tell us how much they are going to be stuck with paying here is because (a) he has not quantified the loss yet, and (b) he does not know how much money he is going to be getting as part of the agreement.
Mr. Pitura: Again, I think from the standpoint of what the honourable member is trying to drive at, the fact remains that we are functioning within a disaster assistance program, and as such, the program is there to provide assistance. It does so on a cost-sharing, and if you want to get into the specifics of it, I would like to say that it is 80 percent of eligible costs up to a total of $100,000. That is the way the program works. That is the essence of a disaster assistance program, to provide assistance, and it is not to provide insurance or cover complete replacement of chattels as they are referred to within the program.
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Mr. Maloway: All I wanted the minister to admit was this was a moving target, that it was not carved in stone, and that the reason he could not give us what the cost-sharing amounts would be with the individual property owners was because he did not know how big the loss was yet. He had not quantified the loss, and he did not know how much money the federal government was going to give him. I mean that is simple. I do not think that is a pretty apolitical statement.
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, what the member says is from the standpoint of being able to quantify the losses out there. Certainly, within the disaster assistance area, quantifying the losses is going to be important with respect to any type of a review. I have to admit that there is probably--with regard to the potential damages that are present within the area, once we start to see what those damages are like will certainly tell us what degree of confidence we have in the program.
Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, there have certainly been improvements made in the program, and if it had not been for the Saguenay flood situation last summer and maybe perhaps the positioning of the flood in close proximity to the election, I doubt whether we would necessarily have the configuration that we currently have. What we want to do is put as much pressure on the minister and I guess he on the federal government to get as many improvements as we can while they are still receptive, and I know he would agree with me on that score. Unfortunately, the election does not run for another six months. It is all over next week, and the federal government will be in a position to basically--well, possibly duck out of some of its responsibilities here if it wishes to. So I just want him to admit that there can be improvements to this program even at this stage of the game.
Mr. Pitura: I would just like to tell my honourable friend that, with regard to the program, certainly as the program unfolds--and he identifies issues with the federal government, and I agree that there are a number of issues with the federal government. There are a number of issues within the disaster assistance policies the way it reads right now. For example, just to identify one issue that I can see is the fact that, since that policy was put into place, the rural agricultural scene has changed immensely where we have a number of family farm corporations now in existence in rural Manitoba. Many of these family farm corporations have more than one residence on a yard site. Under the existing disaster assistance policy it is looked at as one unit even though there are two homes and two families, but if they are owned by the family farm corporation, they are considered to be one.
Those are issues I would like to take up with the federal government. I think that, because of the fact that we do have that ability right now and, I guess, agreement from the Minister responsible for Emergency Preparedness Canada, there is a willingness, I think, to come to the table to start to take a look at some of the disaster assistance policy issues and to try and refine them and make them more responsive to what is present in today's world. If I accomplished anything as minister in this portfolio, I would like to be able to really push for that discussion to take place so that we can get some sort of meaningful national policy guidelines into place.
Mr. Maloway: What hope does the minister have that the agreements will be signed before the 2nd of June?
Mr. Pitura: The honourable member's guess is as good as mine, I guess. I really do not know. We certainly would like to have some further discussion. I have responded to or am in the process of responding to Mr. Axworthy, and I would certainly like to see us co-operate as much as possible, because basically what we are doing here is that we have to put a program into place as quickly as possible to help or to be able to respond to the needs of the people who have been in the flood area. That is No. 1, and hopefully we are putting all politics aside and are able to sit down and say, this is the program, this is the agreed upon cost-sharing. Let us do it. I think that is very important that we get that as quickly as possible. So June 2, I would hope that it would be before, but that is not to say that it will be.
Mr. Maloway: Well, we already have some misstarts in this program. We had the Prime Minister coming to town yesterday or the day before, I believe it was, and the provincial government expecting that he was going to be in a position to sign the agreement, and then he does not do it. It does not seem that the provincial and federal governments are singing out of the same hymn book on this issue.
Like how could it be that there could be such a misunderstanding on the part of the two levels of government, given that they both want to see this thing work?
Mr. Pitura: I wish my honourable friend was right, that it was a hymn book that we were singing out of. It might have brought more results. We talked about having just the proper timing for the flood, while a federal election is on. Well, the federal election was called for the proper timing when the flood was on, so the Prime Minister did call the election after the flood was on.
The whole process, when it began and ended up with the signing of the agreement on the first, there was every intention at that time to move this forward as rapidly as possible. All politics were to be put aside on this issue, and we were to get this program off and going as rapidly, and the senior levels from each government would negotiate the fine details of the cost-sharing, which they have. So I am hoping that an understanding will take place and a feeling of being co-operative in that we will be able to get the necessary approval to go ahead to put the fine details of the program into place.
Mr. Maloway: The minister has not really answered the question as precisely as I was hoping he would. Was this just a minor miscue the other day or is there a fundamental flaw here in the relationship with the two levels of government?
Mr. Pitura: From my observation, Mr. Chairman, the feeling was that because the government M.P.s in the province had indicated that there would very quickly be an agreement in place, maybe we were presumptuous in saying that we thought this main agreement would be the one that would be put into place. However, we thought, and I guess I was quoted as saying, I thought it was a slam dunk, and I still think it is. It is a slam dunk. It still is. There was no need to quibble about the numbers, but let us quickly agree on that and get going.
So, in essence, we were almost assured by the M.P.s, but I guess sometimes you get to the point where you put too much trust in what some people have said and assume that things are going to happen, and you find out they do not, and so basically you get let down.
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Mr. Maloway: Can the minister tell us which M.P.s he is referring to?
Mr. Pitura: The M.P.s, I am told, were quoted in the Free Press, the M.P.s that were affected by the flood area.
Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, how many claims are anticipated? I know the minister cannot, at this point, quantify the loss but certainly should be able to quantify the number of claims anticipated. Can we have that figure?
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, I am advised that we are anticipating approximately 2,500 claims for personal property damage and, of course, the number of individual claims that will come forth as a result of the evacuation will be much higher than that 2,500.
Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, what is the province's previous experience high in terms of claims?
Mr. Pitura: I am informed that 1993 was a bad year with 10,000 flooded basements in 1993 in Winnipeg.
Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, so what we are talking about here in terms of a caseload, we are talking about only 25 percent of the 1993 levels.
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, I have been advised that, although the number of claims in terms of the actual numbers are going to be less than in 1993, that within the scope of the disaster this year, the claims are going to be probably much more extensive in terms of dollar value. There are going to be many more claims with regard to damage to infrastructure within municipalities and within the province so that in the actual detail--and I guess maybe I had better correct that and say bring it back to municipalities because all those claims have to go through our organization--that there would be much more complexity to the claims this year. I do not know if you can equate that on a basis with 1993 or not.
Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, well, surely, you must have some rough idea of the total loss then if you can project with any degree of accuracy here the number of claims and you know from other floods roughly what kind of damages occurred. You know from the Saguenay what happened there, although it was a different situation and you would know from other jurisdictions where these things have occurred. You must have some sort of a model, and if we can have computer models that can predict where the water is going to go and how high it is going to go and all of these things, surely, we have some sort of a computer model that can predict various scenarios about what the total loss will be at the end of the day, even if it is just in a ballpark sense. I do not expect this thing to be totally on the mark. I mean I know it is going to be out, but I just want to know what the ballpark will be.
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, again, I think for my honourable friend's benefit that with the disaster assistance program, the individual claims, it is very difficult at this time to put an average or even project an average dollar figure on the claim. Until we start getting enough of a database built up with regard to the claims, we will not be able to make that projection. It is going to be very difficult at this point in time to be able to assess what the damage is going to be to the infrastructure and to the cleanup costs for flood protection so that the whole package or the whole estimate--one would hate to be able to say, well, I think it is going to be X number of dollars because you probably could be out 40 or 50 percent, maybe more. So I think it would be desirable on all our parts to be able to wait for a period of time for some of these costs to start coming in, and then we can collate them and make a better estimate of what the cost would be.
Mr. Maloway: What was the total cost, then, of the 1993 claims and how many--well, let us just deal with the cost first.
Mr. Pitura: I am advised that the 1993 total damage bill was $25 million. That included the flooded basements in Winnipeg as well as in the Swan River Valley.
Mr. Maloway: At that time there was no problem with people hitting the cap of $30,000, I would gather? You did not have any problems with the cap being $30,000 at that point?
Mr. Pitura: I am advised in 1993 that no, there was no problem with that cap at that time because the average dollar value of the claim in the city was around $2,000. It was slightly higher in the Swan River Valley, but basically there was no problem with the cap at that time.
Mr. Maloway: At that time how many appeals were made out of those settlements? You paid out an average of $2,000 for 10,000 people. I am trying to get at the difficulty of the claim settlements themselves, whether there were a substantial number of appeals out of it or not?
Mr. Pitura: With regard to the question asked about 1993 and the appeals that were made then, I am advised that it was less than 1 percent, and because of the way the Disaster Assistance Board was set up, in a lot of cases those appeals were dealt internally with staff, and basically most of the appeals were handled satisfactorily.
Mr. Maloway: When you dealt with those 1993 claims, did you bring in adjusters from outside the province? How many adjusters did you have and where did they come from?
Mr. Pitura: I am informed that there were no adjusters brought in from outside the province by the Emergency Management Organization, and there were approximately 40 claims people working in the area of these claims in 1993. Most of their backgrounds were within the construction industry. They had knowledge of the construction industry.
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Mr. Maloway: So what the minister is saying, these 40 claims people, how many of them would have been government civil servants?
Mr. Pitura: I am advised that all the claims people that are brought on are brought on as casual employees, and that it is all cost-shared under the disaster assistance program.
Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, so these people would not be registered adjusters then, insurance adjusters? They would be construction people that were experienced in construction, renovations and so on who would be adjusting.
Mr. Pitura: I am advised that these people are claims inspectors, and as such they are hired specifically and trained within the Emergency Management Organization to do the job of inspections on damages.
Mr. Maloway: Given that at that same time the private insurance industry was bringing in a tremendous amount of people from outside the province to adjust claims because they could not handle the volume of them here, I assume that the private insurance losses were far--well, they were far in excess of the $25 million, so they would use their adjusters to go out and adjust these claims. Most of their claims, a very high percentage of them, would have been done on the basis of replacement cost.
So I am wondering what sort of difficulties, if any, your 40 claims people ran into trying to settle this stuff when they were doing it on the basis of ACV in dealing with expectations. That is what you have here. Over the years people now have expectations that they insure for new stuff, and when something goes wrong they get a new chesterfield rather than the old one. They get a pretty rude awakening when they have an old ACV policy, which is not very common these days, but nevertheless they do have them sometimes. If the condition of the building is not up to par, the insurance company gives them that. Then they have a loss settlement, and they find that the depreciation is taken into account, and there is really very little at the end of the day. The customer ends up owing the insurance company money after the depreciation and the deductible that are taken into effect.
Mr. Pitura: I think that in response to all these--with the claims and the claims inspectors doing their job in inspection and then the evaluation process taking place after that, basically the success of the program has been observed in the number of appeals to the program. With the number of appeals results, for the number, satisfaction is at a high level, and so I think that in itself kind of explains the success of the program.
Mr. Maloway: I do not quarrel with the minister about his statement that in his opinion it does tell that the program is not too bad. I think that in reality though, it is people's expectations. If you approach them on the basis that this is the way it is, and you know it is an ACV policy and you cannot gain by this loss and the whole story and this is the way everyone is being treated, then I guess you get general acceptance.
It is only when you have the crossover, when you have the neighbour down the road who has the same sort of loss and that neighbour is getting the replacement cost settlement versus the ACV. That is when the stuff starts to hit the fan big time.
I just see a little different problem that you may have this time around than the last time, partly, last time, because you were dealing with smaller losses. My guess is you could afford to be a little more liberal--it may not be the word--in your claim settlements because you knew what you were up against. You knew how many claims you had; you knew they were small things, and you could afford to write the cheques a little more quickly. That was the situation then. Now, you are dealing with much bigger problems on your hands.
Certainly, in the case of people who have one- and two-year-old houses, depreciation is not going to be a big factor, because the item is not going to depreciate that much over one year. But if you are dealing with a building that is 20 or 30 years old, and you are going to follow your ACV, your actual cash value settlement process, well, you are going to be in for some big surprises when you start dealing with that one.
Let us take an example of people who buy furniture. It is a simple example. People do not normally buy their household furniture in one shot. They do it over 10, 20 years. They buy a thousand dollars' worth a year. But, while they accumulate it over 10 or 20 years, they lose it in a few minutes, it is lost overnight. So now, they have to replace the furniture. If they are simply going out and getting brand-new furniture, then that is fine and dandy if that is covered. But if you take the ACV approach, which is the approach you take, and take depreciation into effect, what you will have is that all that furniture will be depreciated for its wear and tear and its age. So, in reality, the furniture that you paid $20,000 for over the 20 years is probably worth garage sale rates right now. That is its actual cash value.
So, when you throw the deductible into it, they are going to owe you money. You are not going to be paying them anything. You are going to have some pretty upset people, because they are not going to be able to take that money that you are offering them and go out and buy new furniture. They will not be able to do that. They are going to have to go out and take out bank loans to do that.
So this is where you are going to have a basis of potentially a big problem. It is not going to be a problem for you on newer stuff, on newer items, newer buildings. But, certainly, in older buildings you are going to take a real beating with the public on this one, only because of expectations. If the private insurance companies were not offering it, then of course you would not have the same argument thrown up to you. So I guess your only hope other than to just hide, and governments have been pretty good at that over the last few years, is going to be to argue that, well, that is what your neighbours are getting. You are getting the same basis of settlement that your neighbours are getting. But people are not going to buy that. They are not going to buy that at all. That is my interpretation.
You had better be ready for a large number of appeals and a large number of happy people, once again, because of expectations. While the principle is sound, that you should not be able to benefit by having insurance, you should not be able to go and get a brand new car for that old car that you have, the fact of the matter is that people should expect to be put in the position they were before they had the loss or they had the accident. So that is going to be the problem that you are going to have to face.
Now, other elements that you run into in private insurance is the replacement is only there if it is actually replaced. In other words, you do not write cheques and you do not give settlements to people on a replacement basis unless they actually replace the item. The reason for that, of course, is that the private insurers have found over the years that certain trades and so on tend to have a lot of claims around fall time at the end of the season, because they do not need the tools or whatever it is for the winter, so the tools disappear. Then, if you can get a monetary claim for this, then you can head south for the winter or wherever, then come back in the spring and buy yourself a new set of tools.
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So what they say--and they do this with farm buildings, too--they make certain that if a farm building burns down, sometimes a person may not have liked where it was and stuff like that, if the building burns down, it has to be replaced exactly where it was before. These are kind of safeguards that you build in through experience, I guess, that the industry has built into it.
So you offer people replacement cost as long as they actually go out and replace the item. That puts them back in roughly the same position they were before, and if they do not want it replaced, you give them cash based on the actual cash value which is what your basis of settlement is right now. So I think that may be a model to look at as a way to avoiding--it is, I guess, our job as opposition to be critical of the governments on different points, but I guess if we are too effective and you do your job too well, you might be around for another term. It works against our interest if we are too effective here, you know.
I get along quite well with this minister, and I would like to see him succeed, and that is just a bit of advice I would give him right now, if it is not too late, to look at this basis of settlement as an important issue.
Mr. Pitura: I take the honourable member's comments, and I just wanted to indicate to the member that the disaster assistance program, in the 26 years that it has been in place, has basically taken that approach to replacement of the chattels within the house or residence or in the shop or whatever.
It has worked rather well over those 26 years. I believe I am fairly accurate in saying that of our appeals that we have probably had, very rarely is it on the basis of how we have the chattels, that people are complaining that they deserve to have a new fridge when the 10-year-old fridge is damaged, that they would deserve a new one. People are willing to accept the fact that if the fridge is 10 years old and it is damaged beyond repair, that here is the money that it is worth and then they have a choice of either going and replacing it with one of comparable quality and age or putting in the extra money and purchasing new.
One of the things that you have to remember within this program is that when you do take a refrigerator, for example, that is inadvertently left in a basement in this flood and it is swamped and it is done, it is history, that to replace it with a brand new fridge, the new fridge invariably has a much longer lifetime to it than the old fridge, although it could be argued that some of the old fridges from 1950 are still operating very well, but basically that is the premise on that basis.
So the program has operated well and the chattels were not an issue.
Mr. Maloway: Well, we will have to compare notes as this thing progresses then. I see one possibility here that can save the government and the minister on this issue, and that is if the amount of money that the feds put into this thing is so enormous and the losses are quantified well below what they potentially could be, I guess, that the system is flush with money and the adjusters are wandering around being very liberal in their assessments.
To be fair, just so the minister knows, the reason, as I understand it, that the general insurance industry did, in fact, go to replacement cost is that in actual fact that is what they had been doing for the last few years. They had been getting so many complaints from people, I guess, in the '60s and '70s about the actual cash value basis of settlement that it was just a nonstarter anymore, so the adjusters de facto were, but it was up to their discretion.
When they saw what they thought was going to be a hardship case, and I guess enough of a fight was made with the adjuster, then if you stood your ground you pretty well got a replacement cost-settlement. So in around 1980 or '82, in there, the insurance company said well, we are providing it anyway, we are essentially giving--even though the contract says actual cash value depreciation. We are getting a lot of angry customers so what we are going to do is we are giving them replacement cost anyway. Now we are going to wisen up and charge for it, and they started by charging $10 or $20 for replacement costs. They only gave it with certain conditions. Then after a couple of years, it was widely available at no charge and then they accepted--they took away some of the restrictions because they wanted to make sure that it was not applicable to old chesterfields and stuff like that. So the point the minister makes is well taken, that you do not want people to benefit by the loss from having an old chesterfield worth $10 in the basement, and they get a thousand-dollar couch out of it.
Now those are the extremes and it does happen out there. Unfortunately that does happen when you have this sort of a program, but, in reality, you can build some restrictions into that. I just do not think that the public is prepared to accept and people should have to accept that they should be put into the poorhouse which is what you are going to do to them if you apply a very strict AVC settlement process.
I guess what I am saying is that if there are no complaints coming out of this program, the only way you are going to get out of it with no complaints is if there is: (a) lots of money, (b) not too big of a loss and (c) very liberal adjustments where basically if the homeowner puts up a fight you basically say, oh, calm down, we will give you a little more money. That is the way you are going to get yourself through this, but if you just apply the ACV basis that you have done in the past, then you are going to have armies of people--well, at least--now let us not say armies here, but you are going to have at least 2,500 chasing you around the building here in a couple of months. So I would ask the minister to put some final comments on the record on that point, and then we can move on to another aspect of this area.
Mr. Pitura: I thank the honourable member for his comments on this whole issue and, rest assured, if I get 2,500 people chasing after me, I will ask him for help to help me run faster.
Mr. Maloway: I had said that the minister will certainly need his helicopter if that were to happen.
The minister made a comment earlier and we got on to something else and I was not able to comment on it, but in his effort to explain the deductible his explanation actually makes it worse than what it was before, because I was explaining that the deductibles normally are there to discourage nuisance losses or small losses. That is why they have normally been there in the first place. They either disappear with the size of the claim or they are eliminated completely if it is a fire or some serious loss now.
I mean, if a flood does not qualify for a zero deductible, I do not know what the heck should because it is not something that the homeowner could have done anything about. The homeowner did not cause the flood, so why should the homeowner have to face a deductible. Not only do we not have a disappearing deductible and not only do we not have the recognition that there should not be a deductible, but we have this deductible brought in at the end. It is a rear-end deductible. I have never heard of anything like that before. So the homeowner is expected or the property owner is going to collect first dollar from the program, and then once he gets up to the end of where the deductible would kick in, he becomes a co-insurer or, as the minister says, cost-sharing. He pays the deductible at the end. That is the craziest idea I have heard. Now what is the reason for that? If you are going to call it a deductible, then it should be brought in at the beginning of the claim. What is the purpose for putting it at the end?
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Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, first, in response to the honourable member, the cost-sharing is 20 percent. Now, when we take it--[interjection] Pardon me?
Mr. Maloway: From first dollar?
Mr. Pitura: From first dollar. So when we take a disaster assistance claim and we place a value on it, at that point in time the 20 percent is subtracted from it, and the claimant is advised that that is the value or the amount of the claim, dollars that they are eligible for. So, therefore, when I do talk about the top end, in essence, when the claimant starts to spend the dollars they are spending the disaster assistance dollars first and, if they so choose at the end, in order to get back to 100 percent of original claim, they would have to then spend their own dollars.
Mr. Maloway: Well, Mr. Chairman, they are going to have to spend a lot more than that. They are going to take the disaster assistance and they are going to pay their deductible--okay--to try to get back to where they were before, plus the element that the minister is forgetting about and that is the depreciation. So that is what they are going to have to deal with to get back to where they were before. So what are they going to buy with--once again, take an old home with older furniture and things like that and a person who is now no longer working, take a person who is retired now. They are no longer in the workforce. You are going to depreciate their home; they are going to depreciate their furniture; you are going to hit them with the deductible, and they do not have a job.
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, I would like to point out to the honourable member that, with regard to a disaster claim on a dwelling, damages done to the dwelling, including the carpeting if there is wall-to-wall carpeting, that is all considered as part of the dwelling and, as such, is not depreciated. It is fixed to predisaster conditions in terms of the claim. The only thing that has depreciated is things such as chattels. Even with chattels, if one chooses to take a washing machine, for example, that was in a foot of water in the basement as a result of this spring's flood and decides to repair the washing machine and somebody can do the repairs for them or they can do it themselves, those types of costs are not depreciated costs. They are totally at their replacement. If somebody chose to take an appliance that was down in the basement subjected to flooding and chose to replace it with an equivalent appliance, in other words, a used appliance, my understanding is that, in regard to the claim, they would be substituted without any depreciation taken into account.
Mr. Maloway: So the minister is saying, then, with regard to the building itself, for any flood damage to the basement and lower levels of the building that when the contractor is called in to fix the damage, it is done with new materials of like kind and quality, essentially on a replacement basis.
Mr. Pitura: I am advised that with regard to replacement of damaged materials within a residence that those materials are by and large covered without depreciation. I am also advised that, of course, in the case of maybe the more fancier woodwork, it may not be replaced to that level but certainly replaced to a satisfactory level for the homeowner with regard to the compensation.
Mr. Maloway: So then the minister is saying that in effect the building owner is getting replacement cost on building only and actual cash value on the contents?
Mr. Pitura: I am advised that the repairs that are done within a dwelling as a result of a disaster would be replaced probably at a standard value that contractors may put on for an average that contractors would do in terms of assessing the dollars per square foot to say finish off a living room or a kitchen or a rec room in the basement. Those are kinds of numbers that are industry-type numbers that are put into place, so that is used as the evaluation and assessment of the damage within the home.
Mr. Maloway: If the homeowner or property owner wants a cash settlement, what happens then?
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, I have been advised that, with regard to a direct cash settlement, it is something that does not happen because, within the program, the disaster assistance program, of course its objective is to go to predisaster conditions. So we are looking at a settlement based on the individual having the work done to get to a predisaster condition or purchase the chattels to get the predisaster condition.
Now the exception is that at the end of the claim, there may be some additional monies left at the end and everything is completed. Those monies, at that point in time, are written out or given to the claimant as a cash settlement, and that is usually to recognize their equity from the standpoint of their own labour that they put into cleanup or painting or what have you within their house. So, in essence, the entire claim, as it is valued, is placed in the claimant's hands.
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Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, so what the minister is essentially saying is de facto the homeowners do have replacement costs on the building. It is just on the contents that they do not have replacement cost. That is what I understand your assessment and comments to indicate, which explains why you did not run into a lot of trouble when you settled those 2,500 claims back in '93.
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, yes, roughly the honourable member is correct in his assessment with regard to damages to the home, and you have to remember and appreciate the fact that if you have a basement rec room that is insulated and covered with drywall, should the basement be filled with water to the ceiling, in essence all the drywall and insulation would have to be removed and replaced with new material. In fact, in some cases, the studding that is on the walls may warp as a result of the moisture, and some of the studding material may have to be replaced as well. So, again, it is replaced with new materials.
If we are taking a look at structural repairs in the upstairs area, you know, maybe a couple of feet on the main floor, you could be looking at replacement of flooring, replacement of drywall three feet up the wall and replacement of insulation in the outside walls for that area, so that all those replacements would be with new materials, as well, to do that.
So, in essence, the basic repairs to the frame structure is based on just doing the job, getting the work done and it is assigned an industry-type norm value in terms of the assessment, but for the chattels, which is the appliances and the furniture, it is done on a depreciated value basis.
Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, well, then, where does a furnace come into this? Is it considered part of the building or is it considered chattels and appliances?
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, I am advised that a furnace is considered as a chattel. Because of the variability that you have in ages of products such as furnaces, it is deemed to be a chattel for the essence of the disaster assistance policy.
Mr. Maloway: The minister made reference to the sweat equity portion of this. Just out of interest, what do they pay the people for doing their own cleanup?
Mr. Pitura: I am advised that the general payment for cleanup is at minimum wage. However, I am also advised that if you get into the construction end of it and start doing your own work, you would have compensatory wages at somewhere around the industry norm for that type of work.
Mr. Maloway: Last time around, 1993, we had contractors coming in from out of province, and I have no problem with that. We had local contractors as well, but some of the locals and some of the out-of-province contractors were taking on more work than they could handle. They were running around basically as quoting agencies almost, not doing much in the way of work but doing a whole lot of quotes. Not all of them were doing this. Some of them took one or two jobs and did a good job and finished one and started another, but a lot of them just went around and got all kinds of jobs lined up, and then for the next few months they juggled.
I guess it would be nice if you could do all this work in stages and stream it through a whole year, but it is work that has to be done almost immediately. Everybody wants their work done yesterday or as quickly as possible. So the contractors at that time were straining and stretched to the limit, and a lot of them took on more than they could handle. The result was, of course, that some shoddy work got done.
What was the department's experience last time around in '93 with the contractors and that problem that was identified by press reports at the time, and what are the anticipated problems this time?
Mr. Pitura: I am advised that, with the claims that the disaster assistance or the Manitoba Emergency Management Organization looked at in 1993, overall there was a fairly good level of satisfaction.
I would like to share with my honourable friend that for 1997 and the aftermath of the flood and people getting into the claims area of applying for disaster assistance and then getting the work done, Consumer and Corporate Affairs has been very diligent, along with the RCMP Commercial Crime unit, and has actually done a fair amount of work and publicity in informing flood victims about how to go through the process of selecting a contractor to make sure that they are a reputable contractor, perhaps getting a referral would be one of them, but there is this whole series of information that has been put out to all the flood victims who are anticipating repairs in terms of how they can go about choosing a contractor.
Mr. Maloway: Does the service keep an approved list of contractors for various types of jobs?
Mr. Pitura: The answer is no.
Mr. Maloway: Why does it not?
Mr. Pitura: I think it is general practice that it is desirable for the individual to make their own contact with the contractor, because that relationship is important, and at the same time they are advised to contact the associations, the building contractors association and the Home Builders' Association to ascertain whether the people that they have been talking to are indeed certified under that association and reputable.
So, essentially, in terms of keeping a list of all the contractors that might be available, it probably would be best to access through the Builders' Association at any rate rather than us keeping a list that may or may not be up to date. As well, you know, it may tend to make things more confusing for the claimant rather than helping. This way they can get the help that they need right through the Home Builders' Association.
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Mr. Maloway: In 1993, when the department had all of its 10,000 claims, presumably there were contractors who did a good job and contractors who did not do a good job. It seems to me that if there was an approved list that pretty much was nonexclusionary, it simply was a list of all the people that did work on the program, and if they did not live up to standards and that, they would not be part of the approved list.
You know, I think that the homeowners are probably going to be looking for some sort of direction. I do not think that you necessarily have to order them to pick somebody on the list, but at least if you provide them with a list of people who have done a good job in the past, and then you could weed out some of the ones that have not done good jobs.
Mr. Pitura: I just wanted to share with the honourable member that when we take a look at the practicality of what he is talking about, it would be very desirable probably to do something like that. However, it is very difficult, I think, that given the circumstances that we are under where a number of--and I tend to think more of the rural area, and there are a number of people who are probably going to, if they have the ability, do their own repairs. But there are also a number of communities that will have groups, and in fact may even have volunteers come in and help them do their repairs and not rely so much on a contractor.
Having said that, for those people who do choose to have a contractor come in, we are making sure that under the Emergency Management Organization that Consumer and Corporate Affairs have informed people of what process to go through in choosing a contractor if this is the first time they have ever done it or they just do not know what to do. So there is that ability to get as high a level of satisfaction as possible in responding to this disastrous event.
I would also point out to the honourable member that I think we would be fooling ourselves if we said that we are going to have absolutely 100 percent consumer satisfaction as a result of the contractors that are in the area. There are undoubtedly going to be some people that are not going to be happy with their contractor.
I do not think that it is possible to make it a perfect system. We are attempting to educate people as much as possible as to how to choose a contractor. We are also taking into account, and understanding that a lot of the work that is going to be done in rural Manitoba is probably going to be done by a carpenter apprentice-type person within the community, electrical and so on, individuals who the community itself, in terms of reputation, have established themselves in those communities. So basically the process, I think, that is put in place has the opportunity to work, and I think given the opportunity it will.
Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, every summer we have examples of fly-by-night contractors, both in the city and in the rural areas, who drive around. The minister has probably heard of these operations. They usually target seniors and go around and do work at inflated prices and do shoddy work. In order to combat that approach to things, normally the requirements are that the contractors produce a bond and a liability policy. Those are the two things they do. That means that they have been checked out by some insurance company, so that if they do something wrong to the person's property, a person can collect under the liability policy.
Now, in addition to this, most of the general insurers have a list of approved contractors, and I gather it is not that hard to get on the list. I mean, if you are a roofer, then you simply phone around and get on the insurance company's list. Once you have some experience at roofing, then you develop a reputation and you do work on that basis. But at least while the customer is not ordered to deal with roofer A or roofer B, he is given a list of four or five that he can go to. He is told if you want to deal with Uncle Fred or someone else, you can do that, but we would suggest you ask Uncle Fred for a bond and liability policy.
That is basically what we are doing, because if you just leave this thing to the free market, you are going to run into--just because, if you think of it in terms of a funnel, you are trying to put everything through that narrow end of the funnel which is going to be probably the months of what, June, July and August. Everyone is going to want to have their work done immediately, and you people are not going to be able to keep track of what is going on.
So you are going to find all these people coming in and doing work. They are not going to be bonded, they are not going to have liability policies, and they are not going to have experience in the field. It is going to be, basically, the law of supply and demand, also the law of the jungle that is going to prevail here. Then it is all going to come back on you when this thing does not work out the way we had hoped.
If you do adopt an approach like the general insurers do, you might solve some of your problems, I do not know. But it seems to me that if you can at least have your adjustment people talk to the people that they are dealing with and at least give them some cautions about making certain that the people they hire have liability policies and bonds, then at least they are going to have some kind of protection that if the work messes up, they will be able to come back to the insurance company and try to collect on the messed up work. I mean, you do not need them chasing you, but that is what will happen. If anything goes wrong, all the people go looking for the nearest available politician. Well, they do.
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, I just want to assure my honourable friend that a number of the things that he has said is exactly what Consumer and Corporate Affairs are doing with regard to informing claimants what to look for when they are trying to secure a contractor, and I think that the name of the publication is "After the Flood," is it not? Yes. So various steps along the way--I am advised that first they are given a sufficient amount of literature to read prior to re-entry, and when they go through re-entry into the community, they are also advised at that time.
Now there are a number of people that still have to re-enter their residences, and in fact a large number are still waiting for re-entry, but as much as possible is being done to be able to work with these people so that they go through a process when they select a contractor, that they will have some of the criteria that my honourable friend outlined in place when they sign the contract to get the work done.
Mr. Maloway: Well, Mr. Chairman, we just went through a record number of Estimates in Consumer and Corporate Affairs--I think it has been the longest in 20 years, by far--with the new minister, and I spent a lot of time with him discussing this very issue about renovation contractors. You know, while he was reasonably receptive, at the end of the day he is pretty much a free enterpriser, and he did not endeavour to make any commitments whatsoever on the regulation of renovators. He had indicated that he had met and spoken to, I think, some concerned people about that issue, but he felt that, at the end of the day water would seek its own level, and people should, you know, just take their chances. That was his general approach to it. So I did not detect any inclination on his part to be putting in bonding rules or liability policy rules or anything I expected. His attitude seemed to be that he will deal with the boondoggles as they occur.
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Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, I would just like to assure my honourable friend with regard to this process that, through the Manitoba Emergency Management Organization, every effort is being carried out and put into place with respect to keeping people knowledgeable and also providing them with some basic guidelines with respect to choosing a contractor.
I think, to ask that there be changes done with legislation to make sure that these people who are getting contractors for this disaster be required to post a bond--of course, that is an area that is part of the recommendations package to the claimant, to say to the person who is doing the work--to make sure that there is a proper contract in place and probably withholding an amount of money or a percentage of the money before the job is finished to ensure that the homeowner who is getting the work done is satisfied with the quality of work, and other things such as if a contractor comes to the door and says, I am here, we can do you basement for you and your upstairs if it is flooded--to be able to know enough to ask, well, where have you worked before and what is your phone number and to be able to check with those people to ascertain whether they have a reputation for doing good quality work. Those are the kinds of guidelines and information that we are leaving with people and giving to people when they are re-entering their communities and their homes so that they are very much aware of what is happening.
I have to say to my honourable friend, too, that Manitoba Emergency Management Organization were very quickly out of the blocks on this one to make sure that kind of information was available out there prior to anybody re-entering their flooded community. So, in essence, I give them a lot of credit for being able to keep in front of this thing, and, of course, emergency management and emergency preparedness, that is what this whole issue is all about with regard to disasters and being able to respond in a proper manner to a disaster when it falls upon us.
Mr. Maloway: Has any consideration been given or suggestions been made, for the future anyway, to look at a reinsurance component in your flood strategies? Once again, I give the example of Autopac where, every time they have a hail claim, they know once the hail starts to fall down on those cars that, at the end of the day, they wake up in the morning and they are only going to be $5 million poorer because they have reinsured everything above $5 million.
Has there been any consideration given to exploring that angle rather than just trying to self-insure for a flood such as this, that some effort be made to look at having the world's insurance market share in this kind of disaster?
Mr. Pitura: My honourable friend brings up a good point. However, to my knowledge and to our knowledge sitting here at this table, right now any kind of disaster assistance in Manitoba and in Canada is basically backstopped by the Canadian people, and as such it is not possible to get insurance for coverage. Therefore, it probably--and my honourable friend can correct me if I am wrong--would be impossible to buy reinsurance on a nonexistent insurance. I do not know if that is possible, but if my honourable friend has an idea here that could work, I would be most receptive to pursuing it.
Mr. Maloway: Well, I guess I would say that there is an old saying that says that everything is insurable for a price. For example, you hear examples of certain movie stars insuring parts of their anatomy and so on and so forth, violinists insuring their fingers, and I was not--yes, I was thinking of violinists here.
So it is true that for a price you can insure anything, although it is very uncommon. Sewer backup is very common here in Manitoba as a coverage, can be bought, is bought, and in fact flood coverage is available, but I am told it is only on commercial policies and so on. So there is that kind of coverage available in select areas, but, certainly, flood coverage is not something that you could normally buy on the market.
I guess what I am suggesting is that what companies do is they layer their insurance program so anything is possible. You can take your program to market, and you might find somebody willing to buy the excess of a hundred million dollars or the layer between a hundred million and two hundred million. That is basically, conceptually, how you have to think of it. In order words, MPIC or any insurance company, they only retain the first, say, $5 million, and then they sell the reinsurance in layers over and above that. So the layer between $5 million and $10 million might be owned by a reinsurance company in Florida. The layer between $10 million and $50 million might be owned by an insurance company in England, and the layer between $50 million and $200 million might be owned by something else.
(Mr. Mervin Tweed, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)
It has been so long now, and I do not recall all of the exact names, but there is insurance ceded. In other words, insurance companies that buy reinsurance, and that is all of them, a lot of them also sell the stuff. You recall MPIC was mixed up in some of that a few years back. They made some money for a while, but then they got caught on some long-tail liability claims. So just so you keep in mind that all the insurance companies that you see in town here, they reinsure a good portion of everything that they are insuring, but there are also insurance companies which not only buy reinsurance, but they sell reinsurance. They will go buy somebody else's reinsurance.
So you would have to throw it out there and say--this is not a very good example today after a flood to be doing it, but let us say you had done this five years ago, and you throw it out on the insurance market, and you say, who is interested in quoting a catastrophe loss policy to cover the layer between $100 million and $110 million? You will get people who will quote you on that. Some people might want the layer from $5 million to $10 million and not want higher than that.
So there are all these different layers. You have to talk to reinsurance people who do this stuff all the time. Autopac has them. They are reinsured up to the gills, which is why they smile whenever there is a disaster because they know they are stopgapped, I guess--the minister used that word--beyond certain levels.
Anyway, I will leave that one with you. I assume that it has never been done before in the same way, that probably funding government employees' pensions has ceased to be done after a while because we just assume that it is never going to happen, that there will never be a flood. It will be 500 years, and we will let some politicians way down the line, the next generation, worry about that kind of thing.
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So that is my guess as to why nobody has dealt with it up until now, because it would be viewed as a silly political move, because who could conceive of a 500-year flood? Why would you pay some insurance company to buy reinsurance on the reinsurance market for a 500-year flood? It would be kind of a silly thing to do, would it not, in past years, and now it is not so silly. Well, that is not true. I mean, in actual fact it might be reasonably cheap only because it is so rare.
At hockey games, when people shoot the little puck through the hoop, those are usually insured. It is pretty rare but an insurance company will cover that chance, that one in a million or two million, or whatever it is, that somebody will get the puck through the hoop. So that is how those things normally work.
Now, I wanted to ask the minister--well, actually I cannot see how we can finish this area on the floods today. I want to ask him about the hovercraft. I saw the film, and it sure sounded like a really good idea at the time, but why were we chasing around after this hovercraft so late in the game? Why could we not have been looking at this--I had brochures of hovercrafts that I provided, but I gather the company was no longer in business, so it did not help you out too much. The hovercraft idea, it sounded like a good idea. But why was it done in such a rush fashion at the very end, and the guy, at the end of the day, did not come here anyway.
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, again, the question that my honourable friend puts forward would be probably best put to my colleague the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Cummings) as that was the department that was involved with the investigation quantifying that device and taking a look at various ways of trying to prevent an ice jam from reappearing, as it did last year, on the Red River north of Selkirk or north of Winnipeg in the Selkirk area.
The idea of the hovercraft may indeed have some application in the future, and one of the things that we did find out, of course, was that in Canada there were basically only two hovercraft units available in the country, both of them owned by the Coast Guard, and we were advised by the Coast Guard in the St. Lawrence that the hovercraft can work well on breaking up ice, is quite effective on breaking up ice when the ice is adjacent to open water. So that, in essence, they thought it might be able to have application here. However, we were not able to get the hovercraft from them because they felt that they needed to use it on the St. Lawrence at about the same time that we were wanting to use it at the mouth of the Red River.
But to finalize the answer to the question, we have not given up on taking a look at hovercraft and its possible use in the future. In fact, in some discussion with my colleague the Minister of Natural Resources, indeed there might be some sources in the United States that we may be able to get a hovercraft for a period of time to be able to try it out on a trial basis, possibly as early as next spring. I would just like to assure my honourable member that we are not above taking a look at a number of venues that can aid in flood fighting efforts.
Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, can the minister tell us also how successful that hole-drilling operation was around Selkirk?
Mr. Pitura: Again, I would ask my honourable friend to--that question would be best put to the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Cummings). It is called the Swiss-cheese effect.
Mr. Maloway: You mean he did not tell you how it resolved itself.
Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairman, in this discussion that we had with the staff of the Department of Natural Resources, it was felt that the drilling of the holes and the way the holes were drilled, it kind of looked like Swiss cheese. So that is what it was called, the Swiss-cheese effect on the ice. From all observation, visual observation, it would appear that drilling the holes had a positive effect on the lack of ice jams, if I am saying that right. It is a positive effect from the standpoint that there were less ice jams, or none at all, on the Red River. On the other side, I would have to also advise my honourable friend that observation has taken place. It is an observed positive effect until any conclusions are made. We would have to do this for a number of years. My understanding is that this method will be carried out for a number of years in order to be able to determine the effect on the ice.
Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, I wanted to ask the minister, and I understand that--well, perhaps his auditing process here with assessing the local governments' plans, or lack thereof, in this effort will tell us a little bit more about this, but the volunteers or the homeowners, in Winnipeg anyway, were given a presentation on how to build sandbag dikes. The presentation was about, well, maybe, 15 or 20 minutes long on how to do this.
What you had was a fair amount of, I would say, largely out-of-shape homeowners, not really understanding how this poly fit into things, going to a meeting and then two or three days later trying to build this dike. So what you had was, fortunately, always one or two people in the crowd who caught on to things a little quicker than others, but there were some examples where, you know, dikes had to be taken down because people were throwing them together kind of in a rough way, and they did not appreciate that they had to be constructed right. You know, the snow had to be cleared away and they could not go through obstructions and stuff like that. By the time all this was done, it was pretty late in the game. So you had dikes that were constructed that were really not that--they were not heavily tested, but if they had been tested in a big way, I think you would have seen some major breaks in them. So what you had eventually was the backup dikes being put down the middle of the street, and that is fine, and then you had lateral dikes being put from the street to touch the dike that went along down the riverbank.
My point is that the lateral dike was constructed with absolute precision. I mean, you should have taken a picture of these lateral dikes. The volunteers that were there were not allowed to place any bags; they could only handle the bags. They were brought down, and the two professionals placed every single bag, and this was a sight to behold. It was a masterpiece when it was finished. So what you had every 10 or 12 properties, houses, was a perfect lateral dike, but then you had the dike that was holding back all the water was thrown together by a bunch of volunteers, you know, that did not look so good.
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The irony is that if the water made its way through the dike by the river, which looked like it might happen, then, of course, it would be held back by the lateral dike. But it did not make a lot of sense; there was no consistency in having a perfectly constructed, professionally done job for the lateral dike, but then the one that really counted was the one that was being done in a nonprofessional way. I mean, I think if you wanted to flip the coin and you were going to decide who was going to do what, you would have the professionals do the one that was going to hold back the water, right? And then you would have the lateral dike being done by the rest of us guys that did not know what we were doing. The lateral dike was the one that was there as kind of a backup to just make sure that only 12 homes got flooded and not the next pile.
I do not know how you intend to approach that, but perhaps that assessment that you are going to do would somehow take this into account that it appeared to be--and, you know, they did a terrific job, there is no doubt about it, but the point is that things like this were left primarily to the end. It was done sort of at the last minute but done sufficiently early so that the job was done all right, I guess. It was not done with a tremendous amount of planning, and there was too much leeway given to each homeowner as to what he or she wanted to do.
For example, the engineer would come along and the engineer would suggest that this was probably a decent way of doing it, and then the homeowner would do it some other way. So what you got was a fairly unsafe situation.
All I am saying is that we are very, very lucky that the diking system was not tested with higher water than it was or for a more prolonged period than it was because I do not think it would have--there were just too many weaknesses. I guess that is my point, obvious weaknesses noticed only really after the fact, and only because there was not the direct orders from the people in charge to say that this is where it is going to go and this is how it has to be done. It was done on a very kind of collegial sort of basis about, well, this is what we would recommend, but, you know, if you want to do it your way, go ahead.
That is what happened. It was like a McDonald's hamburger approach to it. Some people had pickles and some people had relish, and they kind of joined up at each end of the property, but there were sort of a lot of variations.
So I did not have a lot of confidence that these things were going to hold if the pressure really, you know, if the real true test came, that there would be some failures. I am sure that was the case in many, many other instances, too, where a certain professionally built dike might have done a better job.
So I would ask the minister to comment on that and find out whether that sort of will show up in this audit that he is going to be doing on this program.
Mr. Pitura: Well, certainly from the standpoint of doing what my honourable friend calls an audit, the Manitoba Emergency Management Organization is in the process of putting together or at least having a post-event report done of the 1997 flood, and from the standpoint of the organization, it is going to include a number of areas with regard to the way, in terms of the way the organization functioned and also related to the other organizations out in the local jurisdictions.
It would take a look at such areas as the deployment of the military, I am sure, how effective that deployment was. It would take a look at, in terms of things such as sandbags, sand, the city working within its parameters in putting together its flood preparation plans, and, as the honourable member suggests, in the area of dikes. Certainly that would be looked at from the standpoint of were there enough detailed plans available for people to use to build dikes? Could it be better?
But it is a process for us as part of the Emergency Management Organization to evaluate ourselves as to how our organization functions and how it operated in this disaster. I think that we are not above criticizing ourselves if we feel we could be better in some areas. At the same time, I think we also have to be very forthright about saying, hey, we did some things that are really good, and we are pretty proud of what we have done in terms of being able to get a massive organization together in a relatively short period of time to put their best efforts forward to avert this natural disaster.
So from the standpoint of the entire audit, as the honourable member points out, yes, all of these things probably will be part of the process of evaluation. I am sure that once the report is finalized that a number of the recommendations that would come forth out of their report would be looked at seriously in terms of implementing the recommendations. I am not too sure at this point in time how the format of the report is going to be set up as to whether there would be indeed some recommendations following the report or whether it would just be a straight evaluation in terms of how did we do and how did everybody else do in this effort.
But even such things, as the member points out, about sandbags and how the sandbag dikes are constructed, that indeed may show up as an area where perhaps better plans, more detailed technical workshops might be the way to go in the future. I think the honourable member also has to keep in mind that on April 1 or April 2, there probably was no need to have a technical workshop in making sandbag dikes. It easily could have been handled almost on a one-to-one basis with people in the community. On April 8, that soon changed around. So there is always that thought or at least to have as fast a response as possible to this whole issue. It will be included in this whole audit, and I am sure that the results will bear me out.
The Acting Chairperson (Mr. Tweed): The hour now being six o'clock, committee rise.