LEGISLATIVE
ASSEMBLY OF
Thursday,
April 15, 1993
The House met at 1:30
p.m.
PRAYERS
ROUTINE
PROCEEDINGS
PRESENTING
PETITIONS
Mr. Leonard Evans
(Brandon East): Mr. Speaker, I beg to present the petition of
Stuart Prince, Cam Brown, Rita Cullen and others requesting the Family Services
minister (Mr. Gilleshammer) consider restoring funding for the friendship
centres in
Mr. Conrad Santos
(Broadway): Mr. Speaker, I beg to present the petition of
Alfred Spence, Alvin North, Earl Sinclair and others requesting the Family
Services minister (Mr. Gilleshammer) to consider restoring funding for the
friendship centres in
Mr. Gregory Dewar
(Selkirk): Mr. Speaker, I beg to present the petition of
Cora Lee Poirier, Emily Duguid, Dawn Bates and others requesting the Family
Services minister (Mr. Gilleshammer) consider restoring funding for friendship
centres in
* * *
Mr. Oscar Lathlin (The
Pas): Mr. Speaker, I beg to present the petition of
Lawrence Disbrowe, Wallace Everelle, Henry Arvin McKay and others requesting
the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Enns) to consider restoring funding of
the Northern Fishermen's Freight Assistance Program to the level it was in 1990‑91.
Mr. Speaker: I have reviewed the petition of the honourable
member (Mr. Leonard Evans). It complies
with the privileges and practices of the House and complies with the rules (by
leave). Is it the will of the House to have the petition read? [agreed]
Mr. Clerk (William
Remnant): The petition of the undersigned citizens of
the
WHEREAS the United Nations has declared 1993
the International Year of the World's Indigenous People with the theme,
"Indigenous People: a new
partnership"; and
WHEREAS the provincial government has totally
discontinued funding to all friendship centres; and
WHEREAS the provincial government has stated
that these cuts mirror the federal cuts; and
WHEREAS the elimination of all funding to
friendship centres will result in the loss of many jobs as well as the services
and programs provided, such as:
assistance to the elderly, the homeless, youth programming, the socially
disadvantaged, families in crisis, education, recreation and cultural
programming, housing relocation, fine options, counselling, court assistance,
advocacy;
WHEREFORE your petitioners humbly pray that
the Legislative Assembly of
Mr. Speaker: I have reviewed the petition of the
honourable member (Mr. Dewar). It
complies with the privileges and practices of the House and complies with the
rules. Is it the will of the House to
have the petition read? [agreed]
Mr. Clerk: The petition of the undersigned citizens of
the
WHEREAS the United Nations has declared 1993
the International Year of the World's Indigenous People with the theme,
"Indigenous People: a new
partnership"; and
WHEREAS the provincial government has totally
discontinued funding to all friendship centres; and
WHEREAS the provincial government has stated
that these cuts mirror the federal cuts; and
WHEREAS the elimination of all funding to
friendship centres will result in the loss of many jobs as well as the services
and programs provided, such as:
assistance to the elderly, the homeless, youth programming, the socially
disadvantaged, families in crisis, education, recreation and cultural
programming, housing relocation, fine options, counselling, court assistance,
advocacy;
WHEREFORE your petitioners humbly pray that
the Legislative Assembly of
* * *
Mr. Speaker: I have reviewed the petition of the
honourable member (Mr. Martindale). It
complies with the privileges and practices of the House and complies with the
rules. Is it the will of the House to
have the petition read? [agreed]
Mr. Clerk: The petition of the undersigned citizens of
the
WHEREAS
WHEREAS over 1,000 young adults are currently
attempting to get off welfare and upgrade their education through the student
social allowances program; and
WHEREAS
WHEREAS the provincial government has already
changed social assistance rules resulting in increased welfare costs for the
City of
WHEREAS the provincial government is now
proposing to eliminate the student social allowances program; and
WHEREAS eliminating the student social
allowances program will result in more than a thousand young people being
forced onto city welfare with no means of getting further full‑time
education, resulting in more long‑term costs for city taxpayers.
WHEREFORE your petitioners humbly pray that
the Legislative Assembly of
* (1335)
Introduction
of Guests
Mr. Speaker: Prior to Oral Questions, may I direct the
attention of honourable members to the gallery, where we have with us this
afternoon, from the
Also this afternoon, from the La Broquerie
School, we have thirty Grades 5 and 6 students, under the direction of Mr.
Thiessen. This school is located in the
constituency of the honourable Minister of Highways and Transportation (Mr.
Driedger).
On
behalf of all honourable members, I would like to welcome you here this
afternoon.
ORAL
QUESTION PERIOD
Royal
Trust Relocations
Mr. Gary Doer (Leader of
the Opposition): Mr. Speaker, my question is to the First
Minister.
In
June of 1991, the Premier promised to
We,
of course, have asked this question subsequent to the announcement of the
government. In fact, December of 1992,
the Premier said in this House, and I quote:
"We have remained in close touch with the Royal Trust people, have
had continuing discussions with them.
They still are committed to an investment in
Could the Premier please advise us of the
status of those 200 jobs, some of which were going to be located in the
Hon. Gary Filmon
(Premier): Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition is
entitled to ask whatever questions he wants to, but in attempting to make
political hay on an issue, he is raising a matter that obviously is not one
that any of us would want to pursue.
The
fact of the matter is that Royal Trust, through problems with respect to its
investment portfolio and massive losses over a space of the last two years, is‑‑[interjection]
Mr. Speaker, you know the member for Kildonan (Mr. Chomiak) has all the smart
answers. He does not care about
If
I may carry on, Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is that Royal Trust has
experienced serious financial difficulty. Such financial difficulty denied them
the opportunity to make a multimillion‑dollar investment during that
period of time.
I
have spoken with Royal Trust people as recently as late January and again last
month, met with them in
I
cannot make any guarantees. Obviously,
our hope is that company will be able to be restructured in a way that they are
on sound financial footing and we can, once again, look at the prospect of them
devolving some of their operations into
We
will continue to work positively with them, Mr. Speaker. I think that is the
way in which we can look for better things in future.
* (1340)
Mr. Doer: Mr. Speaker, as I say, we are very
disappointed that even though the losses were well known in December the
Premier left us with a lot of optimism when he assured us, in this House, that
there would be some news on this in the not too distant future, in terms of
their investment in
Mr.
Speaker, I would like to ask the Premier, what is the status of those 200 jobs
that were pending in
Mr. Filmon: Mr. Speaker, just so the member does not
imply that I was misleading him or anybody else in my comments in December, I
can tell him that when I met with some specific individuals in late January,
the individual who was supposed to be coming here as manager of the new
facility was one of the people I met with. So indeed plans continued to be
afoot for movement of a significant portion of their operations into
All
things have changed as a result of the new ownership and the
restructuring. Our intention is to
continue to work to convince Royal Trust, under its new ownership, or indeed
the Royal Bank or many of the financial institutions. We have been meeting with a considerable
number of them in the course of our development of our strategy to attract back‑office
functions in the area of telecommunications and computers from many of
The
member is probably aware that our work continues to pay fruit with
announcements by Unitel a month or so ago, announcements by
CN Rail
Running Trades
Mr. Gary Doer (Leader of
the Opposition): Mr. Speaker, we are certainly pleased about
the announcement today of the service centre jobs being added to
We
are also concerned about the loss of jobs on the running trades in the same
railway. We lost 110 brakemen in
November of '92 from the railway. We
have lost 200 or so maintenance‑away employees. Mr. Speaker, 170 jobs were announced at
Weston, the diesel shops, to be lost, which is now put on hold because the
facility apparently in
In
light of the discussions the Premier is having with the senior officials of the
railway today and the good announcement he has today, can the Premier advise us
on the status of the running trades in the
Hon. Gary Filmon
(Premier): Mr. Speaker, unlike the New Democrats who,
when they were in government, made the bald‑faced statement that they
could continue to raise the taxes in Manitoba on the railways to punitive
levels because, as his predecessor said when the New Democrats were in office,
what are they going to do‑‑tear up the tracks, pull up the tracks?
The
fact of the matter is that by imposing punitive tax levels on both railways, we
have seen significant reductions in the operations of the railways in
* (1345)
Stubble
Burning Health Risks
Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis
(
The
government promised action and today we have received its response. In terms of public health, Mr. Speaker, there
seems to be little more in this report than band‑aid solutions and
cosmetic changes.
I
would like to ask the government, since it would seem that Manitobans may,
instead of waking up to smoke, will be coming home to smoke, how does this
announcement significantly reduce the health risks from stubble burning for all
Manitobans and ensure that the health hazard of last fall is not repeated again
this year?
Hon. Glen Cummings
(Minister of Environment): Mr. Speaker, I would
hope that the member would reread the announcement. The fact is that we now have a regulated
regime in this province for the control of disposal of waste straw, stubble,
and I would fully expect that Manitobans, particularly Winnipeggers, will be
able to enjoy the outdoors and the comfort of their yards in the fall as well
as other seasons of the year.
The
regulation enables us to take particular action if a situation changes, for
example if we have burning this spring, that has potential to cause
difficulties, we can within six hours notice implement the regulations in a
regime that will protect the health of Manitobans.
So
I would ask for her co‑operation, and I would expect that Winnipeggers in
particular will reap some considerable satisfaction from the regulations that
we put in place.
Ms. Wasylycia‑Leis: Mr. Speaker, in January of '92 the Minister
of Health (Mr. Orchard) said, we fully support a review by the Clean
Environment Commission of stubble burning.
His head of wellness and health said that although no evidence has
existed previously about the health effects of stubble burning, he had since
changed his mind due to medical evidence, and in October the MMA clearly called
for a review under the Clean Environment Commission.
I
would like to ask the Minister of Health if he is satisfied that the concerns
of professionals and physicians in this area have been addressed, and whether
he can assure us that Manitobans will be absolutely protected from the health
hazards of stubble burning in the future.
Mr. Cummings: Mr. Speaker, the member chooses to ignore the
fact that this is the result of a recommendation of a working group which
represented the parents of asthmatics, which represented health interests, also
represented community interests, agricultural interests. The Lung Association was also involved in
this nine‑person group.
The
reason that we brought forward the regulations at this time and the reason that
we have taken such sweeping powers which we have under The Environment Act, in
order to be able to provide the enforcement of these regulations, is precisely
the reason that she is asking about, is that we do care about the health of
Winnipeggers and Manitobans at large.
I
tell you that those powers will be enforced in order to protect that very issue
of the health of Winnipeggers or others in the public who are sensitive to the
smoke. It is a practice that the
Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Findlay) has been working very hard to have
reduced and eliminated, and what we have here is a coming together of
communities. The agricultural community
has been extremely co‑operative in developing a control mechanism, and
those who represent the urban issues have also brought their points forward
strongly and support this approach.
Ms. Wasylycia-Leis: Mr. Speaker, in this announcement there is no
permit system with tough guidelines and meaningful penalties. There is no Clean
Environment Commission review on health.
There is no new research into alternatives. There is no new education‑‑
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. I would like to remind the honourable member
this is not a time for debate.
Ms. Wasylycia-Leis: My question, Mr. Speaker, since we remain
concerned about how this will deal with the health hazard of stubble burning on
Manitobans is: What longer term
contingency plan does this government have in place in the event that this
regulation, this announcement does not adequately protect people from the
health hazards‑‑
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The honourable member has put her question.
Mr. Cummings: Mr. Speaker, I am appalled that that member
would put such false and misleading information on the record. It says right in the press release that the
first ticket has fines of up to a thousand dollars under summary
conviction. Beyond that, for repeat
offences or for flagrant and very abusive situations, we can go to The
Environment Act which, frankly, has fines up to $50,000.
Now
if that is what she says is insufficient, then I suggest that they are talking
about draconian government and that is not what this province wants.
* (1350)
Violence
Prevention Programs
Government
Resources
Ms. Avis Gray
(Crescentwood): Mr. Speaker, it is not difficult for any
Manitoban to pick up a newspaper or to be in a conversation where there is not
talk about the increased amount of violence among our young people, and in fact
in our schools and in our society. The
Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) said yesterday that families must take some
responsibility in managing children with behavioural problems. No one would dispute that, but governments
also have a responsibility to assist families and to assist children in dealing
with these particular behavioural problems and certainly with increasing
violence.
I
would ask the Minister of Family Services if he could tell this House and in
fact tell Manitobans, if a family does have a difficulty with a child, a child
who is experiencing behavioural problems, what resources are available to that
family so they can be good parents and they can receive the support that they
need for the children who are misbehaving and for children where there is
increased violence? Can the minister
provide that information today?
Hon. Harold Gilleshammer
(Minister of Family Services): Mr.
Speaker, the first response usually comes through the school system where
funding is provided for more guidance counsellors today than the school system
has ever had before.
School guidance counsellors are often the
first line of defence in terms of working with those children who are finding
difficulties in the school system, and working with those families and with the
teachers who deal with those children on a day‑to‑day basis to
resolve the issues there.
The
school counsellors not only work within the school setting but from time to
time work with the families in their home as well. I know from personal experience that many of
those fine professionals do some tremendous work in alleviating the problems
that students have in the school setting.
Child and
Family Services
Ms. Avis Gray
(Crescentwood): Mr. Speaker, with a supplementary to the same
minister: For families and children who
are experiencing those problems, the school personnel, teachers are telling us
that when they make referrals for severely disturbed children to Child and
Family Services, that in fact if you are 14 years of age and over, the chances
of your receiving service are very, very low.
Can
the minister tell us, given that he has increased the workload of the Child and
Family Services personnel and given that they have eliminated the family
counselling program since 1988 with the government, what resources are really
available there for these families and for these parents?
Hon. Harold Gilleshammer
(Minister of Family Services): Mr.
Speaker, I am sure the member, in doing her research on this particular
question, talked to members of the media who contacted the executive director
of Child and Family Services and he informs me that is not the case. They do work with children who are over 14
years of age.
Ms. Gray: Mr. Speaker, can the Minister of Family
Services then tell this House if Child and Family Services, which comes under
his jurisdiction, is working with children who are over 14 and is accepting all
the referrals?
Why
do we have qualified teachers in these schools who are in fact saying they are
not picking up the referrals and there are no services for the children?
Mr. Gilleshammer: Mr. Speaker, certainly there are difficult
children in the school system that parents have difficulty coping with at home,
the school system has difficulty coping with, and they in turn do access
services provided by Child and Family Services.
In
a conversation with the executive director earlier today, I am sure prompted by
the member asking the question, I am given the understanding that they
certainly provide services for children who are over 14.
* (1355)
Child and
Family Services
Reduced
Workweek
Mr. Doug Martindale
(Burrows): Mr. Speaker, as we have seen, there is
increasing concern across the country for the interests of children and the increasing
caseloads of different provincial governments and cutbacks which are reducing
services.
In
the
Can
the Minister of Family Services, in follow‑up to statements that he made
in Interim Supply, tell the House if he has had a chance to meet again with the
chief executive officer of Child and Family Services and other agency heads to
see how they are going to implement provision of services when there are 3,000
hours less service to provide to children?
Hon. Harold Gilleshammer
(Minister of Family Services): Mr.
Speaker, if the member had listened to my previous answer, I had discussions
with the executive director this morning.
Mr. Martindale: Mr. Speaker, my question is: What have the agency heads said and what are
they going to do? How does this minister
account for the discrepancy between what the CEO of
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The honourable member has put his question.
Mr. Gilleshammer: Mr. Speaker, I am sure many of us read the
same articles in the local papers today, that governments in
Certainly, executive directors and board
chairs have acknowledged the challenge that lies ahead of them in working with
children who are having difficulty, and they have worked co‑operatively
with us and accepted that challenge, and are in the process of finding those
solutions.
Mr. Martindale: Mr. Speaker, we want to know from this
minister what the specifics are, other than the rhetoric about meeting the
challenges, because we cannot count on this minister to protect the interests
of children when there are fewer resources, when there are budget reductions,
when there are fewer staff, fewer investigations‑‑
Mr. Speaker: Order, please.
Mr. Gilleshammer: Mr. Speaker, I can tell the member, there are
more resources there today than there were in 1988 when we came to
government. We have dramatically
increased the funding in most of the social areas, and the plans that the
member is asking for are now being formulated by the executive officers of
those agencies and their staff. I know
that later today, some of these decisions are being communicated to staff. When they become public, we will make them
available for the member.
Child
Care-The Pas
Funding
Reduction
Mr. Oscar Lathlin (The
Pas): Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the
Minister of Family Services.
Mr.
Speaker, this government, through Northern Affairs, likes to talk about the
work that the Northern Economic Development Commission is doing in the North
currently. The Minister of Family
Services I am sure is aware that one of the themes that has already emerged
from those hearings so far is that northern people, particularly women, be
given every opportunity to access employment, training and business.
Mr.
Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister of Family Services whether he can
table in this House today a study, a report, any research material or criteria
that he used to justify those cuts to the daycare program in The Pas.
Hon. Harold Gilleshammer
(Minister of Family Services): Mr.
Speaker, some weeks ago we announced the changes in daycare. This comes after a
dramatic increase in funding over the last number of budgets. When we came to government, the Day Care line
was $26 million or $27 million. We have
virtually doubled that amount of money.
I
do not know whether the member heard the other day, I did leave some misleading
information in the House when I said that our program was three times as big as
So
we this year will show, and I am sure the member has already noticed that, an
increase in our daycare budget, but we have certainly brought in some changes
which freeze the licensing of new spaces and also caps the subsidy at 9,600
spaces. Mr. Speaker, we are going to
work with the daycare community to see that it has a minimal impact on any
particular daycare.
* (1400)
Mr. Lathlin: Mr. Speaker, perhaps I can ask the minister
to answer my supplementary question, because he never did answer my first
question.
Mr.
Speaker, can the minister explain to this House today why the daycare program
cuts in The Pas represented 13 percent of those cuts made across the province‑‑13
percent? Can he explain or point out to
members here where the fairness is in those cuts that were made?
Mr. Gilleshammer: Mr. Speaker, I can assure the member that his
information is wrong. The change that we
are making in the daycare is bringing down the number of subsidized spaces from
10,000 spaces to 9,600 spaces, some 400 spaces.
With the number of centres and daycare operations across the province,
we are trying to manage these changes so that no particular daycare centre
would lose more than one subsidized space.
Mr. Lathlin: Mr. Speaker, my last question to the same
minister is: Will the minister
reconsider those cuts his government made to The Pas daycare program until such
time that he has come to The Pas, met with those people who are involved in the
daycare program and after he has adequately studied the daycare situation in
The Pas? Will he consider his decision?
Mr. Gilleshammer: Mr. Speaker, as I indicated in a previous
answer, the member's information is wrong.
I would offer to meet with him later today or tomorrow to look at the
numbers that he has before him to indicate that the changes we are making in
the daycare do have a fairness about them.
School Tax
Levy Fairness
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (
Because of the current structure of the school
divisions, if you happen to live in a $70,000 home in Winnipeg School Division
No. 1, you would pay $1,034 in property tax.
If you happen to live in St. James or Winnipeg No. 2, on a $70,000 home,
it would be $756.
Mr.
Speaker, my question to the Minister of Finance is: Can the Minister of Finance tell me, is that
in fact a fair tax when up to 25 percent more is being paid from some residents
in the city of
Hon. Clayton Manness
(Minister of Finance): Mr. Speaker, now that
the member for
Mr.
Speaker, if the member then wants to draw into the debate to what extent the
local school divisions should have autonomy and should have the freedom to make
their own budgetary decisions and consequently reflect that in different
special levies as between one school division and the other, then I say to him,
that is a big issue. If the member is
saying collapse the school boards and the big power of government come in and
ultimately make everything uniform, then let him say that.
Mr. Lamoureux: Mr. Speaker, there is only one way this inequity
can be resolved, and that is if this government brings in the necessary
legislation‑‑
Mr. Speaker: Order, please. This is not a time for debate. The honourable member for
Mr. Lamoureux: Mr. Speaker, how can the Minister of Finance
justify, in Weston you would pay $443; in Brooklands, right across the street
from
Mr. Speaker: Order, please.
The honourable member has put his question.
Mr. Manness: Mr. Speaker, as I say to the would‑be
leader of the Liberal Party, I have agriculture land in the School Division of
Morris‑MacDonald and I have agriculture land in the School Division of
I
dare say, although the same productivity is there, the mill rate, as a result
of the special levy in one school division, is an additional five mills as
compared to one school division to the other.
That is on the basis of the fact that one school division has decided to
offer greater programming and charge its people accordingly. It is not an assessment issue.
Mr. Lamoureux: Mr. Speaker, can the Minister of Finance tell me
why the poorest people in the city of
Mr. Manness: Mr. Speaker, I do not need to explain the
decision of trustees duly elected under an autonomous system, to make decisions
in council which obviously, in some cases, cause a greater cost to be applied
against ratepayers in one school division versus another. It is not my role. [interjection] No,
no. The member said two different school
divisions.
So,
Mr. Speaker, if that is the question and it is between different school
divisions, it is not my role to stand here and answer that question.
Income Tax
Act
Dr. Connie
Curran Exemption
Mr. Dave Chomiak
(Kildonan): Mr. Speaker, Clause 31(f) of the Connie
Curran contract allows her to apply for exemptions from Canadian tax and
Why
is the province only now looking at the matter, Mr. Speaker, about her tax
obligations on a $3.9‑million contract to the people of
Hon. Clayton Manness
(Minister of Finance): Mr. Speaker, this is
not the country of
Now
we understand that APM has sought a judgment from
Mr. Chomiak: Mr. Speaker, the minister had the ability to
negotiate this contract. There are
clauses in this contract dealing with tax and nonliability for tax.
My
question to the minister is: Could not
the minister put a clause or clauses in this contract that would have specified
that she meets the criteria so that she would be entitled to pay taxes and that
there are basically three elements to that criteria, from the tax advice that I
have received?
Mr. Manness: Mr. Speaker, we followed the same format that
the member's party did when they were in government and engaged themselves in
the contract also with consultants from the
I
would say, Mr. Speaker, to the member, live in the real world. That does not happen. It is just like if I were to ask the member
to voluntarily pay more tax than he is now as a citizen of this province, he
would probably tell me to go somewhere else.
* (1410)
Mr. Chomiak: Mr. Speaker, in the real world people do not get
paid $3.9 million a year.
Income Tax
Act
Dr. Connie
Curran Exemption
Mr. Dave Chomiak
(Kildonan): My final supplementary to the minister. Does he think it is fair‑‑[interjection]
That is right, Mr. Speaker. Teemu opens
hospitals, not closes them. We hear the
shot from the Premier.
My
final supplementary to the Premier, since he is saying so much on this issue
from his seat: Does he think it is fair
to allow a
Mr. Speaker: Order, please.
The honourable member's question is clearly seeking an opinion and
therefore out of order.
The
honourable member for Kildonan, would you want to kindly rephrase your
question, please. [interjection]
Order, please.
I had advised the honourable member for Kildonan that it was seeking an
opinion and was therefore out of order.
Kindly rephrase your question.
Mr. Chomiak: My final supplementary is to the Minister of
Finance (Mr. Manness).
Will the Minister of Finance reveal in this
House what the per diem rate is for Connie Curran, the per diem rate that we
are paying this woman and these consultants to come in from the
Mr. Speaker: Order, please.
The honourable member has put his question.
Hon. Donald Orchard
(Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, my honourable friend is really
attempting to malign a process which two hospitals, their boards, their administration
urged government to engage in.
Mr.
Speaker, I want to remind my honourable friend the New Democrat in opposition
that this is the most open sharing of information. My honourable friend would not have a single
question around this engagement of APM if we had not given him the contract,
for the first time I think probably ever that consultants' contracts‑‑prior
to them being engaged, has been tabled at a news conference.
Mr.
Speaker, that contrasts quite significantly to the circumstance that I
discovered when I became Minister of Health that the NDP, through the back door
with no one knowing, engaged
They, Sir, are hypocritical in
opposition. They do exactly the opposite
they do in government.
Point of
Order
Mr. Chomiak: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, the
Minister of Health ought to know that what he says is patently wrong‑‑
Mr. Speaker: Order, please.
The honourable member does not have a point of order. That is clearly a dispute over the facts.
Children's
Dental Program
Funding
Reduction Impact
Mr. Clif Evans
(Interlake): Mr. Speaker, over the past three years it has
become obvious that the commitment to job creation and services for rural
Manitobans has become again another broken promise by this government.
I
would like to ask the Minister of Rural Development (Mr. Derkach), does the
minister have any reports or studies stating that the cuts to the dental
program for rural children will not negatively impact on the 60,000 children,
including 700 children from the Interlake alone?
Hon. Donald Orchard
(Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, I presume my honourable friend
is posing a question about the Children's Dental Health Program.
As
I have indicated to other questions from members opposite and in response to
questions about the budget, yes, we did make the decision to remove the
treatment component in the Children's Dental Health Program, which is available
to children going to school outside of
In
addition to that, Sir, I want to tell my honourable friend that since we have
come to office we have expanded the fluoridation grants to a number of
communities in rural
Mr. Clif Evans: Mr. Speaker, did this minister consult with the
health specialists, the rural municipalities and the officials? Did he consult
with these people as to the effect and the impact this would have on the
communities and on people in rural
Mr. Orchard: Mr. Speaker, when you are making budgetary
decisions, there is some inability to go out and consult and communicate, et
cetera, as to what some of your program decisions are.
Sir, I want my honourable friend to understand
that we did not make this decision with any particular joy, and I simply say to
my honourable friend, neither did the government of
These are very difficult times for all
governments in
Proposal
for Use
Mr. Clif Evans (Interlake): Mr. Speaker, further on rural development and
creation in economic development, I want to ask the minister and this
government why do they not support the application of Mr. R.J. Moore to
purchase and reopen the closed
Hon. Harry Enns
(Minister of Natural Resources): Mr.
Speaker, the honourable member is referring to a facility that is known to us
as the Lakeside Camp, and it was formerly operated by the Society for
Manitobans with Disabilities.
There has not been a satisfactory alternative
user for that property found, principally because the terms and conditions that
we have laid down, namely, that if at all possible the facility be maintained
in such a manner that it can still provide the service to the community,
including the school children in that community, there just simply has not been
an acceptable proposal call made to government.
Mr. Speaker: The time for Oral Questions has expired.
House
Business
Mr. Speaker: Prior to getting into Orders of the Day on the
debate on the budget, I will recognize the honourable government House leader,
I believe, on House Business.
Hon. Clayton Manness
(Government House Leader): Mr. Speaker, I
apologize for not rising sooner.
On House
Business, I would like to announce that the Standing Committee on Privileges
and Elections will meet on Tuesday, April 20, 1993, at 7:30 p.m. in Room 255 of
the
Mr. Speaker: I would like to thank the honourable
government House leader for that information.
ORDERS OF
THE DAY
BUDGET
DEBATE
(Sixth Day
of Debate)
Mr. Speaker: On the adjourned debate, the sixth day of debate,
on the proposed motion of the honourable Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) and
the proposed motion of the honourable Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Doer), in
an amendment thereto, and the proposed motion of the honourable Leader of the
Second Opposition (Mrs. Carstairs), in further amendment thereto, standing in
the name of the honourable member for Point Douglas who has 19 minutes
remaining.
Mr. George Hickes (Point
Douglas): Mr. Speaker, I will continue on the Budget
Debate. Like I was saying yesterday, a
lot of the cuts that we see are impacting on the working class, the poor, the
aboriginal people, and we hear the government talk about the fairness of this
budget.
When we have a child buying a Big Mac, who
will pay more towards reducing
If
you stand there and make light of it where you are taxing the children and the
corporations are not being added on, that is a sad, sad day for
Also in this budget we saw nothing about job
creation. If you go into northern
* (1420)
(Mrs. Louise Dacquay, Deputy Speaker, in
the Chair)
When I was up there it was a couple of days
prior to ministers going up there with a delegation from
Since that time they have been sitting idly,
patiently waiting, and there has been nothing, absolutely nothing come out of
that except an opportunity for a little bit of press and a few pictures.
The
community of Churchill right now is hurting badly, and they have to try and
come up with some alternative to employment opportunities. They had a proposal together to try and
rejuvenate that space port. A few years
ago, when they used to have Pan American Airways up there running that space
port, they used to fire rockets into space to look at the weather, and they
used to employ quite a few local people.
The
facility is still there. There are
interested parties wanting to go up there and fire rockets for various
satellite reasons and study the aurora borealis. But there is not the support from the
government that the mayor and council of Churchill has been seeking. They have been trying to get partners, they
have been trying to get companies to bring their business up there and create
jobs.
They were talking the possibility of 200, 500
jobs. For a community the size of
Churchill that is a lot of employment opportunities for that community. But now they are totally frustrated, and the
hope of that community is slowly disappearing.
We
have summer season coming up with hopefully a possibility of ships coming in to
take grain to various parts of the world, but there is nothing that has been told
to that community yet.
They are looking for leadership from this
government, from the federal government, and they have not been seeing it. I know that they are writing letters
constantly because they always send me copies of them.
So
I hope the government will see in their wisdom to try and go up there and have
a meeting with the mayor and the councils and try and help them stimulate their
economy and hopefully gain some jobs for their community.
Also in that budget we saw where 56 agencies
had been cut. The government had said, well, we wanted to try and announce it
to give them as much lead time as possible.
Well, a lot of those agencies had employees in place for years and
years. In the friendship centre there
was an employee who had been employed there for 15 years and because of the
cuts had to be laid off.
The
only notice that the friendship centre gave to the individual was what the
government allowed was two weeks. Two
weeks notice, that is all they gave them.
That is the government that did that.
So a person who was employed for 15 years, there was no money available
for even a severance package, not even a severance package. They were trying to find ways and means of
trying to get some income to at least reward a person for 15 years of
dedication and a lot of hard, hard work.
That has happened to a lot of staff of the friendship centres across
The
Minister of Justice (Mr. McCrae) had talked about zero tolerance, which is good
when you read about it, but just to talk about it is not enough. There are a lot of families and women who are
put in situations where they are very vulnerable. For an example, taking away the funding for
the Flin Flon crisis centre is stepping back years.
So
if something happens, say one, two o'clock in the morning and a spouse is
threatened with their life, where do they now go? A lot of families do not have vehicles where
they can just jump in and drive to The Pas.
Where do they go now? That is the
question that community people are asking, the workers have been asking. They have nowhere to go, and yet we hear the
government talking about zero tolerance.
Well, zero tolerance should be just as important in northern
By
taking that one away, that is putting a lot of people at risk, and also they
have said that the bus lines have offered free transportation to individuals
who want to go from Flin Flon to The Pas to their crisis centre there. But how do you jump on a bus at two o'clock
in the morning, four o'clock in the morning?
You cannot predict the exact hour that a spouse is going to try and abuse
their partners. So that system is not
going to work.
I
think it is a big mistake removing the funding from the crisis centre. I think it is even just as big a mistake by
reducing the funding for the friendship centres that have delivered valuable
services for aboriginal people and for all Manitobans. When you look at the programs of the
friendship centres, they not only delivered programs for aboriginal people;
there was a lot of nonaboriginal people who were utilizing the programs that
were available.
It
is not only a recreation glorified drop-in centre which some people think it
is, because they gave the opportunities and services for family counselling and
visitations and opportunity for our elders to get out a little bit and the
opportunity to have some of their ethnic food. [interjection] Well, it has some
good points, but a lot of negative points.
It is a mixed bag, but it is not a budget of fairness. That is for sure it is not. [interjection]
No, it is not.
Like I said yesterday, if it was such a fair
budget, your MLAs on that side would not have had to be sending out letters to
the constituents to try and sell it, because a good budget would have sold
itself. [interjection] Come on, you know that. Anything good can sell
itself. You know that yourself.
[interjection] When I was speaking yesterday, I was giving you some examples of
exactly what happened in northern
I
was saying yesterday, the fish prices‑‑the Minister of Northern
Affairs (Mr. Downey) knows, the price of fish has been stagnant for years. It has not gone up a cent, yet the costs for
fishermen have greatly gone up. The
boats and motors have gone up; people are still buying them. Canoes have gone up. Boats have gone up; people are still buying
them. Paddles have gone up; people are
still buying them. But the price of fish
has not gone up.
By
reducing the freight subsidy, it is a direct hit on remote fishermen. Who makes up most of those remote
fishermen? It is aboriginal people. That is who lives in most of those remote
communities and who are trying to make a living fishing.
At
one time, they used to make a living trapping, but the price of fur has gone
down so a lot of families have stopped trapping, which is a shame because
trapping used to be a way of life for a lot of the aboriginal people. It was not just a money‑making process;
it was a way of life.
* (1430)
When they were out there trapping, they were
bringing meat back for their families and their elders. Also when they were on the trap line, a lot
of the young family members who were in school, when they were out on their
break and stuff, always went to the trap line with either their grandparents or
their parents.
When you are on a trap line, you are removed
from a lot of the attention that children pay now to TVs and these Nintendo
games which occupy their time. When they
were on a trap line with their grandparents or their parents, they were being
taught their language, they were being taught their culture, and it was very
valuable. Since the price of fur has
gone down, the whole language and culture is slowly being taken away from
aboriginal people. [interjection]
Well, I am speaking to whoever is against
trapping, because obviously they have not lived a life as a trapper or
understand the values of trapping. It is
not only the catching of the fur. It is a whole way of life. It is a culture. It also brings in meat for the family where
now a lot of those families are trying to go to the
With the high number of people unemployed, a
lot of the people have to live on social assistance. If you look at social assistant rates, they
are not really adequate for remote communities that have to pay these high,
high prices for meat and even vegetables.
How often do you ever see fresh vegetables going into some of these
remote communities? Spring breakup, they
never see any.
A
lot of that whole lifestyle has been changed.
That is a real cultural way of life that is slowly being destroyed by
people who have not lived up there, people who have not lived that life, people
who do not understand that kind of life.
I say again that it is a shame.
That is where I learned‑‑when I was growing up, the only
language I knew was my own Inuktitut language.
It is the only language I knew until I went to school. I was out hunting and trapping, and I was
always being taken either by my parents or my uncles. They never spoke to me in English, because
that was their given language. I never
had store‑bought food until I was way in my teens. I never had beef steaks or beef roasts or
pork roasts. I never had that because we
could not afford it. The prices were so
high.
Getting back to what I was talking about was
the meeting I had with the
The
other thing they were talking about, which I was really, really surprised,
because I have a lot of respect for the minister of CEDF. He must have been given some awful, awful bad
advice, because apparently what happened was the fishermen who took out these
loans and were supposed to pay these off monthly, they went directly to the co‑op
to deduct whatever the fishermen had in their accounts, whatever it was in
their accounts, whether it was $1,000, $2,000, $10,000, that some of them got
absolutely zero. Some of them got
absolutely zero, and they had a family to try and feed. They were trying to feed a family; they got
absolutely zero pay cheque. [interjection] Well, they were trying to make
payments as the agreement, because the agreement was they would pay so much
every month. All of the sudden, bang,
instead of going to them‑‑[interjection]
Well, I am just passing on to you what they
were telling me, because they still were saying that they were trying to pay
every month. At the end, they went to
whatever they owed, at the end of the season, they took the whole pay cheque
out. [interjection] Well, you still have to have something to feed your family.
[interjection] No? Because when a person
is out there fishing, they are deemed employable, and the community will not
give them social assistance. That is a
fact. They do not have access to social
assistance, so if they are out there, whether they make a thousand dollars a
week or a hundred dollars, the community views it as them being employed.
The
other thing that surprised them was, why did the government not go to the
individuals and say, okay, you have an outstanding loan, or you have a loan,
okay, let us make arrangements to pay it?
Why totally distrust those aboriginal people in those communities and
say, bang, wherever you draw your pay cheque, we will garnish‑‑not
even a garnishee order? It was just,
bang, take out their whole money. [interjection] Well, if you owe the
government money and if you are working for the government, there is a
garnishee order placed first. [interjection] No, no, because there is a
garnishee order that is placed first, and then you go through the proper
process.
I
have never seen anyone go to an employer, say the government‑‑if I
was working for the government, if I owed the government money, I have never
seen them go right to the government and say, okay, he has, say, $2,000 coming,
bang, I take it all. I have never seen
that. You will get a garnishee order,
and it is worked out to a cost of living.
You take someone's whole pay cheque out from a civil servant.
An Honourable Member: That is not the issue.
Mr. Hickes: That is the issue, because those aboriginal
people in
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order, please. The honourable member's time has expired.
Hon. Eric Stefanson
(Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism): I
am pleased to rise and say a few words in support of the 1993‑94
budget. At the outset, Madam Deputy
Speaker, I would like to acknowledge and thank my colleague the Minister of
Finance (Mr. Manness) for his dedication and hard work in bringing forward this
fair and balanced budget in these difficult times.
This is my third budget since being elected in
the fall of 1990 and, quite simply, they certainly are not getting any
easier. It is a difficult process. I happen to serve on Treasury Board along
with other colleagues. It is a difficult
process and certainly one that leads to many difficult and trying
decisions. The reality is, it is not
only facing the government here in
When you start with a budget, Madam Deputy
Speaker, I would think one of the things that you start with is to look at some
of your objectives. Certainly, in
reflecting back on our process, I want to outline a few of the objectives that
I started with when dealing with the 1993‑94 budget process. Firstly, I would like to think that we all
want to ensure that there is a reasonable level of service to all Manitobans,
particularly in vital areas such as Health, Education and Family Services.
Another objective would be to ensure fair and
reasonable levels of taxation for all Manitobans. Another would be to ensure that our public
debt is manageable, with an overall objective ultimately of a balanced
budget. Another objective, Madam Deputy
Speaker, should be to ensure our economic climate enhances economic development,
that is, wealth creating based on both our natural resources and on
innovation. Another objective should be
that we ensure that we do not leave a legacy of debt that will be a burden for
our children and future generations and not allow them to have the same quality
of life that we all enjoy today.
* (1440)
These are some fundamental objectives that I
believe when dealing with a budget. I am
sure there are more that others could add.
I hope these are objectives that everybody in this House shares when
dealing with this budget, and I think if that is the case, Madam Deputy
Speaker, the conclusion will be that in light of those objectives this 1993‑94
budget should be supported by all members of the Chamber.
I
would like at this time to turn, Madam Deputy Speaker, to various aspects of
the budget starting with expenditures. Governments, businesses, families,
individuals are all wrestling with controlling expenditures. It is nothing new. I think when we do this, I know there is some
element of doubt occasionally on the other side of the House and amongst the
other parties. I think it is important
to look at what some of the other provinces are doing to give a sense of
reality for those who do not recognize that there are difficult decisions being
made not only here in
I
have a summary of the
I
think questions that provincial governments not only in
Let
us look at some of the decisions that the
They also reduced their prescription drug plan
to target now only low‑income families.
That gives you an idea of some of the kinds of
decisions that are being made in the
To
touch on at least one more province, let us look at
That gives you a sense of some of the kinds of
decisions being made in other provinces.
Here in
The
ultimate test, Madam Deputy Speaker, has to be a balance and a sense and also
an accomplishment to retain the fundamental core services that we have in
place. The overriding principle has to
be the preservation of our fundamental core services, not only for today but
for tomorrow.
So
in areas like family services, we have preserved programming for our most
vulnerable citizens.
In
health care, we have maintained our health care system and we have maintained
all major components of health care reform.
In
education, we continue to provide significant financial resources, and we have
consolidated government skills training initiatives into one portfolio
now. At the same time, within education,
we capped a cost that can be passed on to the taxpayers of
Individual aspects of our decision making have
been discussed on a day‑to‑day basis in here, through Question
Period and through comments made as part of the budget, and I will not go into
all of the individual decisions.
Certainly, there is not unanimous agreement, but I would hope that there
is a recognition that difficult decisions had to be made, not only here in
I
want to turn, Madam Deputy Speaker, to revenue.
On the revenue side of the budget, provinces are not expecting
significant revenue growth unless they bring in tax increases as we have seen
in, I believe, one province within
What are the options to fill that void? Increase in taxes? Certainly some I guess
would suggest that, and I will get back to that in more detail a little
later. The past record of some in this
House indicates that that is their solution and has been their solution.
By
broadening the base on the sale tax, by collecting the sales tax at the border
and by changing the treatment of the sales tax for used vehicles, we were able
to accomplish holding the line on our overall sales tax rate at 7 percent, the
second lowest rate in all of
As
a result of some of the other measures that I will touch on in a minute, we
were able to bring in the sixth budget in a row, Madam Deputy Speaker, that has
no major tax increases in personal, corporate, provincial sales, payroll or
capital tax rates. It puts
In
this budget, beyond holding the line on the major tax increases, we were also
able to target specific areas that will be of benefit to
Madam Deputy Speaker, through all of that we
were also able to increase the payroll tax exemption from $600,000 to $750,000
for small businesses. What that means is
of the 43,000
To
accomplish all of these things and hold the line on major tax increases,
Manitobans are being asked to contribute additionally to the finances of the
In
terms of that issue, in terms of the minimum property tax threshold, I ask the
question, is it not reasonable that everybody in this province who is receiving
services in terms of police, fire, ambulance, garbage, snow, go on and on with
the list of municipal services, that those people make some contribution for
that very direct service that they receive?
Is that an unreasonable position to take, Madam Deputy Speaker? I do not think so, and I would hope all
members in this House would recognize this.
It
is also reasonable, in terms of the property tax credit adjustment and the
pensioners' school tax assistance, that it will now be income tested to protect
those most in need. So the people who
still require that assistance will, in fact, be able to obtain that assistance
on an income test basis.
There is no doubt that Manitobans will pay a
little more as a result of some of the decisions of this budget. Let us compare that, Madam Deputy Speaker, to
the alternative, to the tax increases that some might propose and has happened
in one other province that we know of.
Let us compare that to the record of the NDP in 1982 to 1987 in this
province. Let us look at the legacy of
tax increases that was left by that government.
From 1982 to 1987: increased retail sales tax from 5 percent to
7 percent, cost to Manitobans $195 million; introduced an increased payroll tax
of 2.25 percent of payroll, cost there $230 million; introduced personal net
income tax and surtax, $230 million; increased corporation income tax from 15
percent to 17 percent, cost of $16 million; increased corporation capital tax
from .2 to .3 percent, another $35 million; increased gasoline from 6.4 cents
per litre to 8 cents, $20 million; increased diesel fuel tax from 5.7 cents to
9.9 cents per litre‑‑look at that increase, Madam Deputy Speaker‑‑$15
million; increased railway fuel tax from 3.8 cents per litre to 13.6 cents per
litre, $25 million.
The
member for Transcona is concerned about the transportation industry. Look no further than decisions like that, I
tell you.
* (1450)
Introduced land transfer tax and increased
tobacco tax from 1.4 to 5.5 cents, total $820 million. That is an example of the legacy that was
left by the government under the NDP from 1982 to 1987. If that is the kind of solution they have in
terms of dealing with a budget, I would suggest that all Manitobans would say
no to that solution, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Let
us look at what an NDP government in
Let
us now take a look at what people are saying about those decisions in
Globe and Mail, April 1, carries on in the
editorial: Never mind, he says‑‑talking
about the Finance minister of B.C.‑‑that taxes will rise 13 percent
this year on top of last year's 12 percent hike, on top of an average increase
of 10 percent per year in the three years before that. There are higher corporation taxes, higher
property taxes, higher personal income taxes, and sure, the sales tax is up to
7 percent.
When we talk about the sales tax, a quote here
from a B.C. publication as well: A total
of up to 4,200 jobs could be lost in the retail sector because of the increase
in the B.C. sales tax, the Retail Merchants Association of B.C. said Monday. That shows you the impact of the kinds of
decisions made in
I
want to now turn, Madam Deputy Speaker, to what holding the line on taxes means,
what holding the line on personal income tax means to the economy of
What that means, Madam Deputy Speaker, in
1993, the Conference Board of Canada expects Manitoba's disposable income to
increase by $204 for every man, woman and child in the province after adjusting
for inflation. [interjection] $204. The
For
1994, the Conference Board expects
The
1993‑94
I
want to turn for a minute, Madam Deputy Speaker, to talk about debt and
deficits and a topic that I know is interesting to all members of this
House. Once again, I want to go back in
history just a little bit because we have had a fair bit of discussion about
debt and deficit and who is responsible and what happened in years gone by and
how we got to the situation we are today.
I want to go back to 1982‑83 for the benefit of the members of the
New Democratic Party who formed a government in and around that time.
I
will give you some interesting statistics, and actually if you want to look in
the budget book that was handed out last week, you can find them in that book
as well on pages 14, 15, 16 and 17, so individuals can look for themselves if
they doubt some of the information that I want to read into the record. Budget year 1982‑83, as an example,
Madam Deputy Speaker: Revenue growth to
I
will now move to 1983‑84 just in case something changed dramatically for
the good of
Let
us go to 1984‑85 budget, same government.
Revenue growth now down to 4.5 percent, expenditure growth now at 5.6
percent. Where is inflation? 3.3 percent. What is the deficit? It was $482 million that year, staying
consistently between $400 million and $500 million for those three years, Madam
Deputy Speaker, now at $457 per capita.
Let
us move on to '85‑86. Let us see
if things get any better. Revenue
growth, 6.5 percent; expenditures, 7 percent; inflation down at 4.5 percent;
deficit that year, $528 million; deficit per capita, $496. Not getting any better. In fact, I would think most would agree
getting significantly worse.
Let
us go to 1986‑87, same government‑‑
An Honourable Member: Is that still the same NDP government?
Mr. Stefanson: Same government, same NDP government. Revenue growth that year of 8.7 percent;
expenditure, 8.2 percent; inflation that year of 4.3 percent; deficit, $559 million. That was 1986‑87. Deficit per capita, $522.
In
1987‑88, revenue growth that year, 19.3 percent‑‑fantastic;
expenditure growth, 10 percent; inflation, 4.2 percent; deficit that year, $300
million; deficit per capita, $278.
Let
us go to the defeated budget, the 1988‑89 budget. We all know what happened there. It is not hard to tell, when looking at the
track record to date and looking at the numbers in 1988‑89, why that
budget was defeated. In 1988‑89: revenue growth, 8.3 percent; expenditure, 7.5
percent; inflation was down at 4.4; the deficit, $334 million; deficit per
capita, $308.
* (1500)
Let
us look at the average during that particular government, because we know they
were defeated in '88 of that year:
average revenue growth during that period of 10.6 percent; average
expenditure growth, 9.8 percent; average deficit, $438 million; average per
capita deficit, 413‑‑significant revenue growth. At a time when many businesses, many
individuals would be dealing with the expenditure side, working towards a
balanced budget and, heaven forbid, creating a surplus or building for a rainy
day or building for the future, and look at the kind of expenditure growth and
look at the kinds of deficits run up during that particular period. Thankfully, that '88‑89 budget was
defeated, Madam Deputy Speaker, and there was a change of government, so a
different budget was brought in.
What the budget for that year ended up being
was: revenue growth of 12.5 percent;
expenditure growths now down to 3.4 percent; inflation actually that year was
higher than expenditure growth for the first time‑‑inflation was
running at 4.4 percent; deficit brought down to $141 million; 130 per capita.
To
be fair, let us move through a few of those years, 1989‑90, the next
year: revenue growth only 2.5 percent;
expenditure growth that year, 7 percent; inflation, 4.7 percent; the deficit
that year, $142 million‑‑we are now getting down into the figures,
the range, of 100 million to 150 million; the per capita that year, 131.
Let
us go to 1990‑91: Revenue growth
was only .4 of a percent; expenditure growth was 4.9 percent, same as inflation
that year‑‑so the three budgets, one the expenditure growth was
below inflation, one was the same, and one was slightly higher; the deficit
that year was $292 million; the deficit per capita, 268.
For
1991‑92: Revenue growth went to
5.7; expenditures down at 4.7; inflation was 3.8‑‑so expenditures
were a little less than 1 percent higher; deficit that year was $334 million;
the deficit per capita, 306.
The
1992‑93 budget: revenue reduction
of 1 percent; expenditure growth of 3.6; and we have an estimate for the
inflation of that year of 1.8; unfortunately, that year, the deficit was $562
million; 513 deficit per capita.
Now
we have the 1993‑94 budget before us.
We have revenue growth of .2 of 1 percent. We have expenditure reductions for the first
time in all of these figures that I have read off, expenditure reductions of
1.2 percent. We have a projected deficit
of $367 million and a 330 per capita deficit.
The average during that term, instead of revenue growth of 10.6 for the
first term that I showed you, we are now talking revenue growth averaging 3.3
percent, which is comparable to all other parts of
I
took the time to walk through all of that, because what does that all now mean
in terms of where we are today when we look at our accumulated general‑purpose
debt? Let us go back to 1982‑83, a
time when some members across the way formed a government, an NDP government in
We
have now been through six budgets.
Starting with 1988‑89 and going up to 1993‑94, we inherited
the accumulated debt of $5.1 billion. We
started at the starting point. The $5.1
billion that we were left with from the NDP legacy of '82 to '87, the
accumulated debt is now at $6 billion, a increase of .9 billion, $900 million
over six years, Madam Deputy Speaker, about a 17 percent increase.
But
more importantly, look at the magnitude, the $5.1 billion that was left at the
end of '87‑88 under the NDP government, and we now see what that
translates into. We know whom we hold
responsible for the fact that the public debt costs in our 1993‑94 budget
will be $550 million, or 10.1 percent of our provincial budget.
You
need to look no further than the accumulation of debt that occurred during that
time period. Horrendous. I mean, people who were a part of that
government, I would think, would have to hang their heads in shame for the
legacy that they have left after their term governing this province.
I
would like to very briefly deal with the '88‑89 budget because there has
been some controversy as to what we were left with in that budget. I dug out a copy of the budget book, the 1988
Budget Address with the minister of the day, Mr. Eugene Kostyra, his picture in
the book, and the net budgetary requirement in that particular year was a
deficit of $334 million. The book is
available for everybody to get hold of. That is the budget that was defeated
here in this House.
When members of our party took government,
they brought in an entirely different budget.
Before they did so, they took various steps, Madam Deputy Speaker. Program expenditure under the PCs during the
preparation of the '88‑89 budget was $48 million, or 1 percent, less than
the NDP budget that was defeated.
There was also $21 million in doctors and
nurses settlements not included in the NDP expenditures in this book that had
to be included in the '88‑89 budget brought in by the Conservatives. The
Conservative budget also had to put in $20 million into Health; $8.4 million
into Education; $24.6 million into Agriculture and $10 million more into
Capital.
After all of that, the projected deficit
brought in under the PC, the revised budget in '88‑89, was $196 million,
or 41 percent less than the projected deficit of $334 million that was defeated
here in this House, Madam Deputy Speaker.
In
reality, the actual deficit in '88‑89 came in even less than the
projected. It came in at $141 million.
I
think the numbers tell the story in terms of the legacy of debt and the legacy
of taxes that were left by the government of '82 to '87‑88.
But, if one needs any additional confirmation
of what can happen, let us look at B.C. and the NDP government of the day in
B.C.
Again I will quote from some newspaper
publications written in the last short period of time. This is from the Vancouver Sun of March 31,
front‑page story: The budget
documents tabled in the Legislature Tuesday show the New Democrats plan to
borrow more than $3 billion in the year ahead as they did in the budget year
that ends today. Because of this
borrowing spree, the provincial debt has skyrocketed $26.4 billion from $20
billion in the space of two years, an increase of 32 percent, the largest in
the entire history of the
Summarizing, this is a government that
believes in higher taxes, bigger spending and more debt. Does that sound familiar? Anybody who watched
That is one example of one article. They go on and on. Another article, March 31,
1993, headline: NDP drives up B.C.'s net
debt 30 percent to $26.3 billion in two years.
New Democrats have increased B.C.'s total net debt 30 percent in just
two years to a grand total of $26.3 billion.
It
goes on. An editorial on April 1 from
Victoria, this is quoting the Social Credit Leader, Jack Weisgerber, figures
the combined tax hikes now to be levied by the NDP will skim $1,000 from
average family income. This fellow
thinks that Weisgerber is being extremely conservative.
On
March 30, a Victoria newspaper: The new
economic strategy announced by Premier Harcourt Monday means adding to the
public debt and handing much more power to provincial Crown corporations.
So
we see the same pattern, Madam Deputy Speaker.
We see the pattern establishing there that we had to live through in
this province from 1982 to '88.
I
want now to talk for a few moments about
Madam Deputy Speaker: The honourable minister has nine minutes
remaining.
Mr. Stefanson: Thank you very much.
* (1510)
I
want to turn and talk about
For
example, the current Conference Board provincial forecast indicates real
economic growth of 2.5 percent for
I
want to turn to
Despite the increase,
Let
us talk about
Total capital investment, Madam Deputy
Speaker, private and public in
I
could go on, Madam Deputy Speaker, with more and more economic indicators. Since you told me I only have nine minutes, I
want to move to a couple of other topics before my time is up.
I
know everybody in this House is always interested in good news stories. I want to put a few on the record for the
benefit of all of us because, occasionally, some members like to preach doom
and gloom or Dr. Death. I know the
member for Transcona (Mr. Reid) and others are very interested in good news
stories. These have all happened certainly within the last year and many within
the last few months, Madam Deputy Speaker, and they are in no particular order.
International Game Technology, the best in its
class in gaming equipment and technology, has opened an assembly plant in
Let
us talk about Canada Post putting one of their call centres, where? Right here in Manitoba‑‑100 more
jobs. Not long ago, my department was
able to support the People's Co‑operative dairy in
Let
us talk about North West Company, and I know there was some concern expressed
in this House some time ago when we indicated that we were supporting North
West Company. They just recently opened
their retail distribution centre here in Winnipeg, 130 jobs, their only retail
service centre closing facilities in Toronto and Montreal, serving over 140
stores in all of Canada, intending to procure a great deal of their product
right here in Manitoba, opportunities for all kinds of Manitoba
businesses. They have a state‑of‑the‑art
system and opportunities for
I
should go on, because there are more, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I want to touch
on a few more before I move to another topic. Monsanto Canada Inc. of
In
Our
Premier (Mr. Filmon) referred earlier to an announcement that is probably
taking place right now, that I believe is adding in excess of 200 more jobs
right here to
Internationally, our government is active as
well. We have supported Smith Carter
Architects and Engineers of Winnipeg in partnership with two
In
November, five private‑sector representatives accompanied our
government's delegation to
Far
too often, we forget that
We
are amongst the lowest‑cost business locations in all of
We
have a highly skilled and stable workforce.
We have a central location, an excellent transportation distribution
centre. We have world‑class
research and health care facilities and, in my opinion, we have a quality of
life that is second to none.
I
had intended to move on to talk about what should be composed of an economic
framework, but I see my time is running out.
I will save that for another day.
I
wanted to very quickly, Madam Deputy Speaker, touch on Workforce 2000 only
because it was raised by some other members in the House. I want to remind members of the significance
of Workforce 2000. The Leader of the
Opposition (Mr. Doer) throws out a company name and the support given under
this program. Since May of 1991 to February 8, 1993, 43,816 employees have been
assisted in
In
concluding, Madam Deputy Speaker, I had intended to make some comments on the
response to the budget from the Leader of the Opposition, and I just want to
close with two thoughts on his comments.
Firstly, I have to admit that I was extremely disturbed with the tone of
his comments. When he continually refers
to honesty and integrity, I can assure him that all members on the government
side have honesty and integrity. I take
some offence to the kind of tone and the kind of comments he would make. I certainly wish when he deals with the
budget that he would put forward alternatives and tell us what the NDP would do
if they were in power. Thank you very
much.
Ms. Avis Gray
(Crescentwood): Madam Deputy Speaker, I am pleased to rise
today and put a few comments on the record in regard to the budget. This is the sixth budget that this particular
government has brought in, and I note that when the government presented their
throne speech earlier this year they talked about innovation. They, I think, used that term about nine or
10 times in their throne speech, and one would hope that innovation would
transfer and would also be used in their budget in how they decided to spend
their dollars and spend the dollars on behalf of Manitobans.
There are three areas that I would like to
speak of today, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Those are reform, restructuring, responsibility‑‑actually
four‑‑and revenue generation.
I think what this government has talked about but in fact what this
government has failed to really put in place is real reform when it comes to
governments. I know this government
likes to talk about what happens in other provinces across this country. They refer very much to what goes on in
We
recognize that across this country we are facing very difficult choices. We are facing difficult choices in
* (1520)
(Mr. Speaker in the Chair)
When you look at the last 18 years, Mr.
Speaker, of the budgets in this
Remember, this government was elected in
1988. It is a number of years
later. It is five years later. This government has had an opportunity to
actually create some real reform and restructuring in government. They have failed to do that. They have failed in a number of ways.
Now
they have made some successes and some gains.
I will certainly admit to that.
Overall, I believe, in regard to real reform and looking at a new way of
doing business, looking at a new attitude, they really have not done the job
that they should have.
When I talk about reform, Mr. Speaker, and a
new attitude, we are talking about a government getting a grip on what exactly
it is that governments really should do.
What are the areas that they should provide services in? What are the areas where they should not be
providing services but in fact should provide leadership in the area of policy
and philosophy? What do governments in
the 1990s and moving into the 21st Century expect Manitobans to do as far as
taking responsibility for their own lives?
How much does government provide support to individuals and to families?
I
think it is a very philosophical question, Mr. Speaker. When I think of the
extreme left and the extreme right and perhaps the group in between, I always
think of the New Democrats as being a party who really believed in the
philosophy that you should do for people, that rather than allowing for people
to be on their own and get jobs and learn to grow and develop as individuals,
the state like to intervene to such an extent that we were really providing so
many services to people that they were not given an opportunity to go out on
their own initiative and do things.
When I look at the extreme right side of the
spectrum, and I am not saying that this government is necessarily totally on
the extreme right, but some of their policies are, then there is that
philosophy or that idea that as an individual you have responsibility for
yourself and for your life without any government intervention. If you can succeed and you can get educated
and you can do well in your life, so be it, good for you. The more successful you are, the better, but
if you are an individual that for whatever reasons, a variety of reasons,
whether they be socioeconomic, education, geography, whatever those reasons
are, you have difficulties in fact in succeeding and perhaps succeeding in
life, then government is not there to support you at all and you fail, you do
not do as well. Those are the
individuals in our society who are disadvantaged and who do not have the same
advantages.
I
think there has to be a balance, Mr. Speaker, between those two extremes. There has to be a balance. That balance is, yes, individuals should be
responsible for their own well‑being where possible, but sometimes there
need to be supports and assistance in place to help those individuals, to help
them actually move up the ladder to success, however they define success, to
assist them, to provide some resources or some tools so they can, as they go
back to an old model, actually learn to do by doing, but they need some
resources to assist them.
All
individuals do not have the same opportunities to do well and to succeed. Government has to take on and provide some
leadership in some of those areas.
Whether those particular services or supports, as an example, family
counselling services for parents and for families, whether it is providing
reasonable health care for individuals, whether it is assisting a business
person in the form of a small business loan, whether there is assistance in the
area of providing child care for families, whether it is assisting farmers in
some form of financial assistance so that in fact they are able to continue on
farming and then produce a successful crop and continue to be self‑sufficient
after that, whatever the kind of resources that need to be available for
individuals‑‑and there is certainly a wide spectrum‑‑government
has to come to grips with what those services are.
My
concern with this particular budget is that we are starting to see a move
towards the right. We are starting to
see government move away from providing some of what I would call essential
services, essential resources and tools for individuals so that in fact they
can proceed, so they can make a go of it if it is in a business, so they can provide
for their families, so there is going to be a quality of life, Mr. Speaker, so
this is my concern in this particular budget.
We are starting to see that swing to the right, and we are not providing
some of these services for people. We
are starting to move away from that.
When I say providing services for people, Mr.
Speaker, I am not necessarily saying that governments should deliver all of
those services, but governments have to provide the leadership to ensure that
in fact those services and resources are available in the community. Perhaps it is community groups, perhaps it is
nonprofit organizations who are actually providing those services. Perhaps it is business who is actually
providing training for individuals or providing investment in their own
province. Whichever the group that is
providing that service, government has a responsibility to ensure that it is
happening in our province. They do not
necessarily have to be the actual service deliverers, but they have a
responsibility to ensure that those service are in place.
When I think of some of the reform initiatives
that this government could have taken but did not, I question really why they
did not decide to be bold in some areas and why they actually did not take some
steps. Did they really look at the
entire 26 departments and actually look at where some restructuring could
occur?
Have we seen any move towards education
reform? We had heard the words spoken
"education reform," but we really have not seen any real concrete examples
or anything written down on paper that can say, this is what the government of
Manitoba feels that we should do as far as education reform.
There are so many areas that need to be looked
at. If we take the example of education,
we need to be looking at curriculum services.
Are we on the cutting edge of curriculum here in
What about their teachers and staff
development? Has this government, by the
budget where they have actually removed some autonomy from the school division
trustees, and also unfairly divided how the money is going to be spent
throughout school divisions because you see huge inequities across the school
divisions, Mr. Speaker, in this province?
How are school divisions going to be able to ensure that teachers do
receive some type of professional development?
That professional development is necessary so
that in fact teachers can keep up with the curriculum changes that are going on
in this province. It is very, very
important that teachers be allowed that.
When you look at the government in terms of
their own staff, and sending their staff out to courses and ensuring that in
fact the Civil Service Commission has a staff training and development branch
so that staff training is provided to the civil service, one thinks that the
government does feel that professional development is important in one area,
yet on the other hand they seem to be quite willing to allow school divisions
to take those professional development days away from teachers.
We
would like to see in the education reform some real changes in the area of co‑ordination
of services, in the area of boundaries, and in the area of the structure of the
Department of Education. Is the Department
of Education structured so that it is the most effective way of delivering the
services that it needs to deliver, whether those services are for school
divisions, whether those services are for teachers? Is that the best structure within the Department
of Education?
* (1530)
What about school division boundaries? We have a number of school divisions out in
rural
We
have schools out in Emerson and Domain, and we have some school trustees and
some parents out there who are starting to say, maybe we should all be part of
Frontier School Division, because they feel that the formula and the funding
that is available to Frontier School Division would actually meet the needs
more of those towns and schools down in the southern part of the province. So there is a need to review. If a government is going to be bold, if a
government is going to start showing Manitobans that they are prepared to
manage the departments and they are prepared to move
One
of the areas that they could do that is in the area of education and looking at
boundaries and school divisions. This
government promised in 1990 that they would do that. Unfortunately, it is now
two years, three years later, and we still have not heard where that is. Now I am not going to stand here and
presuppose that if in fact we look at a review of school division boundaries,
what the analysis and the results would be of that? I think we have to keep in mind that a reason
for doing that is to ensure that we get the best quality service for the most
reasonable cost. We are concerned about
quality of education, and we may find out, if there was a review done, that
there are many, many ideas. In fact,
school division boundaries might not change at all. Perhaps there would be a total restructuring,
a total administrative change.
We
have to start changing the paradigms within which we think, and we have to
start, I think, at the grassroots level, and talking to parents, and talking to
teachers, talking to school officials, talking to politicians and saying, what
type of education system do we want to see here in
We have
heard in the last few days the ever‑increasing concern of violence in
schools. Again, here is an example of
where government has to take some leadership and ensure that in fact we are
addressing the issue of violence in the schools. It may not be leadership in the form of
providing the direct services, or it may be in some cases, but they have to
take that leadership role. They have to
ensure that in fact the teachers and the school divisions and the schools have
the resources and have the tools necessary to work on the problem, address the
problem, of children who have behavioural problems, who are very violent, who
get expelled from school. Then where do
they go? They are out on the streets, and they start to form gangs. I mean, this is becoming very common. What do we do with those situations?
There are no easy answers, because I think for
any politician to stand up and say the answers are simple, they are being very
naive. The answers are not simple. They are very complex. They take a lot of planning. They take a lot of co‑ordination. They take a lot of consultation with the
players involved with the schools, with the probations department, with the
Department of Family Services.
It
takes a lot of co‑ordination, and it takes a lot of planning to ensure
that there are some services available.
I know the Minister of Family Services (Mr. Gilleshammer) today spoke of
guidance counsellors in the schools, and I know certainly in my conversations
with teachers and school trustees, there is a recognition that guidance
counsellors are in fact an integral part of the school system, and particularly
in the elementary schools, as well.
More and more is there a need for guidance
counsellors to spend time with children who have special needs, who have
behaviour problems or have difficulties within the school system.
I
am not aware though of too many guidance counsellors who are spending time in
the homes with families. I do not
believe that they have the time. They
are quite overworked as it is within the school system, so how do we co‑ordinate
between what the guidance counsellor does in the school system and what the
parents may need in the home and the community, because certainly Child and
Family Services, although they have a mandate according to the legislation to
deal with prevention and to look at prevention and quality of life for
families, they are not able to provide that service. They, in fact, are not even able to provide
the protection services which are mandated under the legislation.
We
know of many instances of children who are 14, 15, who have been sexually
abused, and Child and Family Services is not able to deal with those particular
children. We have seen a growing number
of cases where, in fact, we have waiting lists.
We have
a Family Services Incorporated of
Families from every socioeconomic background
are oftentimes faced with difficult problems with their adolescents and with
their children, and they want some type of support and some help. They are prepared to take the responsibility
of looking after their children, but they just need a few resources to assist
them to do that. That is where I think
governments and where this government needs to take a leadership role.
If
this government in their budget really wanted to look at restructuring, I think
we could have seen some other changes to be made. One of the areas, when I look at the
Department of Health in terms of restructuring‑‑there has been a
committee that has been meeting for the last four or five years, and they have
looked at whether the public health services which are provided by the City of
Winnipeg and public health services which are provided by the Province of
Manitoba, if in fact there should be an amalgamation, or if it should be
delivered under one administrative program.
The
Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard) sighs at me.
He knows very well that this is an ongoing issue and that there have
been committees meeting for five and six years.
Part of the problem is it has been the bureaucrats who have been
meeting, and one questions what the objectives are of these bureaucrats, some
from the city and some from the province.
Do
they really want to see a solution? Do
they really want to see an integration of these public health services? We have seen a duplication of services. We have seen overlap of service. We have seen fragmentation of service. I think the people of
I
would suggest‑‑and I know that the Minister of Health has many,
many issues on his plate and on his desk; it is certainly a huge portfolio‑‑that
the minister perhaps take a look at where that committee is at and what
progress they have made over the last number of years.
Certainly, when I was a civil servant I had an
opportunity to see the odd minutes from some of those meetings and I
questioned, in fact, what kind of progress they were making.
I
believe these are some of the structural changes that really need to be looked
at. I also think we need to look at the
community health services, and maybe the Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard) is
doing this, and look at the services that we are now providing in the
community.
* (1540)
Is
it important that government deliver a lot of the mental health services, that
government deliver a lot of the services to the handicapped? We have community nonprofit organizations out
there that deliver some of the services.
What is the balance that we require?
Is there some major restructuring that needs to occur? Part of the difficulty when you deliver
services within a government by the very nature of government is that they are
very bureaucratic. It is very difficult
to get rid of that red tape.
Oftentimes I think what we find ourselves
doing when we are in government, rather than actually devoting 80 to 90 percent
of our time in actually ensuring that there is a quality service delivered to
the client or to the individual out there, we are doing paperwork and we are
doing nonsensical work that really has no value.
The
member for Rossmere (Mr. Neufeld) spoke about this the other day in his
remarks. He talked about how bureaucracy
perpetuates itself and how oftentimes there is time spent on items that have
nothing to do with delivering a service to a child out there, a service to a
pregnant woman, a service to an individual who is experiencing mental health
difficulties.
I think
we have to look at this bureaucracy and see what in fact we can do to
restructure and what the changes are.
When you have people in senior management positions, assistant deputy
ministers who spend a lot of their time worrying about which staff have
carryover of vacations and what is going on at a regional level, one wonders if
for $70,000 or $80,000 a year those people could not be put to better use in
terms of actually doing planning and deciding on what services should be
delivered out in the community. I would
suggest that again there needs to be that restructuring.
Part of the difficulty, as well, with the way
that the departments are now structured, particularly in Family Services and in
Health and even in Education and Justice to some extent, is that we do not
necessarily have collaboration of the services at the community level. I know there is a deputy minister's committee
that was to look at co‑ordination of services, particularly in terms of
children who are in the school system. I know that committee has been meeting
for a number of months and probably over a year.
We
need to see some changes from some of the empire building that has gone on
traditionally in the government departments.
We need to have people who are starting to say the most important thing
is to make sure that that child or that family receives a reasonable service.
Does it really matter if the budget dollars
are going to come out of the Department of Health or the Department of Family
Services or the Department of Education?
In the end it is the taxpayer who is actually paying for that
service. Rather than spending time
worrying about, it is not going to come out of my area because it should be
home care not mental health, why do we not come up with the most logical
solutions as to what the service should be?
I
know in some areas they are starting to look at more case management where in
fact you have people who are allowed to make those decisions. When people are allowed to make decisions and
have the authority to say, here is the type of service that a person should get
and here are the dollars, in fact, we probably have more of an efficient
service and we actually save money in the long run.
Now
we see a lot of duplication across departments where we have money being spent
by Education on transportation for a child and money being spent on
transportation for the same child through the Department of Health, and Family
Services putting in money. If they took
all that pool of money and combined it, there would probably be enough service
for two people. These are the
inefficiencies that we see.
I
am not blaming this government for the inefficiencies because these
inefficiencies have been there for the last 20 years, but they are being
perpetuated. We have to start looking at
changing how we deliver services within government, because we know that there
is only so much money that can be generated through our taxpayers, so we have
to start seeing some restructuring.
I
also wonder about the value of Treasury Board.
Now, I recognize that cabinet ministers are a part of Treasury Board‑‑[interjection]
Well, I hear from the other side that they have questions on Treasury Board,
but again, one really has to look at‑‑I believe and I agree that
cabinet ministers are responsible for making decisions about their own
departments. They should be the people who are best able to decide what
services should be provided, what the budget decisions should be within the
context of the entire government philosophy.
Then we have Treasury Board staff and the bean
counters who spend their time looking at staffing submissions for maternity
leave replacements for a $14,000 secretary.
Why do we have people who are paid $50,000 and $60,000 spending their
days looking at whether someone should go on maternity leave and if their
position should be replaced? That seems
like very irrelevant work to do at that particular level. Again, I think this government does need to
look at restructuring.
I
know the Minister of Labour (Mr. Praznik) has a trial going on in his
department and, believe me, there are other departments and other staff in
other departments who would love to get in on that trial, who feel some of the
other departments should go that way as well.
Government could be operated more efficiently, and it should be operated
on the basis of let us spend our time delivering the service to the
client. Let us not spend our time doing
paper work and on things that are really totally irrelevant, absolutely totally
irrelevant in the scheme of things. It
requires a major change and it is not going to happen overnight, but I would
like to see this government attempt to look at that. I would like to have seen them attempt to
look at that a number of years ago, but better late than never, so I hope that
they are going to really make some major changes in the area of restructuring.
When we look at the area of fairness of this
particular budget, and I really believe that when the Minister of Finance (Mr.
Manness) stands up in this House or on television and says that this budget is
fair, I really believe he does believe that. I believe he believes that, but,
in fact, it is not a fair budget, Mr. Speaker, because when you look at the
people who are hit the hardest in this budget, it is people who are poor and
people who are low income.
These are the individuals who are hit the
hardest in this particular budget. It is
not fair that if you make over $27,500, that you are going to lose the same
amount of rebate on property taxes as someone who makes $150,000. That is not fair. It is going to affect the person who is at
$27,000, $28,000, more than it is going to affect the person who is making
$150,000 or $100,000.
When you broaden your sales tax, which is a
consumption tax, when you broaden that to include children's clothing, school
supplies, that affects the people who are on limited incomes the most, whether
those are families who are low income or whether they are elderly people who
are on a limited income. Any kind of
broadening of the consumption tax affects people on limited incomes the most.
So
we do not have fair taxes in this particular government, Mr. Speaker. It is affecting people who are low income and
the poor. We have individuals right now,
families‑‑I am getting calls‑‑people who are forced to
give up their jobs, a minimum‑paying job albeit, but give them up because
in fact they can no longer afford the child care. They cannot afford the increase in cost.
The
Minister of Family Services (Mr. Gilleshammer) the other day spoke about the
fact that people are exempt from paying the dollar a day and people are exempt
from paying the $2.40 a day, but that is not true. In fact, all those individuals are not
exempt. They are sent bills every month,
and they are required to pay that. A
number of the daycares are telling us that there are a number of accounts that
are outstanding because in fact families, particularly with more than one
child, are just not able to pay that amount of money. Child care is very, very essential in this
day and age to ensure that in fact people can go out and can earn a living.
So
we have not seen fairness in where this government has decided to increase the
sales tax. They have exempted books as
the minister made note to point out to us in his budget speech, but in fact it
is usually people of a certain income who go out and buy books. It is children, but we decide to tax school
supplies. So children of poor families and
middle‑income families who have three kids in school are going to have to
pay a tax on all of those school supplies.
Yet, we have exempted books, but it is only a certain segment of society
who actually buys books anyway, Mr. Speaker.
*
(1550)
So
there is a concern about the fairness of this.
This government likes to talk about fairness. They really believe that in fact the budget
is fair, but it is not fair. It is not
fair for lower‑income people, the people on a fixed income, whether they
be elderly or whether they be on a disability pension or whether they be on
social assistance. It is not fair for
those individuals. It is not fair for
those families who are of middle income who in fact are supporting
children. These consumption taxes are
going to be very, very difficult.
So
we have seen a government whose only innovation, because they talk about
innovation so much in their throne speech and they think that innovation comes
out when you look at the figures, when you look at the budget they have
developed, they talk about innovation, but we have not seen any. All they think of to do is to take 2 percent
cuts across the government departments, in some cases, and slash programs, and
they really have not thought about what the long‑term consequences are
going to be of those particular moves.
They have not really thought of what the long‑term
consequences are going to be. We do not
know what the crisis in education, what this crisis now is going to create in
10 to 20 years, because I feel that in fact we will not see the most drastic
effects of this budget in regard to education this year, next year or even the
year after. We will see them down the
road in five and ten years, Mr. Speaker.
That is where we are going to see the effects of these cuts, because we
have a government who believes that professional development is not important.
They believe that the autonomy should be taken
away from the school divisions. Is the
next move of this government to actually do away with school divisions and
school trustees? Do they want to
actually manage the education system directly? [interjection] Well, it is a
thought, as I hear from the government side, but in fact I do not think it is a
good thought. I think it is a very, very
slippery, slippery slope. I think it is
a very slippery, slippery slope that we move if we start to take away autonomy
from some of our other areas of government, whether it is municipal government
or whether it is a school‑level government. It is a slippery slope because then you start
to get so much decentralization and so much power and control under the
auspices of one group, i.e., a provincial government, that in fact very much
you get a lot of power and control, but I do not think that is good.
I
think we need a balance in
We
have a government who has decided to take away that autonomy from the school
divisions. We have a government who has
actually decided that there is going to be a 2 percent cap on special levies,
and they have decided that the school divisions, they seem to say that these
school divisions still can make all the decisions they want and that in fact it
is fair.
So
when you have a decrease, when you have the St. Vital School Division and the
Transcona‑Springfield School Division, who are having a $24 to $25
decrease on the property taxes in terms of what they are able to raise on an
average assessment of a $30,000‑assessed home and you have other school
divisions that are actually raising more money, and yet you have a disparity in
the services that those school divisions are able to provide.
You
have a disparity now and, with this particular funding formula and the way this
Bill 22 is developed, you in fact are going to increase those disparities. You are not going to decrease those
disparities, so in fact you are going to see very much difference of what kind
of services one can get in the River East School Division versus
Some school divisions are going to take away
the professional development days from teachers. Some school divisions are going to cut the
teaching positions. Again, you are going
to see teachers who are going to want to move to one school division over
another because they will have better working conditions there. You also have situations where you have
children in rural school divisions who may only live 15 or 20 miles outside
Winnipeg and maybe equidistant between a school in rural Manitoba and a school
in Winnipeg, but yet the services that are available and offered to them are by
far so very, very different.
In
some of the rural school divisions the programs and the services and the
classes offered are very minimal and in the city of
Well, some school divisions are going to hire,
but some school divisions are not necessarily going to do that because, in
fact, they know that the $45,000 that is going to be available to them will not
actually cover the cost of having that clinician in their school division.
We also
have school divisions who are now starting to say, well, we will look at
sharing our resources with other school divisions, and someone says hear, hear
from the government side. Yes, maybe there are some good ideas about sharing
resources and services, but why did the government not decide to take a
proactive approach and say, we want to look at school divisions. We want to
look at how services are delivered. We
want to look at administration within the school divisions and within the
Department of Education, and we are going to take leadership and assist you in
looking at what is the best way to deliver service.
Should there be‑‑[interjection]
No, well, the member for St. Norbert (Mr. Laurendeau) obviously fails to
understand the difference between government's taking leadership and assisting
in a process as opposed to taking over and taking control. There is a big difference and that is the
difference between leadership and dictatorship.
The
government has a responsibility. This
government should have assisted the school divisions in looking at the
boundaries, because now what we are faced with, whether it is school divisions
or whether it is even universities, it is almost a siege mentality and it is a
protectionist attitude, so that everyone is fighting for survival. They want to keep every last resource, every
dollar that they can because they are not in the frame of mind at this point in
time to actually look at what is the best way to deliver services. That cannot occur and that cannot happen
unless you have governments who are supposed to take leadership. [interjection]
Well, the member for St. Norbert talks about
looking at the policy before us. Well,
the policies that we have in education with this government are contradictory,
No. l. On one hand, you say you want to
give more autonomy to the school divisions, and on the other hand, you are
taking it away, so that is definitely contradictory.
An Honourable Member: Tell us where we took it away.
Ms. Gray: Well, I need not tell all of Manitobans where
in fact it has been, because when the member has an opportunity to read my
speech tomorrow, he will see that I have already referred to that and I have
already spoken about that.
I
wanted to talk‑‑[interjection] Well, again, we have the members on
the right to talk about raising taxes.
Unfortunately, this government seems to feel that the only way that they
can continue to provide services is to continue to raise taxes, but perhaps
this government should look at some form of revenue generation.
How
are we going to bring business to this province? We need to bring people to this
province. If we want to keep people in
So
if, in fact, education and training is the key that is going to unlock a
"world of opportunity," how are we doing that with this budget? We are not bringing people to
I
see, Mr. Speaker, that my time is running out, and I would only like to
reiterate, I would have hoped that this government would have really tackled
the restructuring of government, would really look at reform and would be able
to present in their budget revenue generation ideas.
Mr. Speaker: Order, please, the honourable member's time
has expired.
Hon. Leonard Derkach
(Minister of Rural Development): Mr. Speaker, I would like
to say at the outset how pleased I am to be able to rise in my place and offer
some comments with regard to the budget that has been laid down by the Minister
of Finance (Mr. Manness) and indeed offer my support to the budget and more
importantly, I guess, indicate to the House and to Manitobans how proud I am to
be a member of a government that has indeed grasped the importance of the
economy and the importance of bringing down a budget that is not only fair, but
treats Manitobans throughout our province equally and with some compassion.
Mr.
Speaker, the worldwide recession has not only hit Manitoba, but it has hit the
entire nation, and indeed, our province has not been immune to the recession,
so therefore we have had to make some adjustments over the course of the last
few years.
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This is my seventh year in government, or
approaching the seventh year in the Legislature, Mr. Speaker, and in those
seven years I have indeed learned some things about how government operates. Indeed, some of the issues that face
government from time to time are not necessarily supported by all members in
society, but the decisions that have to be made are ones which are going to
serve the society in a fair and equitable manner. I might say that this government in the last
five years has done just that. It has
treated Manitobans fairly, and it has embarked on a direction which, I think,
is going to put Manitoba ahead of many other provinces because we have been
able to understand what the challenges before us are and have been able to take
some measures that will indeed address those challenges.
In
today's world, Mr. Speaker, it does not matter what political stripe you are in
this country of ours. The challenges
that all of us face are certainly probably more acute than they have been in
the recent history of our nation; indeed, many of us across this nation are
faced with making some very dramatic, if I might use that term, decisions over
the course of the next few years. If we
look to our neighbours to the west or to the east, we see that there too they
have had to make some very difficult adjustments to the realities of today, but
there are some, I guess, different philosophies in how we can address some of
the challenges that are before us. We
have chosen a method or a direction whereby we want to ensure that the citizens
of our province have every opportunity to maximize the dollars that they have
in their pockets in terms of being able to purchase the things that they
require in life.
In
some other provinces, Mr. Speaker, we see that the raising of taxes is the
alternative that has been chosen by governments. We have seen that happen in
the past in this province, and, indeed, that solution has not really
worked. It has only taken those very
precious dollars away from the citizens of our province. I think that, when this province is governed
by our children and by our children's children, they will look back at this
government and at this Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness), and they will
understand and be thankful that some of the decisions that he has made were
ones that would benefit them in the long term.
It has often been said that we cannot keep spending our children's
inheritance and for far too long we have been doing just that.
Mr.
Speaker, we cannot find those immediate solutions that will all of a sudden
bring us out of the problems that we are facing into a new world and then we
can start with a clean slate. That just
is not so, but we have to move in that direction. I have heard comments from members across the
way, and I have listened carefully to the remarks that have been made. Indeed, the Leader of the Opposition (Mr.
Doer), the Leader of the Second Opposition (Mrs. Carstairs) have, in their questions
to members of this House, never come up with a solution to some of the problems
that we are facing.
When I read the media reports and when media
would ask the Leader of the Opposition, what would you do? He did not have any solutions to any of the
problems and the challenges that we in this province face. Now you would think that the official
opposition of a province would have something to say with regard to the
solutions that they would offer. So, if
the Leader does not have any solutions, then we look to the members of his
caucus and listen to their remarks.
Perhaps we can glean something from their remarks that would add to the
solutions that we are looking for, and indeed none have been forthcoming. It does not matter who stands in his or her
place. Any remarks that are made are
simply ones of criticism but really not any of substantive solutions.
I
guess the best solutions that they can come up with have been to tax Manitobans
more, to tax more so that government can spend more. Well, that is not a solution at all, and Manitobans
around this province have indicated very clearly that is not a solution.
Mr.
Speaker, I have been able to travel the province quite extensively in my role
as the Minister of Rural Development and to talk to Manitobans, not only in my
constituency but indeed around the province.
One thing that Manitobans tell me is that they cannot afford to pay any
more taxes. They are paying as many
taxes as they can right now, and they do not want to see any increases in the
levels of taxation in our province.
For
some reason that message is not being understood by the opposition, because all
we hear from them is the criticism that they want to maintain all the services
that we have presently, and the only way to pay for them is to increase the
taxes. Well, I have said repeatedly, and
so has our government, that is not a solution, that is not the way out of the
problems that we face today.
Mr.
Speaker, if you look at the debt that our province has, it is interesting to
note that in 1971 the payment on our interest alone cost us about 4 cents of
every personal income tax dollar generated.
Well, today, that number has risen to about 42 cents. That statement is staggering to say the least.
In
my comments with regard to the budget speech, I am going to limit them to the
deficit reduction, essential services and the impact on rural regions. I have chosen these areas because they affect
all rural Manitobans, because they will affect future Manitobans alike and,
finally, because this government feels that Band‑Aid solutions, short‑term
solutions will not work, as demonstrated by previous administrations. Rather, our government is correcting a system
that has been fractured so it will become a stronger system than ever before. That is where we want to start and where we
want to build from.
Mr.
Speaker, as you and members of this Chamber know, the deficit which this
province is facing is crippling the growth of our economy. By 1996 and '97, we are projecting that we
will decrease that deficit to a level whereby the public will no longer have to
keep putting money in to pay for the interest charges on the expenditures that
we have.
We
cannot hide the fact that the decisions we have to make in the future are going
to be ones that are not going to be welcomed by everyone, but those are
decisions that have to be made if we are going to balance our books.
Mr.
Speaker, balancing the books though is not the only reason that a government
brings down a budget such as we have. We have to be sensitive to the needs of
Manitobans, to those essential services that Manitobans need. We have said that the major departments that
we have to protect are those of Health, of Education and of Family
Services. These are the three main areas
that a government has to protect and has to put its emphasis on. I could say
quite confidently that over the last five years this government has governed we
have indeed put our emphasis on Health, on Education and on Family Services,
and those services have been protected.
If we look at the increases that those departments have received over
the last six budgets, we understand that indeed there have been substantial
increases in those departments, that indeed we have protected those services to
Manitobans. That is where our emphasis
is.
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Mr.
Speaker, my colleague the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) indicated in his
remarks when he introduced the budget that the interest costs of our province
alone have exceeded the combined budgets of 12 of the departments of this government.
Financing this province's debt has become one of the biggest businesses of this
province. That is one business that I
think all of us can do without. Courtesy
of the previous government, however, it has become a growth industry, an
industry where no Manitoban, not an individual Manitoban, benefits. As we work very hard at containing and
reducing the deficit, I think it is important that all Manitobans understand
why we are moving in this direction and what our end goal is. Of course, it is to provide Manitobans, both
present and in the future, with the best kind of lifestyle, the best possible
opportunities for jobs, for wealth creation, for education and for all of those
things that Manitobans really want.
Mr.
Speaker, I know that from time to time the opposition become very critical
about the decisions that are made. Unfortunately, when they make those remarks,
they do not come back to us with any real substantive solutions to any of the
criticisms that they make.
Mr.
Speaker, rural
Mr.
Speaker, the department that I have responsibility for has embarked on a new
direction, a direction that is meant to try and revitalize our rural economy
and at the same time provide those continued services that the former
Department of Municipal Affairs provided to the R.M.s of our province. In restructuring our department, we have paid
special attention to the economic situation in rural
We
know what the situation with agriculture is.
Over the last few years governments have put in great sums of money into
agriculture. We have to change the way
we do business in rural
That has been difficult over the last while,
Mr. Speaker. We have seen the decline in
population in many of our rural communities.
Some of them are facing almost extinction, if you like, because the only
residents who are left in some of our very small communities are senior
citizens who are not going to be around for that many more years.
Mr.
Speaker, we need to have some youth in rural
So
our responsibility, I think, as a government and as a rural department, is to
provide the assistance, to be the catalyst that will allow rural
Mr.
Speaker, it does not matter whether you talk about the economy, whether you
talk about essential services, we have to ensure that those services are
available to Manitobans in the rural part of our province. For that reason we embarked on several
initiatives. Some of those initiatives
were designed to put people into rural
Mr.
Speaker, I would have to say that so far, we see some positive signs in terms
of what is happening in some of our rural communities. It does not matter which community I go to,
it seems that people are now starting to look at their own strengths, and they
are understanding that they cannot simply rely on government to do everything
for them. They know that if a community
is going to survive, a lot of the effort in ensuring that community survives
comes from within that community.
Mr.
Speaker, it is for that reason that we have embarked on such programs as the
community round tables, because only through those means can communities come
together. Various sectors of that
community can come together and then can embark on initiatives that will help
the communities grow, and they can build on the strengths of their communities.
We
have seen some of those things, and I think they have yielded some very
positive results. Mr. Speaker, I have to
tell you that in some of our communities, the residents of those communities
have come together and have looked at what their strengths are. They have taken advantage of their strengths,
and they have been able to attract some people into their communities.
I
look at such projects as the Country Ovens one that is not that far from my
area, where an entrepreneur who was a farmer realized that they should be
adding value to the product they are producing on their farm, and in looking at
it very closely, they were able to develop a method where they could grind the
flour from the wheat that they were growing on their farm, develop a product
that was acceptable to the public and to many consumers, and now we have a
little industry out in a rural community that is employing five or six other
people. It is a thriving little
business, and I know that its future is one where they will expand and grow.
These are the kinds of small cottage
industries, Mr. Speaker, that we need in our small rural communities. Projects that employ four or five people make
a big difference in a community of 1,000 people. We have to put our emphasis on those kinds of
small initiatives that do not need a lot of assistance from government but indeed
can be supported through perhaps some initiatives like Grow Bonds or our REDI
program and can indeed be extremely important to small communities.
Mr.
Speaker, it does not have to be just the small community, because if you look
at some of the initiatives that have been undertaken in communities like
Mr.
Speaker, when you look at the economy of our province, our Minister of
Industry, Trade and Tourism (Mr. Stefanson) a few moments ago outlined some of
the good news that
You
look at the fact that a community like
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Mr.
Speaker, you look at Monsanto moving to the community of Morden, again a rural
community. I mean, you ask the question,
well, why did Monsanto go to a rural community in
Communities like the Mordens, the Portages
have indeed done that, and that is why you see such plants as Monsanto,
Calwest, Can‑Oat. If you look at
Teulon and you look at the Care Corporation that established there by using
Grow Bonds, the reason that it established in Teulon, again, was that we had a
community that realized that if it was going to grow it had to get out there
and attract the businesses into that community.
Mr.
Speaker, there is a spin‑off to this.
We have seen a decreasing population in rural
Mr.
Speaker, we have heard the opposition make much of the Budget Address with
regard to the education system. The
education system is one that the opposition has been attacking for some time,
but I have to say that if you look at what we have done in terms of supporting
education over the last five years or over the last six budgets, and if you
look at the revenues that this province has had over the last six budgets, you
will find that we have supported education far more than the previous
government had ever supported education.
Mr.
Speaker, yes, we have some challenges as a province in terms of training and
retraining, but if you look at some of the programs that have been developed,
you will find that we have better opportunities in our province for retraining
than there are in many other jurisdictions.
As
a matter of fact, when you look at Ontario, they have now embarked on a similar
program to the one that was developed right here in this province, and that is
Workforce 2000, a program where we are actually partnering with the private
sector to help retrain workers directly in the workplace, and that is the best
place to retrain many of our workers.
The program is working. As a matter of fact, the results are extremely
good.
Mr.
Speaker, if you look at our K to 12 system‑‑I just happened to meet
with an organization last night, and we happened to get onto the topic of
education, and they said that in
If
you look at it, that is quite an accomplishment, because we do not have a large
population in this province. We have a
large area geographically, and we are able to address the needs, I think,
better than many of the other provinces that may have larger populations and a
bigger basis to work from.
Mr.
Speaker, from time to time, we tend to become very negative about what our
systems look like, but indeed if we compare them to other systems, we find that
we are ahead of many other jurisdictions.
That is where we want to be. We
want to be leaders. I think members of
this House would agree that we want to ensure that we give our children the
best opportunities, and our adults who need the learning, the retraining and
the relearning opportunities, we give them the best opportunities that we
possibly can.
I
would just like to spend a moment or two talking about the municipal side of my
portfolio. Municipalities throughout our
province have for some time been concerned about the review of municipal
legislation because it has not happened.
They have been concerned about such things as policing costs in our
municipalities because there has been such an inequity. We have been able, over the course of the
last year, to address those two particular issues, one being the policing
agreement. That is one that was somewhat
difficult and sensitive, because we had municipalities on both sides of the
issue.
There were those who felt they were paying too
much and then, on the other hand, we had those who felt that they were probably
being discriminated against because of the fact that they had a dense
population, if you like, and the rural side of it was not contributing its fair
share.
Well, by getting those parties together, we
were able to resolve it. Although there
is a little bit of, I guess, frustration in some small parts of this province,
by and large, the initiative was acceptable because we had both UMM and MAUM on
the task force, and it was their recommendation and their proposal that we
accepted. So, by and large, that issue
is behind us. I am glad that it is
because it is one that was before us for about 20 years, I understand, and we
finally have resolved it.
The
other issue of The Municipal Act is one that we know we had to act on. The act has not been reviewed for a good
number of years, and municipalities were quite concerned that the act was not
really serving the needs of municipalities and of the people that they had
responsibility for in a fair manner.
We
have now put together a committee, if you like, or a panel that will be
responsible for doing the review of The Municipal Act. Their responsibility will include such things
as public hearings throughout the province.
They will then bring their report back to me. From that, we will develop a new municipal
act.
This process is not one that is going to be
able to be completed within the next few short months. It is one that is going to probably take two
or three years to complete, Mr. Speaker, because it takes some time to be able
to bring together all of those ideas that are going to come forth from various
municipal individuals, other organizations that have interest in The Municipal
Act, and then to be able to develop the legislation from that.
Mr.
Speaker, it is my hope that there will be good participation in the public
consultation that is going to be going on around the province and that, indeed,
members of this Chamber, members opposite will take some interest in those
hearings and what is going to be happening.
As a matter of fact, I will ensure that the critics from both the NDP
and the Liberal parties will get a copy of the agenda and of the dates of the
meetings, where they are going to be throughout the province.
We
have seen the issue of the VLTs. This is
one that I would like to address just very briefly, because I think it is an
interesting one, to say the least. We
have heard from municipalities that they wanted to share in the revenues from
VLTs, although their hope was that they would be able to share in a larger
portion. We have listened to
municipalities, and we have been able to share some of that revenue with them
and allow them to use that revenue for their needs within their municipalities.
[interjection] The member for St. Boniface (Mr. Gaudry) says not enough. It seems that it is never enough.
Mr.
Speaker, one of the things that we had to pay careful attention to was the fact
that this was revenue that the public knew was there. When you went around the province‑‑and
I know my friend the member for St. Boniface has had some discussions with
rural Manitobans. They have indicated
that they would like that money to go to the priorities of government which
were health, education and, most importantly, the reduction of the deficit.
Although
municipalities wanted a greater portion, I think it was acceptable by many
Manitobans that revenue went specifically to address the deficit. I have not heard any negative comments from
Manitobans as I travel around that we have misused the revenues from the
Lotteries. As a matter of fact, I think
it is a good use of that money, because it does help every single Manitoban
when we put that money towards keeping the deficit down.
Mr.
Speaker, yes, there has been a little bit of grumbling from municipalities that
perhaps they would have liked a greater share.
I think, by and large, they are satisfied that perhaps this was a better
use of the money in the current situation.
We have indicated that as times in this province get better we will be
able to use that money for projects where they will benefit Manitobans as a
whole.
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Mr.
Speaker, yes, we are going to be seeing that program come on stream in the
city, and we will be able to treat our city friends just like we do the rural
people in this province so that there is no discrepancy in the way that we deal
with taxpayers in this province.
I
would also like to say a few words on the Grow Bonds and the Rural Economic
Development Initiative. I have to say
that when I came into this department we were just embarking on a Grow Bonds
program. As a matter of fact, there were
no projects announced at that point in time and, when I was briefed on the
entire initiative, I sort of set in my mind that if we were able to develop
four or five projects within a year or so that would be a fairly good target
for us, one of the things that we had to understand was that this was a new
program, one that was going to have some growing pains as we developed it and
that we were going to have to be careful about the projects that were going to
be supported under this program. Indeed,
it was putting money that belonged to individual Manitobans at some risk.
So,
Mr. Speaker, we embarked on the program and I am happy to say that to date we
do have four projects that we have embarked on.
I think in total we would have something like 160 jobs that would be
generated as a result of these projects.
One hundred and sixty jobs in rural Manitoba is a fairly significant
number of jobs if you take a look at how these jobs are going to be generated,
because they are not short‑term jobs, they are long‑term jobs. I am happy to say, our first project, the
Rimer‑Alco one, has already looked at the possibility of doing another
Grow Bonds initiative and that certainly is positive news as well.
An Honourable Member: How many jobs has it created?
Mr. Derkach: As I said, the Grow Bonds initiative has
created about 166 jobs throughout our province.
That is I think a fair number.
As
I said, we were expecting some growing pains and indeed we have gone through
those. I think that now we are in a
position where we can deal with many of the projects much more
expeditiously. I am sure that over the
course of the next year we will see some very interesting projects come forward
from the Grow Bonds initiative.
Currently, I think the department is working on about 20 projects or so
at various stages. We are going to be
seeing them coming forward over the next course of the year.
Mr.
Speaker, the other program that I would like to just mention very briefly is
the Rural Economic Development Initiative program, again a brand new program in
I
have to congratulate the Minister of Northern Affairs (Mr. Downey), who was
somewhat of an engineer of this program because indeed he had the foresight to
see that this was a program that was needed in rural
Again, we did go through some growing pains
because we had applications of all kinds come to us, some that were of an
economic nature, others that did not fit the criteria whatsoever. There were a large number of rejections in
the initial stages, but now I think the message is out there with regard to the
criteria of the program. I think that
today we are seeing that the projects that are coming in, the applications are
in much better form and we have a much more solid application process in place
than we had say six months ago. I think
we are going to see much more activity in that program. As a matter of fact, we have to date, I
think, received something like 170 applications under that program.
I
would have to say that about 50 applications have been rejected because they
did not comply at all with the criteria of the program. The rest are in varying stages of
approval. I think there are something like
30 applications that have been processed, approved, and activity is going. So, by and large, the program is working, and
I think that if we persist, if we continue to assist communities, I think the
program in the long term is going to be one that is going to be perhaps
followed by other provinces as well.
Certainly I think that for the rural parts of this country it is a
program that has been needed for a long time.
Mr.
Speaker, I think that these are just samples of how this government has tried
to ensure that we assist those Manitobans who need it most. This budget also addresses the fact that we
do have a problem in terms of our debt in this province that has to be
addressed, that taxpayers are not willing any longer to continue to pay more,
that we have to find other solutions, and those solutions cannot be found
overnight. But indeed with the long‑term
objective I do believe that together we can achieve a situation where we reduce
our deficit, and we can leave more money in the pockets of Manitobans.
As
a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker, I think it was the Conference Board of Canada
that indicated as a result of the steps that have been taken by this government
over the last six budgets, Manitobans have substantially more money in their
pockets to spend, and who can spend their money better than individuals in this
province? It certainly should not be a
government. Let us leave the money in
the pockets of Manitobans because they know how to spend that money best.
So,
Mr. Speaker, I have to say that we are poised in the right direction. If you look at the record of this Minister of
Finance (Mr. Manness) and compare that with the former administration, you have
to acknowledge the fact that this Minister of Finance is on the right
track. The Minister of Industry, Trade
and Tourism (Mr. Stefanson) pointed out to this House just a few moments ago
that in the years when the New Democrats were government, the debt of this
province increased by something like $3.3 billion in the course of their term
in office from 1981.
Mr.
Speaker, in the six budgets that our Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) has
brought down, the debt has increased by $.9 billion, or $900 million, not
nearly the kind of increase that we saw before.
If you compare that in percentages, the New Democratic government increased
its debt by something like 183 percent.
In the course of six budgets, our government has been able to keep it
down to 17 percent.
Mr.
Speaker, yes, we have to do better, there is no question about that, and we
cannot do it on the backs of taxpayers.
We have heard the opposition cry about the fact that we have put a cap
on the amount of special levy that school divisions can levy on their
taxpayers. We have done that because of
the fact that we know that taxpayers cannot afford to pay any more. There have to be other solutions, other ways
found to the problems and the challenges that we face.
Yes, government spending has to be reduced,
and slowly we are doing that. We will
continue to do that over the course of the next few budgets. I think the Minister of Finance has addressed
this budget in a very fair way. He has
looked at fairness, he has looked at supporting the priority services and
making sure that those services are supported to the best of our ability. He has ensured that there is balance between
the revenues and the expenditures, and he has kept the taxes down while he has
kept all of these services intact.
So,
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to say that I will be supporting this budget, and
indeed I am hoping that members opposite in this House will also look
favourably at supporting this budget when the vote is called.
Thank you.
* (1640)
Mr. Oscar Lathlin (The
Pas): Mr. Speaker, I am pleased once again to rise
in this Chamber to offer some of my remarks on the budget that was delivered by
this government on April 6 of this year, and I welcome that opportunity.
First, I want to repeat some of the concerns
which have been conveyed to me by those people whom I come across, meet with or
talk to as I travel around in my constituency.
Those people, of course, live in the North, particularly those people
who live and reside in my constituency.
Probably the most common remarks that I hear
from people at formal meetings and some informal meetings, having lunches and
coffee with people around the North, are the following. I will mention maybe four or five of them,
and I will then try to explain why those statements are made by the people.
People in the North are saying to me‑‑and
judging from the letters that I get on my desk that are copied to me, letters
being written to government ministers, I believe members on the government side
are well aware of the sentiments that are being expressed by northern people in
those letters, as well as in the meetings that I attend. Government does not care for the North, nor
do they care for anyone who may be living in the North.
Mr.
Speaker, people are also saying to me and to government ministers that the
government has convinced itself that the
Another thing that I hear often is, we in the
North are continually being punished and penalized for having been born in the
North and having decided to stay and live in the North. We are being penalized and punished for
having visited there or maybe having gone there to work temporarily, but having
decided to stay and live in the North.
People are also saying to me, Mr. Speaker,
when northerners propose, for example, that government establish a northern
heritage fund which could be financed or funded by profits realized by northern
resource development such as hydro, mining or forestry, the governments usually
respond by saying that we cannot do that because, if we did that, it would only
benefit people from only one region of the province. You see, the government tells people from the
North that all the resources of Manitoba belong to all Manitobans, no matter
where they may be living, whether it is north or in the south or in the west or
in the east.
Mr.
Speaker, people who live in the North simply cannot understand or accept those
kinds of statements that are quite frequently being given by the government
because they see that whenever financial resources or programs and services are
to be introduced or allocated, nothing or very little actually goes to the
North and to the people who live in the North.
Yet the government says that all resources belong to all Manitobans, no
matter where they may be living. If this
is indeed the way it should be, that is, that all resources indeed belong to
all Manitobans, then why is it that this government nickel‑and‑dimes
the North when it comes to allocating resources? When it comes to cutting programs and
services, financial resources, why is it that the North does not receive
special consideration, given the circumstances that the northern people find
themselves in?
As
I have said before in this House, Mr. Speaker, living in the North‑‑I
mean, I experience this myself. When I
am in the city, it is actually cheaper for me to live in the city because I do
not have to travel great distances, for example. It is actually easy for me to access medical
services when I am in the city. It is
easy for me to access services when I am in the city because they are right
here in the city, but when I am in the North, I have to travel a great distance
to access programs and services. If I
have to see a specialist, I have to travel by motor vehicle six hours to get to
access medical services. All of that
costs money, so that is why the people who come from the North and live in the
North cannot understand why when the government says all of the resources
belong to all of Manitobans, yet when it comes to extracting resources from the
North, there is actually very little that goes to the North as benefits for
those people who live in the North.
At
the same time, however, when it comes to cost cutting, the North always gets
hit the hardest. That is what people
cannot understand, and that is why people in the North, Mr. Speaker, as I am
sure the members on the government side realize‑‑because not only
those people who are directly affected by the cuts are saying this to the
government ministers, but also people who may not be as hardly hit by government
programming are also giving the same message to the government. That message is that the North, because they
have always traditionally been in a disadvantaged position, meaning that there
are not the programs or services available in the North and that the
unemployment rate has always been high in the North‑‑in The Pas,
for example, it is around 24 percent, and as you go further into the more
isolated areas, you will find that the unemployment rate is usually around 80
or 90 percent.
So,
Mr. Speaker, that is why people from the North are saying to government and to
us in this Chamber that perhaps when it comes to cutting costs‑‑and
we all agree that we should be trying to cut down the deficit. That is not the argument, but the point to be
made is that whenever we are looking at cost‑cutting measures, perhaps we
should look at the circumstances that currently exist for those people who live
in the North.
Mr.
Speaker, on April 6, this government, the Conservative government, brought down
its sixth budget since they came into office in 1988. This budget, as we have seen, has been the
most hurtful for the vast majority of Manitobans, including those people who
live in the North, seniors, women and youth.
The average family of four, for example, got hit with more than $400 in
tax increases and raises more than $100 million in taxes for this government.
* (1650)
Mr.
Speaker, we say that this budget is extremely unfair in its application,
because it hits those people who can afford it the least. It hits some people far harder than others,
yet this budget is supposed to be a fair budget. Everybody, as we were told by the Minister of
Finance (Mr. Manness), should bear the pain equally. We do not accept that from this side. In keeping with the Conservative tradition,
it hits particularly seniors, as I said, middle‑income people, and the
most vulnerable in our society, the disadvantaged, and, yes, as I said before,
children and our youth.
So
our biggest criticism so far of this budget has been in the area of
fairness. Is it a fair budget? The government says that it is a fair
budget. We say that it is not.
Sure, we accept that hard decisions had to be
made. I have already said that we have
to somehow deal with the deficit that is there, but we cannot ignore the fact
that this government brought
Mr.
Speaker, we all know what has been happening in
Well, I was looking at some data, figures and
graphs the other day and comparing the annual deficits for
So
we believe we cannot ignore the fact that this government's trickle‑down
economic policies have failed in those five previous budgets in its attempts to
stimulate our economy. In those five budgets, the Conservative government has
been off in their forecasts, not by a narrow margin but by wide margins in
their forecasts for what is supposed to be happening in
We
believe that the government has not made the tough choices that it speaks about
during every Question Period. We believe
that they have made the wrong choices.
Let
me read the Minister of Finance's (Mr. Manness) news release of March 15, when
he wrote to organizations that are receiving some provincial funding. In his news release, he said: In order to achieve this, priority emphasis
will be placed on funding groups and organizations who deliver key human
services such as child protection, support to the frail elderly and adult
mental health agencies.
He
went on to say that the grants totalling approximately $3 million will be
withdrawn from those 56 organizations because in the minister's mind they did
not fall within the priority framework, that being delivering key human
services such as child protection, support to the elderly and adult mental
health agencies.
Well, Mr. Speaker, that is why we say the
government did not make tough choices, but rather that they had made the wrong
choices. How else can this government
explain a corporate tax break totalling over $300 million over the past five
years? They have also cut more this year
with $7.8 million on the payroll tax and $9 million on the manufacturers
investment tax credit alone. That is $17 million, about the same amount as this
government cut out from the public school system this year. They also made the wrong choice with $53
million in property tax increases, while the property tax credit is being
reduced by $75 for every home in the
Mr.
Speaker, this government told school boards that they could not raise property
taxes by more than 2 percent, and then along comes the same government and hits
the average modest homeowner with a 7 percent increase on property taxes, while
the homeowner in Tuxedo or on
I
also wanted to share or read some of the letters that I have received from people
in my constituency, for example, the Association for Human Development for The
Pas, funding of the friendship centre.
He writes to the Minister of Family Services (Mr. Gilleshammer): I am writing on behalf of The Pas Association
for Human Development. We are very
concerned about the recent funding cuts to The Pas Friendship Centre. You may not consider the friendship centre in
The
Pas Friendship Centre offers many programs for an array of people coming from
all walks of life. Many of these
individuals will become much more dependent on the system once these cuts come
into effect. The Pas Friendship Centre
has allowed our organization to place severely employment disadvantaged into
their centre for on‑the‑job training. In all likelihood, these individuals will
receive employment and ultimately become self‑sufficient. Please reconsider the provincial budget cuts
to this essential organization.
Mr.
Speaker, that is why we say this government did not make the tough choices, but
rather it made the wrong choices. I have
another letter here that I have received from Carol Kozun (phonetic), director of
the Marigold preschool centre in The Pas.
Carol says: I have recently sent
a letter to Premier Filmon and Honourable H. Gilleshammer about some of my
concerns. I did not at this time question why nursery schools have been
expected to take such a cut after experiencing severe cuts during the recent
restructuring. Does the government plan
to tear down the previously well‑established child care system in this
province?
They go on to say: I am writing about a continuing concern and
the government's recent news releases about cutbacks to various social services
and agencies. As a taxpayer and a
director of an integrated nursery school, I am interested in balancing budgets
and concerned about growing provincial deficits. At the same time, however, I am most
distressed that your government is able to enact these cutbacks without
providing agencies and groups necessary planning time. Working on a tight budget already, I find the
50 percent cut in our operating grant without prior notice or responsible planning
on the part of myself and the board which I operate under most distressing.
* (1700)
When asked by the press to comment on what the
changes would mean to my centre, I said I would wait for the official
word. I am still waiting for that
official word.
That is a letter from Carol Kozun (phonetic),
director of the Marigold preschool centre in The Pas, Mr. Speaker.
I
also have a petition here that was given to me by the people from Norway House,
Mr. Speaker, but it was not put on the official petition form. I will read what it says anyway. The federal government is trying to take more
of our money, this time by declaring that Norway House is not an isolated
community.
So,
Mr. Speaker, what the people from Norway House are saying to us or saying to
the government in this letter is that they feel that they should be treated the
same way as other Manitobans are treated in
They say that every year they have to drive to
Thompson several times and that it is costly whenever they have to make that
trip from Norway House to
Mr.
Speaker, the education people from The Pas have written letters to me and I
know they have also written letters to government members, so government
members know what I am talking about when I say, for example, that teachers,
school trustees, parents are expressing their concerns with the limitations
that the provincial government's actions had placed on their education program
in the Kelsey School Division in The Pas.
They feel that the restrictions imposed on the trustees of that particular
school division forces them to make decisions based on what they should be
doing rather than on the needs of those students in that division. They say that would mean that their division
motto, which is, Dedicated to Quality Education, will rapidly become a hollow
one.
I
have to say, Mr. Speaker, that I agree with that wholeheartedly. The more cuts that are being made, even
though they have a very noteworthy and worthwhile and excellent motto,
Dedicated to Quality Education, they will eventually be unable to provide
quality education.
As
a northern community, we are required to meet every aspect of student need, not
only for the resident students of The Pas and area, but also for those students
from outlying areas who relocate here temporarily to access a broader range of
high school electives. We are now in
danger of seeing those electives diminish or disappear with few of the
alternative sources found in
The
children of The Pas deserve better, Mr. Speaker. The teachers and trustees and parents in The
Pas are saying that their children deserve better‑‑better treatment
from this government. Their future lives
depend on the education that they are now receiving, so they are asking in
their letters to government to reconsider their cuts in the education budget
and to reinstate that funding that is so vitally necessary.
Mr.
Speaker, the fishing industry that I talked about briefly in the House during
Question Period, I believe that this government should take the fishing
industry very seriously, because it is indeed an industry, just like
agriculture is, just like mining, just like construction. It is indeed an industry, because the way the
people are talking in Berens River, for example, in Moose Lake or in Leaf
Rapids, it seems as though fishing is not regarded as an industry because
oftentimes they hear that whenever the agriculture industry runs into problems,
government steps in with support programs and financing and so on. Oftentimes the people in
* (1710)
Mr.
Speaker, the fishermen in the North are simply wanting not more than what other
people are getting, but the same kind of treatment, the same kind of assistance
that is being given out to other fishermen in other parts of
Today I asked a question on daycare, for
example, regarding the cuts that have been made to the daycare centres. I asked a question previously on
Mr.
Speaker, this budget has been very hard on the poor. It has been very hard on the North, and I
have to say that once again the North has been forgotten in the budget. One only has to meet with teachers in The
Pas, nurses, school trustees, friendship centre staff, people who have been
laid off by government from KCC and other government departments. One only has to talk to the fishermen around
The Pas area to realize that people are getting desperate. People are almost like in a depressed state
of mind when you go and have a meeting with these people. That is not a very good sign, you know, for
people to come on as if they are depressed, and that is what I sense. I sense a feeling of hopelessness. People say, well, what is the use? What is the point?
Mr.
Speaker, with all the cost‑cutting measures that this government has
taken with a view to cutting the deficit, I say to the government that in the
end, in the long run, the cost‑cutting measures that this government is
currently taking will cost the government even more down the road. We see it happening already. This afternoon during Question Period people
talked about violence. We read about it
in schools. We read about gas sniffing
in northern
Mr.
Speaker, this budget here will only serve to make that situation worse. As I was talking to one elderly person in The
Pas two weeks ago, his question to me was, how far is it going to go before
something has to break? His concern was
that people are human beings with feelings.
What he was trying to say to me was there will come a time when people
are going to fight back. They are going to start fighting back. They will be driven to the wall and pretty
soon there are not going to be any more options left for a whole lot of people. When we are in that situation, he was telling
me, that is when people do desperate things.
Mr.
Speaker, I have to say that I agree with the message that the elderly gentleman
was trying to give me in The Pas. We
have seen here in the last two weeks what that gentleman was talking about in
The Pas, and that is, people are getting tired, people are getting frustrated,
people's backs are to the walls. They
have no more options left. That is why
we see people marching to the Legislature just about on a daily basis, because
sooner or later, something has to give and when that something gives, it is not
going to be nice, and it is not going to be pretty.
I
want to conclude by mentioning one more thing.
I mentioned the Norway House road, the Cormorant road, the
When I was travelling around the North, people
had heard about that by the time I got travelling to Norway House,
The
question was put to me, why is it that the provincial government can spend $70
million for road, highway construction, and we do not see one cent coming to
the North? One person in Norway House
told me, he said, you know, Oscar, all we are worried about are gravel
roads. We want to fix our gravel
roads. A single lane highway, we want to
fix those kinds of roads in the North.
We are not even worried about twinning highways. All we want to do is fix those gravel roads
that are deteriorating every year and causing a lot of expense to those people
who live in those communities.
So,
Mr. Speaker, perhaps I can close off by saying that the failure of this
government‑‑this Conservative government has been stepping aside,
like, for the last five budgets now.
So
the failure of that Conservative step‑aside vision has led us to where we
are today both in terms of the deficit, the human suffering that is going on
out there, the high unemployment rate, people moving out of
* (1720)
Their projections have been wrong on
everything from transfer payments to employment levels to the size of the
deficit. This Conservative government
must take responsibility for the impact of their policies and the failure of this
Conservative government's vision to get the province back on its feet.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
Hon. Jim Ernst (Minister
of Urban Affairs): Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the words
of the member for The Pas (Mr. Lathlin).
Unfortunately, he has misconstrued almost everything that has gone on in
the House since we brought down the budget, and I could not agree with very
much that he said because he seems to have missed the point of all of this.
I
can say, Mr. Speaker, this is the sixth budget that I have had the opportunity
of participating in, of speaking to in this House. I also can say this is the sixth budget that
I have had the opportunity of working on, prior to it getting here, as a member
of our Treasury Board.
I want
to say a word or two about the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) and the
approach that he has taken to how the budget is prepared and how the budget is
brought forward. I think, first of all,
that it is probably the most progressive attitude of any Finance minister in
the country.
Now, I have not had the opportunity, Mr.
Speaker, obviously, to be involved in the caucuses of every political party
across the country, so I can only guess that this is the case. But historically, at least from all reports
and discussions that I have had, our caucus has had the benefit of the openness
of the Minister of Finance, and he takes great risk in doing that, because you
have seen in the past what has happened to Ministers of Finance who have had
one little thing leak out before the budget is tabled in the House.
So
I give every credit to our Minister of Finance for having taken that
opportunity because these are unusual times.
These are not times that have normally and historically gone on in the
past. Mr. Speaker, these are unusual
times, and times when all of us have to understand the need, we have to
understand the impacts of the kinds of financial problems that the province has
been facing in recent times‑‑very unusual times indeed.
I
must also say that the members, Mr. Speaker, of that same Treasury Board also
worked very hard, not wishing to pat myself on the back, but certainly the
other members of the Treasury Board I think have worked well together too.
Many of us have been there since the very first
budget and have a synergy of working together over that period of time and an
understanding of how many of these things work.
The benefit, of course, is that you get to see what goes on in all of
the departments of government on a relatively detailed basis, something that
not all members obviously of the government side of the House and certainly not
from the opposition benches get to see.
At the same time, you run the risk of having all of those colleagues
with whom you have dealt harshly‑‑whose budget you have dealt
harshly with‑‑now all of a sudden dislike you considerably. That is, of course, why I think the member‑‑
(Mr. Jack Penner, Acting Speaker, in the
Chair)
An Honourable Member: Is that why Jim took off?
Mr. Ernst: I think so.
Nonetheless, Mr. Acting Speaker, we do have a
dedicated group of people on Treasury Board and one that has worked very hard
to try and produce the results that we have seen today.
I
have heard‑‑and I expect it here, quite frankly, from the members
opposite‑‑the kind of derision and catcalls and name calling and
naysaying and a variety of other things that come from the opposite side about
this particular budget. Let me say that
none of the decisions that were taken here were taken very lightly at all. For many of us, for all of us, as a matter of
fact, it was a very different experience this time compared to previous times,
because we had to do an awful lot of soul‑searching as to how to try and
deal with the issues that were before us on a fair and reasonable basis.
Fair and reasonable, I suppose, Mr. Acting
Speaker‑‑[interjection] It is in the eye of the beholder, as the
Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Enns) indicated. Certainly, some will judge things differently
than others. The fact of the matter is,
I think we all tried, desperately tried to try and be reasonably evenhanded in
terms of how we dealt with the budget process.
The
fact of the matter is, we know our revenue stream is significantly down from
what it has been in the past few years. We know that transfer payments from
At
the same time as our revenues are plummeting we have a situation where the
costs of the government simply rolling over from one financial year into the
next generally cost somewhere in the area of 5 percent, all things considered. How do you deal with a significantly reduced
income stream yet an increasing cost side?
Well, we have to look at what happened over
the last four or five years within the private sector. Obviously, businesses, in attempting to deal
with recession and in attempting to deal with global restructuring, with
competitiveness in terms of trade across the world, across
Mr.
Acting Speaker, the only way they are going to do that is to be competitive,
because in this day and age we do not have the opportunity of doing what the
NDP would like to do. That is, throw up
barriers all around the province and say, we can exist here with a million
people all by ourselves; we do not have to have trade anywhere else; and we can
artificially manipulate the economy as best we need to in order to achieve our
own purposes. We cannot do that. In the
real world it does not work like that, and I urge the members opposite to get
into the real world and understand how things happen here, understand what has
to go on in order for us to remain competitive as a province, for us to be able
to say to those companies that wish to come here and create those jobs, to
those companies that are already here to maintain the jobs that are here.
We
have the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Doer) standing up every so often in the
House and complaining that jobs are leaving the province and then suggesting
all of a sudden that we could still, even though they are leaving, tax them
more.
We
could pass a bill to force them to stay.
According to them, I think, Mr. Acting Speaker, according to their
ideology, we could pass a bill in this House that would legislate them a
profit. We would simply say, we will
pass a bill in this House that says X company will have a profit next year, and
then we will tax them.
Well, the real world does not work like
that. That is crazy to think like
that. We have to understand that there
is an interrelationship on a global basis today, and on that global basis they
have to be competitive. They have to be
able to match quality, price, delivery and all of the things that are necessary
in an economy in order to be competitive, and we have to try and do that.
But
the NDP would not necessarily want to do that.
They would much rather simply raise taxes, raise their prices as they
were. Raise taxes, tax the people more,
because they really do not understand what competitiveness is all about. They really do not understand what it means
to compete in a world economy or any economy for that matter.
Now
that is a pretty general statement, and there may be one or two over there that
really do, but obviously they are not able to convince their colleagues that is
how it works, and that is unfortunate.
If we are going to offer ourselves for‑‑and it is
interesting, you know, because it seems to be resident only here with the NDP
because in
* (1730)
In
They have to have sustainable development, a
term that we have all heard in this House, and we have heard as one of the
basic principles of our government, sustainable development, development that
matches a respect for the environment together with a need for a market economy
so that people can have jobs, people can earn a living for their families, and
yes, can pay taxes to our government so that collectively we can provide those
safety nets, the health care, the education and other things that are so
necessary and our people have come to understand and want.
But
yet, Mr. Acting Speaker, the opposition says, we cannot reduce our expenditures
in health care, for instance, because health care is what we need most, and we
have to continue to provide health care and more hospital beds and more
opportunities and more operating time.
We hear this every day during Question Period, more, more, more in terms
of health care. We need to have more
beds, more nurses, more doctors, more operating time, more personal care home
beds, more home care, all of these things continuously more and more and
more. So we cannot touch health
care. In fact, health care we should be
increasing our expenditures in. So for a
moment let us consider then we cannot touch health care.
Then we come to education, but we cannot cut
education either because education is the key to the future. Education is the fact that we have to train
our young people. We have to retrain
those people who have lost their jobs.
We have to train the people on welfare.
We have to provide education for all of those people and simply have to
throw more money at it. We cannot for a
minute not fund anymore. We cannot for a
minute do anything differently. We
cannot for a minute decide that somehow under the educational process that we
can do more with less. That is not in
their think, not in their vocabulary, so simply throw more money at it.
So
we cannot reduce any expenditures in health care and now we cannot reduce any
expenditures in Education. In fact, we
have to increase those expenditures again.
So then we get to Family Services.
My colleague here, the Minister of Family Services (Mr. Gilleshammer),
is in fact in this budget doing more with less and doing it very
effectively. But we cannot cut off the
advocacy groups, cannot cut off their funding.
No, that is wrong. We cannot do
that. We cannot cut off the Anti‑Poverty
Organization. We cannot cut off the
foster parents association. We cannot cut off any of these groups. No, we have to continue to fund them.
Of
course, because of a recessionary economy, we are faced with additional welfare
cases. We have to continue to provide
basic necessities of life for those people, but therein, Mr. Acting Speaker,
lies a bit of a conundrum alone. The
members opposite do not think of welfare as providing the necessities of life,
as kind of an interim measure to tide families over when they have run into
difficult circumstances, but rather as a guaranteed income. I think they themselves would admit that,
that they think welfare should be a guaranteed annual income to people and not
a stopgap measure.
Interestingly, Mr. Acting Speaker, when I was
away in February, I happened to turn on the TV and I saw President Clinton,
that great left‑wing President of the United States, lauded by all kinds
of groups as being‑‑finally we got rid of the Bush‑Reagan
right‑wing conspiracy. We have
somebody in there who cares about people.
Here was President Clinton. Here
is the guy who is going to go in there and do something for the people of the
Now, normally, they do not even care about
people in the
Anyway, we cannot reduce expenditures in
health care, according to my friends opposite, and we cannot do it in
Education. We cannot do it in Family
Services, no. What about municipalities? No, we cannot do it in municipalities because
that is offloading. We cannot take away
$75 of the property tax credit. We
cannot say to people, you really ought to pay something, you know, for your
realty tax property services that you get from your municipality. I mean, it is only fair that you should
actually pay something. You should not
actually get away with paying nothing for those services that you get from your
municipality. But that is wrong because
that may be a significant increase on a percentage basis over what‑‑you
know, anything over zero is a significant percentage increase, Mr. Acting Speaker.
So
we cannot do it in Health. We cannot do
it in Education. We cannot do it in Family Services. Now we cannot do it in municipalities‑‑[interjection]
Oh, I have not got to Highways yet. Can
we do it in Environment? Can we reduce
now our vigilance over the environment?
Oh, I do not think so. I think
the member for Radisson (Ms. Cerilli) would be the first to leap up and say,
no, we cannot do that. We cannot
consider reducing our vigilance over the environment. In fact, we should be doing more. We should have more inspectors. We should have more people out there checking
up on things. We should do more in terms
of the environment, not less.
Well, 60 percent, 70 percent of government
expenditures are wages, Mr. Acting Speaker, for the dedicated civil servants
who work for the
Would it be reasonable, Mr. Acting Speaker, to
suggest that maybe a net reduction of 1 or 2 percent in their pay packet would
help, would do something to assist the government in its financial crunch? Would that be a reasonable position to take?
Well, for the members opposite, probably not, but you might think it was a
reasonable thing to do. So we approached
those people who represent the broad spectrum of civil servants.
An Honourable Member: Who would that be?
Mr. Ernst: Well, the union. That did not fall on very fertile ground, I
might suggest, when it was approached to them.
Then the Finance minister, in his own inimitable way, looked for other ways
and means of‑‑you know, having taken the first step and tried to
approach it on a reasonable, normal, rational basis and say, look, we got a
problem; we need some help. We have 60
percent or 70 percent of our cost vested in the people whom you represent. Now can we do something to try and assist me
on the cost side?
* (1740)
You
know, harking back now to what I said earlier about the private sector and how
they dealt with the recession and global restructuring. They reduced their cost. They did not raise their revenue, they
reduced their cost. That is what
governments have to do, because lo these many years we have ignored it, but the
fact of the matter is, governments have to reduce their cost. We spend too much money. We have to reduce it and we have to look at
all of the areas. We have been through
half a dozen now where we cannot touch, according to the members of the
opposition, so we cannot touch the staff either.
What about the public debt? We do have a dollar or two in public debt that
we have to deal with. We have a dollar
or two of public debt, Mr. Acting Speaker, that needs to be addressed and
interestingly enough, it needs to be addressed first. It needs to be addressed before we deal with
health care, before we deal with education, before we deal with family
services, before we deal with the staff.
We have to pay the public debt first so we cannot deal with that. If we cannot do any of those, if we cannot
touch municipalities, we cannot touch health care, we cannot touch education or
family services or the staff or municipalities‑‑where? Is it all going to come out of the Department
of Agriculture? Natural Resources? Consumer Affairs? The Department of Housing?
Even if we did take all of those departments,
Agriculture, Natural Resources, Consumer and Corporate Affairs, Housing, all of
those things, Highways, wipe them out completely, we still would not put a
dent. We still could not begin to touch
the kind of cost structure that is there, because those departments eat up three‑quarters
of the budget, those three major departments alone.
Mr.
Acting Speaker, my friend the Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard) the other day in
his speech referred to some honesty in terms of dealing with the budget. I think the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness)
has been as honest as any Finance minister, perhaps too honest, in terms of
broadly disseminating the position of the provincial government, the fact of
what we had to deal with and what we are having to deal with in an ongoing
basis.
I do
not think any Finance minister, certainly not since I have been paying very
much attention to provincial government operations, has ever been as
forthright, as honest and as up front about the problems facing Manitoba than
the present Minister of Finance. For
that I think he should be congratulated because we all need to know what the
problem is in order to address it.
Now
that we have had the information put forward by the Minister of Finance, we
have had a budget brought forward to deal with it, what we need is some
understanding and some co‑operation from members in the opposite benches
in order to deal with it. I would hope
that notwithstanding all of the problems that we are facing and the criticisms
that they have had of the budget that they will be able to stand up and support
this budget for the first time since I have been in the House.
My
colleague the Minister of Health talked about honesty and he referred, Mr.
Acting Speaker, to that suggestion, that statement by the Leader of the NDP,
that when the Pawley government was turfed out of office they left us with a
$60‑million surplus. Now here was
the member for St. Vital, Jim Walding, standing up and voting against his own
government because they were leaving a $60‑million surplus on the table
and he thought that was wrong. Mind you,
when you consider the attitude of the NDP, that might have been believable,
because they want to see huge deficits all the time. They do not want to see surpluses. They want to borrow more money. They want to spend more money.
In
times when they have raised taxes very, very dramatically, Mr. Acting Speaker,
they still had huge deficits, but I do not think that was in Mr. Walding's mind
when he voted to defeat his own government's budget.
I
do not think it was in his mind that there was a $60‑million deficit
because in fact there was not. There was
a $334‑million deficit. [interjection] A $334‑million deficit and
that did not count‑‑because after we became the government, we
found out‑‑a settlement for the nurses of about $20 million, a
settlement for the doctors for about $20 million, some forest firefighting for
another $20 million and a few other little gems that totalled up close to a
$100 million of additional expenditures they did not even include in the
budget. They did not even put it
in. So all of a sudden, the $60‑million
surplus that the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Doer) talks about is now a $434‑million
deficit, all of a sudden, magically.
I
cannot know for sure what triggered his decision in his own mind, but I suspect
it was not a $60‑million surplus that triggered him to do that. I suspect it might have been a four hundred
or more million dollar deficit that triggered that decision in his mind.
Mr.
Acting Speaker, the other day I was sitting here in the House listening to the
member for Flin Flon (Mr. Storie). [interjection] That is a very good
question. Why would anyone want to
listen to the member for Flin Flon?
Nonetheless, I did.
I
heard from the member for Flin Flon that the modest adjustments‑‑and
I think that is really all you can refer to them as, modest adjustments‑‑in
taxation contained in this budget were a tax grab. According to the member for Flin Flon, this
was a tax grab.
Mr.
Acting Speaker, as a member of the Treasury bench in the Pawley government, he
is referring to the broadening of the sales tax slightly on some items, a one‑cent‑a‑litre
increase in the gasoline tax, as a tax grab.
Do you want to know what a tax grab is?
I mean this is the height of hypocrisy.
The
member for Flin Flon (Mr. Storie), a member of the Treasury bench of the Pawley
government, supported $369 million in increased taxes‑‑a 20 percent
increase overall. Now, that is a tax
grab of the first order. We are talking
now about a 2‑percent tax on net income, a new little gem that was
brought out by‑‑I think euphemistically referred to as mean Gene
the tax machine. This was the Minister
of Finance under the Pawley administration.
They raised hydro rates 10 percent. They raised telephone rates‑‑11.5
percent telephone rate increases; 30 percent increases in Autopac
premiums. They averaged a 20‑percent
increase in every fee that the government collected, everything from drivers
licences to birth certificates.
An Honourable Member: Mr. Acting Speaker, I hesitate to interrupt my
colleague, but I wonder if he would table the document that he is reading from?
Mr. Ernst: No, Mr. Acting Speaker, I need not table this
document because that information is part of the public record. That information
is contained in Hansard. You need only
look in back issues of Hansard to find that information. Read past budgets delivered by members of the
NDP, and you will find those incredible increases in taxation.
A
land transfer tax‑‑somebody who wants to buy their home‑‑these
people that they refer to as low‑income people who are struggling to keep
their own home‑‑they put a tax on buying one. That was one of their gifts to the public of
* (1750)
I
heard today someone talk about how people would have to pay more for a Big Mac
at McDonald's. Interestingly enough, you
know that the NDP put a 7‑percent tax on take‑out food for the
first time. [interjection] Yes, they did‑‑a 7 percent tax on Big
Macs.
Mr.
Acting Speaker, not only that, they put in two‑‑not one‑‑two
1‑percent increases on the sales tax in this province. I have heard them
stand up over there and talk about regressive taxation‑‑the sales
tax is regressive; we ought not to have it. They put in two increases on the
poor and the seniors who have to buy those basic commodities. They put that up 2 percentage points.
Mr.
Acting Speaker, not only that, they implemented that other gem to encourage
employment in this province. They
thought, you know, we want to have jobs for the people of
That was not good enough, so they implemented
it once, and they increased it by 50 percent the next year, Mr. Acting Speaker,
because it was not working. We have seen
it before with members of the NDP who said, it may work in reality, but does it
work in theory? That is what we have to
worry about.
Mr.
Acting Speaker, while I was sitting here and waiting for my opportunity to
participate in the democratic process, I happened to refer to Maclean's
magazine. I was referred to it by the
Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Enns).
It is
I
turned to the page entitled
I
read on. [interjection] As soon as I put on my glasses, we will find out what
it says.
It
says: Most people are pretty fed up with
the NDP because they promised us a lot and have been very slow to deliver. Now, Mr. Acting Speaker, what they are
talking about is the New Democratic Party of the government of Ontario, because
the subheadline says, Bob Rae gets a failing grade in a mini‑test taken
in two Toronto ridings.
An Honourable Member: That is no reflection on the school system.
Mr. Ernst: Well, no, that is correct. It is not, but you have to wonder because
here is a government that has been in office roughly the same amount of time as
ourselves. They were elected a week
earlier than we. For the first time the
socialist saviours of
It
says, by‑elections often serve as a public report card on a sitting
government's performance. For Premier
Rae's hapless New Democrats who fought and badly lost two of them in
An Honourable Member: How poor?
Mr. Ernst: Well, I do not know.
An Honourable Member: 8 percent.
Mr. Ernst: Well, no, no.
In
St. George‑St. David another riding, Tim Murphy held on to former Ontario
Attorney General Ian Scott's vacated seat for the Liberals, capturing 51
percent of the vote compared with 38 percent for the Tories who, again, have
traditionally been running third in recent times and a humiliating 8 percent
for the NDP.
So,
Mr. Acting Speaker, we see I think the kind of problem that can occur when you
have statements being made by members opposite about how great they would do,
because when they are confronted with circumstances, when they are faced with
having to deal with major issues in a responsible manner, that is what
happens. They did it coming in
irresponsibly to start, and they were forced now‑‑I think the
relative comparison of deficits, theirs approaching somewhere in the area of
$12 billion, which, on a per capita basis, would relate to a $2 billion deficit
in
Now
what is the deficit proposed in this budget, Mr. Acting Speaker? Somewhat less than $400 million,
significantly less, by large orders of magnitude, than would have been the case
had the NDP been in power using that transpolation. Now that may not entirely be fair, but there
is no other way of judging, but then what goes on either historically by the
NDP in this province or by what their ideological soulmates do in other
provinces on either side of us? What are
we suppose to judge it by? By the hollow
rhetoric of the members opposite, I do not think so. I think we should look at what happens. What are the facts? What have they done for real with the responsibility,
the elected responsibility to carry out those activities? What have they done? That is what we are judged on. They should be judged in the same way.
Now
time is getting on and I have only begun. [interjection] Three minutes. Thank you, Mr. Acting Speaker. Well, we have to look for a minute and see
what is happening in those other budgets in other provinces under other
administrations. Mr. Acting Speaker, New
Democratic Party governments in Saskatchewan and in Ontario and in British
Columbia, Liberal governments in New Brunswick and Newfoundland, P.E.I. and in
Quebec, we have not seen all of their budgets yet, but we know that two New
Democratic Party governments and one Liberal government have raised their sales
taxes by one percentage point, something this budget does not do.
They have all of a sudden thrown out their
ideology with respect to regressive taxation and have said, not only that, we
are going to tax the poor, we are going to tax the senior citizens, we are
going to tax regressively with a sales tax, because we need the revenue. They were not prepared to face a reduction in
cost, but they were forced to do that too, because of past actions, Mr. Acting
Speaker.
But
why have they not launched major attacks against the corporate sector? Why have they not launched major attacks in
those provinces against personal income taxes and so on? For the same reason that we have not. They have recognized all of a sudden, for the
first time, that we have to be competitive.
They have to be competitive, and we have to be competitive. That is exactly what the Minister of Finance
(Mr. Manness) has done with this budget.
He is continuing to make this province competitive.
The
Premier (Mr. Filmon), as the chair of the Economic Development Board of
Cabinet, is continuing to make Manitoba a competitive place, the members of
that board, the members of this entire government working constantly for the
betterment of this province, to make it a better place, more competitive, to
attract jobs, to attract industry and to be able to have the revenue to look
after the social safety net, to have the revenue available to pay for
education, health care and family services.
Thank you.
The Acting Speaker (Mr.
Penner): The hour being six o'clock, this House stands
adjourned and remains adjourned until tomorrow (Friday) at 10 a.m.