Monday, June 5, 1995

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA

Monday, June 5, 1995

The House met at 8 p.m.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

(Continued)

COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY

(Concurrent Sections)

AGRICULTURE

Mr. Deputy Chairperson (Ben Sveinson): Good evening. Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. The committee will be resuming consideration of the Estimates of the Department of Agriculture.

When the committee last sat, it was considering item 1.(e)(2) on page 15. At this point, we will just wait for the critic to take her chair.

Hon. Harry Enns (Minister of Agriculture): I have occasion to remind you that any and all members of the Legislature are free to participate in the examination of these or any other Estimates. If my colleague the former ag rep from Morris wishes to take his former masters to task, now is a golden opportunity, but I will leave that to his judgment.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Perhaps at this point, I should invite all other members of the Assembly to join in the discussions in the Department of Agriculture Estimates.

As I said earlier, we were on 1.(e)(2) $34,100.

Ms. Rosann Wowchuk (Swan River): Mr. Chair, when we left the committee we were discussing the number of people of aboriginal descent who were working in the department, and the minister indicated that he was disappointed that there was not a higher level.

I want to ask, has the department looked at this problem. What steps does the minister anticipate taking to try to bring those numbers up?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to introduce Ms. Marilyn Robinson, who is our Director of Human Resources, who joins us at this time in support staff for the consideration of Estimates.

I can only reiterate what I indicated earlier. The department has, in my opinion, been very cognizant of the targets and of the general direction of various affirmative action programs taken. While we have, I think, some noteworthy successes in terms of gender equity within the department, as the honourable member for Swan River (Ms. Wowchuk) will I believe acknowledge, we have not had that similar success in terms of reaching even our relatively modest target of I believe some 10 percent with respect to aboriginal participation in the department, but that is not for want of trying.

I believe we have to accelerate our current efforts, which do include an outreach program at the high school level, for instance, that indicate agriculture is a vocation, a career path worthy of consideration, but for reasons that I cannot account for, have simply not been able to--you know, as a society, we have not generated a sufficient pool of people within that community that has taken up the interest in agriculture that would enable my department then to appropriately hire them, where skills and competency levels are such that they could be considered.

It is an ongoing challenge, I think, to this department, as it is indeed to all of us in our society. By the same token, we have to find better ways, we have to refine more innovative measures that make some of the exciting opportunities that agriculture and particularly agriculture of the future provides for employment opportunities more attractive to our aboriginal brothers and sisters.

Ms. Wowchuk: There are attempts made by--I do not know what role the provincial government plays in it. Perhaps it is the federal government that does make attempts to get and offer supports for aboriginal people to become involved in agriculture. I think by involving people in the industry and encouraging them to participate, we then from there will perhaps get their children involved and at some point develop that interest.

I also think that we, and government, have to do more to look at ways to involve agriculture in the curriculum. I realize it is not under this line, but I am just making suggestions as to how we might be able to address this where we work agriculture more into the curriculum and promote it as a positive industry. It would be helpful, not only in the aboriginal communities getting an understanding of agriculture, but also in the urban centres as well. So, although it does not come under this line, I would encourage the minister to have his department look at ways that we could integrate the agriculture industry more into curriculums in the schools. Hopefully, through that process, we will eventually develop the interest and, within a few years, see that there are people from different backgrounds taking an interest in agriculture and then be able to take some of the jobs that are available in this department.

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, I accept the honourable member's counsel in this matter. It is good advice. I am sure staff hearing it directly will do their best to respond to it. We have from my own knowledge a modest program where we specifically work with Quicken Development regarding agriculture through the high school system. I am also aware that the University of Manitoba, no doubt with our co-operation, with the co-operation of the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Manitoba, has reached out particularly to the high school level to encourage recruitment to agriculture throughout our school system. We just have to keep on trying.

* (2010)

Ms. Wowchuk: I have another issue that I would like to raise, and perhaps this might be the appropriate section. Earlier in the day we discussed the issue of pay equity. The minister had indicated that in the Crown corporations pay equity has not been addressed. I would like to ask the minister whether this is an issue with staff, whether it has been causing a lot of concern, and how the staff of this branch, this department here, is dealing with that issue.

Mr. Enns: Well, Mr. Chairman, it is an issue if there is a disparity. I am aware that in some instances certain Crown corporations enjoy a higher level of income than does the general public service. It is not an issue in those Crown corporations. It is an issue in the two Crown corporations that I am responsible for, the Manitoba Agricultural Credit Corporation and the Manitoba Crop Insurance Corporation, where the equity provisions were not passed on to the benefit of their employees, and I think, as the senior staff of the corporation indicated, it depends on where you are positioned. There are some positions where the impact is negligible or not serious, but there are certainly some categories of employees where the differential is significant and, to that extent, it is a problem.

I think that employees more and more tend to regard themselves as employees of government, of the public sector, and look towards equitable treatment. I would like to believe, and I am advised by staff, that staff relations with Civil Service Commission are working to address this problem as it pertains to our departments.

I also remind the honourable member--in fact, allow me to use this occasion to publicly encourage my senior staff who are in Human Resources who are working on this matter to redouble their efforts. My understanding is that the contract is open. It is being finalized as we speak. I do not know exactly what date that is, but I understand it is fairly imminent.

It would certainly be my hope that equitable treatment be accorded to all those who work what I would like to say, in this instance, in the agriculture family, in the Department of Agriculture, whether they be Crown corporations or otherwise.

Ms. Wowchuk: Mr. Chair, I hope that we will see the staff take that direction.

The area where it was brought to my attention was when staff from the Agriculture department were going over to the Crop Insurance office, and they were spending a lot of time during the initiation of GRIP and NISA. There were a lot of people doing the same work, working just as hard, but my understanding is that there was quite a discrepancy in pay between those people who were ag reps versus the people who were doing the crop insurance work. So I am pleased that the minister is giving the directive to have this addressed.

The question I ask is, for this change to take place, will it require legislation to be passed, or is this something that can be negotiated in the contract in the negotiations that are on right now?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, I am advised that it can be negotiated. But I do want to express my appreciation to the member for bringing to the attention of the committee a very valid point, particularly in the Department of Agriculture. I know of no departments where there has been a more willingness to get the job done and not an overconcern about what turf you are coming from.

I know that the member for Morris (Mr. Pitura) can attest to the fact. When a new program like the GRIP program was introduced, it was an all-out effort without having to bring in too many new people. A lot of people got new job descriptions added to their present ones, and it was only in that manner that, with a great deal of co-operation and a lot of cross-pollenization, if you like, of regular departmental staff, Crown corporation staff, working together to achieve an end result, we were able to introduce a relatively sophisticated and somewhat complicated financial support program to the benefit of agricultural producers. So the point that the honourable member makes, in my opinion, even has greater validity where that close working relationship does exist, and it is understandable that serious pay differentials would be in the way or stand in the way of ensuring that full and complete co-operation, which I knew was there.

Nonetheless, it is understandably--we are all humans--a matter of concern if you are working side-by-side with a colleague essentially carrying out the same kind of a program but there are significant or substantial pay differences that result from an earlier decision that included one group of employees but not the other ones.

Pay equity, generally speaking, is not the problem at the middle or higher level of employment but is a problem at the lower end of the pay scale, at the clerical level. I am advised that really that is the only area where it is a difficulty to the corporations and to the employees involved.

Ms. Wowchuk: I appreciate that answer, and if the minister says it is at the clerical level, my understanding was there was even a discrepancy in pay, for example, what an ag rep would be paid versus what the manager of the Crop Insurance branch would be paid, and an ag rep would be paid more than the person who was managing the corporation.

I do not have the figures of what the salary is for any of them. I guess if I wanted to I could probably check the list that we get. That was the area that was mentioned to me as well. It was not only at the clerical level. It was at the higher level. I would appreciate if the minister would direct his staff to investigate that and look for equality amongst the workers in his department.

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, my only comment is that the member must realize that ag reps are pretty close to God, you know.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Item 1.(e)(2)--

Ms. Wowchuk: I beg your pardon. Could the minister confirm, is that his intention, that he is not going to be having ag reps in the department in the near future? Is that what he is implying?

Mr. Enns: No, that is not my plan at all. I am just saying that they are worth what they are being paid.

Ms. Wowchuk: Then they must be doing a good job, and I hope they are being paid well for the work they are doing.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Item 1. Administration and Finance (e) Human Resource Management Services (2) Other Expenditures $34,100--pass.

1.(f) Less: Recoverable from other appropriations ($3,500)--pass.

Item 4. Agricultural Development and Marketing (a) Administration (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $124,400.

Ms. Wowchuk: Mr. Chairperson, there are several questions that I want to address here, but one of the main questions that I want to look at under this section is the provision of agriculture training and employment.

We talk about the training that is available for farmers as they prepare for the imminent diversification that is going to take place. We have heard the minister talk about diversifying into the livestock industry, hogs, beef, all kinds of changes. For farmers to be successful in this they need supports, because there is a lot of new technology that is out there. I think it is very important that we have agriculture programs and training in place.

* (2020)

I believe that there was a fairly successful program in place, but we have seen that is going to be cut. It is my understanding that through ACC there will be no further courses offered. I wonder how the minister proposes then to provide the training and supports that farmers will need as they diversify and start out into these areas that might be new to particular farmers.

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, allow me to just introduce some additional senior staff who have joined us: Dr. John Taylor, Director of our Animal Industry branch, and Dr. Jim Neufeld, co-ordinator of the Veterinary Services branch.

I am certainly aware of some of the activities, for reasons that they have to be held accountable for, that Agriculture Canada has undertaken as a result of the most recent federal budget that impacts fairly severely in this whole area of training, employment services within the agricultural community.

I was personally called upon to meet with some of the concerned federal employees in some of the federal offices that are involved in some of these training and agricultural employment placement programs that operate throughout the province, particularly in centres like Winkler, Portage, Selkirk.

The specific program that the member alludes to is the educational courses that were being offered at Assiniboine Community College. All of these I view with some regret the decision on the part of Ag Canada to reduce these kinds of services to agriculture.

Mr. Chairman, you and I, we belong to a government that has had to make its difficult choices in the past seven or eight years.

I know that you, Mr. Chair, are particularly aware of some of the difficult choices that departments that you have been involved with, like Natural Resources, had to make in the reduction of some of the services to achieve budget target dates. While it was not my privilege to be the minister of this department, I am very much aware that during those times, particularly in the years '91-92 and '93, there were some very specific challenges that the Department of Agriculture faced in its overall resources that Treasury Board allocated to them.

Despite the fact that in the global sense, because of the inclusion of the major safety net programs like GRIP and NISA and other programs, the overall budget of the Department of Agriculture looks not all that bad. But in the heart and guts of what runs the department there have been enough, in my opinion, and more than need be, budgetary restrictions that we have had to live with.

So I only put this on the record by saying that I have some empathy for the federal government that is now undergoing and having to make similarly hard decisions. I think what the challenge that will face the department is how we can sort out over the next period of time the very best, the positive programs that we, when faced with the test of the kind of prioritization that public funds now all undergo, which programs, be they federal or provincial, are the ones that this department ought to be supporting and perhaps finding or prioritizing the funds to find support for.

I am not at all satisfied with some of the answers that I am getting that the big bureaucracy of Employment Canada, where regrettably a million Canadians line up for work and for unemployment insurance benefits, has the expertise to pinpoint the specific kind of skills that agriculture needs at an ever- sophisticated level of agricultural workforce that is called for. These were some of the jobs that these programs were providing.

The whole problem of ensuring that agriculture continues to have a flow of new entrance, new educated youngsters, who perhaps get their first brush with an agricultural curriculum at a community college, but who then find the necessarily motivation to pursue it at a higher level, perhaps even at a degree course level at the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Manitoba.

In my opinion, that is a concern, but I do not have any easy answers for the honourable member on this score at this particular time. Other than what I indicated in the House, it is not that we have the capacity to backfill in every instance.

Ms. Wowchuk: Mr. Chair, I realize the provincial government cannot pick up every offload by the federal government, but I believe there are certain areas that the provincial government has responsibility and one of those is in education and training.

It is my understanding the department that has been closed down at ACC, the Program Development department, was the area that the Department of Agriculture went to, and I understand the Keystone Agricultural Producers would go to that body to have programs developed and courses developed.

I want to ask the minister: I am sure there are going to be some programs offered for training somewhere. I would believe that if the minister is going to have to appeal to his urban colleagues, and if they could find $37 million for the Jets, I am sure the minister can appeal to the Premier (Mr. Filmon) and find some money for training. Where will these courses be developed if the area where courses were developed from at ACC has been now closed down?

Mr. Enns: Well, Mr. Chair, I openly and publicly solicit support from any and all quarters to the legitimate requirements of agriculture. You see, I know the honourable member for Swan River agrees with me. While on opposite sides of the fence in the House, we do understand one thing, and that is that agriculture, regrettably, tends to get short shrift in the public attention, in the attention of this Legislature and in the attention when it comes to prioritizing budget requirements. It is part of the price tag that we pay for having become such a minority.

As a representative of Her Majesty's loyal and most obedient opposition, she and her colleagues can assist me that just as they spend 99 percent of their time complaining to the Minister of Education (Mrs. McIntosh), the Minister of Health (Mr. McCrae), the Minister of Family Services (Mrs. Mitchelson) and then, for good measure, the First Minister (Mr. Filmon) for whatever wrongs he has committed on that particular day, to occasionally direct their attention to agriculture and to encourage me and to encourage the general public and to encourage the media and her caucus to provide that kind of measure of support for matters of agriculture.

It is a situation that I think is serious in that sense because, whether we like it or not, we have grown into such an urbanized society that what the member says is true. Thousands of people walk the streets for a handful of millionaires who play hockey, but we find it difficult sometimes to provide the kind of resources for what makes the economy tick.

* (2030)

Ms. Wowchuk: I want to assure the minister that if he is prepared to lobby the Premier for funds for agriculture, I would be very happy to give him my full support on that because I think it is a very important industry and one that needs the support, particularly when it comes to education and training and offering the supports for our young farmers as they diversify into the various livestock industries.

Mr. Enns: Well, Mr. Chairman, just to leave the issue on a positive note, there are and there will be--and I think this is what will have to happen. You will find different organizations, private and semi-private, that will begin to fill in some of the gap. I am aware, for instance, that the Manitoba Cattle Producers' Association are looking to developing a producer course at ACC. It would be easier and more readily done if there was at least some level of ongoing support.

I agree with the honourable member that we are not going to see the end of agricultural curriculum development at places like the community colleges. We will just have to find more innovative ways of doing it. CAP funding will also be required. I might say that the passing of legislation that will enable organizations like the Cattle Producers' Association, like the Keystone Agricultural Producers association, to become more fiscally stable that they can then use some of those funds to ensure that in fact they are in a position to offer their support to this kind of important agriculture work.

I take this opportunity to solicit her support for Bill 15 which was just introduced to the House this afternoon.

Ms. Wowchuk: The minister says that there can be courses. The question I am asking is where does he anticipate that these courses and programs will be put together because there were many programs that Keystone Agricultural Producers offered and the department offered that were put together through the branch at ACC that has now been eliminated. So the minister is now going to have to look for another area, somebody else to co-ordinate these programs and design the programs that have been very successfully offered through ACC in the past but now there is not anybody to design and compile the programs.

Mr. Enns: Well, Mr. Chairman, allow me just to put on the record that the department itself is very proactive in this whole role of education. We have, for instance, 93 marketing clubs throughout Manitoba who combine various diversification and value-added training combined with a marketing thrust. There will be market-driven programs, courses that will become available through numerous organizations and institutions regarding swine and there will be worker courses. There will be occasions where organizations like Manitoba Pork can be involved.

Much of the work done that is causing concern for the member for Swan River were, in fact, contract employees, I am advised. They would contract for a specific course delivery. We would anticipate and we would do that ourselves, through our farm management courses, that we will be playing a continual role in this overall endeavour. I repeat again, it will be extremely helpful to have some of our farm organizations adequately funded in such a manner that they can be major participants on behalf of their clients and be able to commit with some assuredness X number of dollars for particular sponsorship of a curriculum or course presentations at places like the Assiniboine Community College.

I accept the honourable member's concern in this area. I think it is valid. I cannot answer for, nor is it my role to answer for the federal government's action in this regard. We are particularly concerned that Agriculture Canada has really made some very, very major decisions with respect to, as I said earlier in the House, not just this particular program but the entire kind of education-, research-oriented program.

We kind of heaved a sigh of relief, after the federal budget was presented, that the Morden, Brandon and Winnipeg research centres did not disappear. But in effect, as we read the fine print, a great deal of the ongoing operative work, swine specialists, other activities, are in fact disappearing or being cut or being transferred to other jurisdictions from these programs. That causes us no end of concern because, if anything, we should be redoubling our efforts at all levels to kind of prepare our producers for the era of agriculture that we are now entering with the disappearance of the Crow.

Ms. Wowchuk: I realize that the federal funding is gone and that is a concern. My question is, since there is not going to be the co-ordination of these agriculture programs and designing of the programs to do ACC anymore, does the minister feel that this responsibility is going to fall on his staff now to design programs? I feel that, as I understand it, there is going to be a bit of a void.

The minister talks about the other groups providing funding, but there has to be a hub that co-ordinates the courses and designs them, and that is the department that is now gone from ACC. It was a department that was used by Keystone Agricultural Producers.

So I guess what I am looking for is how does the minister anticipate filling this void of this department that will fulfill that role of designing the courses that were so useful to farmers and we will continue to need. As I understand it now, there is not going to be anybody doing that particular work that was being done by the co-ordination department.

Mr. Enns: I think the honourable member will appreciate that the federal budget came down in late February. Our own budgets were well set and established by that time. I challenged my department and the entire agricultural community how best we glean and pick out the best of what has been offered, what we believe under the prioritization of today will offer the best bang for the dollar spent, if you like, whether it is federal or provincial. I think in fairness, though, these changes that are occupying the member's attention--some of which have not really taken place yet, just notice has been served and, in the case of the employment programs, they have been extended, I believe, for another year or for this summer, in most instances, or till September. Others may have been effectively cut, like the Assiniboine Community College program--but, in any event, it is something that has just happened.

I accept the member's concern. Staff is listening to it. We will develop over the course of the next summer, the next fall and this coming year how best we can respond to some of these changes.

Mr. Chairman, allow me also to introduce Ms. Dori Gingera, who is our Marketing and Farm Business Management Director. She comes and joins us at this time.

Ms. Wowchuk: Mr. Chair, one of the issues that we have heard about a lot over the last little while is the issue of whether or not dairy producers should be able to use the synthetic growth hormones BGH--

Mr. Enns: BST.

Ms. Wowchuk: --BST to increase the production of milk.

I would like to ask the minister whether his staff has reviewed that. I realize, again, that is a federal issue, but it is a concern to people in this province. People feel that they do not want to have the production enhanced with drugs because they feel it will have a negative impact on their health.

I would like to ask the minister what his staff has done in research on this and whether or not his government has made any presentation to the federal government with respect to the enhancement drugs for dairy producers.

Mr. Enns: Well, Mr. Chairman, I am certain that the honourable member for Swan River is aware that, in essence, this is certainly the technical review. The ongoing technical decision with respect to the introduction of this kind of a product to our food supply is essentially a decision that the federal government has to make and will make.

She would be aware that currently prohibition has been placed on the introduction of the growth hormone to the dairy industry in Canada. The position of the department is that it neither endorses nor opposes the use of BST in Manitoba. We believe, as I just said, that it is from a technical point of view an issue for Ag Canada, the Veterinary Services, the Department of Health to make that overall determination as to whether or not it is an appropriate agricultural tool to be introduced to the dairy industry in Canada.

* (2040)

Secondly, it is a marketing question as well. I think the honourable member reflects a legitimate concern that I am sure will to a considerable extent dictate whether or not it will be introduced, period. If a sufficient number of consumers, Canadian users of the product, have the attitude that I believe I sense in the honourable member for Swan River (Ms. Wowchuk), then quite frankly it will not be introduced, in my opinion.

I think different dairy operators and people involved in milk production will consider their public relations with their customers being paramount and not wish to make a decision that would disturb that.

Our own veterinary lab, as such, is not directly engaged in the technical testing of the product, largely because we have our hands full with matters that are entirely of provincial jurisdiction. This is clearly an issue for the Health people in the federal department of Canada to resolve.

Ms. Wowchuk: Can the minister indicate whether he has had discussion with the dairy producers in Manitoba and whether or not they have expressed an interest in having the ability to use this product in their production?

Mr. Enns: My staff advises me that, no, we have not received any specific requests from the dairy producers in this regard. If anything, they have asked for an extension of the moratorium.

Ms. Wowchuk: Mr. Chairman, when I look at the activities of the department, I see that the department provides specialist support services for various animal industries, and I believe last year we asked a question about what kinds of supports were being offered by the department to the PMU industry and whether there has been staff hired to work with the industry.

Just along that industry, I want to ask the minister whether it comes under his jurisdiction, that it was suggested that an all-party committee be established to deal with some of the problems that the PMU industry has been facing. In fact, it was at the suggestion of our Leader, Gary Doer, at a meeting in Brandon with the PMU producers and Mr. Rick Borotsik, that we suggested that perhaps an all-party committee would be the way to deal with some of the problems facing the industry.

I want to ask the minister, along with what kinds of technical supports are being provided to the industry, where are we with the establishment of that committee, and have any guidelines been set up for the committee as to how it should operate?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, the member raises two issues. One is what the department has specifically done to strengthen its resources to more adequately respond to the legitimate concerns that PMU, not only the PMU, but the people who own and raise horses in the province have. I indicated a year ago that it was my desire that we strengthen that end of the Animal Industry branch activity by putting in place a first full-time specialist that could help the PMU producers, of which we have the majority in the country. But not only them.

We have an active horse council that represents many--number in the thousands--people who enjoy pleasure horses, two or three horses on small acreage, throughout Manitoba. There is, of course, your ongoing activities at the various racetracks around the province in the summertime, the principal one, Assiniboia Downs, so it was my view that if we have swine specialists and sheep specialists and beef specialists, we should have a horse specialist. Against ongoing opposition from the department, my view finally prevailed, and I must say, in this instance I badgered them, I badgered them, I insisted that this had to be done. This one little foible they grant this little minister that we should hire a horse specialist.

I am pleased to announce that on August 1 of this year, that is actually happening. His name is Mr. Ray Salmon, who has considerable experience in the animal branch, and has spent considerable time in assisting the young fledgling bison producers get off the ground, I believe in the Teulon area. After a lengthy competition, of which considerable amount of interest was shown by a large number of individuals, Mr. Salmon was chosen to fill that position. There were some thirty-four applications for this horse specialist position that was advertised for the Animal Industry branch.

The expectation is for the incumbent to allocate time equally between the equine ranching, horse feedlot and light pleasure horse industries. In the latter case, emphasis will be on provision of technical rather than equestrian type information. The position, as I indicated, has been filled and Mr. Salmon will commence his duties on August 1.

Ms. Wowchuk: Can the minister indicate where this position will be located? Is it going to be out of Winnipeg, or is it in some northern region?

Mr. Enns: The position will be centred in Winnipeg, but it will be moving throughout the province.

Ms. Wowchuk: The second part of the question that I had asked the minister was on the all-party committee to be established to support the people in the PMU industry. We had received a letter asking for names of the people who would be on that committee prior to the election, sometime in March. We have not heard anything of the activities or whether that committee is actually going to be established.

Could the minister indicate any information he might be able to provide us with on that committee?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, I can indicate to the honourable member that just a week ago, yes a week ago, at the invitation of my colleague, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology (Mr. Downey), we had a meeting with the current president of the Manitoba Equine Ranching Association--it is a new name that I have to get used to--Mr. Charlie Knockaert, whom the honourable member will be familiar with, and the issue the member raises was the subject of discussion. We are looking forward to developing that committee, because the ongoing, in my opinion, unfair portrayal of the industry needs to be addressed.

* (2050)

The PMU industry is a significant industry to Manitoba with a direct value to the economy in excess of $44 million. Of a total of 52,000 PMU mares in Canada, we have 30,000 of them. The result in offspring provide feedlot animals that are looked after. Now, I am satisfied--and I know the honourable member who is well familiar with the industry--that if you were to by any benchmark measure how domestic farm animals are being treated or handled on our farms, the PMU mare would be very close to the top of the list if I were to compare her life with a sow in a farrowing crate or a steer in a muddy feedlot.

My director of marketing is raising her eyebrows at me, and that tells me I have to change tactics, because she gets paid the big dollars to keep her minister out of trouble, and I am putting too much on the record that is going to come back to haunt me again.

What I am saying is that the PMU mares are extremely--in the main, there is always room for somebody not playing by the rules, but both by the code of ethics that has been established by the industry itself, by the kind of ongoing supervision that the company provides and by our own, and hopefully with the help of the newly established position of a horse specialist who can offer further advice, further technical information to horse raisers and horse breeders of all kinds in Manitoba, the horses in Manitoba need not come under the kind of criticism that regrettably from time to time they come under.

I solicit the member's support in this instance. The issue that we have to determine is--I think from the initial instance was--[interjection] I do not think we were looking at a legislative committee. We were looking at a committee comprised of perhaps somebody from Brandon, somebody from the industry--

Ms. Wowchuk: Legislative. All-party committee.

Mr. Enns: An all-party legislative committee. Well, that is an issue that we are not quite clear on ourselves. Perhaps we should take this matter up directly with Mr. Downey who seems to be the lead administrator on this issue.

Ms. Wowchuk: I thank the minister for that, and I look forward to having that discussion with the Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism to get some indication as to where it is going. I would hate to see a committee put on paper and then have nothing happen with it, and then, a few years down the road, someone gives some indication that there was not support for it. So I think we should deal with it.

With respect to the code of ethics, in discussion with some of the PMU producers earlier this winter, we had a discussion about the inspection of the barns by the industry, by the people from Ayerst. They were anticipating that some changes could be coming from government and there could be a process where there would also be government inspectors involved in this. Has there been any discussion within the department to follow through on that? Are there any plans to have inspections done by government inspectors in the PMU barns?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, the member is correct that the company, Ayerst, provides a fairly rigid level of inspection I believe on a monthly basis, or they are moving toward a monthly inspection basis. In addition to that, the Department of Agriculture has just recently hired Dr. Allan Preston from Hamiota as our field veterinarian working under the direction within the veterinary branch, with considerable PMU horse practice and experience and who will be working, I might add, out of Hamiota. It is my understanding that that is going to be the case.

We will begin to introduce a level of spot inspections from the Department of Agriculture. I am well aware of the fact that those who criticize the industry continue to question the integrity of the process, if it is in fact the company's inspectors who are doing the inspection. If it helps the process, if it will help with the overall perception of the industry, I will encourage our veterinary people, our Animal Industry branch to devise, with some of the additional resources coming on-line in the person of Dr. Preston, Mr. Salmon, to provide a greater level of integrity to the field inspections that are already occurring on a fairly frequent and regular basis by the company.

Ms. Wowchuk: I am pleased to hear that a veterinarian has been hired and anything that we can do to help the industry and improve the image will be very helpful. I know that the producers that I spoke to were looking at ways to do whatever had to be done to help dispel some of the images that were out in the public, particularly the fact that the industry was being regulated by the company who stood to make the profit and the impression that the company did not really have the best interests of the animals, those people making those comments not realizing the fact that if you have not got healthy animals you are not going to end up making very much profit. I am pleased that a veterinarian has been hired who will do some of this work and I am sure that it will be very welcomed by the industry.

I want to go on to a couple of other areas in the livestock industry. I want to ask about what changes have taken place in the Manitoba Livestock Performance Testing Board Corporation. That was the corporation that was providing testing and keeping records for cattle producers and beef producers, and my understanding is that that service has now been discontinued.

Can the minister explain why this has happened and what will be the result of this change?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, I am advised that the program has in fact been privatized by Canada and that essentially organizations like the Manitoba Cattle Producers' Association have taken over the operation of the program involving beef and swine. The sheep program that was also available to producers will be taken over by the Sheep Federation of Canada. In effect, these organizations are taking over the operation of this program.

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Mr. Chairman, I want to once again use this opportunity. Here we have a situation where obviously producers involved feel that it is a worthwhile and important program to carry on, or helpful to at least a segment of the producers. We have the legitimate organizations in instances like the Manitoba Cattle Producers' Association willing and prepared to take on the obligation of ensuring that that program continues. In order for the Cattle Producers' Association to do that, they need to have greater stability in their funding mechanisms. I will be introducing another act to the Legislature that I know that the honourable member for Swan River (Ms. Wowchuk), supported by the member for Dauphin (Mr. Struthers), will want to support with some enthusiasm to ensure that their check-off legislation is of the kind that provides them with a reasonable security of their finances, that they can in fact undertake these kinds of programs, that were, acknowledged, formally run by government. But governments, whether federal or provincial, are finding themselves, in too many instances, to have to back away from some of these programs. If the programs have value, the producers are prepared to pick them up on their own, but we have to strengthen their organizations to enable them to do that.

Ms. Wowchuk: Can the minister indicate what will be the end result change to the producer? Was the service that was being provided when it was a federal program funded or was it provided free of charge? Now, if it was free of charge, what are the costs involved in it now?

Mr. Enns: I am advised by staff that there will be a per-animal charge--

Ms. Wowchuk: But was there before?

Mr. Enns: --whereas previously it was covered by a grant from Agriculture Canada.

Ms. Wowchuk: Did the previous program cost the provincial government any money?

Mr. Enns: Our support, which is not inconsiderable, but it essentially was staff, technicians in the field, space facilities when required, that kind of support to make the overall program work. Now, my hope would be that we would continue to provide some of those services, although my director shakes his head, tells me how much I know. We will provide technicians and we will provide some support for this program.

Ms. Wowchuk: Can the minister indicate how much this program would have cost? What was it costing before? Was it one full-time staffperson that was working on it? What kind of dollars is the provincial government now saving on this?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairperson, with the greatest respect, the staff does not have the kind of data to answer--

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please.

Ms. Wowchuk: I apologize, Mr. Chair. I was not looking for a specific dollar. What I was asking, was it enough work that it meant one person was working on it or was it just a small amount of work that was just filled in by somebody? It was not an elimination of a job.

Mr. Enns: I am advised that it involved one full-time position.

Ms. Wowchuk: The minister talked about the cattle producers and some of the issues that they had raised. One of them was funding. The other issues that they have raised are ways of identifying livestock and tagging animals so that they can be identified. Can the minister indicate whether there is work being done, research by staff that will enable new means of identifying livestock and whether the requests made by the Manitoba Cattle Producers' Association with regard to identification of livestock is being addressed?

Mr. Enns: Their question on the Manitoba Cattle Producers' Association has three elements to it, the first one being a somewhat tightening up of the check-off provisions that would make it still very much of a voluntary system, I assure the honourable member. Any member who contributes to the check-off can, by simple letter, receive all of his funding back, but he has to do that annually. What the current situation is, I am even told from the people involved in the purchase, in the sales rings, they actively encourage this.

Nobody wants to be bothered with extra paperwork if they do not have to do that. They will tell a producer, drop me off a little note, then we will not bother with the check-off and they do not have to refund that to the government, who in turn provides it to the appropriate organization. That is just on the basis of less work, easily done. What they are also saying, on the other hand, is make it simpler. Take it off of everybody and have the parties that do not want to contribute drop us a line once or twice a year saying they do not want to contribute and we will refund the money. That is the general genesis of the proposed change in the legislation, which I think the member is familiar with.

The second aspect of the request by the producers is to provide them with an opportunity for greater vendor security. There are still, regrettably, some instances where cattle producers innocently get caught up in a firm that is in the business of handling or purchasing cattle, goes bankrupt. Our current bonding provisions do not, in all instances, cover the losses and we have had, not many, I am pleased to say, but one is too many, cases where individual cattle producers are out considerable sums of money. It is a situation that is near and dear to me.

A good neighbour of mine in the Woodlands area suffered a loss like that where he is out the cost of some 17 steers which represents--you know, these were fat, 1,000-1,200 pound steers--a good portion of his annual income. So the Cattle Producers are requesting that they be offered an opportunity to build in a small provision that would provide them to secure, top up the existing lender security that is there by bond through a reassurance provision that would provide for this additional coverage.

The third element, the question is the one that the member refers to, brand identification, the greater security of identification of cattle in transport and so forth. That one has a few more complications, a few more wrinkles to iron out. We do not have compulsory brand inspection in the province of Manitoba. It also kind of laps into our own legislation, livestock legislation that we currently have on the books and that is currently under review. The whole issue of animal welfare, everything from how we treat puppies to how we transport horses and other farm animals is being considered by the department, and at this particular point I am not prepared to indicate that I am quite ready to advance the identification portion of the cattlemen's request.

It is not that I do not think that there is a legitimate need for it. There have been some instances, particularly the cattle being tied specifically to the manifest of the carrier or the truck that is moving the cattle, cattle that are showing up at auction marts that need closer and tighter identification, but the member is correct. These are the issues that the cattlemen are raising with me concurrently.

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Ms. Wowchuk: Is the minister indicating that the section on the identification will not be a part of the legislation that he is proposing to bring forward at this time?

Mr. Enns: I have not made a final decision on it. It is subject to some further staff advice on the matter, but there are difficulties in that area. It is not just from that point of view. The issue of animal identification is going through some revolutionary changes in terms of electronic computer chip identification and so forth, and that is really changing just as we speak, by month, and whether or not with that knowledge we would not be well advised to hold off writing into legislation which six months from now or a year from now may need to be revised. I would like to have a little bit more time with senior staff and the Cattle Producers' Association to sort out just where the chips fall on that identification question.

I have no trouble, and I will be presenting to the Legislature the bill covering off the first two items that I mentioned, the vendor security and the check-off question.

Ms. Wowchuk: The other issue that the cattle producers had raised was the concern with animals with horns, that this decreases the value of animals at point of sale and there was also injury to other animals. They had indicated that they were going to be soliciting the minister and looking at the possibility of a horn tax to encourage cattle producers to remove the horns at an early stage. Has the minister given that any consideration?

Mr. Enns: Well, you know, Mr. Chairman, the member knows how to wound me. She raises a very sensitive issue. You see, I was a young impressionable Minister of Agriculture in 1967, and I believed everything my staff told me. I had an experienced director of the Animal Industry branch, some of you may even remember him, Mr. Al Church, and he and the other people within the department at that time told me, Mr. Enns, the day has come for the horn tax to be removed. It has served its usefulness. We have been doing such a great job in extension in the Animal Industry branch that most responsible cattle producers no longer leave the horns on their calves. They are following our extension advice. They are using the caustic pace or the dehorners and taking the horns off the calves when they should be taken off at an early age, you know, either when they are dropped as calves, as is my practice, or even as 400-pound or 500-pound feeder steers. The department came to me and said, Mr. Enns, this is an unnecessary imposition on the cattle producers. It is time to remove the horn tax. Being that dutiful and obedient minister, I listened to my department's advice and I took the tax off.

The reason why I remember it so vividly is because it was also an occasion when the government of the day was having its kind of quiet spells and we were not perhaps all that aggressive and progressive any more. This was about the ninth year of our administration. This was in the Walter Weir administration after nine years of Duff Roblin's Conservative government. We did not have that much to flesh out our throne speech, so the removal of the horn tax actually made it into the throne speech of that day.

The editorial writers of the Free Press ridiculed myself, and I was wounded, you know, as a young impressionable minister that here I thought I was doing something for the good of the cattle industry and I was ridiculed by none other than the editorial writers of the Free Press. Well, some things never change. The editorial writers of the Free Press still ridicule me from time to time or that of my government, but now you are being asked and the cattle producers are asking me, of all people, who removed the tax to put it back on.

Ms. Wowchuk: How many years ago?

Mr. Enns: Well, you know, I am having some trouble. I am deferring that to my senior staff. They will ponder the situation, and they will come back and advise me again. Subject to their advice, I commit myself to following their actions in this regard to the letter.

Would you prefer me to tell you another story about Czar Nicholas II?

Ms. Wowchuk: I am pleased that the minister is listening to the cattle producers, and I hope he relayed that story to them since it is they that are asking for their horn tax to be added on now. So he should relay to them how it came about being removed, and perhaps if the minister decides that it should be implemented again, he can save it for the next throne speech and add a little bit of interest to the throne speech and give the editorial writer something to write about again.

While I am talking about the cattle producers, another area that they talked about is the losses they face to their herds to wolves and coyotes during the winter season, and I believe they were looking to the minister and brought this issue to the minister, as well as to what kind of compensation. It was compared to, similar to having compensation for wildlife damage to crops--whether or not the minister was ever considering compensation for loss of livestock to wildlife.

Mr. Enns: While I can certainly attest to the healthy populations of coyotes, particularly in most rural parts of the province, we as a department have not received any specific complaints with respect to animal loss as a result of this activity. I am sure that there are cases where that has happened. I would invite the member to bring it more directly to our attention.

We have a committee that is reviewing agricultural crop damage and crop loss from various forms of wildlife activity, the principal ones being waterfowl, which is a longstanding program supported by Canada, and crop damage done by big game, elk and deer and so forth, from serial crops to standing hay. We do not have a specific compensation program in place for loss due to coyotes or wolves. Whether or not the committee should expand their terms of reference to review that question, perhaps is a valid point. I am disturbed. I cannot do a great deal about it.

The simple fact of the matter is that again society has frowned on the taking of wild furs in ever-increasing fashion and as a result we are living with the consequences. We have a beaver explosion in our province that is causing us all kinds of difficulties. We have the highest populations in many other animals that will no doubt impact on agriculture from time to time.

Ms. Wowchuk: It was an issue that was brought to our attention. I will look back at the notes that I have and perhaps give it to the minister or his staff, and they can look at it further.

I want to ask the minister about a couple of other areas dealing with livestock. When we were at a meeting during the election, at the pool meeting, there was a discussion on two issues that were brought up, first of all, the issue of game farming. We were each asked a question on game farming and what our intentions were, and the minister had indicated that he would be pursuing the possibility of expanding game farming in Manitoba, raising of elk, deer in captivity. I wanted to ask the minister whether under the Animal Industry branch anyone has been looking at the development of those industries, both in Saskatchewan and Alberta, and whether there are intentions at the present time by this government to expand or to establish game farming and whether there has been any work done by this department on that.

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Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, I think for the interest of members of the committee, allow me just to put on the record the different types of non-traditional livestock that are being raised in the province. We have in excess of 4,300 bison being raised by some 50 producers. We have 450 fallow deer raised by four producers. We have some 70 llamas raised by 11 producers; 5,000 wild boar raised by 75 producers; 2,000 ostriches; 2,000 emus; 25 rheas. I think the latter three are all kind of related. It just depends on how close they can look you straight in the eye. They are big birds.

I am answering the question in this way. The question of further expansion of game farming has, of course, as particularly the member for Swan River knows, considerable history in the province of Manitoba. I am aware, of course, and was a member in opposition at the time, a government that she now represents, her brother, I think, being the minister--

Ms. Wowchuk: That is right.

Mr. Enns: We experimented with elk ranching in a given year. I believe that circumstances have, if anything, increased the need for the province perhaps to once again look at it. I say that quite frankly from the point of view of the challenge that we face here in the post-WGTA era, to make available to our producers any and all legitimately economic opportunities for engaging in some kind of agriculture, in this case, livestock production.

It is not lost on us that we hear reports from around the continent, if, indeed, around the world, that, genetically-speaking, we probably have the finest elk, and they are going at premium rates in different jurisdictions. To continue denying these opportunities to those interested in pursuing this line of activity is one that I am not prepared to say will continue forever.

I am actively pursuing the potential or the possibility of looking at some form of expanded game farming in the province of Manitoba. There is no government decision that has been made in this respect and none immediately imminent. We are forever receiving data as to how programs are working in other jurisdictions, but it is, as the member is fully aware, a somewhat sensitive issue with the people of Manitoba. A decision of whether to expand or to move into some form of elk ranching will be made or not made, and she will be among the first to know about it.

Ms. Wowchuk: I am sure that both the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Driedger) and the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Enns) will be getting questions on this, and I know that the Department of Agriculture in Saskatchewan spends quite a bit of time on this area. I am not sure what happens in Alberta, but I am wondering if the minister has availed himself of any of the information from Saskatchewan or Alberta to look at the value of the industry and the pros and the cons, because, certainly, as with any--when you move into an area of taking wildlife into captivity, there are pros and cons, and I am wondering whether there has been any analysis of that information.

Mr. Enns: I do not have that information available to me at this instance. I am sure that within their branch this kind of information is routinely gathered and then comes to our attention.

We are forcibly faced up to elk ranching and elk farming in a very demonstrable way from time to time when a jet loads up on elk here in Winnipeg or Manitoba for shipment to different parts of the world. They are usually Saskatchewan elk or Alberta elk, but we are certainly not unaware of what is happening in other jurisdictions.

I would like to think, and I think the challenge would be to our senior staff, that should we entertain expansion into this field of activity, we would have the opportunity of having learned, perhaps, from other jurisdictions' errors, in some instances, that we could pick and choose from the best experience that has proven workable in other jurisdictions, should we wish to introduce some form of elk ranching. But I repeat, that is a highly charged political decision, as the member is well aware, one that this government is not at this moment prepared to make.

Ms. Wowchuk: The minister indicated a list of all the other exotic breeds that are being raised on a commercial basis right now.

Can the minister indicate whether it is his feeling that there is lots of opportunity for these various birds, such as the ostrich and llamas, or does he feel that that market is pretty much saturated? Does he feel that those areas can still be expanded and there is still lots of opportunity for people to begin raising these various animals for exotic products?

Mr. Enns: I think, Mr. Chairman, you can categorize these kinds of nontraditional animals into two very distinct classes, where there is, in effect, virtually solely a breeders' market. That is probably the case of the big birds, the ostrich, the emus and those kinds of animals.

I am not prepared to pass any judgment on it. These are expensive birds. People are paying big money and, hopefully, some people are making good money on them, but it is a fairly speculative kind of venture to be in. For instance, I would be very reluctant to ask, for instance, an organization like the Manitoba Agricultural Credit Corporation to involve public funds in any way in terms of loans for these kinds of programs at this point in time.

However, there are other animals among this list, the bison being one of them, on which it has become a half halfway. There is still a healthy and active breeder market involved for good breeding stock in bison as these herds are building up, but there is an active, ongoing meat market established.

There is a processing firm, regrettably not in Manitoba. I wish it were in the Interlake or somewhere in Manitoba, but it is just across the line in North Dakota, of which I understand a good number of our Manitoba producers are co-operative members. They are processing bison meat, principally, I am advised, for the European market at very, very attractive prices. So there is a different kind of a situation developing.

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There is an economic basis for ongoing production of bison, not in the hope that you have a Native Son or Stargazer, a real winner in terms of a breeding stock, but you have a regular outlet for the meat product.

Those are the kinds of activities that I am encouraging my department. I am encouraging organizations like the Manitoba Agricultural Credit Corporation to look at seriously, hopefully, to develop some support programs that can see these programs take off. I believe that, for bison in particular, we have room in this province in some of our kinds of margin lands, lands that I am familiar with, that could maintain significant populations of bison.

They are a very unique kind of animal that long before we introduced Aberdeen Angus or Charolais or Shorthorn to this part of the continent did very well without Departments of Agriculture, I might say, without extension workers, without ag reps, if you believe it, Mr. Member for Morris (Mr. Pitura). I am told, I only read this in books, that there were millions of these little beasties that roamed fertile northwestern plains of this continent.

So they are of a little different category. I place the wild boar in that similar category. The wild boar have their problems with them. The established pork industry is nervous about them because of disease-related problems, but there are certainly opportunities for niche markets to be developed in Japan, in Europe and in other parts of the world for these specific products, at attractive prices.

When you put all of that together, it is in that context that I am prepared to look afresh, if you like, at the concept of expanding that to other game farming, as well.

Ms. Wowchuk: Under this section, we see that there are supports provided to the 13 feeder associations. Can the minister indicate what kind of supports are provided for associations?

I assume it is supervision, it is not financial supported, but is this in establishing the feedlots or vet services? What would be the supports that could be provided?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, just to give members a flavour for the program, we have a number of these feeder associations throughout the province--the Carman area, Teulon area, Deloraine in the southwest, Ste. Rose, Vita in the eastern part of the province.

Typically, the associations consist of a membership of up to 56, 37, 34 people. They will have anywhere from 3,000 to 800 or 300 feeders on hand. What the credit corporation does is provide loan guarantees that enables them to get a line of credit up to a maximum of $5 million from their local lending institution.

The department provides technical assistance. Our beef specialists, farm management people, help work with them. I had the pleasure of attending one of the meetings, I believe it was in the Carman area. I was in the area, and they had kind of an annual meeting, where they meet to do the business of their association, and I was pleased to see that several of our agricultural staff people were present and assisting them in conducting their business.

All in all, I consider it to be a very successful program. It is a combination of allowing people who wish to get back into the cattle feeding industry, not necessarily in the humongous large numbers, multithousands, but in co-operation with their neighbours, and neighbours and neighbours, 10 or 12 others, each putting up maybe sufficient loan capital for 50 or 100 steers, feeder steers, and all of a sudden putting their aggregate number together to 2,000 or 3,000 or 4,000, which makes for an economic feeding operation in terms of care, in terms of management, in terms of purchasing clout for feed, and so forth. I really believe that this is the kind of program that demonstrates that it is possible to move and, if you like, the kind of inevitable kind of broadening of, the increasing of scale of agricultural production. Yet it can be done at the level that individuals are comfortable with.

If you only wish to invest in 50 head of cattle, by joining an association, you can do that. I would like to think that there is room in the future in our hog expansion for some similar kind of coming together where, yes, there will be maybe multimillion-dollar barns that are being put up. The fact of the matter is that our future expansion in the hog area will consist primarily in that area. But it need not be one owner. It need not be an integrated operator. It can be half a dozen young farmers who have decided in this post-WGTA era that they should do something differently than just produce grain. They should maybe take the seed money they get from the $1.6 billion payout on the Crow, go to Mr. Gil Shaw at the Manitoba Agricultural Credit Corporation and leverage some additional loan capital. Together, all of a sudden, they have the necessary $700,000, $800,000 that a credit union or a banker will top off with another $300,000 or $400,000, and they have the million dollars to build that barn that is producing the kind of genetically superior and performance hogs that are making Manitoba hogs renowned around the world.

Ms. Wowchuk: I thank the minister for that. I want to tell the minister that I know what the program is, and I know how it operates through the credit corporation. What I was looking for is, what services does the Animal Industry branch--do they provide vet services? Do they provide services on feeding? That is what I am looking for.

I know how the program works and how they pool their money to get the program together, but it is listed here as supervision, and I am looking for what kind of supervision is provided for the producers under this area.

Mr. Enns: Our support consists of the kind of professional extension advice that you would expect from the Department of Agriculture, but the operations are not receiving any direct support in the sense of services. We are not inoculating their cattle for them. We are not paying the veterinary bills for them. We will advise them about what to do and what to use and use the best knowledge that our beef specialists can provide them in the operation of the feedlot. They can avail themselves of our farm management specialists to look into whether or not they want to get into the business of forward contracting or how best to market their animals. All these kinds of skills are the kinds of things that the department will offer them. If the member is looking for a dollar support level, that is not being provided.

Ms. Wowchuk: I am not looking for a dollar support value. What I am looking for is this: Are the people who are involved in livestock feed associations getting any different service than an individual farmer who is a cattle producer on his own? I see it listed in here as supervision for feed associations, and I am looking at what is offered to people who are in feed associations that is different from what is offered to an individual farmer who could have a cattle herd on his own.

Mr. Enns: No, Mr. Chairman, I am satisfied that that is not the case. That is not to say that there is not strength in numbers. The fact that there will be a group of 38, 48 young producers in an association in a given area unquestionably will receive the full attention of the department when called upon to provide it so, but certainly no advice that is not available to the individual producer if he decides to call on the ag rep in his area. I do not know what capacity the ag reps have to make the number of individual house calls or farm calls that they once did, and I suspect that a certain amount of that still takes place. But I suspect the issue is more of the individual farmer to come to the office to avail himself of the services.

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Ms. Wowchuk: As would the people who are in the feeder associations. They would have to avail themselves of the services provided there. What I am trying to see is whether if you are in a feeder association, does the department look at this as something special and provide supervision services to a greater extent than they would to an individual who might have just as many cattle and require just as much service?

Mr. Enns: My staff assures me that they receive no different services than any other similar group of producers would receive. Perhaps the one area where they get some specific expertise or advice that I suppose you could put a dollar value on is in the helping of drawing up the legal contracts, because they are legal contracts that involve significant obligations and that are needed to satisfy the requirements of the lending agency as well as the Manitoba Agricultural Credit Corporation, which provides the loan guarantee. We do have farm specialists that help in that specific area, that when we identify or when a group comes together, when we are told that there are 12 or 13 or 15 people who wish to form a group, we at the early stage will provide that formative quasi-legal--well, it is not quasi, it is legal--advice to draw up an appropriate contract that will meet these requirements.

Ms. Wowchuk: Moving on to another area, some time ago, a few years ago, the government made changes to the vet services district boards and turned those over to the vets in rural Manitoba. I want to ask the minister how that is working and what has happened with services. One of the concerns that was raised when the vet clinics were being turned over was that there was going to be a change in fees, there was going to be reduced services. Can the minister provide us with an overview as to what has happened to vet services in Manitoba?

Mr. Enns: To the best of my knowledge, there has not been that much of a change, in effect, take place. We receive notice from time to time of a district that is having some difficulty in maintaining its support for a particular lab. I think we received notice of one such district in the last little while but, in the main, we are continuing to operate with some 29 or 30 veterinary districts throughout the province. I am advised that within the structure of these, the methodology of arriving at fee structures has been largely unchanged. Things have carried on.

I can report to you that I was attempting to be of help to them in the sense that we are aware that a number of them are working out of facilities that need, in some instances, considerable renovation. In some cases, these are still some aging facilities that were made available to the province--army surplus buildings, air force surplus buildings--years ago. We were able, working together with the department of Finance and the federal government, to receive some modest support through the infrastructure program that was announced by the federal government a year ago. We were able to provide, I forget the actual amounts, upwards to about $20,000 additional to their normal grants that helped a number of the clinics undergo necessary renovations.

I must also report that in some instances it was not enough, the renovations, the $20,000 did not provide the kind of funds needed for complete replacement costs which, in some instances, were in fact called for. I have indicated to my colleague the Minister of Finance (Mr. Stefanson), we have hope that the federal government has intentions of repeating the infrastructure program in the coming year. I applaud the federal government. I believe it is a program that did in fact work, did provide some instant employment, which was one of the rationales for introducing the program. It did enable municipalities, provincial governments, organizations, with this one-third, one-third, one-third participation, undergo some of these projects which, in times when all budgets are being tight or strapped for additional funds, allowed for some very welcome relief to getting some programs along the way, and it is my hope that I can repeat and perhaps even enlarge somewhat on that source of funding for the vet labs so that we can get on with the support to some of the facilities that need considerably more than the $20,000 that was made available to them last year.

Ms. Wowchuk: The minister indicates that there was a $20,000 assistance per district. Is that accurate? Can the minister indicate then, how much is the grant support per vet service district? Are they funded equally or does that vary in each region of the province?

Mr. Enns: I have seen, the kind of formula that we apply provincially is equal, but it varies with the level of support that different municipalities will provide in their special circumstances. The total amount that the veterinary clinic gets can vary.

Ms. Wowchuk: Than can the minister indicate per vet clinic, what would the government's share be of what is provided to each district by the province?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, what the program is, and my understanding is that this has been of some standing, this program has, the matching formula has not been changed in the last number of years. We will match the amount of money raised by the municipalities in their own clinic, and that is why the funding will change.

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For instance, this last year, the Ashern group of municipalities raised $19,000 themselves; they received $19,000 from the province. The Roblin-Russell raised $17,000; they received the equivalent amount of $16,000 from the province. I am looking for Swan Valley. They raised $13,000; they received $12,000 from the province, give or take a few dollars. The West Lake group raised $20,000; they received $19,000 from the province. So it is tied directly to the local contributions.

Ms. Wowchuk: Then just for clarification, can the minister indicate--the province matches funds to run the clinics, but the vets are not or are they employees of the government or do they work on a fee-for-service on the schedule that is established by the province?

Mr. Enns: Dr. Neufeld advises me that what they have is an agreement with a board that supervises and runs each veterinary clinic. They are not technically employees. They have still the capacity to operate in a private capacity as well, but they undertake an agreed contract that covers terms and conditions, the kind of services that that veterinarian is prepared to provide to that clinic and to that district. Included in that agreement are fee schedules that are predetermined by the board.

Ms. Wowchuk: The fee schedules are determined by the board not by the province, so they can vary from district to district as to how much can be charged?

Mr. Enns: I correct myself. The fee schedule is, in effect, established by what we refer to as a veterinarian commission on which the individual clinics have representation. The Veterinary Services Commission negotiates the fee schedule with the veterinarians in the various district hospitals or clinics. There are now 28 existing clinics in the province. The St. Lazare people have just notified us of their intention to dissolve. That fee schedule is standard across the province.

Ms. Wowchuk: The minister just indicated that one vet clinic is going to dissolve in the St. Lazare area. What do we anticipate will happen for veterinarian services in that part of the province?

Mr. Enns: I am advised, Mr. Chairman, that what will happen in this instance is that the neighbouring clinics will amalgamate, will merge with the different halves or portions of the now defunct St. Lazare.

Ms. Wowchuk: It also indicates in the Supplementary Estimates that the department looks at the management of a diagnostic lab. Can the minister indicate if that is a lab that provides services for all the province, where that lab is and who runs it?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, that is a fine facility located on the campus of the University of Manitoba, and it has been in operation for a goodly number of years now. I can recall that being budgeted for--and I do not know when it was actually constructed--in the early '70s, 1969. That is where we house the major portion of the Animal Industry branch staff that are involved in the veterinarian end of it. The kind of service they provide is vital to the information required by all our veterinarians throughout the province. They work very closely with trying to assist, resolve and diagnose problem areas of animal and livestock health with the various district vets.

We also have a considerable companion small-animal volume of business to contend with. Some years ago we attempted to separate the companion animals from our operations under the directions of Treasury Board, to attempt to privatize that portion of the building, but that has not succeeded. It has come back. The two individuals involved have returned the operations to the provincial vet lab services, so that we are still engaged in both the domestic farm animal business and the companion animals as well.

The lab performs, is constantly being challenged to provide up-to-date data, and often under continual pressure to provide it sooner, when viruses, disease problems are detected, which are hard to diagnose. We have some extremely talented, gifted scientists working that are constantly trying to provide the kind of support for the practitioners of veterinary medicine in the province, to the benefit of our overall industry. Specific industries, like the feather industry, the broilers, chicken, those industries all have fairly significant demands on ongoing health-related management problems that are associated with their business, all of them relying extensively on the operations of the lab.

Ms. Wowchuk: If the minister would clarify--there was an attempt to privatize this in about, two or three years ago, and then the minister is indicating that that was not successful. Who were the individuals that were taking over the lab, and how long did it stay in private hands before it returned to government?

Mr. Enns: This was a fairly recent venture that was attempted last July. It was undertaken by an existing private practitioner veterinarian, along with one ex-employee of the provincial lab.

I do not wish to conjecture on why it did not succeed. They will perhaps tell you that we did not entirely get out of all of it; we maintained a certain amount of work ourselves. I think from their perspective they might have felt that if we would have walked away from the companion animal business entirely, they might have had a better chance of succeeding as a private venture. We, on the other hand, were concerned that this was a service that we had provided to Manitobans over a number of years, since 1969, at any rate. We are not prepared to do that in total.

In any event, it has come back together. I do not know what kind trouble I am going to be in with the Treasury Board when next we meet, because as far as Eric Stefanson thinks, he thinks it is privatized and is just humming right along. If Vic Toews does not pull the wire on me, I will be all right for a little while.

Ms. Wowchuk: Just for clarification again. Can the minister indicate--he says that the government was keeping part of it and they were attempting to privatize part of it--what part of this lab service was the government attempting to privatize?

Mr. Enns: We were quite prepared, and in fact we think it is absolutely essential that the Department of Agriculture, through its veterinary services, is very much involved in providing the best of animal health care to our growing livestock populations that are playing an ever-increasing role in agriculture in Manitoba. We were not quite that convinced that looking after Lassie or Tabby the cat or somebody's pet, whatever, was an appropriate use of the public dollars at this stage of our existence. That part of the trade, in veterinarian jargon, is called companion animal care: Lassie, Weejee--well, not even Bambi--Tabby the cat, yes.

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It was the small companion animal that we thought, and under Treasury Board direction, we should get out of, privatize it. There was a veterinarian that was prepared to take on the business; there was an ex-employee that was going to join the venture. They would stand alone and look after Tabby and Lassie and charge whatever the traffic would bear to make that a successful venture, but we still retain some elements of it. Whether that was the right thing to do or not, time will tell, but, in any event, we are back in the companion animal business. It really should not surprise the member for Swan River because, deep down, in the bosom of her heart, she knows that this little minister is carrying a concern about Tabby and Lassie as much as Ferdinand the Bull and Otto the Ox.

Ms. Wowchuk: Can the minister indicate what kinds of funds were involved? Did the people who were taking over the companion--

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please. It is the will of the committee to continue on to twelve o'clock, I understand. Agreed? [agreed]

Ms. Wowchuk: Can the minister indicate what kinds of funds were involved with the turning over of the companion animal care portion? Were these people who were taking it over buying a portion of the services or were they just going to be able to use the labs and run their service out of there?

Mr. Enns: Senior staff advise me that there were not any resources from the provincial vet lab that went with the transfer. We gave the employee in question a leave of absence for a year. They set up shop on their own with the private veterinarian that had expressed interest.

Ms. Wowchuk: Can the minister indicate then, if that service was not supposed to be in the department and now it has come back, has it been budgeted for or is this going to be an added cost?

Mr. Enns: For the companion animal program, we charge full fee. Recovery is virtually a hundred percent. We do provide, though, with the facilities of the scientific staff that we have, further ongoing testing and diagnosis that helps the entire veterinary industry and services.

That was, of course, part of the rationale for it, the Treasury Board saying, look, while we are prepared to subsidize to some extent the support for the farmer in commercial, agricultural, livestock where our recovery probably is in the order of 25 percent--[interjection] Twenty percent. In other words, the services that we provide to the hog producers, to the chicken producers, to the dairy and beef producers, their veterinary services, the diagnostic lab services they get from our Veterinary Services branch are in fact subsidized by the taxpayers of Manitoba. I make no apology for that. I think the importance of the livestock industry well justifies that relatively modest expenditure of public money.

It would be more difficult--in fact, I would not want to be the minister that would defend the public expenditure of looking after Tabby or Lassie; we have not been doing that. It was under that rationale when Treasury Board reviewed our situation in the kind of stringent reviews that all departments and their activities went under and said: Look, it is certainly not necessary as a public function of this government to provide these kinds of veterinary services to companion animals. Why do you not try to hive that off and find somebody that is interested in taking the practice that you now are getting into your facility and set that up as a private practice, which we attempted to do last July?

I do not have the full reports on it yet. I understand that has just kind of come back to us. I am more than prepared to provide to the House and to the member a fuller analysis of why this particular venture did not work out successfully.

Ms. Wowchuk: The information that I would be wanting from the minister is: If this was being set up as a private enterprise in public buildings, were the people who were going to run this clinic going to have to pay rent on the facility, or were they just taking the business out and using the facilities provided by government?

Mr. Enns: No, Mr. Chairman, I apologize for not making that clear.

This was not housed in the provincial and the public building. This was housed separately. I am assuming it was the private veterinarian that had expressed interest in the business that it was either in his facilities or privately rented facilities or whatever it was. It was not that they were operating out of our facilities in a private manner.

Ms. Wowchuk: When the information is available, I look forward to having the minister provide more detail on this venture.

The minister mentioned dogs and cats quite often in the last little while. Earlier this spring we had a very unpleasant situation where we had some animals that were in very poor condition in what were called puppy mills. The minister indicated at the time that he was going to be putting together a committee to review the situation and would be bringing forward some regulations or guidelines as to how animal breeders should be running their operations.

Can the minister indicate what has happened and how soon we can see some regulations put in place to ensure that all animals are treated in a much better way than what we saw this spring in some of these puppy mills?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, I can report to the committee that the committee has indeed been struck. It consists of my assistant deputy minister, Dave Donaghy, as a member of that committee, along with Dr. James Neufeld, who is a director of our Veterinary branch; Miss Vicki Burns, Executive Director from the Winnipeg Humane Society, and a Dr. Ken Mould, who is from the Centennial Animal Hospital; a private veterinarian, Miss Doreen Nevraumont, who is the provincial director of the Canadian Kennel Club, and Mrs. Jacqueline Wasney, President of the Consumers' Association of Canada, because there is a consumer aspect to the puppy mill operation.

People, in good faith, wish to be assured that there is integrity behind the purchase of what they presume to be a purebred dog being offered for sale, that is being appropriately presented for sale. I can attest to the fact that, not unlike when purebred cattle or other livestock are purchased, there are fairly rigid standards to be tested by the different breed associations to attest to the integrity of the breed.

Then there is Councillor Lillian Thomas from the Manitoba Association of Urban Municipalities. She is a councillor from the City of Winnipeg, of course, and we have a rural reeve, Mr. Ed Peltz, from the R.M. of Woodlands.

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These people have met at their inaugural meeting, and are meeting. It is my hope they will provide the department the kind of advice that will provide us with some reasonable regulations that will prevent the kind of situation from reoccurring that disturbed the honourable member for Swan River and many other Manitobans.

I must say, I received many calls on that issue, and I am pleased that the department responded with dispatch. It is my hope not to overregulate, and this is always the danger, you know, when legislators sit. It reminds me of that favourite saying of mine, Mr. Chairman, life, liberty and property are at risk whenever legislators sit. We should always be mindful of that.

Many loving dog owners, perhaps the majority of them, raise two or three litters a year under good and caring conditions. That cannot be questioned. It is not my intention that the heavy hand of government now intervene in that kind of practice, but we have to devise, obviously, some regimented regulations that prevent the kind of factory that some people are running with puppies where animal care is not being observed, where questionable practices are being carried out that give all of us who are involved in any kind of animal care a bad name.

The department is taking this very seriously in the sense that they are also using this as an opportunity of looking at our whole animal welfare kind of legislation. We underline the word "animal welfare," and that is not a question of confusing it with animal rights. This is animal welfare, but that is to be taken seriously by all of us, particularly in Agriculture, but also in the companion animals as well as in the case of the puppy mill owners--needs to be taken seriously. The public will not stand for what they perceive to be callous, willful abuse of animals, whether they are domestic farm animals or whether they are companionable pets and animals that we have for our personal companion pleasure. So the department is addressing this issue.

I attended just briefly the inaugural meeting of the committee. I told them directly that if there are things that we can do by regulation, they can be done fairly expeditiously, but if in fact the advice comes back that we do require some legislation, then it would be my hope to have that legislation for consideration by the House as soon as that is possible. It may not be till the fall or early in the next spring session, but we are taking this opportunity to kind of challenge ourselves within the branch, within the department, as to what needs to be done that can update our own legislation. Some of it is old. It falls to the Department of Agriculture because we end up being responsible for animal abuse no matter where it occurs.

Ms. Wowchuk: Mr. Chair, I look forward to hearing the recommendations that come from this committee. As the minister indicated, this issue probably brought more phone calls than some more serious issues, although this was a serious situation, but people have very serious concerns when animals are being abused.

The minister touched on the humane treatment of all animals, and a comment that has been made to me--and from what I understand, the minister is saying that they will be looking at other aspects of the humane treatment of animals. I have been told by people who have concerns many times with poor treatment of livestock that the act that governs the inhumane treatment of animals is a weak act and very many times that it is not enforced.

Can the minister indicate whether there are a lot of complaints that are brought to his department about the inhumane treatment of animals and, of the complaints, how many charges are laid? From that, I am looking to see whether or not in actual fact it is quite a weak act and does have to be reviewed.

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, in the year '94 there were 131 humane inspections carried out, which represents an increase of some 17 cases or, otherwise put, 15 percent. Of these, some 30 percent of the complaints were considered unjustified, frivolous or simply not justified. A certain number, 70, required corrective action. The most severe case may require charges under the act or the federal Criminal Code. Three convictions of cruelty to animals were obtained. One case is before the courts and charges are to be laid in at least one other case.

So, to answer the member's question, out of 131 initial complaints, a significant number were set aside as not requiring any further action. A significant portion, fully 70 percent of them, required some corrective action. It could simply have been admonishment, better care, better feeding care, better watering facilities or some such thing. There were three situations that, in the opinion of the persons carrying out the inspections, they felt criminal charges ought to be laid and in fact were laid.

The province pays all costs in humane inspections and may recover some costs from the sale of seized livestock. We have a couple of cases of note that I may wish to put on the record. In the constituency of Dauphin a couple were charged because their horses were left out to pasture in January of 1994 while the owner was away on holidays for a month--no bedding, no water source, foals were emaciated, foals were forced to eat some of the same feed as adults, one died. In this case a conviction was obtained.

We have this--I recognize the name from Steinbach, who has been inspected by our inspectors. This is the incident that caused the notoriety on public television. There were a large number of dogs on the premises in varying states of poor condition, with medical problems. In this instance charges have been laid, and further action is awaited before the courts.

Mr. Chairman, just a little indication of the work by the department in this respect.

To answer the member's question, I cannot specifically indicate in what areas the current legislation needs to be strengthened or changed or modified. It would not surprise me if there are a number of instances where that has to happen. As I said a little while ago, the department is taking this advantage of review. They may well come back to me and say, Mr. Minister, we require a new act. If that is the case, we will proceed with it.

Mr. Stan Struthers (Dauphin): Mr. Chairperson, several years ago producers in the Ste. Rose, Rorketon, Eddystone area were left scrambling trying to provide themselves with some veterinary services. I know they experienced great difficulties in filling the position at Ste. Rose.

Could the minister indicate to me what the process is that producers go through in order to obtain veterinary services in any particular spot in the province?

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Mr. Enns: There is, of course, the option, and that happens in certain areas of the province, where private and independent veterinarians look at a given area, given situation, circumstance, look at what they view to be their business opportunities in practising veterinary medicine in that area and set up shop. We have a number of them operating throughout the province.

I believe what the member is more specifically referring to is, how does a veterinary clinic or veterinary district get established? That is a little bit more complicated. It generally gets motivated by a group of livestock producers within an area. It is, generally speaking, too much for a single municipality to tackle, so they are encouraged to group in twos or in threes.

It becomes more difficult from the kind of area that the honourable member mentions because the land mass is big there and populations are few, so the ability for that area to cover such a large geographic area is hard for people to feel that affinity that they belong to one district. That, perhaps, is necessary, though, for numbers, for economies, to put economies of scale together.

I am actually just waiting for Dr. Neufeld to provide me with a little bit of specific information on that case. We are aware of it. It has surfaced certainly within the department, surfaced in the local press from time to time about the difficulties that the member refers to and just where we are at this present moment--yes, this just further gives the details.

You know the veterinary district board will advertise. They will offer a fully equipped hospital maintained by the municipal and matching grants from the provincial government to attract that practitioner to that area. New areas can only be formed at the initiative of the municipalities. I do not know if that helps.

Mr. Struthers: I know that the R.M.s that got together at the time experienced a lot of difficulty in locating a vet. Eventually they did, and they had to go outside of the country and bring someone in.

What kind of steps is the department taking to ensure that there is a pool of people out there qualified to become vets to service producers in rural Manitoba?

Mr. Enns: The department has for many years provided some support to students who are going into veterinary medicine. In my opinion, it is a program that may well be looked at, but it does provide some support on the provision that they come back to the province and practise their veterinary medicine for at least a number of years in the province. The amount of support is in the order of $3,000. I think there are some concerns in the department that that amount in terms of today's costs, that is for the full four- year course, it obviously covers only a very small portion of the tuition fees that are now applicable.

It would be my hope that I will challenge the department to see whether we cannot provide some increase in this area, because again, in my opinion, the services of veterinarian practitioners are going to increase in the province, not decrease. If all what I have been saying, if all what other experts are saying, about the impact of the post-WGTA era having on Manitoba agriculture, whether you hear it from government people or from other sources, you cannot end up but conclude that there will be more livestock of some description in the province, and more livestock means more veterinary care.

Mr. Struthers: Is my understanding correct that the Lassie and tabby-cat type of veterinarians there is an overabundance of and veterinarians to service agricultural producers there is a shortage in? Am I correct in making that statement?

Mr. Enns: Yes, Mr. Chairman, no different than the situation, to some extent, in the practice of medicine. The same kind of situation prevails. We have a continuing problem in attracting doctors of medicine to rule isolated parts of the province, and we have a similar problem in attracting veterinarian practitioners into the same regions.

Mr. Struthers: The $3,000 that you mentioned, is there any indication that has to go towards students who are interested in providing vet services in a rural setting, or does that mean that a rural student who wants to be a Lassie and tabby-cat type of veterinarian also qualifies for that kind of support from your department?

Mr. Enns: I am advised that they do in fact have to return to a rural practice. Now I want to remind the honourable member that rural practice also includes companion animals, but the rural practice would also include significant farm domestic animals. If the party chooses not to remain at a rural address, then the $3,000 contribution towards his education is not written off; it is expected to be repaid.

Mr. Struthers: I am interested still in ways in which we can promote some of our younger members of society who graduate from high school into going into veterinary school in the first place. Are there any plans to use, or is distance education already being used in the rural areas to offer courses in the study of veterinarianism? Veterinanianism--is there such a word? Whatever.

Mr. Enns: There are only two training centres for veterinary medicine in Canada, one located in Saskatoon, the other one in Guelph. We provide some core funding to these centres, some $720,000 annually. As well, we provide the graduate student support program, which amounts to about a further $249,000 annually.

In one way I would like to think that we in Agriculture did it right. It is not, in my opinion, absolutely necessary to have a school of dentistry in every province or for that matter a school of medicine in every province.

(Mr. Frank Pitura, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)

We wanted to utilize the best resources of our public dollars to have first-class schools on the Prairies. We have a first-class law school in Manitoba. I was quite willing to report--there were some pressures on us to have veterinary medicine taught in Manitoba but, quite frankly, it is a limited field.

We get a bigger bang for our dollar by making sure that facilities at Guelph and/or Saskatoon receive the kind of support that they are receiving from neighbouring jurisdictions so that they can be first-class facilities. We in turn get guarantee of accessing the enrollment. Our students get fair crack at being able to pursue that chosen profession at these facilities.

I welcome the expressions of support from the honourable member for Dauphin (Mr. Struthers) in this area. I could not agree with him more that if we are anticipating, as I anticipate, that there will be a million beef cows in this province, that is up from the 620,000 that there are currently in the province, that there will be between 4 million and 5 million hogs produced in this province in a relatively short period. That is up from the 2.3 million hogs that we are producing today. We will be producing more of all kinds of additional livestock in this province than certainly the future requirements; the needs for veterinary services will only increase.

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I suppose our challenge in rural Manitoba is to make rural Manitoba lifestyle a little more appealing because, in the final analysis, that is what it is. Whether it is in the practice of medicine or in the practice of veterinary services, it is often long and pretty lonely hours for a country vet who travels long distances all hours of the day, particularly at calving season in cattle country. Very often it is a one-practitioner situation which gives him very little time off. I think if we can develop better organization where we have two or, in some instances, three veterinarians servicing where they can more fully regulate and enjoy reasonable time off and breaks from their profession. That is all what comes when you associate with a larger practice, for instance, in a larger urban setting when you are part of a clinic of 10 lawyers or five doctors. Everybody gets to play a round of golf occasionally, you see, but it is a little harder for a country vet to do that.

Mr. Struthers: I agree. A lot more people, not just veterinarians but doctors and everyone else, are more concerned these days I think with quality of life issues and not just the straight salary or anything like that.

I used to be a school principal and in charge of guidance counselling as well and career planning and that sort of thing, and there is not a high school around these days that does not do a career day of some sort. In Dauphin Regional School just a week or two ago they had a career day in which I spoke, and I do not remember veterinarian services being represented at that career day. I do not remember having, as a school principal, videos and presentations by veterinarians or people from the Department of Agriculture or those sorts of things actually promote the field with high school students.

What I have noticed with other fields, those who have come into the schools and been marketing their own occupations have gained in numbers of graduates who do eventually go into the field. Quite often young people do not know what is out there for them, and I think maybe there are some things we could be doing in the area of veterinarian services that would help alleviate the situation. If there are any programs of these that are going on now could you tell me about them, and if there are any plans for some more could you tell me about those, too?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, I can advise the honourable member that veterinary services would be pleased to be presented by the Manitoba Veterinary Medical Association but they are not aggressive about it. They do it at request. If your high school would have requested them to come and make a presentation, they would do it. I think always it is of value to senior members of my staff to hear this kind of advice being provided at these committee hearings, and I would invite staff to take that into mind and take it back to their respective associations that they are members of.

Just as a matter of a little further information, we register 15 to 20 new applications for veterinary college a year, which roughly balances the amount that tend to leave the province a year. There is also the question of supply and demand that is at play here to some extent, but while I certainly would not disagree with the honourable member that there are instances, the kind that he mentions, where we are underserviced, on the other hand there are many parts of the province where veterinary services are quite adequate. I happen to have the privilege of being within close distance to one of our veterinary clinics in the central part of the Interlake in the Lundar area, but I am also very well serviced by several veterinarians in the Stonewall area that do quite an adequate job.

Then I have a neighbour who kind of retired from being an animal veterinarian and still does companion animals while he is kind of semiretired, enjoying life and raising 25 beef cows just down the road from me. He likes me to call him on occasion. He will even come and look at a difficult birth that I experience from time to time at the ranch, not really because he wants to service my cow, but he is a Liberal and he wants to argue me out of my political position while he is doing this. So we have great occasions in the twilight hours of darkness in the barn when these momentous things are happening with Mother Nature. He has yet to win his argument, I might say.

Ms. Wowchuk: Mr. Chairman, earlier we were talking about lab services being provided in the Animal Industry for veterinarians. I am looking now at the Soils and Crops section, and we have diagnostic services for crop samples, plant diseases, various insect damage and things like that.

Can the minister indicate where those kinds of services are provided from, the analysis of various kinds of plants, or is there a government lab that is done at or is that done from a private lab?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, allow me to introduce Dr. Barry Todd who is our Director of Soils and Crops branch working out of the Carman offices. Dr. Todd is responsible for the well-being of our soils and special crops which again is, in a province like Manitoba, becoming more diverse, more challenging, as our producers grow an ever-increasing variety of new and, in some cases, exotic types of crops.

The answer to the honourable member's question specifically is that that is one function of the Soils and Crops branch that was not moved from the campus, University of Manitoba. It is still a resident. It is still housed at the university for analysis, plant disease and the kind of things that the member was asking questions about.

(Mr. Deputy Chairperson in the Chair)

Ms. Wowchuk: Then if the minister could indicate, there was a section of that branch that was privatized a couple of years ago, was there not? I know you could send samples of forage and samples like that. Is that accurate?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, the honourable member is correct. The soil testing, feed sample testing has in fact been privatized, and I am told reasonably successfully so. The service is being carried on--

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please. Could we just pass a few of these lines and stick a little closer to the line, please.

Item 4. Agricultural Development and Marketing (a) Administration (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $124,400--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $30,000--pass.

4.(b) Animal Industry (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $1,519,600--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $485,200--pass.

4.(c) Veterinary Services (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $1,430,300--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $503,000--pass; (3) Grant Assistance $467,600--pass.

4.(d) Soils and Crops (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $2,312,800.

Ms. Wowchuk: Mr. Chair, I was asking the minister about the section of the soils labs and the feed-testing labs that were privatized a couple of years ago I believe. I wonder if the minister can indicate what the impact of that has been. When I look for impact I wonder what would be the quality of service, the turnaround time in service, and also what would the fee structure be to the farmer in comparison to what it was prior to privatization?

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Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, allow me to put the following on the record.

In 1991, Norwest Labs incorporated purchased and assumed operations of the provincial soil testing lab and the feed lab. They have completed payments to the Province of Manitoba for the laboratories and continue to rent space in the agricultural services complex.

Norwest Labs does about a million dollars worth of business in Manitoba per year. Farm soil samples make up about 30 percent of this, feed samples 20 percent and environmental samples about 20 percent. The remaining 30 percent is composed of plant, greenhouse tissue, microbiology and industrial organic sample analysis. In other words, they are a testing lab not just for government purposes.

Norwest Labs has provided enhanced soil test services such as wet samples and three-day turnaround. The number of soil samples analyzed during the fall season--and I think this is to the member's questions--in '92, for instance, we had 11,278 samples, in the year '93 we had 10,303 samples, last year 15,000 samples, an increase of some 46 percent over the year previous. There are 12 full-time employees at Norwest Labs, in addition to 10 at the provincial lab. When we ran the testing facilities, the soil testing and the feed testing, we had 10 full-time people and seven part-time people. There are now 12 full-time people and four part-time people. So the employment ratio has remained virtually unchanged, service is being provided, and I would consider that a very successful transferring of an established agricultural program into the private sector. It enhanced the opportunities for Norwest to be a major player in the environmental and nonagricultural testing processes in the city as well, which they may or may not have had the opportunity to participate in.

Ms. Wowchuk: Can the minister indicate, he had said, I believe, that the Norwest does rent the facility. Does Norwest have the opportunity to share government equipment or are they completely independent? Is there an advantage for them to be in the same facility as a government lab where they would have some advantage of government equipment?

Mr. Enns: I am advised that equipment required by Norwest Lab was purchased at the time of the sale and that there is not a mixing or cross-utilization of provincially owned equipment and Norwest equipment.

Ms. Wowchuk: The minister seems quite pleased with the changeover to the private sector of this particular service. Are there any plans by the department at the present time to privatize the other portion of the lab, being the section that does the sampling on plant disease and insect damage? The other part of the lab that is now still owned by the government, are there any plans to privatize?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, I am certainly not aware of any. Allow me to put on the record, privatization is not an ideological approach to the issues on the part of this government. Where it makes sense, where there is an opportunity for a successful transfer, they will take place. I am satisfied that, for instance--we go through this argument every once in a while at our own Treasury Board who review all operations of the department from time to time. They have certainly questioned the ongoing activities of not just this lab but of our entire provincial diagnostic lab services, whether or not that facility, as such, and the service it provides could be fully privatized.

We are satisfied and we have been able to convince Treasury Board to this date that that simply is not the case, that there are the kind of services that modern agriculture requires in the case of the provincial labs and like that. It simply is not supportable in the way the services are being provided.

Ms. Wowchuk: Can the minister indicate what the impact was on farmers with the privatization? He talked about the veterinary services where the costs on livestock were 20 percent recovery, and I am sure there was a benefit when both the soil tests and the feed tests were done by government. What has been the change in fee to the producers now that it has been privatized?

Mr. Enns: My director advises me that even under the operations, when it was run by the department, by the provincial government, we were recovering in the soil samples upwards to 80 percent, somewhat in excess of 80 percent of the actual costs, and that has not really changed very much. The current firm, having to compete with other people in the business, does not allow for great expansion of the charges, and my advice is that that has not occurred.

There was less recovery in the feed sample operation. In other words, we were subsidizing to a greater extent the feed sample service to livestock producers who were requesting that service then under the current operation. I can attest to the fact that it is not an issue that has been raised with me, my office, and it is not, I think, in lieu of the services of value, to the seeker of that service, and it is not unfair that that party should be paying for it.

Ms. Wowchuk: The minister may have indicated this answer earlier, and I apologize if I ask him to repeat it, but he said that the Norwest Lab does about $1 million of business a year. Does Norwest Lab do a lot of work for government? Is a good portion of their business providing service to government?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, I am advised that it would be very minimal. We do our own. Soils and Crops branch will utilize their services from time to time for specific analysis and soil testing to support specific research work that they are engaged in. There may well be. I know that, from a discussion with my colleague the Minister of Environment (Mr. Cummings), some of that 20 percent of workload that involves various environmental "samples," that there could be some government-directed testing in that category. If I recall from memory, my colleague, the Minister of Environment, indicated they do from time to time use them. Again, it would likely be minimal. It will be referral or the department wanting to support some particular data that they are searching for. You would have to direct that question directly to the Minister of Environment when his Estimates are under review. From our perspective it is very minimal, very nominal.

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Ms. Wowchuk: One of the areas under this section that I have a lot of interest in is the Crop Residue Burning Program and the impacts of that program. I guess what I am looking for is the program has been in place for some three years now. There have been some concerns raised with the program, in particular in my part of the province where there is heavy straw. There is a need to burn straw in order to continue with some of the practices that are in place. I have been wondering if the government has, in the last couple of years, reviewed the legislation and assessed whether it will be necessary to make some exemptions in certain parts of the legislation to allow people to continue their sustainable agriculture practices and still be able to abide by the law. I am looking for what kind of review has been done on the legislation.

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, I would firstly like to advise the committee and the honourable member for Swan River that the crop residue burning advisory committee will be reviewing the 1994 crop residue burning authorization program. They are undertaking that now--I am advised now that that will take place some time in June. They hopefully will look at recommendations regarding changes, improvements, and it will be forwarded on to myself and the department for consideration.

To give the members of the committee a little overview of the year 1994 with respect to the burning of residue, only 11 charges were laid in 1994 for violation of the regulation. This followed an extensive awareness campaign conducted in July to September. All the charges were laid by the RCMP. They are scattered in different parts of the province, one in the Dauphin northwest region, three in the Grandview area, two in Headingley and Red River southeast, two in Hanover which is across the river in the southeast, two in Swan River, and one in the southwest. The fines varied from $100 to $1,320.

While I believe that the whole question of stubble burning still is a problem to some agricultural producers, a simple fact of the matter is it is unavoidable. We are all living in times where environmental issues play a bigger role for us. Hog producers are aware of it. Stubble-producing farmers have to be aware of it as well. There is no skirting the issue that when you have the right kind of weather conditions, the kinds of calls and the kinds of visitations to our health care facilities under heavy smog and smoke situations in the city create a pretty strong rationale for the measures taken by the department in this instance. I must say, with obviously some exceptions, nobody likes to be the party that gets caught or violates. In the main there is compliance with the regulations, and I am pleased to say that the number of charges, the number of actual violations are relatively low.

Ms. Wowchuk: The minister indicated that last year there were 11 charges under the act. He indicated how much the fines were, but I am wondering how many charges were dropped and whether or not we have the numbers of how many charges there were in the previous year. I am looking for some comparison, whether the advertising was effective and we actually do have less people burning.

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, I am advised that we were, perhaps with additional years experience behind our belt, a little more careful in laying charges, but I am advised that no charges were, in fact, dropped.

Ms. Wowchuk: Mr. Chair, I am pleased to hear that there were less. The reason I was asking about the dropped charges, in the previous year there was some concern with the legislation and the concern being, I believe, that it says a minimum fine of $1,000. RCMP officers were concerned, as were some people in the courts. They indicated that it was a very heavy fine for the kind of offences as compared to some other offences which were more serious, and that was what was leading to having some of the charges dropped in the previous year. So maybe they were not quite as anxious to lay the charges this time, or else less people are burning.

That was one of the issues that I would like to have the review committee, when they are looking at the legislation, look at that section that says that the minimum fine is $1,000, and I guess I might get in trouble with some people who think that nobody should burn and $1,000 is reasonable, but just talking to people in the justice system there was a concern that that was a pretty hefty fine particularly for a first offence and new legislation.

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, I am advised that there in fact is not a maximum fine. That can happen where you get ticketed, the minimum fine of $1,000 will be on the ticket. If you take it to court, a judge can make his decision and obviously does, because I looked at the range of fines. They range from $100, $198, $264, $900. There are three that were in excess of $1,000, just $1,100, $1,200. So there is a range open under the legislation.

By the way, Mr. Chairman, last year and the year before, there were 58 charges laid which compares to this year's 11. So there has been a noticeable decrease, I would think, signifying a pretty significant compliance with the regulations as the producers get accustomed to living with them and knowing how to avail themselves of the information as to exactly whom, when and where to call when burning is permitted.

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Mr. Struthers: I just wanted to pick up on what the member for Swan River (Ms. Wowchuk) was asking and what the minister just indicated. What kind of a plan is there from your department to encourage farmers into alternative practices rather than stubble burning where that is possible?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, the department never ceases to, through its various extension opportunities, provide the latest data for our farmers in various alternative methods of straw management, including evaluating various crop varieties, management practices, residue-management option, to gain a better understanding of how excess residue can be managed in heavy clay soils without burning. Efforts are being made to determine the impact of straw removal on soil quality and soil degradation in anticipation of the development of straw-based industry in Manitoba.

We have in addition to this, as the member will be aware, a fairly serious number of considerations currently being planned that would utilize in an alternative way for paper, for particle board, for ethanol, for insulation, for fabrics, erosion control mats, edible fibre, horticultural plots, sanitary products, a whole host of kind of innovative potential alternative uses.

One of the most significant ones, probably, is located in the southern part of my constituency near the community of Elie where a major effort is being put together, a particle board from straw fibre. Whether or not it will succeed is still questionable. There are still some financing dollars that have to be found, but all of these kinds of programs are being continually being put before the producers.

In addition to that, we hold symposiums, Straw to Gold. We are trying to alert producers to the potential and the scale of alternative things that can and ought to be done to straw other than burning it. Our hope is that some of these will take root and that we will, in due course, not have an excess straw problem on our hands. I think our soil specialists will continue to express some concern about the fact that there may be a word of caution before we hive off excess straw into everything else but the soil in terms of the long-term future organic well-being of good soil management.

I pass on to the honourable members, just to show you, this is a sample of paper made from straw that the member may find interesting.

There are a host, as I say, of options being considered in different parts of the province, in the southwest, in the central part of the province, in your part of the province. Whether or not a good idea brought to fruition, to market, to successful, viable, economic business opportunities, there is a tortured road to travel on. I am confident that before too long we will see some of these ideas turn to practice and to real results.

Mr. Struthers: I had two questions on crop residue burning and the minister answered both of them in one shot, so I do not even have to ask the question about utilization of straw. I think it is an area that has the potential to provide a lot of growth for rural Manitoba. I would support any kind of a move that his department would be making in diversifying into that area.

The question that I wanted to ask now, though, is whether your department does soil inventory maps. Is it your department that does the maps? Do they put them together or is that contracted out to anybody in the private sector?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, I am advised that we are engaged in a co-operative government program with the federal government, and it is Soils and Crops people that provide these kinds of surveys of our soil types throughout the province.

Mr. Struthers: Are there any private sector firms that actually do the mapping for you, for your department?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, I am advised that we do the internal work. We provide the actual data and the maps. The final printing of the map is farmed out to a print shop, which puts out the various formats that the maps are made available in, but all the research, the data work is done by a combination of federal government and provincial government employees.

Mr. Struthers: That task is done by members of the Soils and Crops branch?

Mr. Enns: No, I am advised that my information is correct. The work is done by federal equal components to our Soils and Crops people, working in tandem, at the faculty, at the university and in our building at Ellice Avenue, the Ellice Avenue building on campus at the University of Manitoba.

The data that we collect is available to other agencies, including private agencies, for whatever use they wish to have of this material. I know that there are information-gathering agencies in the private sector that from time to time seek this kind of data as well.

Mr. Struthers: Could the minister provide me with just a specific example of a private sector firm that would need a map of some soil inventory?

Mr. Enns: The advice that senior staff provides is that on occasion you will find a private consulting engineer seeking particular advice. They are siting a structure or a facility, a building. They want specific soil information that is helpful and germane to the plans that they are drawing up for a client in terms of the types of soil, structure of the soil, permeability of the soil. I suspect that when private consultants, acting on behalf of a potential proponent for a party that is building a livestock, a hog unit and requires the construction of a lagoon to meet the conditions of the guidelines in the environment regulations that the Department of Environment calls for, they need specific soils information that they can build into their specs to the construction of the lagoon that will meet the conditions and stipulations of the environmental regulations.

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Mr. Struthers: Is there a charge for these private sector firms for that kind of information from your department? Is there a dollar charge for that type of information?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Speaker, I am advised that we do a limited amount of this and have limited call on this kind of service. At the current time it is not a revenue item for the department; there are minimal charges that are charged for a hard copy when it is provided, but in effect we provide the information free of charge.

Ms. Wowchuk: Occasionally we see maps, and I believe there was one just recently in the Western Producer or the Co-operator, that showed different colours with different kinds of crops on them. It is my understanding that those are done through some satellite system where you can pick up the different crops. Do we have the ability in Manitoba, through the Department of Agriculture, to be able to figure out which crops are planted in different parts of the province through this kind of system?

Mr. Enns: I can respond that certainly in my previous responsibility in the Department of Natural Resources we had a very sophisticated Remote Sensing division operating here in the city of Winnipeg. It provides a lot of the satellite gathering information that is transmitted onto maps, produces invaluable maps that show all kinds of different things. It shows the forest fire situation under the circumstances. It could show flood situations. Its principal and Agriculture derives and uses its services on an ongoing basis. Agencies like the Canadian Wheat Board use it.

It monitors crop development throughout our growing areas of the Canadian prairies. It also monitors production of crop growth in some of our competitor countries, some of our potential customer countries like the Soviet Union and the likes of that. It is a fairly sophisticated remote sensing operation that the Department of Natural Resources operates and provides a very significant information mat, and they encourage private distribution of that information. I know that the Canadian Wheat Board, as I mentioned, is a fairly significant customer.

Other information gathering agencies, Linnet here that is involved in putting together information packages is a customer and, indeed, even some partnership arrangement that is involved of which I do not know all the details. I am also aware that, again, in the grain trade, other private grain companies, Cargill, UGG are interested and regular customers of these kinds of data reports as they pertain to the agricultural production that they are specifically interested in.

That is something different from what we are talking about. We are talking soils, we are much closer down to the earth. We are doing the actual soil survey, soils analysis that then get translated to soil types. We find it helpful to us in the maintenance and running of our crop insurance program, maintenance in helping us to make the kind of advice with respect to fertilizer applications, with respect to all kinds of extension advice that we find helpful, cropping advice.

Ms. Wowchuk: Thank you to the minister for clarifying that and any further questions we have on that we will take to the Department of Natural Resources Estimates. I was not quite sure what the separation was between--

Mr. Enns: Natural Resources would be--the kind of maps that you are seeing, the multicoloured hues, things like that, they are generally speaking, although not exclusively. There are other agencies and other jurisdictions involved in the printing of them. The ones that emanate from Manitoba are produced through the Remote Sensing Centre out of the Department of Natural Resources.

Ms. Wowchuk: I thank the minister for that information.

I want to ask the minister about the marketing expansions and opportunities that have been made in the forage production, pellets and cubes. I understand the minister earlier in the day talked about the trips to Asia. I understand that the minister did take--on that trip with the federal government, this promotion of Canada, there were people from Manitoba that went to promote the sale of cubes and pellets in Japan and overseas. Can the minister tell us whether that was a successful mission and whether or not we have been able to develop agreements for sale of those products, in particular the products that were produced in the Interlake region? The people in that area have been working for a long time to try to develop markets.

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, I wish I could report to the committee that that specific aspect of the trade mission was successful. Regrettably, it was not. There had been every indication given to us by a very significant Korean consortium that they were prepared to provide some up-front money, some fairly significant amounts. Some $700,000 was the actual amount that was proposed in a Memorandum of Understanding with a group of producers in the northeastern Interlake region, the Arborg area, for an alfalfa dehyd pellet plant.

In fact, up until a few days prior to the trip it had been our intention--in fact, we had included in our roster of people to travel with us several representatives from Arborg, or at least one representative from Arborg, who was looking forward to, with the Manitoba contingent being present, that we could perhaps conclude, finalize the deal. It was with considerable disappointment that, for reasons that do not remain completely clear, the Koreans in the final analysis backed away from the project, and there was little we could do about it.

We, nonetheless, proceeded to make a number of other people, both in Japan and in Taiwan, familiar with the same proposal. While I certainly do not want to raise any false expectations at this time, nonetheless, as so often is the case, you simply have to keep banging at the door and keep trying. There is a need for the product, whether or not we can competitively meet the market demands, particularly of the Pacific Rim countries. Alberta has an advantage in a sense they are just that much closer to the ocean-going ports of Prince George or Prince Rupert and Vancouver. It is still a bulky commodity of medium value, you know, in terms of its overall value, but it is surprising, there is a market demand there for all kinds of forage products, from seed to pellets to compressed hay. Our people have to show, I think, and we have to as a department provide some further innovative advice as to how to gain entry into that market.

Alberta is, as you know, heavy duty into alfalfa-dehyd products. In fact, one of their main areas of concern in the elimination of the Crow is the impact on the movement of alfalfa-dehyd products through their oceangoing ports. So we are, you know, that much further inland, and the impact of the WGTA is that much greater on us and on a crop that value adding is there but not at the highest level.

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It is going to make it, quite frankly, difficult for our plants to compete. We have some existing plants. We have a plant at Minnedosa right now that is looking to add further value to the pellet that they are making by adding other supplements to it that would make it specialized feed for our wild boars, for other animal feeds. I believe that there are opportunities there that we have yet to tap.

I can further advise the committee and the honourable member for Swan River (Ms. Wowchuk) that we are expecting a delegation of the Forage Seed Producers Association from Japan to come in and visit us this weekend. They continue to be extremely interested in a wide range of forage products. We are recognized to have the capability, capacity of producing some of the finest timothy seed in the world, and there are considerable, you know, timothy imports there. Our production has gone down in the last little while of timothy seed, generally speaking, in the province.

You know, I hold out the fact that when we are faced with quite a different freight regime as a result of the elimination of the Crow, I am not about to exclude or predict precisely what will happen, what will turn on the crank or turn on the bell on the part of some of our producers to aggressively and actively pursue some of these higher-value forage seed options, particularly, and look to some innovative ways of providing forage to that forage-starved part of the world.

Ms. Wowchuk: Can the minister indicate what caused that deal to fall apart? Was it the quality of the product that we have here, or was it price?--because it seemed that it was very close to being developed. There must have been something that made them change their mind. Does the minister have that information?

Mr. Enns: The initial enthusiasm that brought the Koreans into the deal was, and this is what they tell us, positive projections of future growth in the Korean market. They are telling us that upon second assessment of the market conditions they felt that that growth, in fact, was not going to take place there, and they did not see the situation as being viable.

We do have the Interlake's organization now in discussion with a second Korean organization, the National Livestock Co-op Federation, again looking at the same project. In the final analysis we believe, within the department, that it was an investment issue that kiboshed the deal. That was not the fault of the Arborg people. It is the party that is putting up the investment dollars that comes to that kind of a management decision.

We found that some of the demands, some of the expectations of the Asian investors are, in my humble judgment, high. They look for very fast turnaround and return to investment as tight as three years. That is pretty high expectation. To consider that you will have your investment back in three years on a million-dollar plant of some kind is, by North American standards I am advised, on the high side. We will have to overcome some of these expectations before we see that kind of significant investment occurring in our part of the province. It will come, it will come, but it will take its time in coming.

Ms. Wowchuk: We talk about travelling to various countries to promote the products that we have for sale here. Is there a specific line, and would there be any money coming from this branch here that would be set aside for travel for trade promotion? Or can the minister indicate where we would be able to find the amount of money that is spent on that type of expenditure?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, I am advised that if I can direct the member for Swan River's attention to item (e)(2) on page 17 of the regular book. There is an item there of approximately $1.105 million. A good portion of the market development travelling undertaken by various specialists from the department, including nondepartmental people from time to time that we invite to join us on our trade missions, would be included in that figure.

Specifically, it is not anywhere near that global figure. We looked at actual travel expenses for the proposed outgoing missions for the coming year in the Estimates that are before you for 1995-96. The department's marketing branch is proposing several visits to Mexico.

I want you to know that they arranged visits to Mexico in July and August, and by doing so we avoid press detection. You noted the other day that your Leader of the Opposition is particularly suspicious of ministers when they travel to places like Mexico and the Caribbean in February, but when my department travels to Mexico it is in the simmering heat of July and August when we can do nothing else but work, work, and work.

We anticipate two further trips to the Pacific Rim, to Japan, promoting all commodities. The Mexican trips are specifically related to dairy, beef, swine, canola, some pulse crops and pork. We anticipate several visitations to our neighbours, the Americans, again promoting swine, vegetables, beef cattle, dairy cattle, forages and pork, and one European trip for poultry, dairy and meats. The total travel expenses budgeted for those eight trips abroad are $48,500. They are modest amounts, but extremely important to the future well-being of the province if we keep in mind that we are so much of an exporting province that we must constantly look after finding those markets for our producers.

Ms. Wowchuk: I would imagine there is also a budget that is set aside for incoming missions. The minister indicated there were going to be people here within the next few days again to look at forage production. Can the minister indicate what kind of a budget is set aside for that?

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Mr. Enns: I can indicate to the honourable member, last year's incoming trade missions included these visitations: three from Japan, three from the Philippines, two from Mexico, three from Malaysia, one from China, two from Thailand, one from England, one from Vietnam, one from Taiwan. We had certainly support from private sector organizations, including particularly if it involved say an item like pork, which many of these trade missions did, Manitoba Pork was always a participant in sharing the hospitality and the costs associated with receiving an incoming trade mission from abroad. Our budget was a modest $11,650 to enable us to provide a reasonable level of hospitality to the incoming trade missions in that year.

Ms. Wowchuk: Mr. Chair, again we have gotten ahead in one line, so we will go back to Soils and Crops.

The whole issue of management of our soil and water is one that is very important. I know that there is testing of various methods of irrigation and water management. One of the projects that I am interested in is one that has been carried out--somewhere in the Roblin area there is a project.

I want to ask the minister if he can indicate how he feels, whether that has been a successful project, how long it will continue and what kind of interest has been expressed by farmers in the area as a result of this project.

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, allow me just a few general comments about irrigation. I am well aware that irrigation has under some circumstances brought its fair share of problems to soil management, and, certainly, in the history of irrigation, particularly in jurisdictions to the south of us, there sadly have been some rather extreme cases of neglect for good management practices associated with irrigation which have altogether given irrigation, certainly in some circles, not the best of reputation.

In Manitoba, we are extremely fortunate that when we talk about irrigation, we are talking about supplementing relatively acceptable levels of natural moisture. We are not talking about Imperial Valley in California or even some other jurisdictions where irrigation demands, where applied, are constant and massive.

Nonetheless, it is a challenge that the department is more than prepared to accept, to devise and to develop the very best of data as to what constitutes appropriate, prudent and judicious use of this supplementary water through irrigation.

So we were very pleased, and I believe it is a program that Manitobans will have reason to be mindful of the contribution of one Charlie Mayer, the last federal Minister of Agriculture of the Mulroney administration, who provided us in Manitoba with the Crop Diversification Centre at Carberry with a satellite operation at Roblin. The Roblin site was particularly chosen for data collection and experimentation with effluent irrigation, and focusing on preparing a site for irrigation with effluent irrigation is planned to start this spring, and I do not know--is that underway? Well, I shall read further.

PFRA and Manitoba Agriculture assisted the town of Roblin in completing the baseline soil monitoring for the town to obtain an environmental licence. A soil and water monitoring plan for the site was completed. A topographic map of the area was also completed. Piezometers were installed to monitor ground water qualities and levels.

The town of Roblin was issued an environmental licence for irrigating with effluent on the new site, and the Manitoba Water Services Board assisted the town of Roblin in tendering for the irrigation pipeline and pivot system. The pivot and pipeline are installed but were not operated in 1994. The town of Roblin effluent was discharged on other agricultural land using travelling guns; 62 million gallons of effluent were discharged in this manner.

Canada-Manitoba soils survey completed field work for a detailed soil survey. Plans for a plot-working start in 1995 were completed. An advising group of farmers assisted with the planning of the site work for 1995. The area where the plots are to be established was sprayed with Roundup and tilled. The area where the shelter plots are being established was surveyed, sprayed and tilled.

Well, Mr. Chairman, there is a full-scale experimental trial that is going on with using effluent for irrigation purposes in Roblin. The Roblin subsatellite has equipment in place for effluent application in the year 1995. The land owned by the town has an alfalfa stand established and some demonstration plot areas have been prepared for agronomic trials in this coming year. These will include alfalfa-brome management, forage seed production, special crops, fruit crops, woodlot management and crop disease.

We have a further satellite station operating out of the same Crop Diversification Centre located at Carberry, in the Melita area, where the trials will work more directly with potatoes, canola, oats, Kentucky blue grass and other new selected crops.

These are some of the new adventures that the department is engaged in with respect to the Crop Diversification Centre and the emphasis on getting to know and getting to understand and getting to manage irrigation in a manner and way which we can safely recommend to our producers, that it can be done in a way that will truly be living up to all the criteria of sustainable agriculture, that will ensure that soil degradation does not take place.

Ms. Wowchuk: The irrigation is a new concept in the Roblin area, but irrigation has been going on for some time in southern Manitoba. I want to know what kind of testing is done on the impacts of irrigation on our soils.

We hear concerns expressed that when you start you do a lot of irrigation, there is a salination of the soil and things like that. Is there an ongoing analysis being done in the areas where irrigation is quite common, particularly, in the areas where we see a lot of potato and vegetable crops growing?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, I am advised that we are certainly looking forward to the kind of more intensive ongoing monitoring that the Manitoba Crop Diversification Centre located at Carberry will provide. It is really a principal part of their mandate that through this program--and it is a joint program, we participate with secondment of staff to the centre. Two of our specialists are working out of that centre. We share the information and will, of course, be influential in directing some of the ongoing research and monitoring in this regard.

Again, when potential irrigators apply for an irrigation licence, they first call as often to our Soils and Crops people to study the very maps, soils topography, for the types of soils that are potentially candidates for irrigation. That comes from our department. We can often provide them the kind of soils information that is important to them in terms of the application of water.

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Because of the nature of our considerably less dependent, more intermittent use of irrigation and the rotational aspect of it, we do not have that kind of experience that the honourable member refers to, although irrigation has been used certainly in the vegetable growing areas of the Portage plains and different parts of southern Manitoba for a number of years.

To date, we have not experienced the kind of serious soil difficulties that she speaks of, but we are not taking anything for granted. We look to the programs now in place for the refinement of them--as operator of the mandate of the Manitoba Crop Diversification Centre, as being the central source of data collection information--to analyze, to monitor and to provide the very best data possible for future irrigators and the future of irrigation in the province of Manitoba from all aspects of it, and the question of the judicious amount, the quantities required for optimum crop yields.

The potato industry has made it just about a demand that the potatoes that are grown for processing have to be grown on fields that can be irrigated. Not that we cannot grow potatoes without irrigation, but without irrigation we cannot provide the continuity of a quality product, that competitive world, the global market, and that is where we are selling our potato chips to. We are selling our potato chips to Japan; we are selling them to Chicago; we are selling them to Milwaukee. If ours are not the best, they do not get sold. So whatever reasons, the processors say that there is virtually tremendous growth opportunities in potato production, but they insist that they be irrigated potatoes.

Through the Crop Diversification Centre we hope to get this kind of data information on the product that we produce as a result of irrigation optimum crop yields. The optimum amounts of water required and the certain fishes and the certain topsoils will at the same time also provide the ongoing monitoring of what is happening on the ground, what is happening to the soil itself, what is happening to potential leakages or leaching of surface fertilizer, herbicides, other cropping practices that could potentially injure our ground water supplies, could potentially pollute our aquifers and so forth. Those are the kinds of very serious responsibilities that we expect the Manitoba Crop Diversification Centre headquartered out of Carberry will assist the Department of Agriculture in ascertaining.

Ms. Wowchuk: The minister indicated that out of the Carberry Diversification Centre there are the technical services provided for the people who are setting up the irrigation systems.

Can the minister indicate whether his department provides any funds to establish irrigation services in those regions where it is feasible to use irrigation?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, I can advise the committee that there has been, for instance, some public dollar support for the projects underway in the south-central part of the province--Morden, Winkler, in that area, in the construction of large dugouts to collect surface waters and pump waters into them that provide onsite irrigation for a limited number of acres. They call themselves the Agazziz irrigation association. They have applied through organizations like PFRA and to the provincial government through the department of Water Resources in the Department of Natural Resources for some assistance, and I have received some assistance in the construction of these ponds.

I am advised that the Department of Rural Development has a modest $3,000 grant that is administered through the Water Services Board to applicants who apply for irrigation operations, and they only get them after they come through our department, and we site out the advisability or the locality that is being considered for irrigation.

This is just some further information about the Agazziz irrigation association's project, which hopes to develop some considerably more capacity at three different sites in the coming year that would approximately provide for an additional 1,600 acres to be irrigated. The support for that program would come, $200,000 from the Manitoba Crop Diversificaation Centre; $200,000 from the Canada-Manitoba Agreement on Agriculture Sustainability; and then from my colleague the minister of rural economic development, probably through our REDI-funded program, something like that, an additional $300,000 from the Water Resources branch; and the Department of Natural Resources for another $100,000, for a total contribution of $800,000 to that $2.5-million program.

I think the question was asking for specific support to an individual farmer who is choosing to irrigate. There is not a great deal of support. I can indicate to the honourable member, and I think I left some information in that regard when we had the agricultural corporation people before us, that to get into irrigation is a costly venture.

It is estimated that it costs, the capital requirements for irrigating an acre of land or an acre of potatoes, let us be specific, is somewhat in excess of $2,000. If somebody wants to irrigate 500 acres of potatoes, he is looking at a considerable cash outlay. We are looking at ways and means of helping that farmer get that kind of credit through modifications of existing programs at the Manitoba Agricultural Credit Corporation.

Ms. Wowchuk: The minister indicates that there have been funds that have gone into the project where you are collecting ponded water and setting up irrigation projects that way, but are there no other projects that the government is investing money in to help irrigate land?

Mr. Enns: No. As yet, nobody will let me build the Holland dam.

Ms. Wowchuk: Mr. Chairperson, the irrigation projects that are being tested from the Crop Diversification Centre, in those cases, is water being taken from rivers? The concern that has been raised: Is water being taken from aquifers and large amounts of water being drained and used for irrigation? I am looking to find out where you would be getting water for these projects. Is it all river water or are you tapping into aquifer water?

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Mr. Enns: As the Minister of Agriculture, I am certainly hopeful that, in the first instance, I can convince my colleague the minister responsible for Water Resources in the province, to lift the moratorium on further allocations of water from a river like the Assiniboine, for instance. Goodness knows, we have experienced again this spring, and we will be paying in excess of probably $5 million to $6 million in damages for the excessive amount of water that we have in that basin.

Our difficulty, of course, is that we swoosh it all out the province in a short six weeks and then for the rest of the year we fight over water. Surely, we can begin to use our heads and manage that abundant source of water that we have, that providence has provided for us in this part of the continent, and provide ample stocks of water for the job opportunities, for the agricultural opportunities that are there if we use it wisely.

I can report to honourable members that most of the aquifers have fully recharged as a result of not just this but last year's excessive moisture conditions--aquifers that for years have been under extreme pressure, like the Winkler aquifer. I can recall, under duress I signed the licensing authority for the town to dig yet another well when it was essentially against the regulations because we were mining that aquifer, we were below a level that the Water Resources people felt it was appropriate to draw any more water out of it. It has been fully recharged.

I think that it is going to be incumbent on agriculture to be able to convince our fellow citizens that we can use water in an environmentally sound way, but more importantly we have to convince my government and the citizens of this province to invest in some of the infrastructure requirements required to hold that water, at least some of it, back later on in the growing season where it could be of such tremendous help to those of us engaged in agriculture.

A significant amount of engineering work has been done, no doubt not enough by today's standards in terms of the new parameters, environmental concern, that have to be taken into consideration, but I would suspect that governments, the public has spent in excess of several millions of dollars in sourcing acceptable water reservoirs throughout the province, in the southwest, along the Assiniboine.

For several years running it was a major mandate of the federal government, the PFRA organization, and dust covers, reams of studies and maps, sophisticated maps that cite the possibility of storing X number of acre feet on this stream, X number of acre feet on that stream, major projects on the Assiniboine that would have prevented all of this year's flooding, all of this year's damage, would have provided the city of Winnipeg with all the water they needed till the year 3000.

It would have provided recreation opportunities this province has never seen, would have tripled our tourism influx, would have tripled our agricultural production influx and would have banished forever any concern about lack of water in any part of south- central Manitoba, but we choose to ignore that good advice and those good opportunities that are there.

If we could have stored half of that water that gushed uncontrolled throughout Roblin-Russell all the way down the Shellmouth at a lower surge rather in a similar lake and then used it judiciously for the next five or six months, would that not be a better solution than now appealing to the Manitoba Disaster Board for assistance for flooded-out hay lands, flooded-out pasture lands, for crops that are not going to be seeded?

Vision, vision is still required in this part of the world.

Mr. Struthers: I would like to get a little better handle on the amount of money that is going into the irrigation projects and who can apply for them. Can an individual small family farmer get hold of some of this money to help him with his irrigation costs? Is it open to larger corporate farms? Is this money available to companies that do not have anything to do with agriculture or actually doing the farming?

Mr. Enns: Mr. Chairman, there really are no specific programs available to the individual farmer at any level for irrigation purposes other than the modest program that I referred to through Rural Development. When an individual farmer makes an application, wants to get into some form of irrigation farming, Rural Development, through the Water Services Board, will help him in a very modest way. I believe the figure is $3,000. That is only after the land in question has been approved by our Soils and Crops people as being suitable for irrigation purposes.

The monies that are being talked about here, the Agassiz irrigation association is in fact a group co-op, if you like, of a number of producers who have joined together an association and put fairly significant sums of money, their own money I think--I think it takes $50,000 per member to be part of that group--who then have petitioned successfully both the federal government and the provincial government to provide assistance in the building of a number of these large dugouts, usually in association with our natural runoff that fills in the spring in a natural way. In some cases they are augmented by pumping in the spring, filled to capacity and then they are drained virtually every year for those irrigation requirements.

Those are the only kinds of water sourcing--and that is not contributing anything to the $2,000 I speak of that it costs to irrigate an acre of potatoes. When I speak of the $2,000, that is in the specialized equipment. That is in the actual sprinkler systems, the irrigating systems that you see on the fields. That is in the whole operations involved in that kind of specialized agricultural production.

These kinds of monies are viewed I think by the government no different than a major dam being built, Shellmouth being built for instance, which is a reservoir for much of the Assiniboine River water and in its control.

The Portage plains, the Portage people that are irrigating the Portage vegetables, they draw on the Assiniboine River waters because of the controlled flows coming out of the Shellmouth that enable them to do that.

The whole R.M. of Macdonald receives it residential and industrial water supply from the little La Salle River, because a diversion was taken out of the Assiniboine and pumped into the La Salle that made that project possible. It would only be possible because we manage the water that comes down the Assiniboine and can with confidence accomplish that.

But to answer, I am diverting again, there is no specific program or assistance available to the individual farmer, corporate, individual or otherwise, in irrigation.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please.

The hour is now 12 midnight. Committee rise.