Mr. Chairperson (Ben Sveinson): Good afternoon. 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 for the Department of Finance.

As had been previously agreed, questioning for this department will follow in a global manner, with all line items to be passed once the questioning has been completed.

Hon. Harold Gilleshammer (Minister of Finance): Thank you, and I would invite my staff to come to the front.

Mr. Chairman, I am concerned that we have not passed any lines here. We have been debating for quite a number of days, and I know that there is agreement on the budget because one member after another on the other side stood up and voted for it. Their names were actually recorded voting for the budget. I just thought as an act of good faith, since this is our third or fourth meeting, that perhaps we could pass a few lines and show some progress.

You know, staff from this office and from the Department of Finance have been here day after day after day, and it just seems that when we read Hansard we are not making any progress. I wondered if it is possible we could go line-by-line and show some support for the budget and the department and have some lines passed before we proceed.

Mr. Jim Maloway (Elmwood): Mr. Chairman, we have only an hour and 50 minutes left, and we will try to get as much done as we can in that period of time. If we do not finish it, we can deal with it in the concurrence. But the minister has his staff here for the next hour and a half, so let us proceed. I have quite a number of questions on some specific cases. I would like to proceed with them.

Mr. Gilleshammer: Mr. Chairman, I heard a long list of departments that have not been into Estimates yet, and that they have to be dealt with here and that the Speaker or the House leader read out. I am concerned that they are going to have to have a turn, too, and we have not passed any lines yet.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, I do not think the minister has to worry about it. At the end of the day, the department's Estimates will be passed. We simply have some more questions to ask on the IT area, and then we have some other questions to ask in some other areas. In an hour and 50 minutes we will be finished.

Mr. Gilleshammer: Well, I know that there is support for the budget from members opposite, but I felt that they would want to have those other departments come in and go through some questions on that. But, if that is not the case, we are prepared to proceed.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, perhaps the minister has available the figures that he was going to obtain for me the other day, that is, the list of the expenses of the Y2K expenses, the computer hardware, software, consulting expenses for the Crown corporations, so that we can add to our total here and determine what the final total is for the government for Y2K and computer-related expenses for year 2000.

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Mr. Gilleshammer: As I recall, my commitment was to provide my honourable friend with some annual reports from those organizations so that he could have an opportunity to peruse them. I see we have even put notations in here so that he would easily be able to find year 2000 information. So, Mr. Chair, I table and I apologize, I have only got one copy. I am not sure if the Clerk would want me to just table one copy or whether we need to get–[interjection] We need three? So we will have to leave it until another day? [interjection] Well, these annual reports are lengthy. Anyway, I will table them here and you can look at them and see what you want to do, or perhaps we could just pass them on to my honourable friend.

There are the Manitoba Lotteries Corporation Annual Report 1997-1998, the Manitoba Public Insurance Annual Report 1998, and the Manitoba Hydro-Electric Board Forty-Seventh Annual Report for the year ended March 31, 1998. All of these organizations, of course, are concerned with year 2000 issues, and I table them at this time.

Mr. Chairperson: We want to thank the minister. These reports have been tabled in the House already, so there is no need for the minister to table two more copies.

Mr. Maloway: Since the minister is in a tabling mood, I wonder if he could provide copies of the studies that were done in the e-commerce area by the Gartner Group, the Giga Group, and the Hackett Benchmarking Group.

Mr. Gilleshammer: We have been working very diligently trying to get all of the information my honourable friend is looking for. He will appreciate that both the staff and myself have other duties to perform, and we have not been able to locate all of these at this time. He may be aware that we spent the morning in here on Public Accounts this morning, and I am pleased to report that we did pass six reports there, so we made substantial progress, but I do have some of the reports from the Gartner Group.

The first is the Gartner Group search results. Again, it is a fairly lengthy document that I would table at this time. I have a second one here which deals with some of the key issues, and this, too, is from the Gartner Group. I just maybe would outline some of the issues that it deals with for the member's information. This is to do with the Internet. The first issue is what key trends will affect the role of the Internet? The second is how will Internet-driven technologies evolve? Thirdly, what will be the most effective strategies and tactics for users to exploit the Internet? Probably the word "exploit" is not a good term there, but it is not government's term, it is part of the information from the Gartner Group. Fourthly, how will Internet applications evolve, and which will generate a profit and which will continue to hemorrhage capital?

This information is readily available, so I would table this one copy here for the member. We are supplying it and not tabling it, okay? I think that is probably good for now.

Mr. Maloway: Presumably the minister has other studies then by the Giga Group and the Hackett Benchmarking. What is the status of those reports

Mr. Gilleshammer: Well, certainly I know the member's voracious appetite for information of this nature. We just wanted to be sure that we were able to complete some of his requests and they will take a little more time. I know the member is pleased to receive those reports on such a timely manner, and we will do our best–I said the other day–before the Estimates would be finished, but it appears we are going to finish today, and we will just have to get them to the member in a timely fashion afterwards. I can assure him we will do that as soon as we can.

Mr. Maloway: Would the minister indicate roughly how much time he requires? Are we talking about days here, weeks, months, years, how long?

Mr. Gilleshammer: We will make an effort to get them to the member in a timely fashion. He will appreciate that there are other issues that staff have to involve themselves in. In fact, today, I know they were doing some extremely important work. Unbeknownst to me this committee was going to call us back again, so we have had to call them away from their normal duties to appear again at committee and are pleased to do so. As soon as we possibly can, we will get that information for the member.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, have there been any pilot programs or tests done regarding e-commerce in the government at this point? Are there any contemplated at this point?

Mr. Gilleshammer: I am told the only department that is visiting this issue is the Department of Natural Resources. They are in the very preliminary stages of that.

Mr. Maloway: Have there been any plans to establish kiosks in shopping malls with the view to selling things like hunting licences and drivers' licences and a number of other items out of these kiosks?

Mr. Gilleshammer: I am told that the issues which the member is raising I think are all in the Department of Natural Resources, and they are in the early stages of talking about how they can best service their customers.

I know that, for instance, with hunting licences, there are many, many vendors out in the rural part of our province, and I would invite the member for Elmwood to come out into rural Manitoba sometime and visit. In fact, the Pan American Games may be a good opportunity for him to visit some of the sites. I know the sailing is going to be up at Gimli, and the rowing events are going to be held in western Manitoba. It might be a great opportunity for him to get out there and see how business is done. In fact, I was just reminded earlier today, someone needing to renew their driver's licence. In rural Manitoba, you can go to almost any Autopac dealer, have your picture taken and get your licence, and it is much, much more difficult to do that in the city of Winnipeg. I think the various departments need to look at how they can best service customers.

Getting back to the question, the Department of Natural Resources is a natural one to look at some of those ideas. I know that we have many foreign tourists that come to Manitoba, particularly for hunting and fishing. In the quest for better customer service, I know that department is looking at all sorts of ideas whereby they can better serve Manitobans and others who make use of our parks and are interested in wildlife.

In fact, I think that the department went through an exercise in terms of reserving camp spots that is now functioning smoothly whereby people can reserve these over the phone. I think truly that is the department that has a number of opportunities to look into using modern technology to service their customers.

I know the Estimates for the Department of Natural Resources have not been passed. Maybe my honourable friend would have time to sit in with Natural Resources and look in more detail into some of these ideas that are coming forward. I suspect that we could do some brain-storming here to think about ways in which customers and people who access services from that department may be better served in the future. That truly is the area that I think is going to best take advantage of technology in the future. I am told at the present time they are just at the very formative stages and really have not a lot of concrete data that we can share with the member. But again, I would offer him the opportunity to attend the Estimates of Natural Resources, which have only had very brief scrutiny by the opposition, and that is probably where he could get some more in-depth answer.

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Mr. Maloway: I would like to draw the minister's attention to Minister Pitura's comments in Hansard in which he indicates the idea of purchasing hunting licences through kiosks. He said he would like to see a time when you can walk into a kiosk, that is, a provincial government kiosk in a shopping mall and be able to order your hunting licence or renew your driver's licence or maybe a copy of your birth certificate. He indicates that that one-stop shopping method would involve seven or eight government departments. Now, has this department had any conversations with Minister Pitura regarding how this kiosk system would be set up and how it would work?

Mr. Gilleshammer: Well, I noted that the quotation that the member for Elmwood made was from the other section of committee. Perhaps he would like to table that so we have a copy here in front of us to be able to review it. I noted that the partial excerpt that my honourable friend read started by saying, "I would like to see." I suppose in the future there is possibly many, many changes, and some of those we all may be around to see some day but they are not reality at this time.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, so is the minister saying that there have been no conversations with the Minister of Government Services as between the Government Services minister and his information department here on the concept of establishing kiosks in shopping malls in the city or around the province whereby seven or eight government departments would be offering services on an e-commerce basis? Is he saying that those conversations did not exist or did not happen?

Mr. Gilleshammer: I can say to the member that I have not had that conversation with the Minister of Government Services (Mr. Pitura). I do accept that, within government, from time to time, there are people looking at new and better ways of doing things. Clearly the quotation that the member read into the record was something that may occur in the future, so there no doubt are discussions within departments on how services such as this may be provided in the future. At the present time, I am told that these are in the very early stages of discussion, and at the present time do not exist in kiosks in malls, I think the member was talking about.

Mr. Maloway: I wanted to ask the minister, in view of the fact that the 800 computers that are slated to go into the Family Services department in October are being rerouted for use during the Pan Am Games this summer, I am wondering whether the minister is making any provisions for how he is attributing the cost as far as the games are concerned, because the computers will be four months old. He is basically purchasing these computers four months earlier than he has to. If he knows how computers depreciate, he will know that, if he waited four months, he would be saving the taxpayers some money. On the other hand, he is saving the Pan Am Games probably a tremendous amount of money, because now they do not have to go out and lease 800 computers for the games.

I am not arguing with the idea that they are doing this. This is probably a good idea. The question is: how are you accounting for this?

Mr. Gilleshammer: I am pleased the member is supporting this initiative and the Pan Am Games, which, of course, will bring thousands and thousands of people to Manitoba. The member indicates that he is a ticket holder and will be participating as an observer–[interjection]

I think he said he tried to be a participant but did not make the cut. I understand that there is a private sector organization which is involved in covering off some of the costs of this initiative.

Mr. Maloway: Could the minister elaborate a little better and explain what he is talking about here with "private sector organization"?

Mr. Gilleshammer: Well, while all three levels of government are heavily involved in funding and supporting the Pan Am Games, the member will know that there are other groups and organizations within the province and within the country who are also participating. I understand that the costs of these machines to be used in the Pan Am Games is covered in the Pan Am Games budget and will not be seen as a cost to government.

Mr. Maloway: But the government is buying the machines. They are buying them four months earlier than they have to. They are lending them in effect to the Pan Am Games. What is he talking about that there is no cost to government? Of course, there is cost to government. The government is buying them in the first place.

Mr. Gilleshammer: Well, there is a depreciation–I think that is what the member is saying–and that depreciation is covered by one of the other supporters of the Pan Am Games.

Mr. Maloway: Which supporter is he referring to here?

Mr. Gilleshammer: That would be IBM.

Mr. Maloway: So the government is buying the computers. They are buying them actually from IBM. They are lending them to the Pan Am Games. So how is he accounting for the depreciation on the equipment? If he were to wait four months and if the equipment were to be bought four months later, it would be presumably at lower cost than when he is buying it right now. So this is really in essence a subsidy to the Pan Am Games. How does that show on the books?

Mr. Gilleshammer: I think the simple answer is that we are not paying the full price for those machines.

Mr. Maloway: By not paying the full price you mean that they are being sold to you, you are taking title of the machines, and that because they are arriving in the government four months after they should be, that they are being sold to you at a discounted price?

Mr. Gilleshammer: That is correct.

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Mr. Maloway: I was wondering whether there were any studies being done or whether the Finance ministers across the country have been dealing with the whole area of taxation as it relates to e-commerce sales or as it relates to purchasing equipment on toll-free lines or purchasing products on toll-free lines. For example, at the present time, people can buy computers in Toronto on toll-free lines or computers in the States, and it is basically on the honour system as to whether or not the provincial taxes get paid on the purchase. Now, I would like to know what sort of mechanism you have for tracking down cases where people do not declare the taxation and pay the PST on those kind of sales. I am sure there are other kinds of sales, but those are ones that come to mind.

Mr. Gilleshammer: The question my honourable friends asks I think is an important one that is not under the purview of the Office of Information Technology. When we had staff from the Department of Finance deal with taxation, I possibly could have gotten my honourable friend a more up-to-date answer. But the point is a valid one, that there is in existence in Canada something that some people call the underground economy whereby goods and services are exchanged and sometimes tax is not paid on that. Governments right across this country and nationally have to be concerned about that. Sometimes it is a bartering situation that takes place between various tradesmen. I know it is a very difficult issue to police, but we do have staff within the Department of Finance who spend a good deal of their time trying to prevent that kind of activity. Certainly, I think it has been shown in many jurisdictions, particularly where taxation is high, that people are more prone to try to beat the system. It is a cost to government everywhere when people do not honestly pay their fair share of taxation.

So we do have staff within the department who attempt to police this. I think they are successful a good deal of the time. If the member is saying, is it absolutely a hundred percent foolproof, the answer is no. It is, I guess, a judgment call that governments and departments have to make: how much time do you spend trying to enforce taxation law and getting people to comply? I guess there is not only that, but there is also the smuggling that takes place where product is brought in from other provinces or from other countries. This, of course, is mostly a federal issue.

I know that, if my honourable friend has been out of the country lately, customs officers will ask you to declare what you have bought or been given, what you are bringing into the country, and it is a constant concern. I think for the citizen, the citizen sometimes sees this as a victimless crime, that to beat the government is not as serious as perhaps taking something from a neighbour or a fellow citizen. But we do have staff that work in this area and, to a large extent, are successful.

I am told that within our Audit branch within Taxation they audit the records of tax collectors and taxpayers. They conduct investigations into the smuggling of tobacco and fuel, tax evasion and other violations of the acts and prosecute for offences under these acts. This can range from, I think, people who are selling cigarettes by the single cigarette rather than by the package, to people burning coloured fuel in their vehicle when that fuel has been designated for farm use only. I am told there are even people who make their own beverages these days, some of them illegal. So this whole idea of getting everybody to pay taxes is an ongoing problem.

So the member is saying that perhaps there will be new issues. The whole idea of e-commerce is really, from a point of view of law enforcement, no different than people buying through a mail order catalogue or buying something over the phone. I sometimes see on television you can phone a 1-800 number and buy disks with music on it and records and tapes and that sort of thing. So, if you are saying, is government changing with the times, I think the answer is yes. We have to be aware of those things and try and be as vigilant as possible in enforcing taxation.

Now there is a balance, of course. How much money do you want to spend on that? I mean, if you want to put the taxation cops to work, sometimes you are spending more on enforcement than you are on collecting. I get to see from time to time something called write-offs that the department has to be involved in when people do not pay their bills. Often private tax collection agents are hired, and they are able to go out there and try and enforce what government officials have not been able to do. After a while of that endeavour, governments historically have written some of them off. So if you are saying there are new challenges out there, I agree.

Mr. Maloway: I guess, first of all, I am asking are there any studies in the area of e-commerce and taxation that you have? I have spoken to another Finance minister from a different province, and the information I got from him was that this had not really been a topic at the Finance ministers' meetings or level yet. It seems to me that rather than being ahead of the game you are probably behind the game if you have not started looking at how you are going to collect the taxes on e-commerce trades which can involve other countries. Unless you are going to tie it into customs checks at the border and you start sharing information with them, which I do not know that you do on a consistent basis, then I do not know how you are going to police that.

Mr. Gilleshammer: I am wondering if my honourable friend would identify the Finance minister he was talking to.

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Mr. Maloway: I think there are probably a limited number of names that he could be dealing with here, but I do not think that that is of particular interest here. I think what I have asked is do you have any studies dealing with how you would collect taxes regarding e-commerce sales? Do you have any strategy, do you have any studies to deal with that problem?

Mr. Gilleshammer: I can tell the member that I do not have any studies at the table here today, but I would point out that the method of the transaction does not in any way change the objective of ensuring that appropriate retail sales tax compliance takes place. The audit group within taxation I think is responding with more sophisticated audit programs and investigative techniques. This is an ongoing review.

From the short time that I have been in the Department of Finance, I can tell you that the investigative processes tend to be held very closely. In all my tours of government departments and buildings, one of the memories that I have of going to meet some of the tax auditors is that they were working behind closed doors in a very, one might even say, clandestine fashion and interacting with colleagues from across the country and from the federal government.

I think that they are well aware that they need to improve the sophistication of their audits, so that they can keep up to speed on techniques and strategies to enforce the collection of taxes and ensure that there is tax compliance. So I do not have any studies with me today, in fact, because the opposition indicated they wanted to talk with us about year 2000 compliance. I will ensure that I check with other departmental staff in Finance to see if we have any studies that have taken place or if there is any off-the-shelf varieties that I can share with the member, and, if there indeed are studies, I would be pleased to share them with my honourable friend.

Mr. Maloway: Does the minister or his department have any estimate as to how big a problem this is, as to how much uncollected revenue there might be out there in the area of the e-commerce sales; and the second thing is outside-of-Manitoba sellers selling products into Manitoba over toll-free lines?

Mr. Gilleshammer: Again, I have not seen any of that data in any of the briefing notes and briefing books that I have had the opportunity to read. I think I can say with some certainty that the Audit branch is increasingly moving into this area of computer-assisted audit techniques. They are doing that to address the ever-increasing use of electronic transaction data. I guess what my honourable friend is looking for is some hard data on how successful they are. I will raise that issue and see if there are any data that I can share with him.

I would say, and I think the member would agree, that this is a very difficult area to get hard data on because a lot of the activity that we are talking about takes place not only in what he calls e-commerce but also simply in bartering, where somebody does some work for somebody in return for something else. Now, I know that my honourable friend is a prominent businessman in the city of Winnipeg and he might have more information through his own sources on that than I do, but it is a concern to the Audit branch and something that they work on.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, it is certainly a concern on the part of local businesses. It does not matter what sort of businesses they are, but let us say computer sales companies in Manitoba. When they have to pay employees, they have buildings here in Manitoba; they have their operation in Manitoba, and they are faced with competitors who are not necessarily offering a better product but have a 7 percent advantage by virtue of the fact that they operate outside of Manitoba borders, just across the border.

I just want to know how big a problem it is because I know that while it is the requirement that people voluntarily pay the tax, I would like to know how many, for example, computer products are sent here from Toronto every day and how many people actually go down to the tax department. I would like to know: when is the last time somebody walked into your tax department and said here is my bill of sale and I want to pay 7 percent on a $5,000 computer? When is the last time that has happened?

Mr. Gilleshammer: I do not have that information here about when was the last time. It could have been earlier today, but we will try and find that out when people do come in to pay sales tax. I would point out though, that it is the federal customs officers who collect the provincial sales tax when it does come into the country. I think that the working relationship between these officers of both the federal and provincial governments and the working relationship is a positive one. They do not catch all of the people who choose to ignore the law. As I indicated, to a lot of people, it seems to them like a victimless crime that they are not in any way infringing on the property of fellow citizens; they simply are not paying the tax. I mean, my honourable friend probably has been on airplanes coming into the country where you have to fill out those forms and people are scrambling to make lists and talking about what you are going to report, and what you are going to let the government know that you have bought outside the country.

So it is not, by any means, foolproof, but my advice to anybody is just to tell the truth and then you do not have to worry about it. But there are parts of this province where we have very long, undefended borders, where in all seasons people attempt, I think, to bring product into the province in a clandestine way and avoid the paying of taxes, so it is a constant issue with tax collectors and auditors who try to enforce the laws of Canada and Manitoba.

When we have the Finance staff at committee at another time, we can maybe get more detailed answers for the member.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, so the minister seems to be saying that the problem should be not as big a problem at the border then, as the tax is collected as the products are shipped across the border in trucks or whatever form they are using. The provincial tax is collected at the border. However, this problem is also across the country, province to province. Now, is there any recognition of the possibility of having reciprocal agreements whereby Manitoba would collect, companies would collect tax and send the money to the other province where the goods were sold to? Otherwise, what you do is you create a very unfair situation for local suppliers in Manitoba.

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If you could purchase a product in Ontario, whether it is a car or a computer, and you had to pay the tax there and they were to remit the money to Manitoba, at a government level now, it might solve the problem. What is happening right now is that the companies are in Ontario, for example, when they sell to an Ontario resident they are collecting Ontario tax and sending them to the Ontario government. When they are selling it to a Manitoba resident, they are not collecting any tax and they are just leaving it up to you to go track the people down in Manitoba. Of course, the people when they get the product, they see a 7 percent saving here, and they are not too inclined to come and voluntarily remit to you.

So it would be much easier if that Ontario company just simply collected the tax based on the residency of the person who is buying the product, so if it is Alberta, zero tax, and if it is Manitoba, seven. I mean, they would have to deal with different percentages for each province, but would that not be an easier method of doing it? It would guarantee collection at the source and then you would simply have the monies sent off to the province where the person resided. It would save them paying it. I do not know, it just seemed to me some sort of reciprocal agreement. You know, we have had free trade in this country for 10 years now, and we are still not quite there yet with interprovincial trade. I guess we are getting there, but it took us 10 years to do it. So I do not want to see local companies disadvantaged because consumers buy the products outside of Manitoba and can buy the identical product at 7 percent less, and then you do not end up with your taxation revenue out of it.

Mr. Gilleshammer: Well, I thank the member for his comments, and I will be sure to share his comments in Hansard with my people in Taxation because I know that, if in any way they can learn something from our discussions here that will be of use, they will be very interested in that.

Mr. Maloway: I did want to get a list of tax arrears. I do not know whether you have those handy here, but maybe I could keep asking some questions. I know you are very interested in more questions on Y2K. You have all the top guns here to answer those questions, but I do want answers to the tax arrears question as well, but maybe we could finish off the questions on the computer side of things first, if that would be better for you.

When you purchased this new system, you made a decision to go with 150 servers, as opposed to a single-server approach. As you know, over the last couple of years, there is a debate in the industry about that idea and a lot of companies now are looking for a single server to do their worldwide operations. It is similar to the idea of the telephone. You have all the software. The expensive programs are down on Empress Street or wherever in the big telephone building. What you have in your house is just a dumb terminal. You just have a telephone, and you do not have to worry about software and so on.

Basically, the argument that the single-server people use is that by using a multiserver approach, what you are doing is making Bill Gates rich. You are ensuring that you have to buy in your case 9,000 copies of Windows, 9,000 copies of all these software programs, and then when you update them you have to update all these multiple machines, and of course, they rarely work all that well consistently over a long time anyway. So it would be much easier if you were simply to buy a single server, put all the data on that and then just have the workers work at their desks with dumb terminals. I ask for your comments about that, as to what your attitude is on that now?

I know that you went with the multiserver approach, but the question is whether you are now looking at perhaps reconsidering, when the contract runs out in three or four years from now, at a single-server approach.

Mr. Gilleshammer: I thank my honourable friend for his question, and it is difficult to say what decisions will be made in three or four years. The member has referenced the changes in technology that take place every few months, but I am sure when we sit down to make those decisions three or four years from now, we will take into consideration the changes in technology. I can assure you that as a government we would always be looking at new approaches.

Mr. Maloway: At the time, I do not believe you even asked for a quotation on a single-server approach. It seems to me that at the time you simply went to market, and your specifications were drawn up in such a way that the only people that could apply were people that were going to sell you 150 servers. I do not even think you even offered that option to any possible bidder.

Mr. Gilleshammer: This would be a question better asked in Government Services where they were responsible for making those decisions there. I believe that the Government Services Estimates have not been passed yet, and it would be an appropriate place to put that question.

If the member does not get the opportunity to do that, I will be sure to share a copy of Hansard with my colleague in Government Services.

Mr. Maloway: If the minister does not know the answer to the question, he can simply say so. I have asked the Minister of Government Services (Mr. Pitura) this question too, and they are not exactly sure of what the economics of that proposition are either. The point is, if you do not know what the answer is, just say so.

I am just asking: do you have any studies available right now that would indicate what the saving was in the beginning, two years ago, of going with this solution over a single-server approach? Do you have any idea whether you saved a lot of money by doing what you did or did it cost you money by doing what you did? What is your feeling at this point as to what you might do a couple of years from now given the way the technology is changing?

Mr. Gilleshammer: Again, the member already asked this question. He said three or four years ago, and now he is saying a couple years from now. It is very difficult to make a decision today based on the technology environment that is going to exist down the road two years, three years or four years. In fact, there could be considerable change by that time, and I cannot prejudge what decision the Department of Government Services will make at that time.

Mr. Maloway: How much money did you save by going with the multiserver approach over going with the single-server approach? Do you have some estimate as to whether you saved thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions?

Mr. Gilleshammer: I am told the suggestion of how things might have gone was not feasible at that time, so the question really is a hypothetical one. There is no answer to a hypothetical question.

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Mr. Maloway: The minister is responsible for the Better Methods Initiative of the government, and the goal, as I understand it, is to eventually end in a paperless office, or that has been the goal of the whole computer industry over the years. As I had indicated before, it seems that that is a pretty elusive sort of target. But we have some evidence that Cisco Systems, I think, Dell Computer, probably a number of others, claim in an e-commerce environment to be down to a paperless office.

Now, I am sure you have heard these claims by these companies, but do you have any evidence to show that that has, in fact, happened with them? Has anybody from here volunteered to go down and check Dell or check at Cisco Systems and see how their system operates, because you have spent a considerable amount of money here and you have a far from paperless environment.

Mr. Gilleshammer: I know that I have seen a number of travel requests where staff do go to a number of national and international meetings to keep current on issues around technology. It is an ever-changing environment and one that I feel we are attempting to keep up to date on. For sure, the Office of Information Technology has been largely centred on Y2K issues as we now are into the last half of 1999. Much of their attention and energy is going to be centred on being sure that we are compliant. Again, as we indicated the other day, every indication is that we are well positioned for the year 2000. Having said that, again, the technology is ever changing and the thought of a paperless office is something that is still in the future for government. There are companies, corporations, which are moving in that direction. With the number of staff within government and people who have to be informed about government policy, government decisions, we are some way away from achieving that target, if in fact it is one.

Mr. Maloway: Can the minister then tell us how much the government is spending on paper in this fiscal year?

Mr. Gilleshammer: I do not think I have seen that information lodged in the Estimates of any department. I am not sure that that is a question that has ever come forward during our Estimates process. If the member thinks that we can save some big dollars in that area, I think he is wrong. As we transition into more and more technology, I am sure we will be using less paper. I do not know whether the member is thinking that this is a big issue with government, that individuals who work within departments are too reliant on generating briefing notes. I know I have observed that the member writes the odd letter himself for his constituents and for others.

Probably the bigger cost is the postage that he is using rather than the paper, but we can, I suppose, check with the Public Accounts and see what the caucus offices are using in terms of paper and postage and perhaps report back to this committee at a later date. A valid question. I know that all the caucuses, one is not as active as the other sometimes and probably within the caucus there are people who write more letters to their constituents and use more postage. I do not know whether caucuses keep track on that. I know the member for Elmwood is probably at the high end because I have seen him come in the House with box loads of letters, and he sits there signing one after the other. I wonder if within his own constituency he is finding that he can communicate more by using technology than he can with hard copies and using all this paper. I do not know whether he would care to answer that or not.

Mr. Maloway: I have no problem answering that at all. In my constituency it is not a rich constituency, but I do not know what percentage of people have computers. I do not suspect it is very high, so I have no choice but to mail them letters and tell them what I am doing down here. I cannot e-mail them memos, because they do not have computers.

Now that is not the case with you and the government. You just spent $162 million to bring yourself out of the Stone Age, you said, into the new age to buy these fancy computers. You did not buy the computers from the lowest bidder to start with. You spent all this money, and now you are telling me you do not know how much money you spend on paper a year. You have no idea when you are going to become a paperless operation as Dell has done, as Cisco has done, as a lot of other companies have done. You have no plans whatsoever to do this, and you have state-of-the-art equipment here. There has to be some kind of a plan that the government has, and that is one of the reasons you went with this big system. So, surely, surely there has to be an overall plan in this government, and I think there is a plan. I think you are hiding the plan.

I think you have a plan here for e-commerce. You said in your throne speech that you are going to reduce the civil service by 10 percent. Now you are going to do that over five years. Presumably somebody is going to have to pick up the slack and do that work that these civil servants are doing right now; presumably, they are working right now. So how would you do that? Well, you do that when you buy a big new computer system like this by reducing–when you reduce the labour force, you are simply going to be making up the slack with this fancy new computer system. You are going to be doing internal e-commerce. You are going to be doing external e-commerce with the public.

I know you do not want to talk about that before an election because those are sensitive issues, but certainly the potential is there with the computer system you have right now. Part and parcel of that is the necessity, our desire, to reduce the amount of paper the government uses. If you cannot tell me how much you are spending right now and you have no plan, then what was the purpose of all of this? Was it only because of Y2K? I do not think so.

If you have plans that you do not want to tell me about them because of the election, well, just say so. I will wait till after the election then, and we will find out one way or the other, I guess.

Mr. Gilleshammer: The member does raise the issue of how technology, as it develops over the decades, does replace people. There was a time as a summer student I worked on the railroad, and we did a lot of manual labour. Now I see that they have developed a lot of machines that do that, and, as a result, they do not need as much manpower as they did at one time.

Is my honourable friend suggesting that he would prefer to live in an age, in an era, where a lot of this is done manually and that the use of technology and machines is a bad thing, because I do not think he is going to be able to stop that? The use of technology in government is a reality. It is part of the reason why I think telephone systems across this country are reducing staff members, because they have more up-to-date technology. They do a lot more things now in telecommunications than they ever did before.

I would point out that one of the points of technology is to increase the amount of service that can be provided. I think that is happening, and governments will continue to access technology as the years go by. Yes, in the throne speech, there was an indication of what we see in the future, that government will be able to operate quite effectively with fewer staff years. That has been shown over the last 10 years, and I think that is a trend that will continue to some extent into the future.

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Mr. Maloway: Let us get back to Y2K now. The province has spent $70 million in Y2K expenditures, and presumably with this new computer system that they have they could keep track of the expenditures. I find it really passing strange here, to use a phrase of the former, former Minister of Finance, that the minister does not seem to be able to put together information as fast as I think he should be with this new computer system that he has. For example, I would think that the breakdown of the $70 million in Y2K expenditures, albeit over two or three years, should be something that should just be readily available. You simply put the parameters down in your program and you pull out the reports.

In a business, I can tell you, with the proper computer system you simply put down the parameters for the report you want, and you push the button and out it comes. I can get reports, all sorts of different reports, all sorts of different ways. With the current software you are working with and the hardware you are working with, I do not see why you should have a problem. Back in June, but I guess it was much earlier, I filed a Freedom of Information request for Y2K information. So what did I get back on June 25 of this year? I get a letter saying that if I want to pay $520, I can get the information. I do not know why that should be such a difficult thing to do. I was simply asking for the amount of money that was allocated or to be spent on the testing of the system, it is Y2K testing, and asking for the costs by department. This is the kind of letter I get back.

Now why could that be so complicated? I find that hard to believe that this is what I would get. It just seems that the information should be available.

Mr. Gilleshammer: The Freedom of Information, a very important issue to our government. I know it was passed by the previous government I think in 1985. For some reason it sat there and sat there and it was never proclaimed. I suspect there was not much of a commitment to it. I know the member was in government then, and I am sure within his caucus he would have been urging them to put it on the agenda probably on a monthly basis and saying: let us talk about this Freedom of Information Act we have passed. We need to get this proclaimed.

Probably he did send letters on it. I am sure he would have been hounding colleagues like the member for Brandon East (Mr. L. Evans) who was in cabinet at that time saying: we have passed this worthy legislation. We do not seem to have any commitment to it, so we did proclaim that. In fact, as I recall in the early days in the Legislature when I was first elected in 1988 and the member for Gimli joined me at that time. In fact there are not many of us here now from that class of 1988. A lot of them were in opposition at that time with the Liberal Party, and they have gone on to other things, but anyway, one of the first things we did was to proclaim that Freedom of Information legislation. It is there to assist opposition members and the members of the public to get information from government departments when they wish to have that.

Now, part of the legislation they passed also said it should not be there simply to do research for opposition members or students or anybody else, so that anything that is provided after some two hours of work should be something that members of the public are prepared to pay for because it does create work for staff within departments who rightly have other responsibilities and work that they need to do.

I have not read this letter yet. In fact, it is not even to the member for Elmwood (Mr. Maloway). It is to somebody by the name of Shauna Martin. Anyway, after a certain amount of work is done, then it is expected if you are going to take people from their tasks and from their normal work to provide that information, then there should be a charge for it. I think that was part of the original legislation. That was not an amendment that has been put in.

So I presume the member supports that, as he was a member of that caucus that researched and structured and passed that legislation. If he is suggesting that we should have an amendment to the current legislation, that is probably something for another day. If this was something he debated and fought for within caucus and lost at the time, I guess so be it. I am sure that he takes an active role in debating these things.

At any rate, those are the rules, and we try and abide by them. But I understand that if you still are not satisfied that the act is being applied correctly, there is an appeal process. So I would urge him to use that appeal process to the Ombudsman if he feels he has not been well served.

Mr. Maloway: The minister has the information. The minister knows that he spent $70 million on Y2K projects, 65 projects. He could provide me in minutes, I am sure, with a list of all the projects, who got them, the duration of the project, the nature of the project, what it was doing. He could provide that information with no problem at all. If he wished the information, he simply would have to ask his staff, and he would have it right away.

All I am pointing out to you is that when I send an information request like that under the Freedom of Information, that is the kind of response I get. That is how open this government is. It is not open at all. It is controlling the information. It does not want to give out information because it feels that the information that it gives out will be detrimental to its electoral fortunes perhaps in the next couple of months. So, I mean, if the minister wished to give this information, he certainly could. There is no question in my mind.

I want to ask the minister, of the 65 Y2K projects, how many instances were there where you were dealing with a brand new system, where you bought a brand new system, but, in the meantime, you went and spent money on Y2K on the old system as a backup? How many instances were there? You do not have to be exact here. Is it two or three, a dozen, of the 65?

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Mr. Gilleshammer: I am informed that there were a handful of systems that were sort of built in parallel while new technology was coming on stream. I do have some taxation information for my honourable friend that was just handed to me and I could share that with him, if he would like.

So, Mr. Chairman, I will go ahead with this taxation information. The collection of outstanding accounts receivable and delinquent returns pursuant to The Retail Sales Tax Act, The Corporation Capital Tax Act and The Health and Post Secondary Education Tax Levy Act is as follows: these outstanding accounts receivable result from returns filed by businesses without paying the tax and from unpaid audit assessments. Delinquent accounts are the result of taxpayers not filing their returns by the due date. The collection of outstanding receivables and delinquent returns is performed by professional collection and field officer staff dedicated to fair, responsible enforcement.

It continues: improvement of audit effectiveness as a result of increased receivables arising from audit assessments. Many businesses are still experiencing cash flow problems where they simply close their doors. Bankruptcy and receiverships are still a fact of life out in the business world. Enhanced enforcement legislation, delegation of authority and continuous improvement of collection processes have resulted in a substantial increase in the amount collected, and a decrease in delinquent accounts under The Retail Sales Tax and the payroll tax.

Two collection officers were hired in the fall of 1998. The Collections section has invested time and resources to train and develop new staff in order to achieve quality resolution to the accounts receivable. Experience indicates that it will take the new staff upwards of a year to achieve this performance level.

At any rate, we have some retail sales tax arrears. This spans a number of years in fiscal year '97 ending on March 31, of course, there were 4,649 of those accounts. In fiscal year March 31, 1998, that had risen to 4,781. Year to date to December of 1998, there was 4,516. Now, the member is interested in the dollar amount. In March of 1997, there was $13.9 million outstanding. That dropped in fiscal year 1998, March 31, to 13.2. The year to date as of December 31, 1998, was $11,811,000 that was in arrears.

Now, there was a substantial amount collected every year, as well, so this is an ongoing process, and this refers just to the retail sales tax. The amount collected, I gather, that had been in arrears in fiscal year '97 was $12 million. At the end of fiscal year March 31, '98, it was $15.5 million, and year to date, December 31, '98, it was $19.3 million that has been collected. Some of this would be in arrears for more than one year, so there is an ongoing activity there to measure the number of outstanding accounts, the number of delinquent accounts and the amount that is collected.

Now, I can go through the same for payroll tax. In the year up to March 31, '97 arrears, the number of accounts was 201, and the amount outstanding was $1.1 million, and the amount collected in fiscal year '97 was $2.1 million. In fiscal year March 31, '98, there were 170 accounts in arrears. The amount outstanding was almost $900,000, and the amount collected was $2.5 million. Year to date, as of December 31, '98, there were 196 accounts in arrears. The amount outstanding is $1.3 million, and the amount collected was almost $1.9 million.

Similarly with the corporation capital tax, the number of accounts in arrears as of March 31, '97, was 405 accounts. The amount outstanding was $2.3 million, and the amount collected was $1.9 million. Similarly, at the end of fiscal year March 31, '98, there were 623 accounts in arrears. The amount outstanding was $2.4 million, and the amount collected was $3.5 million. Year to date, as of December 31, 1998, there were 675 accounts in arrears, $2.3 million outstanding, and $1.7 million collected.

Mr. Maloway: Let us just take a look at the sales tax, the RST portion of it. How does this compare to, say, 10 years ago in terms of the arrears? Do we have improvement in the arrears position of the government, or are things pretty static, or have they gotten worse?

Mr. Gilleshammer: I do not have that information at hand here that goes back 10 years. It appears for the years that I have reported on that it is reasonably flat, that there continues to be people who get into arrears because they go out of business or their business is failing. I think the important thing is that we have collections officers who are on the job, and a substantial amount of this at the end of the day is collected.

Maybe further to that I could indicate some of the action presently being taken by Taxation Division relative to the problems that we have been talking about.

First of all, out-of-province sellers are encouraged to voluntarily register and collect the tax. Some of them do and some of them do not. Secondly, Manitoba businesses bringing equipment and other goods or services from out-of-province sellers for their own use are provided with tax reporting forms and information for self-remitting the tax. However, many businesses fail to self-remit, resulting in a substantial loss of tax revenue, as just a small percentage of them are registered businesses, but they are audited and can be pursued that way.

Under an existing agreement with Revenue Canada, Revenue Canada collects Manitoba's retail sales tax on goods that individuals resident in the province bring through Customs or import by mail or courier. Taxation Division is exploring with Revenue Canada officials the possibility of expanding the process to include sales tax collection from businesses importing goods from outside of Canada.

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Under the reciprocal information exchange agreements with the provinces and Revenue Canada, the Taxation Division receives audit listings of out-of-province purchases made by Manitoba businesses and individuals. These listings are generally of higher value goods or when specific projects are undertaken with another province. An interprovincial sales working group, including staff from provincial and federal Finance departments and Revenue Canada, is presently reviewing options to resolve this issue. Discussions to date indicate the likelihood that federal legislation will be required to enable the enforcement of provincial tax collection by out-of-province sellers.

There are currently other initiatives underway to revise the system for collecting taxes on interjurisdictional commercial trucks and buses. I think the member knows from practical experience that a lot of this is done on an honour system. We reference people returning to Canada from other jurisdictions, but we will continue to seek out the best practices that are taking place in other jurisdictions and also work with other jurisdictions to make our tax collection as complete as possible.

Mr. Maloway: One of the most common complaints we get, particularly from businesses, is the fact that they do not understand how it is that businesses could get behind in the collection and remittance of the sales tax when there is a requirement that it be remitted, I believe, by the 20th of the next month, so there is certainly sufficient time for people to remit their sales tax. The question is: why are your people not making contact with them immediately? As soon as they see there is a problem in late filings, they should be on the case, I would think, at that point in time, rather than letting these arrears pile up.

Most businesses in town would not think of paying their RST a day late, let alone let arrears pile up for months and months and months. So the question is: how do you allow these clients, these customers accounts to get so far behind in the first place? One would think that if a business is properly run that as soon as an account starts getting a little bit late, you move in quickly to assess the exposure and try to work out some sort of arrangements and certainly impress upon them the fact that they are actually violating the law beyond a certain date.

We dealt with this issue a few years back with the Bombay Bicycle Club when they went out of business and left the taxpayer holding a lot of money. We have dealt with this matter in the Al Golden case, with the Transcona Club. You know, it borders on outright theft when businesses take money, when a customer goes to a restaurant or goes to a business and gives them the money, pays the bill, the 7 percent to the government is essentially trust funds, is what it is. It does not belong to the business. It is being collected on behalf of the government of Manitoba, on behalf of the Minister of Finance, so what right does the business have to basically direct this tax money into general revenues of the business and to be using it for other things like paying rent, salaries, trips and other things? Am I right or am I wrong about that?

I mean, this money should be segregated by the business, and it is the province's money. It is not to be spent on other things. It should not be co-mingled with the general revenues of the business. Do you agree with that, Mr. Minister, or not?

Mr. Gilleshammer: Well, the member is essentially correct that most businesses are extremely conscientious in remitting their sales tax, and to divert those funds for any other purposes is a mistake. Our collection staff monitor these accounts and have a follow-up process. I see a list every month of those that are in arrears. There are all sorts of reasons, some people might call them excuses, for why this happens. Sometimes it is a long weekend. Sometimes it is human error in postage. The majority of the ones I see are resolved.

There are penalties put in place, and sometimes those penalties are waived because the reason seems plausible, and then time is spent on other cases to try and track this down. In some cases, the money does not get collected, and often it is because somebody has gone into bankruptcy or gone out of business or fled.

Now, when he says that the money should not be co-mingled, I am just curious whether he thinks that businesses maybe should have a separate cash register that tax money goes into, so that it does not touch any other money and that it would go directly to government. I would suggest that maybe he would be adding a burden. But the problem is that everybody, whatever their intentions, does not always get it right, and, as a result, there are people who fall into arrears, and we have a process to deal with that.

We audit these businesses and do assess interest and penalties. We screen applications for registration to ensure that only legitimate businesses receive a registration number. Appropriate instructions to businesses on the proper use of registration numbers are used. Communicating with registrants by mail, telephone and taxation workshops provide information on the correct use of registration numbers, including the cancellation of unnecessary numbers. There is the development of other administration options, including potential enhanced legislation measures to ensure the proper use of these registration numbers.

You end up with a delicate balance. Do you bring the hammer down on somebody in every case and put them out of business? Do you allow them a little latitude to get their business back into condition and the tax paid? You know, I think that the auditors do a reasonably good job in this area, and I am not sure if the member agrees with that or not, but, for sure, when you collect a tax, it should be remitted to government. It happens in most instances, but there are some cases where people run into difficulties. The majority of those cases are resolved, but there still are a few that do not get resolved appropriately.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to correct a misunderstanding that the minister might have. I know he has only been in the job for a few months, but he should be aware that for all of the 400 Autopac agencies, as an example in Manitoba, that his department actually has an account that the Minister of Finance sets up and all sales tax revenue on registered cars in Manitoba is remitted directly into his account, the Minister of Finance account. He should not think that co-mingling is a big deal. The fact of the matter is in that particular type of enterprise, in that particular type of business, 7 percent or whatever it happens to be, is separated off right at the point of sale, right at the very beginning, and it always has been.

I understand if you are in the restaurant business, of course that does not happen. They do not separate it off into a separate account for the government. The fact of the matter is that it is basically money being held in trust for the government, that is what it is. People just do not seem to understand that. Some people just do not seem to understand that. The department should be by way of written letters or face-to-face communications by the Collections staff, the people should be informed that that is not their money to be earning interest off of, investing, playing around with, diverting, using for other means, that it is the Province of Manitoba's money and the fact that they go bankrupt or have financial difficulties has nothing to do with this 7 percent. This money is held in trust and has to go to you by the 20th of every month, and that is the way the system should work. If you establish that, and I am sure you are, I am sure that is being done, you should eliminate some of these problems.

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I know that from having talked to people within your staff, there have been suggestions over the years that the staff goes easy or that the management shows some favouritism or goes easy on some businesses as opposed to others. That is an allegation that has been made, for example, in the case of the Bombay Bicycle Club and in the case of the Transcona Golf and Country Club and other such names that it operated under. Why was this person able to go, basically, take you people for a ride for so long? How did that happen? Clearly it had to be a problem at the top with a lack of direction as to being told to leave this account alone or do not go hard on that account. I am just giving you, that is the concern that was voiced to me by people working in the department. Now, that may be correct, it may not be correct; their interpretation may not be correct. The point is at the end of the day I see lists every year here where you people write off uncollected sales tax. We have to admit that does happen. The question is: why does it continue to happen? You can hire staff; you can train staff; you can have the best computer system and still we have an arrears. That is why I ask: how bad is it today versus what it was like, say, 10 years ago? Are we getting better or is it just carrying on the way it has?

I do not have any answers for the minister on this question. I just ask what the current status and update is of this arrears problem.

Mr. Gilleshammer: I get the sense that the member is saying we are not harsh enough. I am just wondering if he would think that maybe some jail terms would be appropriate and tougher punishment for people who run into trouble here.

Mr. Maloway: The minister is starting to play games again. This is the same kind of discussion and debate we had way back in 1991, when the government was caught with its pants down, when it was failing to take action against Bombay Bicycle Club and other companies that were in arrears, and suggested that it was being deliberately politically motivated by friends of this government, they came back with the same line the minister is using right now: oh, well, we do not want to be pushing people into bankruptcy.

Well, in that case the place was bankrupt at the time anyway. The thing was already over the edge. I understand their sensitivities. I understand that you do not want to be pushing people into bankruptcy especially if the economy is bad. The economy is supposed to be good now, if you listen to this government in their daily announcements and forecasts and promises. The reality is that clearly there is a misunderstanding on the part of some businesses when they do not remit their sales tax at the proper times and they leave the taxpayers with unpaid sales taxes. I know that the average Manitoban would not agree with what the minister is saying, that people should be just allowed to pay their sales tax whenever they feel like paying it, because that is what he is saying.

Mr. Gilleshammer: The member for Elmwood (Mr. Maloway) ought not to try and put words in my mouth. I did not say that at all. I said our staff are very vigilant in dealing with people who fall into arrears and that there is a process to deal with these people and that there are consequences. The member, in trying to characterize my comments, is dead wrong. It is an ongoing effort of taxation administration to ensure that the legislation and related regulations and procedures are effectively communicated and understood by individuals responsible for collecting the retail sales tax.

I think we have done a good job of that. The number of people that have uncollectible accounts, when you do an interprovincial comparison, Manitoba stacks up very well. I would offer that Manitoba has a better record than Ontario in this respect, and there are statistics which would show that.

If the member is going to bring specific issues, I do not intend to get into discussing specific businesses here other than to say that I think the department has done a very good job of dealing with this area. We have new staff. We are doing more training. It is an ongoing process. There are always, there always have been people who are in arrears. They are dealt with. There are consequences.

I think what the member is saying is that we should take a zero-tolerance approach to this and put people out of business the first time that they fall into arrears. I do not think that is workable. The reasons I have seen for people failing to have their retail sales tax money in on time vary from month to month, and most of them are quite legitimate. The penalty is forgiven, and often it is the first time that they have ever been in arrears. I think they are dealt with in a responsible manner by the officials in the Taxation Division.

Mr. Chairperson: I believe that the point of order raised was simply a dispute over the facts.

Mr. Maloway: I wanted to ask the minister, when he said that there were a handful of systems that were built in parallel and Y2K, could he give me a list of those systems where the government basically bought brand-new Y2K compliant software and spent additional monies updating the old system that will die, I guess, on January 1?

Mr. Gilleshammer: I thank the honourable member for that question. I know that he wants a reasonably detailed answer, and I will commit to getting him that information in due course. As soon as we have an opportunity to compile it, we will pass it on to the honourable member.

Mr. Maloway: I have a final question for the minister, and it has to do with the whole business of payment of, well, say, sales tax or any type of taxes to the government. He knows that the income tax department has an e-filing system where your accountant can file your taxes by e-mail, and so can people individually. The question is where is the government at right now with regard to the Department of Finance and the ability to pay your different types of taxes to the government over the Internet in a form of Internet banking? I am referring here to sales tax, corporation capital, the whole range of provincial taxes.

Mr. Gilleshammer: I am told that a project of this nature is underway and that some time in the year 2000 that will be ready for rollout within government.

Mr. Maloway: I would like the minister to clarify his answer a little bit further. I mean, specifically, what types of taxes will be able to be paid, and what method will be used?

Mr. Gilleshammer: I would get that information for my honourable friend.

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Mr. Leonard Evans (Brandon East): As I understand, we have a limited amount of time, so I have three or four questions. Ten minutes is it, approximately?

Mr. Gilleshammer: What time do we finish?

An Honourable Member: 4:44 p.m.

Mr. Chairperson: That is the final time, yes.

Mr. Gilleshammer: But before that, we have to pass these lines.

Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. What we have done in this committee, and in my committee in the past has been the agreement between the minister and the critics which was to say, yes, we will have far-reaching questions, we will not be following line by line, and so on, and for that, we are going to give you enough time to pass these lines at the end of our questioning.

That is up to you. [interjection] Well, if you want to run the full time, then I guess the–[interjection] Well, the point that I make to you now is as a Chairperson here, okay? I have allowed that to happen with the understanding that these lines would be passed prior to it being finished. Now, if you–[interjection] Before 4:44.

Mr. L. Evans: I seek clarification, but I think once you reach the deadline, then time is allowed to automatically pass them. That is my understanding, so I do not think it is a problem. We are wasting all our time on this.

Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. As I have said, I gave that to the committee–

An Honourable Member: We understand; we understand.

Mr. Chairperson: No, I do not think you do quite, with this being that I said that indeed there would be time to pass these lines, and that was the understanding in these committees that I have chaired all along. Now, if this is going to be a change, that is fine, but then there would be a change down the line, too.

Mr. Gilleshammer: Might I suggest that we pass a number of the lines at this time, and we can still have this general discussion under the Minister's Salary?

Mr. L. Evans: Well, I am not clear. As I understand it, once we have run out of time, there are no further questions, and we still have to pass the resolutions. Normally, when you run out of time, then the Chair says we have run out of time, and now it is time we can pass resolutions.

Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. I explained in these committees that I am chairing and have chaired for a number of years now what the practice has been. Simply being, that the minister and the critics agreed to have far-ranging questions, and with that they would have time to pass those lines prior to the time being called.

Now, if you are going to change that, that is fine. I can take that.

Mr. L. Evans: Well, I have a question for the minister on floating new bond issues. I wonder if he could update us.

Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. The member for Brandon East is going to continue to ask questions until 4:44 p.m. Okay.

Mr. L. Evans: I wonder if the minister could update us on the situation of floating or selling Manitoba bonds. What is the capital market like? What are the rates of interest that we are looking at now for any new bond issues?

Mr. Gilleshammer: Mr. Chairman, my honourable friend will appreciate that we were asked to bring staff here to deal with Y2K issues, and the staff from the Treasury Division are not present today because our understanding was we would be spending the day, the rest of the time, but I will take the question as notice and take it back to my staff and get him a reasonably definitive answer on that.

Mr. L. Evans: I would look forward to that information, particularly interest rates that we may be looking at right now.

I understood that we had a little more flexibility, realizing that the computer technology would take a lot of time, but I had hoped not all the time.

At any rate, another question, tobacco interdiction, this has been a burning question over the years as to whether it is even legal to do it or constitutional to do it. I do not disagree with the objectives. They are admirable objectives. But I was wondering again whether the minister could give us an update. I see there are 10 staff employed at doing this. I am wondering: to what extent are we successful? It may be difficult to measure that.

Mr. Gilleshammer: Again, we did have some wide-ranging discussions on smuggling earlier and the collection of taxes. The fact of the matter is, it does continue. There are staff that are dedicated specifically to the tobacco side of it.

The member will recall, I am sure, that when eastern provinces, to resolve some other issues that were prevalent in their provinces, they drastically reduced the taxation on tobacco. It is a delicate balance of what you are achieving. I think that while it may have stopped some smuggling into Ontario and Quebec, it also creates the problem where young people have cheaper access to tobacco. I do not agree with that.

I think what they should have done was resolve their problems with the smuggling that was going on in Ontario and Quebec and maintain the taxation on their cigarettes, because I think there is a greater need and a greater challenge to keep tobacco out of the hands of young people.

I think in Manitoba there is fairly widespread agreement on that, that if you make that product readily available to young people–I mean, we all see young people who are smoking, and we know what the health risks are–I would argue that they may be trying to solve one problem, but they are creating a larger one.

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Manitoba ended up being the focal point of this issue. I do believe I have heard that we get support from the other western provinces to try and stop this problem at the Ontario border. We do have a number of investigators who work near the Ontario border. I am told that to date Manitoba's investigative staff have conducted over 3,000 checks of retail businesses, and 346 of these have been noncompliant. Charges have been preferred in 276 instances, and 41 young offenders and 29 adults have been warned. Individual penalties assessed so far have ranged from absolute discharges to $500 fines.

We have some experienced investigators who have been hired on a casual basis. They are funded through federal and provincial Health to implement a program to discourage minors from smoking. We have put in place investigators. They have seized a lot of product. I am told there are upwards of 10 additional staff that were hired in 1994 on a term basis and three investigators who were seconded from Revenue Canada excise to work and enforce The Tobacco Tax Act.

So this has been a major issue, and a lot of product has been seized. To date, this taxation special investigations have seized upwards of 50,000 cartons of smuggled cigarettes and a million and a half grams of fine-cut tobacco–

Mr. Chairperson: Order, please.

Mr. Gilleshammer: I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, I was just in the middle of it.

Mr. Chairperson: I am very sorry. Order, please. I am interrupting the proceedings of this section of the Committee of Supply because the total time allowed for Estimates' consideration has now expired. Our Rule 71.(1) provides in part that not more than 240 hours shall be allowed for the consideration in Committee of the Whole of the Ways and Means and Supply resolutions respecting all types of Estimates and relevant Supply bills.

Our Rule 71.(3) provides that where the time limit has expired, the Chairperson shall forthwith put all remaining questions necessary to dispose of the matter, and all such questions shall not be subject to debate, amendment or adjournment. I am therefore going to call in sequence the questions on the following matters: Finance, Resolution 7.1 to 7.10; Enabling Appropriations, Resolutions 26.1 to 26.4; Allowance for Losses and Expenditures Incurred by Crown Corporations and Other Provincial Entities, Resolution 27.4; Capital Investments, Resolutions, B.1 to B.8; Capital Initiatives, Resolutions 27.5; Millennium Fund, Resolution 27.6; Northern Affairs, Resolutions 19.1 to 19.4; Consumer and Corporate Affairs, Resolutions 5.1 to 5.4; Agriculture, Resolutions 3.1 to 3.2 and 3.4 to 3.9; Children and Youth Secretariat, Resolutions 34.1 to 34.3.

We will now proceed with calling each resolution.

Resolution 7.1: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $1,128,200 for Finance, Administration and Finance, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 7.2: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $1,831,600 for Finance, Treasury, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 7.3: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $6,706,900 for Finance, Comptroller, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 7.4: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $15,393,500 for Finance, Taxation, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 7.5: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $1,910,300 for Finance, Federal-Provincial Relations and Research, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 7.6: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $355,800 for Finance, Insurance and Risk Management, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 7.7: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $3,260,900 for Finance, Treasury Board Secretariat, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March of 2000. [passed]

Resolution 7.8: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $4,549,800 for Finance, Office of Information Technology, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March of 2000. [passed]

Resolution 7.9: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $785,800 for Finance, Amortization of Capital Assets, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March of 2000. [passed]

Resolution 7.10: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $181,800,000 for Finance, Net Tax Credit Payments, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March of 2000. [passed]

Enabling Resolutions.

Resolution 26.1: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $16,330,800 for Enabling Appropriations, Canada-Manitoba Enabling Vote, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March of 2000. [passed]

Resolution 26.2: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $3,400,000 for Enabling Appropriations, Sustainable Development Innovations Fund, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March of 2000. [passed]

Resolution 26.3: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $1,500,000 for Enabling Appropriations, Justice Initiatives, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March of 2000. [passed]

Resolution 26.4: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $20,000,000 for Enabling Appropriations, Internal Reform, Workforce Adjustment and General Salary Increases, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March of 2000. [passed]

Other Appropriations.

Resolution 27.4: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $775,000 for Other Appropriations, Allowance for Losses and Expenditures Incurred by Crown Corporations and Other Provincial Entities, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March of 2000. [passed]

Capital Investment.

Resolution B.1: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $13,000 for Capital Investment, Agriculture, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March of 2000. [passed]

Resolution B.2: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $8,710,000 for Capital Investment, Family Services, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March of 2000. [passed]

Resolution B.3: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $7,400,000 for Capital Investment, Finance, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March of 2000. [passed]

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Resolution B.4: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $40,700,000 for Capital Investment, Government Services, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March of 2000. [passed]

Resolution B.5: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $20,700,000 for the Capital Investment, Health, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March of 2000. [passed]

Resolution B.6: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $1,453,800 for Capital Investment, Highways and Transportation, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March of 2000. [passed]

Resolution B.7: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $280,000 for Capital Investment, Natural Resources, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March of 2000. [passed] [interjection]

Order, please. If you wish to carry on a conversation, do it over there, please.

Resolution B.8: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $34,000,000 for Capital Investment, Internal Reform, Workforce Adjustment and General Salary Increases, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Other Appropriations.

Resolution 27.5: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $55,000,000 for Other Appropriations, Capital Initiatives, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 27.6: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $4,000,000 for Other Appropriations, Millennium Fund, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Northern Affairs.

Resolution 19.1: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $511,400 for Northern Affairs Executive, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 19.2: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $15,987,200 for Northern Affairs Operations, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 19.3: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $2,614,600 for Northern Affairs, Capital Grants, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Is it the will of the committee to carry on and finish these resolutions?

Mr. L. Evans: Yes, I agree we should quickly finish these resolutions.

Mr. Chairperson: Agreed? The committee has agreed. We shall continue.

Resolution 19.4: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $126,400 for Northern Affairs, Amortization of Capital Assets, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Consumer and Corporate Affairs.

Resolution 5.1: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $1,162,300 for Consumer and Corporate Affairs, Administration and Finance, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 5.2: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $5,577,600 for Consumer and Corporate Affairs, Consumer Affairs, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 5.3: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $2,382,400 for Consumer and Corporate Affairs, Corporate Affairs, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 5.4: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $206,600 for Consumer and Corporate Affairs, Amortization of Capital Assets, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Agriculture.

Resolution 3.1: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $2,692,800 for Agriculture, Administration and Finance, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 3.2: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $53,412,600 for Agriculture, Risk Management and Income Support Programs, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 3.4: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $13,214,600 for Agriculture, Agricultural Development and Marketing, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 3.5: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $14,244,100 for Agriculture, Regional Agricultural Services, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 3.6: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $2,297,200 for Agriculture, Policy and Economics, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 3.7: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $4,900,800 for Agriculture, Agriculture Research and Development, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 3.8: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $12,000,000 for Agriculture, Agricultural Income Disaster Assistance, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 3.9: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $743,100 for Agriculture, Amortization of Capital Assets, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Children and Youth Secretariat.

Resolution 34.1: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $685,800 for Children and Youth Secretariat, Children and Youth Secretariat, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 34.2: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $5,388,000 for Children and Youth Secretariat, ChidrenFirst Initiatives, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 34.3: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $37,000 for Children and Youth Secretariat, Amortization of Capital Assets, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

This section of the committee only rise.

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Mr. Chairperson (Ben Sveinson): Order, please. As constituted in the House, we will reconvene here in this portion of the Committee of Supply to go through these resolutions, and we will start off with the Finance Resolutions 7.1 to 7.10.

Resolution 7.1: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $1,128,200 for Finance, Administration and Finance.

Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Inkster): When you are talking, the resolution that you are talking about having passed right now, is that for the Department of Finance?

Mr. Chairperson: That is.

Mr. Lamoureux: Okay.

Mr. Chairperson: It is, but we have stopped all questions and everything. We were passing the resolutions now.

Mr. Chairperson: Resolution 7.1: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $1,128,200 for Finance, Administration and Finance, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000.

Shall the resolution pass?

An Honourable Member: No.

Mr. Chairperson: All those in favour of passing this resolution, please say yea.

Some Honourable Members: Yea.

Mr. Chairperson: All those against, please say nay.

Some Honourable Members: Nay.

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

Mr. Lamoureux: I would ask for a recorded vote in the Chamber.

Mr. Chairperson: The honourable member for Inkster needs a second member to support it.

Mr. Lamoureux: It was indicated to me that we did not need a second person in the committee.

Mr. Chairperson: Does the honourable member for Inkster have a second member to support the request for a recorded vote? Seeing that the member does not have, his request is out of order.

The resolution stands as passed.

Mr. Lamoureux: I do know that in standing committees you can move a motion. Earlier this morning I moved a motion, and I did not require a seconder. I just want to be 100 percent certain that a seconder is not required, because I know the member for The Maples (Mr. Kowalski) also wants this to be a recorded vote. It is important to both of us. I would ask that if there is any other member then that would be prepared to allow–

Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. The request that he is talking about from before is definitely entirely different from this one. This particular recorded vote needs two members, which you do not have.

Mr. Chairperson: Order, please.

Resolution 7.2: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $1,831,600 for Finance, Treasury, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 7.3: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $6,706,900 for Finance, Comptroller, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 7.4: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $15,393,500 for Finance, Taxation, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 7.5: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $1,910,300 for Finance, Federal-Provincial Relations and Research, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 7.6: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $355,800 for Finance, Insurance and Risk Management, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 7.7: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $3,260,900 for Finance, Treasury Board Secretariat, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Resolution 7.8: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $4,549,800 for Finance, Office of Information Technology, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000. [passed]

Hon. Bonnie Mitchelson (Minister of Family Services): On a point of order. Just on a point of clarification, are these resolutions that we are going through right now resolutions that were passed while the bells were ringing?

Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. The Clerk and myself as the Chair are not 100 percent sure of where we were when the bells started to ring. So we are redoing them all to be sure that we have them. At this point I would say to everybody, I cannot or I am not supposed to go into any more discussion on this, so I will have to proceed with the resolutions.

Mrs. Mitchelson: Just then as a point of clarification then, the process is that you have to go through all of those that you passed while the bells were ringing, but then what happens with the rest of the resolutions that have not been dealt with? I guess the issue for me is the Children and Youth Secretariat which we have not had.

Mr. Chairperson: I will try and be more clear. I am going through the whole list of resolutions which includes those particular Estimates. I started at Finance and I am going through the whole works of them. So rest assured that I will be passing those particular Estimates.

Mrs. Mitchelson: And that is what you are doing right now.

Mr. Chairperson: That is what I am doing right now. We will recess for a recorded vote in the Assembly.

Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. The time being six o'clock, committee rise.

* (1650)

Report

Mr. Gerry McAlpine (Chairperson of the section of the Committee of Supply meeting in Room 254): Mr. Chairman, in the section of the Committee of Supply meeting in Room 254, the vote was called on Resolution 4.1. Justice, Administration and Finance. A voice vote was held, whereupon a count-out for a vote was requested.

Formal Vote

Mr. Chairperson (Marcel Laurendeau): A recorded vote having been requested, call in the members.

* (1730)

Committee will come to order. In the section of the Committee of Supply meeting in Room 254, the vote was called on Resolution 4.1, Justice, Administration and Finance. A voice vote was held, whereupon a recorded vote was requested.

Mr. Chairperson: The Yeas have it. The resolution is accordingly–

Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Inkster): Just on a point of order, I understand that there were resolutions that were still being passed while the bells were ringing. Can we just get clarification in terms of what committee is in which room?

Mr. Chairperson: I will do that in a minute.

Mr. Chairperson: Can I just finish this resolution, please? The resolution is accordingly passed.

Hon. Darren Praznik (Government House Leader): On that same point of order, I will be seeking, and do at this time, leave for that committee. When we go back in the House, I will be seeking leave for committee in Room 255 to reconvene to reconsider those resolutions, given that there were concerns about–254?–in 254 for them to reconsider those resolutions because they were passed when the bells were, in fact, ringing.

Mr. Steve Ashton (Opposition House Leader): On the point of order, I think the member for Inkster has a correct point of order. I would suggest that we have a ruling that those motions were passed improperly. The section of committee does not have the ability to override the rules. The House itself, by leave, can vary from the rules, but a section of committee. So what we have to do at this point in time, I think, is accept the point of order and then accept the proposal from the government House leader, just to be on the safe side.

Mr. Chairperson: Okay, to be on the safe side, the committee in Room 254 is still constituted at this time, so 254 will go back. This committee will rise, and the House leader will then make the request to the House that committee 255 will resume.

An Honourable Member: What department have they started?

Mr. Chairperson: Room 255 is on Finance, I believe.

An Honourable Member: That is finished.

Mr. Chairperson: No, you are not finished. We are going to reconstitute it. You are not done yet, so 255 is going to be going back in.

Mr. Ashton: Those resolutions were not passed properly. We are going to redo them.

Mr. Chairperson: Because the bells were ringing at the time. So this committee is now rising. This section of the committee is rising. Committee rise.

Section 254, you can go back. Call in the Speaker. Section 255 will go back when she is done.

House Business

Hon. Darren Praznik (Government House Leader): On House business, given that this is a rather unique situation, that it does not happen regularly, while we are sitting in the Chamber–

Some Honourable Members: Oh, oh.

Madam Speaker: Order, please. I am experiencing difficulty hearing the honourable government House leader.

Mr. Praznik: Madam Speaker, because this is a rather unique situation, where we are sitting in the Chamber and Committee of Supply in two sections at the same time, I would ask, first of all, leave for committees to continue to sit in both 254 and 255 to continue their work on the consideration of Estimates.

I would ask, since we did have a ruling in committee, that the section in 255 will reconsider those resolutions that were put to it while the bells were ringing in committee.

Madam Speaker: Is there unanimous consent of the House for the two sections of Committee of Supply that were previously sitting in Rooms 254 and 255 to reconvene at this time in those respective committee rooms? [agreed]

Mr. Praznik: Madam Speaker, I would ask as well that, first of all, Madam Speaker perhaps will not see the clock at this time, and rather than go into private members' hour, I would ask if we could continue with debate on second reading of Bill 38, The Registered Psychiatric Nurses Act, and then I will have some announcements with respect to committee.

One right now is the Committee on Municipal Affairs. It was scheduled to meet at 5 p.m. If it could then meet following the completion of Estimates in Room 255.

Madam Speaker: Is there unanimous consent of the House for the Speaker not to see the clock and to revert to Orders of the Day, specifically debate on second reading of Bill 38? [agreed]

Madam Speaker: To resume adjourned debate on second reading of Bill 38, The Registered Psychiatric Nurses Act (Loi modifiant la Loi sur les infirmières psychiatriques), standing in the name of the honourable member for Transcona.

Mr. Daryl Reid (Transcona): My colleague the member for Kildonan has a number of comments with respect to this bill, and I would yield the floor to him at this time so that he might represent our viewpoints.

Mr. Dave Chomiak (Kildonan): As we suggested on the previous bills, of course, we are in support of this bill. We will look for expeditious passage of this bill because we basically see it as part of a three-part package.

I am very pleased that our discussion this afternoon has prompted debate in this Legislature. I cannot recall when Conservative members have got up to actually talk positively about health bills in my tenure in this Chamber because normally they have been on the defensive and normally they have been unwilling to defend the government's action as it relates to health care. So it is nice to see that we could all join and talk about something positive for a change with respect to health care, and subject, of course, to the caveats that, if re-elected, whether or not the government will fulfill its commitment or it will revert to its pattern of making promises during an election campaign to be followed by, if re-elected, conveniently forgetting those promises and then proceeding to act like the Conservative Party that has ruled this province, unfortunately, with difficulty in health care for the past 11 years.

As I indicated before, it is indeed a positive step when the Conservative government recognizes the role and function of nurses in this province. I am glad. It is the first time in four and a half years since the last election that the government has actually acknowledged the role and function of nurses, be it through the act relating to registered nurses, the act relating to LPNs, and now the act before us of The Registered Psychiatric Nurses Act. As I said in the previous bills, there is no problem from this side of the House. We welcome this initiative. We have been pushing for these initiatives. We have been pushing for a number of years to try to somehow get the government to recognize the important role and function the nurses play in the health care field.

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You know, Madam Speaker, I have to respond to some of the comments of the member for Emerson (Mr. Penner), who, like government members opposite, illogically talks about and says, on the one hand, oh, all you New Democrats want to do is throw money at the problem, and then says in a week, look, we have thrown money at the problem. You know it is contradictory. The member for Emerson (Mr. Penner) talked about all of the money going into home care, for example. You know the member for Emerson ought to know that only in the last two years, and after much prodding by members on this side of the House, has the actual caseloads in home care expanded. This, despite the fact that $150 million a year was taken out of the health care, out of the hospital sector, and people were left with nowhere to go. And that has been part of the problem.

Part of the problem is, and it has been told from the very beginning, if you are going to cut acute care facilities, then you ought to expand the community-based facilities, and that has not happened. Not only did they cut acute care, they cut the community-based services. So we were faced in this province with the worst of all worlds, and on top of it and more to the point, dealing with this bill, nurses have been made unwelcome, unwanted in Manitoba. So I welcome the initiative on the part of the government to actually recognize the role and function of nurses. I hope that it is not just a conversion for purposes of re-election; I hope it is meaningful. I hope that, as I said in my previous comments, this goes a little way towards restoring confidence in the health care system and confidence amongst nurses and the nursing profession, that there is a place for them in Manitoba, that we welcome their input. I hope that it is not just that this will be forgotten by the government after the bill is passed.

Hope springs eternal from this side of the House. We have been supportive of these measures for some time. We welcome this act, and again I suspect and suggest that this will be unanimously passed by this Chamber. It will be a recognition to all nurses, be it LPNs, be it RNs, or be it RPNs, that finally after 11 years in Manitoba, after 11 years, there is the beginning on the part of the government to recognize the importance of nurses, and that perhaps we can start to restore confidence amongst the nursing profession and ultimately amongst the public that the health care system, which has been in absolute chaos in this province, particularly the past five or six years, can begin to heal itself. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Madam Speaker: Is the House ready for the question? The question before the House is second reading, Bill 38, The Registered Psychiatric Nurses Act. Is it the will of the House to adopt the motion?

Some Honourable Members: Agreed.

Madam Speaker: Agreed and so ordered.

House Business

Hon. Darren Praznik (Government House Leader): Madam Speaker, I would like to announce that Bills 36, 37 and 38 are being referred to the Standing Committee on Industrial Relations which is sitting tomorrow evening, Wednesday, at 7 p.m., and also hearing another bill as well, so that will put four bills into that committee.

I look to the Clerk's table. Has a recorded vote been requested?

Madam Speaker: Yes.

I will just make the announcement regarding the Standing Committee on Industrial Relations as scheduled for tomorrow, Wednesday, July 7, 7 p.m., will also deal with Bills 36, 37 and 38.

Mr. Praznik: Madam Speaker, I see the Chair of the committee arriving, and I have been informed by one of the pages that a recorded vote has been requested in committee.

Madam Speaker, I would then move, seconded by the Minister of Government Services (Mr. Pitura), that the Chamber, by leave, resolve itself into a committee to consider of the Supply to be granted to Her Most Gracious Majesty.

Report

Mr. Gerry McAlpine (Chairperson of the section of the Committee of Supply meeting in Room 254): Mr. Chairman, in the section of the Committee of Supply sitting in Room 254 the question was put on Resolution 8.1. Administration, Government Services. A voice vote was held whereupon a counted vote was requested and members were asked to proceed to the Chamber.

Formal Vote

Mr. Chairperson (Marcel Laurendeau): A recorded vote being requested, call in the members.

In the section of the Committee of Supply sitting in Room 254, the question was put on Resolution 8.1. Administration, Government Services. A voice vote was held whereupon a counted vote was requested and members were asked to proceed to the Chamber for the vote.

Mr. Chairperson: The Yeas have it. The resolution is accordingly passed.

The two committees will resume in their perspective until the hour being six o'clock.

So this committee rise. Call in the Speaker.

Hon. Darren Praznik (Government House Leader): Madam Speaker, the Standing Committee on Municipal Affairs which was called for five o'clock, given the fact that now the hour is around 6 p.m., we will cancel that meeting for today and reschedule it for tomorrow afternoon, after I have had a chance to confer as to time with the opposition House leader (Mr. Ashton). So that is cancelled for this evening.

Madam Speaker, I believe you can now see the clock, it being 6 p.m.

Madam Speaker: The Standing Committee on Municipal Affairs, previously scheduled for 5 p.m. this evening, has been cancelled and will be rescheduled tomorrow.

The hour being 6 p.m., this House is adjourned and stands adjourned until 1:30 p.m. tomorrow (Wednesday).