EXECUTIVE COUNCIL

Mr. Chairperson (Marcel Laurendeau): The item before the committee is item 1.(b) Administration and Finance Executive Support (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits on page 11 of your Estimates book. Did the honourable Premier have anybody else to introduce today? Is there any other staff to introduce today that had not been introduced yesterday? No. Okay. The honourable Leader of the Official Opposition.

Mr. Gary Doer (Leader of the Opposition): Jim is still wearing the same blazer. No, I am just kidding. Blue blazers are very important.

My question--I was raising questions with the Premier yesterday on home care. I would like to know whether the Premier was apprised by his Minister of Health (Mr. McCrae) on the recommendations from the Home Care Advisory committee that was established in May of 1994 by the provincial government and the committee obviously chosen by the government to provide the government advice. When he mentioned yesterday he was dealing with advice on home care, was the Premier briefed by the minister’s Home Care Advisory committee pursuant to the decision of the government to proceed with privatization of home care?

Hon. Gary Filmon (Premier): I do not recall, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Doer: Well, this is the same answer we got from the Minister of Health (Mr. McCrae) this week on Connie Curran. You know, I do not recall after--two years ago he said I received recommendations. What kind of advice, who did the government receive its advice from if it did not receive it from the Home Care Advisory committee that was handpicked by the Conservative government?

Mr. Filmon: The Home Care Advisory committee has been charged with the responsibility to listen to complaints about the system, to seek better ways of providing the services and to talk in general terms about home care policy. I have put on the record, and I ask the Member for Concordia (Mr. Doer) to read the record from yesterday, the process that led us to the determination that we made in respect to the policy decision that was made, and nothing has changed since yesterday.

Mr. Doer: Mr. Chairman, the government established the home care committee on May 26, 1994, with terms of reference to look at the total service delivery system from the home care perspective of the government. The committee was also allowed to read documents that were prepared by the APM consultant. I want to go back. Yesterday I raised a number of questions about APM and I have been raising them for the last couple of weeks without any satisfaction. Can the Premier please tell me when the Minister of Health was telling the truth?

Two years ago in this Chamber on May 27, 1994, he said, and I quote, we have recommendations from APM on home care. It is right in Hansard. Last week and this week he has said that he has no report from APM. I would like to ask the Premier why he had recommendations on home care from APM in 1994, and why he cannot remember, cannot recall, might have something, might not have something in 1996? Is this kind of the acceptable system of accountability that this Premier is talking about in terms of getting straight answers to straight questions in this House and giving the people of Manitoba material that they have paid for, Mr. Chairman?

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Mr. Filmon: I assume that the member opposite has never had recommendations that came to him other than by way of report, so he would not understand the difference, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Doer: Given the way the Minister of Health has handled the emergency ward situation in the city of Winnipeg, given the fact that on March 1 he said that there was no savings of money, that they were going to proceed with all four quadrants, and he said that he would establish a Crown corporation, in light of the fact that he will not provide documentation on the cost and quality of service, does the Premier still have full confidence in his Minister of Health, who we believe is bumbling and fumbling his way around some very important issues concerning Manitobans and, indeed he is not up to the task and up to the job regrettably of that very important ministry?

Mr. Filmon: Yes, Mr. Chairman, I have full confidence in the Minister of Health.

Mr. Doer: Mr. Chairman, could the Premier please indicate--the assistant deputy minister, I believe her name in Health is Ms. Hicks, apparently said at the time of privatization the wages for home care workers would go down with the privatization of home care--what wage reduction is necessary as part of that statement of Ms. Hicks and what was the analysis to the government on wage reductions through the privatization and profit initiative of the government?

Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, this is the Estimates of the Executive Council. I cannot be asked to verify or confirm the source or the accuracy of information that is alleged to have been given by an assistant deputy minister in the Department of Health or any other department. I invite the member opposite to go into the next committee room to address that question to the Minister of Health. I am sure that that staff person is probably there, so he can get that information very readily instead of playing games here.

Mr. Doer: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It may be a game to the Premier, but it is not to those 3,000 people that feel that they may be facing either a loss of job or 30 to 40 percent wage decrease. They feel that the kind of money that presently goes in a home care system when it moves to the privatization model of the provincial government will mean that certain individuals become, you know, perhaps the head of We Care or other organizations would become very wealthy while they have a reduction in their wages by 30 to 40 percent, and that is not just an argument of detail.

That is a whole issue of policy, that is a whole issue of vision that this government has, both economically and health-wise, because all the studies on home care that we have read, and I invite the Premier (Mr. Filmon) to show us any other studies, have indicated that the pay of staff and the ability, the pay that staff receive in home care will have a strong correlation with continuity of care, which in turn will deal with the turnover rate, which will produce better quality of care for patients because turnover is counterproductive to care, and a more constant staffing provides better quality of care. So it is not an issue of detail, it is an issue of philosophy. It is an issue of ideology. It is an issue of dealing with the decision that this Premier admitted he made yesterday.

I would like to ask the Premier, are we talking about reduced wages in the initiative of the government for these people?

Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, it is a game when the Leader of the Opposition deliberately chooses not to go into the next committee room where the individual he is referring to and the department that he is referring to are present to answer his questions but instead chooses to come here where he believes the information is probably not available so that he can play political games with it.

I repeat for him, and he can read Hansard, that I told him what the process of decision making in government is and he ought not to misrepresent it as he continues to do.

Mr. Doer: I would expect that the Premier, who makes a decision of this magnitude that affects 17,000 Manitobans, the Premier that makes the ultimate decision that affects 3,000 people, would know broad parameters of the impact of the policy decisions that he is implementing.

I would expect that the decision that the government made with this whole policy, of its impact on both the profit for companies and the salaries for people would be a consideration for the Premier, it would be a factor that he would look at. I do not expect him to know whether it is 25 percent or 30 percent, but is the ADM of Health correct when she says salaries will be reduced in home care through this privatization initiative, and if so, what is the impact on the quality of service, because all of the studies have indicated, and the Premier surely has read the studies on this before he has proceeded with his decision, all of the policies have indicated that there is a correlation between the paid level for home care staff, continuity of home care staff and therefore the quality of service to clients.

I am not asking him to give us the pay level of a clerk 5 in the Department of Government Services. I am asking the broad policy questions dealing with quality of service that relates to pay of staff. That is all I am asking the Premier. I would like the Premier to tell us, did he not know anything about the impact on salaries, or if he knows something about the impact of salaries, can he please tell us what it is?

Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, I invite the leader of the opposition to ask that question of the Minister of Health and his staff.

Mr. Doer: Is the Premier telling us that he does not know what the impact of his policy will be on salary levels? He does not know?

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Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, I am telling the Leader of the Opposition that the appropriate place to ask that question is in the Estimates of the Department of Health.

Mr. Doer: I disagree. You have made the decision. You said yesterday you had made a decision on a major policy area of government. You are a head of the government. You chair the cabinet. You choose the cabinet ministers. You maintain confidence in your ministers. They come forward with recommendations. They come forward with recommendations to cabinet that you ultimately chair. You decide whether it is yes or no or altered.

I believe, I think the public should know, in terms of the government, was there any study on salary impact of privatization? Was there any research done? This is what we keep coming back to. We would not even ask these questions if we did not have to go day after day after day to the Minister of Health (Mr. McCrae) and ask for studies and reports that led to the decision in 1996.

We can get the APM’s report or we can get the recommendations that were submitted last month by the government’s own hand-picked committee or any other report. Then these questions would not have to be asked, but we are dealing in a vacuum here. We have a minister saying there is no formal report. What does it have to do? Wear a tuxedo? I do not want to be silly about it. You have recommendations, you have documents. The public has paid for it; they have a right to know. We shouldn’t have to come to this house every day and ask for stuff that led to the government’s decision. The people should not have to keep going back and forth over documents. That is not the way we should be debating this issue.

We should be debating the merit of the government’s decision based on all the research we have, so in the absence of those documents and the absence of those answers from the Minister of Health (Mr. McCrae), I am going to the person where the buck stops. He might not like it, but the buck stops right with him, and I am just simply asking him what was the salary impact material in broad terms. Is it going to stay the same, is it going to go down, or is it going to go up from the privatization initiative? What will that mean for turnover rates? Not a big issue, but what are the broad turnover rates, and what does that mean for continuity of care? Those are all I want to know. I do not want to know a minute detail in some other department. I want to know the work that this government did leading to a huge decision that is having an amazing impact, unfortunate impact on a lot of clients and a lot of workers. That is all I am asking the Premier, so I will ask it again.

Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that information could not be stated with certainty until the bids were in from the companies that were proposing.

Mr. Doer: If the government is going to privatize out to companies, and it is already privatized out to companies, one of them being We Care, and the Premier yesterday said that we have used We Care as one of the evaluative--the so-called evaluative, maybe formal, maybe informal, I do not like to use that word formal or informal--but as one of the techniques to make this decision. As I understand it, We Care pays considerably less than what the public service pays. I also understand that a certain percentage goes to profit, so how much are we going to see in a policy way for reduced pay and profit in the home care area?

The Premier has dealt with private companies before. They usually have a minimum of 10 percent or 12 percent return on investments in the form of investment return. They may have money over that for profit. We do not know--again, the government has those documents--but I would just like to know. The only evidence we have seen is We Care, and it was a major reduction in pay, and the turnover rate, as we understand it, from health care experts both inside the government’s department and out, indicate that the turnover rate will be much greater. They cite examples of other jurisdictions where the turnover rate is well over 60 percent, as opposed to Manitoba’s turnover rate of 20 percent--and I do not know these things. Again, we do not have anything to go by, but I would just like to know from the Premier what--We Care has much lower wages than the public-administered, publicly run home care system in Manitoba, and I would just like to know from the Premier, what is the range on those reduced wages?

Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, I am aware, for instance, that in the contracted-out services to VON that the rates are very similar to those that are paid to those who work in the public sector, and I know that my experience is that where private contractors provide services that might formerly have been done in a very bureaucratic manner, that they generally make your savings not on paying their employees a great deal less, but on better organization of the workflow, better organization of the tasks at hand, and, ultimately, they eliminate inefficiencies and waste. They may have a better co-ordination of the services.

We know of stories, for instance, where people going out to serve the needs of a variety of clients in one particular senior’s home, there are 11 different people going in and out of there everyday to provide the services. Now, if that could be co-ordinated better so that there were only two people going in there, one providing, for instance, the nursing service and the other providing support and attendant service, we could get tremendously much more productivity out of it. We could reduce the costs of the mileage or the transportation charges. We could far better get results out of that kind of co-ordination without necessarily having to reduce the rates of pay.

So it seems to me that this is one of those arguments in which the final answers will not be known until proposals come in from the various organizations that choose to contract. You know, the bottom line on that, if the member wants nothing to go to profit, then, of course, the invitation has been made open to the MGEU to organize themselves to bid on the contract, and the government has offered to help them in that process. There could be absolutely zero put into profit under those circumstances, or if more of the work is received by nonprofit organizations, not only VON, but we have been contacted by other organizations that are affiliated with the nurse-managed resource centres that say that they would like to put in proposals on a nonprofit basis. Profit needs to be zero in these contracts, in some cases, or is intended to be zero.

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So it would seem to me that what will happen is that there will be far better organization, far more efficiencies in the delivery of the services, and, in the end, the wages may not be dramatically altered in many cases.

Mr. Doer: The comparison between VON and the government is between two nonprofit organizations, one publicly [interjection] Well, okay, is the Premier saying today then that they will use the principles of the Canada Health Act and prohibit profit in the provision of home care here in Manitoba? That is what he is saying? Let him say that.

Mr. Filmon: The Leader of the Opposition does not strengthen his case by putting words in my mouth. I did not say that. I said that the alternatives are that some will derive greater savings by better organization of the work effort involved, and they may therefore be able to justify taking some profit margin out at the end. Others will operate on a nonprofit basis, and they may well be the lowest bid. The union may organize its own bid with no profit involved and be successful in getting the contract. There will be a variety of ways, and everybody who puts in a proposal or a bid will have to face the consequences of the way in which they organize themselves for that bid.

Mr. Doer: So the Premier is opposed to putting in, and we were going to propose in a private member’s bill that the principles of the Canada Health Act apply now to home care, and of course we have private health care programs in Manitoba that are nonprofit. They may be administered for example by the quote, Grey Nuns, and others, et cetera. St. Boniface Hospital does not bid with McDonald’s and does not bid against Ford Motor Company and We Care to provide services in southeast Winnipeg. It is a nonprofit operation for the good of all people that they have to serve. Obviously it has a role for patients across the province as well as a geographic region. I mean, all the evaluations on health care have indicated, you know, you look at the American studies, you look at any, have indicated that, you know, in a mixed economy, Ford competes against GM, that is fine. In health care, where they have a competitive model, over time there are tremendous inefficiencies that people eventually, with the changes, get health care on the basis of their financial resources rather than on the basis of their health care needs.

You also have the situation where salaries are reduced and, obviously, companies in a private system have to make profits, so is the Premier willing to put the principles of the Canada Health Act on nonprofit for home care, which I think could move this debate along quite a bit? We tried to move it along yesterday by suggesting you have a plebescite of clients; the Premier rejected the vote from clients. We are trying to suggest today that you look at the principles of the Canada Health Act.

Why could we not have nonprofit legislation in this province on home care to keep all our dollars for patients rather than for profit?

Mr. Filmon: With all due respect, this debate on the part of the Leader of the Opposition is purely philosophical, and he has an ideological hang-up on this. If he wants to use the American example, I can tell him that there are thousands of Canadians who go down to the U.S. for medical treatment because the treatment that they are receiving is superior to anything they could get in Canada. Has he ever heard of the Mayo Clinic? I can tell him that if he believes that the only reason that the American system consumes a greater proportion of the GDP in that country than the Canadian health care system does in our country, he is wrong. The fact is that the people who work in that system also command a much higher income level. The doctors, the nurses--why does he think that nurses throughout the ages have gone down to the States for jobs? Because they can earn twice as much there in some cases as they can here. Doctors, our family practitioners are being paid twice as much to go down to the States as they are here. So the people who work in the system, despite the fact that it is so-called privatized under the definition of the Leader of the Opposition, those people are being paid a great deal more than they are under a publicly administered system under the principles of the Canada Health Act.

Mr. Doer: Of course, 35 million Americans do not have any medical coverage at all. Another 35 million Americans are undercovered by insurance companies and have to mortgage their houses and lose their livelihood in order to pay for a family member that may lose their health care, so if this is the shining example the Premier is following, I am quite worried about it.

Mr. Filmon: You used it as a shining example. I am telling you that it is not all that you say it is.

Mr. Doer: I am sorry the Premier did not get a good night’s sleep, but just relax. I can understand he has a lot of pressure now to deal with a very serious situation. I just encourage the Premier to relax, take a deep breath, just get a hold of himself.

Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. Could we carry on with the debate?

Mr. Doer: Yes, I am, I am just giving the Premier health advice, preventative health.

I would like to ask the Premier, why then can we not pass laws here on home care which has evolved over the years? The Premier has mentioned VON in the ’60s. Obviously, it was a nonprofit, but sometimes a private nonprofit is different than a private profit. We Care is different than VON. The Premier knows that. We know that. Why can we not look at, looking at the 21st Century, designing a system for home care which is going to be so crucial?

We have talked about improving the co-ordination between Community Services and the Department of Health. We need greater co-ordination between the Health ministry in Manitoba versus the city health administration in the city. We need greater co-ordination from the hospitals to outpatients and others who are affected. We need more appropriate and flexible self-managed care. We have talked about that in our platform. The government has talked about that before, as well. Nobody is denying that, but I would like to ask the Premier, would he consider a law that would make home care nonprofit?

Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, I just want to assure the Leader of the Opposition that I can withstand all of the pressures that he wishes to bring to bear on me or anybody else does. My frustration is in my inability to make myself understood to the Leader of the Opposition because of his blind ideology.

He is absolutely blinded to any of the aspects of the issue that are important to the people who are receiving the service. The only thing in the end that they care about is that they get the service at the greatest possible quality of standards that we can justify by virtue of the money that we have available to us, that they get the service when they need it, how they need it, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, in the most efficient and effective manner to meet their needs.

The fact is I would never hold up the American system as the beacon, as the best example. I go to the States and I tell my colleagues, the other governors of the western states in the United States, that they ought to look at the Canadian system because it has many, many advantages, and I cite the fact that there are 35 million Americans who are not covered at all and another 30 million who have inadequate coverage and all of these kinds of things, but for him to suggest that what happens in a system that is privatized is that people make less money is simply wrong. Nurses make more money in that system. Doctors make more money in that system, and that is precisely the way in which his argument falls apart.

His argument falls apart on every count. All we are discussing here is his blind ideology and that of his colleagues. It is the same issue that they raised about the Manitoba Telephone System. What people care about is that they get their service and they get it in the most efficient and effective form possible at reasonable cost.

In the end, it is not a matter of who delivers it or how it is delivered or whether this person is a union member or not a union member, it is whether or not the service is delivered to the standards that people expect at a cost that the government can justify.

Mr. Doer: Again, I would like to ask the Premier, based on his statement right now, the head of We Care home care today said, yes, their staff on a profit system make less money than the nonprofit system, either run by the government or other agencies such as VON. I would like to ask the Premier: How much less will they make? Did they consider that? What was the impact of that on turnover rates?

We know that all the studies indicate that staffing salaries affect turnover rates which affects quality of care. It is tied together. It is not two separate issues. That is what worries me, that the government never did take a look at this in terms of the whole system, that they are ideologically bound to three or four people that want to have profit in home care, one who seems to be the only one whose report we have been able to find, the We Care system. That is the only recommendation in the ’90s we found to privatize. So the government goes ahead lock, stock and barrel without any other report and has no other evidence, but there is a connection. How can the Premier say today that there will not be a reduced salary level when the owner of the We Care program, the main proponent of this system, is saying there will be a reduction in salaries?

I would like to ask the Premier, what will that impact be on turnover?

Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, I can say that because we do not know ultimately who is going to get the contract. It may well be VON. It may well be the MGEU who collectively organize and bid for the work. It may not be We Care at all. Those are the kinds of things that we will be dealing with when we have the proposal call and the bids put in place.

Mr. Doer: I think that all of us have watched something called loss leader, where people come in to bid to take the business, they buy the business and then eventually raise the costs over time. Even in hockey arenas there is a controversy on loss leaders. What is to stop a private company, for example, Great-West Life, from coming in with all their wealth, who are in favour of providing health care services in North America as part of their corporate objectives? What is to stop a company like Great-West Life from loss leadering of tender to eventually get rid of the nonprofit sector and then over time raise the rates dramatically? I did not see anything to deal with that, and why should we go along with anything like that?

In fact, we believe and I want to make it clear again that we should pass a law in here with the principles of the Canada Health Act on profit on health care and home care. I do not have any problems, as I say, in a marketplace economy that has competitive features to it, but I believe also, in a marketplace in our mixed economy, health care should be nonprofit.

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Mr. Filmon: As I understand it, I mean, these are things that get into the detail. I will give my understanding. The Leader of the Opposition can probably go and pick a difference between me and the Health minister, but among other things we will assure that there will remain competition in the system. That is the whole principle of what we are involved with, so it is being tendered on a four-quadrant basis. Circumstances are being put in place so that one bidder would not get all four quadrants. That being the case, then there will always be comparisons and opportunities so that if one decides that, having bid too low, they want to up their prices, the next time they may not get the work. As long as there is competition in the system, we are better protected than we are today. Today we are the captive of one group who have a monopoly on the provision of that service, and we are assured that we will never be able to provide the service anymore efficiently or at any less cost.

Mr. Doer: Mr. Chairman, it is a strange statement from the Premier who says he is captured by himself, because he in essence administers and manages, ultimately, government and the system. It is a strange concern of his that he is worried about himself in terms of home care delivery.

I would like to again ask the Premier--and you know, I keep going back and back and back at this issue--will he order his Minister of Health (Mr. McCrae) to release the APM recommendations articulated by the minister that he had on May 27, ’94, documents that the advisory committee says that they read just recently? Will he order his minister to release those documents, those recommendations, and any other materials that deal with such a major decision, so that we could all look at them? I mean, we get sometimes 20 pages of explanation on amendments to bills, but something that is amending a program in such a radical, ideological way makes the Minister of Health sound like he is doing this thing on the back of an envelope. He is running this, making these changes on the back of an envelope as he did on the emergency wards, flying by the seat of his proverbial pants, trying to find somebody to blame for the mess we are in today, instead of himself.

So will the Premier agree at least to order his Minister of Health--and he would expect the same thing from us, as he should. I mean, we have got a huge controversy going on in Ottawa because everybody is looking for documents about Somalia. This is a program that impacts on 17,000 Manitobans. Could the Premier please order today that these documents be released? So then we can get on to the merit of the decision rather than some of the information the government is withholding on why they made a decision.

Mr. Filmon: I am told that there is no report, Mr. Chairman, and I invite the Leader of the Opposition to pursue this line of questioning in the Estimates of the Department of Health.

Mr. Doer: I will have to look at the Black’s Law dictionary tonight for the definition of “report.” Does the government have anything in writing from APM on home care?

Mr. Filmon: I have not seen it, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Doer: The health advisory committee, appointed by the Conservative government, said that they had read the documents on home care produced by Connie Curran, APM consultants for the minister. Can the Premier please confirm whether Ms. Keirstead is telling the truth that there were, in fact, documents, i.e., in writing?

Mr. Filmon: I can neither confirm nor deny that, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Doer: Mr. Chairman, last week I asked the Premier for the APM consulting contract. I asked again on Monday; I asked again on Tuesday; I asked again today. Does he go to the Minister of Health or does the staff go to the Ministry of Health and ask whether those documents exist after we ask in the House? Does he care about parliamentary democracy? I know he does not like criticism. He does not like any questions, even though I remember some pretty feisty questions a few years ago from him when he had the same job.

So does he not go out of Question Period and ask whether those documents exist? Is the Premier then saying he did not even inquire about those questions after we asked the question four times in the House? He did not get up and answer the question most of the times, but did he not even have the courtesy of inquiring whether there were documents?

To give us an answer, he cannot confirm or deny, I mean, what kind of follow-up takes place when questions are raised in this House? This is presumably a parliamentary democracy and presumably keeps us all accountable. The Premier is always talking about making everybody accountable, enhancing accountability. There are documents all over about accountability. Where does the buck stop with the Premier? When he gets asked a question about documents, does he pursue it with the Department of Health? Do those documents exist? Did he ask that question? Did he get an answer of whether they do or do not exist?

When his Minister of Health (Mr. McCrae) stood up in this House two years ago and said, he has recommendations, what is this a nudge-nudge, wink-wink kind of government? So I would ask the Premier, did he follow it up? Where are the recommendations? Can he produce the recommendations for us? I think the public has a right to have those things. I do not think we should play Fifth Amendment cutesy games in this House when the questions are being asked. The essence of our democracy is that the Premier is accountable for his total government policy.

To say “I can neither confirm nor deny” is not leadership in my opinion; it is ducking. We should stop the ducking and start answering. Now, if he does not want to answer in regular Question Period, I just want to know whether he goes back to all his Premier’s staff, and does all his Premier’s staff go back and ask the Department of Health whether these documents exist and do they advise the Premier whether in fact they do exist or not? That is my question to the Premier.

Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, I choose not to participate in abuse of the rules and procedures of this House with the Leader of the Opposition. He has the Minister of Health (Mr. McCrae) sitting in the next committee room; that is the person who can and should answer his question.

Mr. Doer: I would like to ask, in light of the fact that I asked the Premier the lead question three or four times, twice at least this week on Connie Curran’s recommendations to the government, does his clerk of cabinet follow that up with the ministry of departments that are affected, and does the Premier get an answer back? Or are questions just floating around this Chamber with no follow-up?

Mr. Filmon: Those questions were answered by the Minister of Health (Mr. McCrae).

Mr. Doer: Did the Premier’s Office follow up the questions that we raised in the House about a recommendation in a report? I want to know whether the clerk of cabinet or the senior cabinet, the Premier’s staff, follows up on questions that are raised. I recall that if the Premier asked the former premier a question affecting the ministry of a department--and the member for Brandon East (Mr. Leonard Evans) knows this--the Premier’s senior staff would follow it up.

Mr. Ford would go to the deputy minister of a department or a minister of the department because that is the job of the senior staff, to follow it up. We are paying them a lot of money, and I respect that. I want to know whether the Premier’s staff, yes or no, followed up the questions on Connie Curran’s report--or Connie Curran’s documents, quoting the advisory council, and recommendations, quoting his own minister.

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Mr. Filmon: Absolutely, Mr. Chairman. If the questions were not answered or taken as notice, they would be followed up but, in this case, the questions were answered.

Mr. Doer: The questions were not answered. The Premier said, I can neither confirm or deny. That is what his answer was when I asked him: I can neither confirm or deny there were documents. That is not an answer. Is that, yes, there are documents, or, no, there are not documents? I asked whether there were documents and I asked whether there were recommendations, so I want to know. I do not want to have, I cannot confirm or deny. You cannot plead the Fifth Amendment in this Chamber. I do not want confirm or deny. I want to know whether your staff saw documents or found out whether there were documents and I want to know whether it is yes or no. Are there documents or are there no documents that exist from APM on home care? It is not a difficult question.

Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, I said that that is a question that should appropriately be asked to the Minister of Health. He would have that information.

Mr. Doer: Does the Premier, when he is asked a question in the House, which could be over all ministers--the Premier is the First Minister. He gets questions in the House, like the Prime Minister does, like nine other premiers do in other provinces, like former premiers do. When he gets asked a question in the House and he chooses not to answer, does his staff go back and get the answers for him or is he satisfied with saying, I can neither confirm or deny?

Mr. Filmon: I did not say that in the House.

Mr. Doer: Yes, you did.

Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, in Question Period I did not say, I can neither confirm nor deny. In Question Period, there was no question taken as notice. There was no question unanswered. It was answered at that time by the Minister of Health (Mr. McCrae), and I invite him to go and to debate and discuss that issue with the Minister of Health.

Mr. Doer: Mr. Chairman, in this Chamber a few moments ago when I asked the question about the documents--[interjection] Well, there is Question Period and there are questions in this period and I asked the question whether the Premier had gone back from Question Period or the Premier’s staff, the clerk of cabinet, which would normally go back to a ministry and a deputy ministry to find out the answer to the question. I did not ask him to give me this namby-pamby confirm or deny. I asked him to stand up and give us an answer whether documents exist. It sounds like the Iran-Contra scandal, you know: I cannot remember. I was sleeping in the afternoon. I cannot confirm or deny. Deniability, it is an American concept, is it not? Yes. Do we have one of those? No, not in a parliamentary democracy.

So all I know is, you have a lot of staff here. You are asking us to approve all kinds of staff. Now, if they do not do anything because when we ask questions they do not care about it, tell me about it, but if we take it serious enough to ask a question in this House and we pay people good money to be clerk of cabinet, with no disrespect, and I am talking about the position, not the person, is there follow-up? You have senior political staff. I want to know whether they follow up. I mean, I see little messages coming in in Question Period all the time, little newspaper stories coming in all the time and little briefing notes and quotes back to 1912, what somebody said. I just want to know whether today when you get a question or yesterday when you got the question or the day before, does your senior staff find out whether there are documents or not, and can you tell us yes or no? That is all I want. I just want him to stand up and tell us what is going on here.

Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, the member has great difficulty understanding.

Mr. Doer: I understand completely.

Mr. Filmon: I have told him that there was no question that was taken as notice in Question Period and there was no question that was not answered in Question Period. If there had been, my staff would have followed up on it.

Mr. Doer: So I would like to ask the Chairman, is the Premier telling us that not one member of his staff went to the Department of Health to find out whether there were recommendations or documents from APM to the provincial government that were pursuant to the contract that we tabled in the House? Is he telling me that not one of his staff followed up that question from last week, from this Monday, from this Tuesday and from today? I am asking the Premier whether any of his staff followed up the question dealing with a contract paid for by the taxpayers, a question asked to the Premier.

Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, because nothing was taken as notice, and no question was unanswered, there was no follow-up.

Mr. Doer: Mr. Chairman, if the Premier gave a false answer or an incorrect answer--not intentionally false--in the House, and his senior staff or a staff of another department were aware that the information was wrong, would they not then follow up the answer the Premier gave and give him advice on whether his answer was correct or incorrect? Would they not advise him that information was insufficient? They do not need instructions on notice or not notice.

Mr. Filmon: Or course, Mr. Chairman. He is aware that from time to time I have come back into the House and corrected a previous answer, so that does happen.

Mr. Doer: Mr. Chairman, so the issue of notice is not the only factor for staff to follow up a question of the Premier, the Premier has just acknowledged that. My question is why, in this occasion, when the Premier did not answer three times the question about documents and it was an issue of public importance, is the Premier telling me that not one of his staff had the initiative or the instruction to go back to the Department of Health and find out the status of documents and recommendations?

Mr. Filmon: Yes, I am, Mr. Chairman, because those questions were answered by the Minister of Health (Mr. McCrae).

Mr. Doer: Mr. Chairman, is the Premier telling me that the director of communications, who answers directly to the Premier, who is handing out stuff in the hallway all the time, did not follow up the question dealing with the Connie Curran APM report and did not make any inquiries into the Department of Health into the committee that she is working with, which consists of Mr. Matas, which consists of Ms. Biggar, which consists of Ms. Staples, which consists of Ms. Hachey, which consists of others in the Department of Health? Is the Premier telling me that director of communications did not follow up to the Department of Health and report to the Premier?

Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, I do not know how I am expected to be aware of these things. The staff that he is referring to appear to be most of the ones involved with health, one being an external person to government. I do not know what meeting he is talking about. I do not know what discussion he is talking about. I do not know what committee he is talking about. If he has information, let him put it on the table.

Mr. Doer: Is Roger Matas a member of the Premier’s staff?

Mr. Filmon: Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Doer: Is Bonnie Staples a member of the Premier’s staff?

Mr. Filmon: Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Doer: Do they have responsibilities to liaise with the Department of Health about matters of public importance?

Mr. Filmon: Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairperson: Before we continue, is there leave for the honourable members to remain seated while asking questions?

Some Honourable Members: Leave.

Mr. Chairperson: Leave is granted.

Mr. Doer: The members, Mr. Matas and Ms. Staples, did they not, as members of the Premier’s staff, inquire about the recommendations and documents and materials in writing dealing with the questions of the APM contract on home care that we tabled in the Legislature? I am asking the Premier whether they followed up on those questions that we raised in this House, as members of the Premier’s staff.

Mr. Filmon: I do not have any information on that, Mr. Chairman. Neither of those people is here to consult with, so I do not have any response that I can give him there.

Mr. Doer: I believe the staff would be in the building. Could the Premier inquire whether they have or have not followed up on the questions we have raised? We have some time. We have got tomorrow; we have got the next day. The staff that are at the table cannot answer the question. I believe the staff I mentioned, do they answer directly to the Premier, or do they answer through the clerk of cabinet?

Mr. Filmon: One is part of my senior staff and the other is not, so it would be a direct relationship with one, but not the other.

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Mr. Doer: I would like to ask the Premier to find out from those staff whether in fact they, his communication people, again working for his ministry in this set of lines in the department that the Premier is responsible for, whether in fact they inquired in the Department of Health on the recommendations, the documentation, the materials pursuant to the APM contract on home care that was referred to by the Minister of Health on May 27 wherein they said that there were recommendations. I would like to have the Premier--and I am willing to not ask a question in other areas that may affect other staff, if the Premier’s staff can follow that up. But I want to know whether they, in fact, made inquiries about those documents pursuant to our questions and pursuant to the APM consultant’s contract which we tabled in this House on home care.

Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, I will inquire and bring that information back tomorrow.

Mr. Doer: Yesterday the Premier mentioned that this matter was before the government of the day, that the issue of home care privatization was before the government of the day for six months to one year. Today, in a media report, the chair of the government’s hand-picked committee on home care said, and I quote: We are not feeling we have had much to do with this issue on home care to date. We have felt that we have received documents--which, of course, are the Connie Curran documents--and obviously the whole plan to go private went to Treasury Broad--”private” being her word, not mine--before we saw it, and we did not think that that would be the process. So we spent a year and a half trying to convince the minister often that we need to be in the loop of consultation, so we are not quite sure what we will be doing in the future.

Can the Premier then indicate whether in fact the advisory committee chair that was chosen by this government is correct that this matter has been before the Treasury Board in government for the last year and a half?

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

Mr. Filmon: Mr.Chairman, this is why I keep advising the Leader of the Opposition to ask that of the Minister of Health (Mr. McCrae). I would have limited knowledge of it. My only indication is that the earliest it came into the process of Treasury Board consideration was during this last estimate cycle that began sometime late last summer or early fall.

Mr. Doer: Who hires and who fires the secretary of Treasury Board?

Mr. Filmon: The government.

Mr. Doer: Yes, and is the government not headed by the Premier and therefore he makes the--the last time I looked, when the person was appointed, it had the Premier’s signature on the press releases. That is a person whose Order-in-Council was signed by the Premier, and I am not going to go on any further. We know that the Premier hires and fires the secretary of Treasury Board.

In fact I cannot remember, the last time I was in the Premier’s Office, from time to time we meet on some issues dealing with Manitoba, and it seems every time I go there, the secretary of Treasury Board is coming out of his office. Does the Premier not meet with the secretary of Treasury Board on a regular basis, and does the secretary of the Treasury Board not apprise the Premier of matters of major importance, such as matters like privatizing home care?

Mr. Filmon: Yes to both questions and I repeat that the earliest that I am aware that the matter was being considered by Treasury Board or was under the process of Treasury Board Estimates preparation was within this last budget cycle, beginning somewhere in the late summer or early fall.

Mr. Doer: We will leave the record on the year and a half with the public comments of the head of the government’s advisory board and her information about Treasury Board dealing with it for the last year and a half.

I want to ask the Premier another question. I want to move on from home care, and I thank the Premier for taking as notice the issue of Ms. Staples and Mr. Matas.

Barb Biggar has been hired by the provincial government we believe on two contracts to date. One has been taken as notice twice by the Minister responsible for the Telephone System (Mr. Findlay), both in December and last week. Can the Premier advise us as to the size of the contract at the Telephone System?

Mr. Filmon: That is a question that would more properly have to be obtained from the Crown corporation. I do not have it.

Mr. Doer: Can the Premier advise us, what is the general scope of the contract that Ms. Biggar has with the Manitoba Telephone System?

Mr. Filmon: No, Mr. Chairman, I do not have that information.

Mr. Doer: I do not even want to acknowledge that the staff of his Executive Council do not follow up on these questions that are asked. I am not naive enough to believe that people in his office--he has numbers of staff in his office--do not follow up these issues of public importance that are raised with him in the House on a regular basis, and so, again, to confirm or deny a position I do not think is very--I mean, eventually we are going to find out how big the contract is and what she is going to do. So it is a lot easier to find out ahead of time from the person rather than him ducking and hiding and playing about with this information.

I would like to ask the Premier another question. Can he confirm again that the contract size for Barb Biggar was $75,000 for advertising to deal with the Department of Health?

Mr. Filmon: I am told, Mr. Chairman, that it is up to a maximum of $75,000, depending on the amount of work that is done under the contract.

Mr. Doer: I would like to ask the Premier whether this contract was tendered.

Mr. Filmon: It was the subject of a proposal call, and it was a proposal call that was based on requirements that were put together by the senior administration of the Department of Health. It was reviewed and the recommendation was made by the Department of Health senior officials.

Mr. Doer: I was asking the Premier, was this publicly tendered pursuant to the tendering process, or was this a select group of people that were contacted to put in a proposal? I just want to know whether it was an open public tender or not.

Mr. Filmon: My information is that it was an open public tender or proposal call, and there were five bids.

Mr. Doer: Can the Premier indicate when this was tendered and where it was tendered?

Mr. Filmon: With respect, Mr. Chairman, this is the kind of thing that is detail that ought to be derived by asking the Minister of Health (Mr. McCrae), who is sitting in the next committee room answering questions.

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(Mr. Chairperson in the Chair)

Mr. Doer: Again, I ask the Premier, when the questions were raised publicly last week, did nobody in the Premier’s Office follow up on the questions raised about tendering, about cost, about the process that was used to hire obviously somebody that is closely associated to the Premier himself? Is this not an issue that would normally have some alarm bells ringing in the Premier’s Office to give him information, or is this office off in some other separate orbit in terms of what is going on here in the province?

I just want to know whether there was any follow-up on when it was tendered, how it was tendered, because obviously these are issues that are important to Manitobans because of the close previous and present association with the Premier and his former senior communication officer.

Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, of course, I followed up. That is why I was able to give all the information I did. I did not know that there was another question which was what date was it tendered, and that is getting to great detail. I can find that out if he has until tomorrow or the next day to find that information, but it would be very simple to go next door where the Department of Health is ready to answer those questions.

Mr. Doer: Well, if the Premier has not noticed, for the last week we have been asking the Minister of Health for just a copy of documents or recommendations on a matter dealing with one of the most important issues of public importance to the House, so there is no easy way to pry out public information from this government. So thank you, I would like the Premier to take that as notice, when it was tendered and how it was tendered in terms of that contract, and I thank the Premier for taking that as notice.

I would like to ask the Premier, what is the size of the budget that has been approved for the total communication efforts for this total fiscal year, including the mailing of brochures, including the hiring of staff or consultants, and including the whole issue of the TV and radio ads?

Mr. Filmon: Is this for the Department of Health, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. Doer: Mr. Chairman, the Premier chairs cabinet. The cabinet receives minutes from Treasury Board. Treasury Board must authorize all contracts over $20,000. The decision that is recommended by Treasury Board cannot proceed without cabinet approval; otherwise, the Auditor would cite it because it clearly exceeds the authority of a department or the Treasury Board. So I would like to ask the Premier just to take that issue as notice as well.

Mr. Filmon: Is this for the Department of Health? I repeat the question.

Mr. Doer: This is for the Premier, the head of government.

Mr. Filmon: Well, now the Leader of the Opposition is operating like a Philadelphia lawyer. Is the question with respect to a budget of the Department of Health?

Mr. Doer: I asked the Premier the size of the contract of Ms. Biggar with the Telephone System and then with the Ministry of Health. Then I asked the Premier on whether it was tendered. I further asked the Premier, and he answered, yes, by the senior officials of the Department of Health. I then asked the Premier when and how was it tendered. He said he would take that as notice. I then further asked, pursuant to the decision, what is the size of the contract? If the Premier does not know and wants to get that information along with the timing of the tender, I respect that. I am just asking the Premier as the head of government: What is the scope in cost of this public campaign, a public campaign that presumably would be before all Manitobans?

Mr. Filmon: I will take that as notice, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Doer: A year ago we asked the Premier about Ms. Biggar’s involvement in working for the beverage companies. Has the government forgiven the beverage companies on the environmental provisions that they had passed in law?

Mr. Filmon: Have to ask the Department of Environment, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Doer: Did the Premier not sign an Order-in-Council forgiving--let me go by memory here--but did the government, the Premier, not sign an Order-in-Council of some over $800,000, and this is a question I asked the Premier last year. He said to me in Hansard, do not bet that we will forgive this environmental provision. Did the Premier not forgive through Order-in-Council in March of 1996 the sum over $800,000 for beverage companies?

Mr. Filmon: I have a wonderful memory, but from time to time I need to verify facts and figures such as this. I do sign hundreds of Orders-in-Council, in fact, in the thousands range. So I will have to verify that, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Doer: Last year the Premier indicated that to the best of his knowledge, Ms. Biggar, who was formerly working for the Premier, was not involved in this decision by government. Can the Premier advise us of the status a year later?

Mr. Filmon: I confirm absolutely that she was not involved with that decision, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Doer: I want to move on to some other items. I want to ask the Premier some questions on other staffing issues. The Premier is responsible for hiring and firing deputy ministers, and I want to ask the Premier, can the Premier indicate the rationale or the reasons of why the deputy minister responsible for post-secondary education and training no longer works for the province of Manitoba?

Mr. Filmon: I know that the Leader of the Opposition will be sensitive to the need not to discuss personnel matters in a personal sense. I can just say to the Leader of the Opposition that by mutual agreement the employment of the individual involved ended with the government. The government employs people at a deputy minister level by Order-in-Council and their employment, from time to time, can be altered or in fact terminated by Order-in-Council. It was the desire of government to have a change of personnel at the senior level in that area and the change was made.

Mr. Doer: The individual we have asked about, and there have been decisions made by the government before which we have not, I have not personally raised. I respect the realities of individuals with governments but I also know that Manitobans have, there is a certain credibility level with some deputy ministers beyond this building. In listening to business and labour and others in post-secondary education, this individual had a tremendous credibility that I had personally picked up of confidence, of integrity, of vision in post-secondary education that people felt were very important for this province in terms of developing a long-term strategy for economic development and post-secondary education.

Now, we did not agree with all decisions made by the government on post-secondary education and we would address those to the appropriate minister as appropriate because the deputy minister does not establish policy. But I am concerned that we have lost, in a vital area, an individual that had a lot of respect, from what I could hear, and a person, as I say, that was implementing some decisions that we did not agree with but we respected the fact that the government is responsible for policy and we would hold them accountable on matters such as access and other programs. I fear that we have lost a vital commodity, and I want to know whether the Premier shares this belief that we have lost an important commodity in our senior administration, and why have we lost that important human skill, a person with credibility in a very vital department?

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Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, I want to emphasize that I have never once questioned the competence or the experience of the individual being named. I said that for a variety of reasons I felt that change was important at this time, and I want to point out that I was the Premier and our government raised that individual to a deputy minister level. He had not been at that level when we took government and that the person who has replaced him in this position is an extremely competent person and a career civil servant who had been under the employ of the former administration, so I do not think that we are doing it for political reasons. I think we are doing it for reasons of balance and reasons of putting in people who, we feel, will pursue the challenges that we face in the best possible way.

Mr. Doer: I was not suggesting for a moment, and I would not suggest today, that the reasons were political. I want to make that clear. I could not even begin to guess the politics of the person in the job whom I have known for a long time, nor could I guess the politics of the person who was in the job. I am just talking about somebody that had--there are sometimes people in the administration of the Province of Manitoba that gain credibility outside of this building, and credibility is not easily won and, I think, is important for the delivery of services in the public sector, and particularly post-secondary education, which is dealing with a whole range of people with a whole range of educational needs, with educational resources, with educational challenges, with people in the private sector, people in the training sector, people in the education sector, people in the labour sector.

It is not, I would imagine, an easy job, so when I read your press release, I have to say that I was quite surprised about that one decision. I am not talking political; I want to make this absolutely clear. I come from the school that I could not even begin to tell you some of the people I worked with in deputy ministers’ jobs what their politics were. It was never as important to me as their energy and advice, and their ability to deliver. So I am not raising it from that perspective. I was raising it--I think I am just raising the question of the Premier: Did he feel that we could not meet the educational challenges with the incumbent? I thought that we could and we had a lot of chances to go forward, to go ahead under his stewardship in that department.

Mr. Filmon: I think in two areas the most difficult decisions, and probably the most lonely decisions, that I as head of government make are in selection of those who become more equal than others as members of cabinet and, secondarily, as the deputy ministers that I choose. I am very mindful of the responsibility I have to make good decisions and appropriate decisions in

each case. I weigh those decisions carefully, and I do not take any of them lightly. I would not want--and I think ultimately our government will succeed or fail based on the quality of people and the capability of the people that we put in those roles either as ministers or as deputy ministers, and so it is an enormously important task, I think.

I would not want anything that I said to diminish in any way the skills and the talents of the individual that the member opposite is putting forward, because I know that he has other good employment prospects. I certainly would want to support him in that, and I do not want this to enter into a discussion that could in any way diminish that because I have nothing on the record that I would want to put that would be negative about the individual.

I do not know where this is heading. I know that governments other than ours oftentimes make many more shifts and changes in deputies. I am very proud of the fact that a number of our people who are serving in senior administrative roles are people who serve many administrations. The member opposite was with me at the retirement of one Charlie Curtis just a few weeks ago and he served many administrations in this province.

The same can be said of some people sitting at this table advising me; others who we have either promoted or retained as deputy minister rank people or assistant deputy minister rank people, and I am very proud of the work that they all do. I always attempt to put in place people who bring the combination of skills and energy and enthusiasn for the job that I believe is necessary for the challenges that they face.

I will accept the Leader of the Opposition’s disagreement with that decision just as I will his agreement with the decision I made on the new Deputy Minister of Finance and say that from time to time he and I are going to differ. That is why he is there and I am here. He has had different roles, I have had different roles, and I know that he and I in other scenarios often saw eye to eye. I would say that if he were in the same boat as I was, he would not always make the same decisions I do. But I guess I will take the responsibility and I will live with it, but I do not want to in any way diminish the skills or the talents or the contributions of the individual that we are now referring to.

Mr. Doer: I respect that. I just want to pursue a couple of other questions on it, and then I will move on. If I recall correctly in Levesque’s book--it is a fascinating book on all kinds of issues of public life as his former role of premier. He said that you had to get a balance between your minister and your deputy minister as a team. If there was any problem between the two as the elected premier, the deputy minister had to go. I note that Mr. Goyan worked with--I do not want to mention his name, the former deputy minister-- I already have--but if I could ever take a word back here. The former deputy minister worked with the former Education minister and now there has been a change in ministers. Was the reason based on conflict just in terms of the existing minister and the former deputy minister?

Mr. Filmon: Not to my knowledge.

Mr. Doer: The other issue that can result in a person leaving that role is a major policy difference with the government. I do not know whether there was or was not, because I have not talked to the individual, but I noted in your budget a major decrease in investment overall in the apprenticeship program and other programs and post-secondary--some programs, not all post-secondary programs.

Was there any fundamental disagreement between the government and the former deputy minister on policy and resource allocations in the department dealing with post-secondary education?

Mr. Filmon: Not that I am aware of, Mr. Chairman. In fact, the individual who is being referenced was part of the process that actually took those Estimates through Treasury Board.

Mr. Doer: I want to move into some other items, the whole issue of federal-provincial affairs, and, again, I am inviting the member for St. Boniface (Mr. Gaudry), do you want to ask any questions? [interjection] I beg your pardon? Well, this may be an item that you are interested in. I will start with something that you might be concerned about.

Can the Premier advise us as the minister responsible for federal-provincial affairs on the status of St. Boniface College, Collège de Saint-Boniface, merci beaucoup? As I understand it, the federal government has reduced its investment. As I understand it, the province has responded in kind by passing on a reduction to the college. As I understand it now, the province and the feds are back negotiating some other financial arrangements.

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So I would just like to get it from, I will not say the horse’s mouth because that would be inappropriate. I would just like to get it from the person where the buck stops. What is the status? What was cut? Why was it cut? Is it back on the table, and can we see a program that many people in St. Boniface feel is very important for both the education programs and opportunities available in Manitoba and the cultural reality that we have in our community across the river?

Mr. Filmon: Let me say to the Leader of the Opposition that nobody is more concerned about this than I am, and I will just say that the reality that I perceive in this issue is as follows.

The federal government has been reducing the per-pupil transfers for Collège Saint-Boniface over three years, I believe, and for the last two years we have been choosing, as I understand it, to supplement the college’s revenues to make up for that reduction that has been taking place from a source which is the French language, FLOLE funding, and then this year, in addition to the cuts to St. Boniface College, they also cut the OLE funding, and they passed along the $116 million of transfer payment reduction on health and education. So every single potential source that we had to try and keep whole the programming at St. Boniface College was simultaneously cut. The department, in evaluating what could be done, found no other means of being able to support this programming despite the fact that we consider it to be extremely valuable.

I appreciate the grave concern that is being expressed by people throughout our Francophone community in Manitoba and had personal approaches from a number of people including Paul Ruest, the rector or president at the college. I know him well and have been appreciative of the work that he has done in a variety of different applications within this whole field of bilingual education, so I have asked the group of senior officials, including Clerk of the Executive Council and the deputy minister of post-secondary education and others to meet with them and to try and come up with a plan that might assist them to keep the programming, or at least to keep that section of the college whole. I do not know how it will turn out other than that we have been willing to look at a variety of options and alternatives, and we are seeking a plan that might help us in the process. I do not have any final answer that I can give as to what we might do or what we found.

Mr. Doer: When did the government find out from the federal government about the OLE cut that made the dramatic impact on the college? Was it contained in the federal budget or was there notice before then--the most recent federal budget, that is?

Mr. Filmon: As I understand it, this year’s reduction was in the federal budget.

Mr. Doer: I am sure that there are concerns from all political parties about this. I mean, the whole issue of its place in our education system and also perhaps the sensitivity going on in this country right now with the programs in western Canada and how quickly important programs, if they are reduced, also have two possible meanings, three possible meanings: one, the educational impact that it would have as a possible consequence of the decision, two, the cultural consequences to our community, and three, the national implications at a time where everything that happens one way or the other--I look at what happened in Montreal about a jar of pickles, I think it was, from New York with kosher wording and becoming a huge symbol of language in Quebec and therefore, by definition, whether I like it or not-- and I do not like it--but an issue of debate across the country again.

Obviously, I think we can always--I think the Premier and I were proud when we were at The Forks that we were able to point to the kind of--I think we have moved past the 1980s, if I might say so, where we were I think unfortunately embroiled in unnecessary disputes, but that is my personal opinion. I think we have moved beyond the 1980s. You know, we all know the Populism in issues and how you can potentially inappropriately--how should I say it?--inflame issues in our own community. We have tried to stay away from that in our caucus, as the Premier knows, and I am very worried about it, so is there any way of having a short-term transition to develop a plan that could work with the federal government, that we could put before the federal government, which made the cut, and have them have to deal with this one way or the other? I think that sometimes when the government does that with other entities--I can think of Abitibi-Price and the takeover, other economic projects--when we come forward with a plan and then put it back to somebody else, it may help us force the other side, the other side being the cutter as opposed to the cuttee. I am sure that is something that we could all agree with, so I am just raising the prospect of getting a transition plan that makes cultural and educational sense, that we put back to the federal government and have all parties put pressure on the federal government.

I again prefer us to work as one community on these issues, to work together on these issues. The member for Wolseley (Ms. Friesen) has raised this, and the member for Radisson (Ms. Cerrilli) has raised this, en français. Just after you left last week--I know I am not supposed to say that, so I take that back, but we were disappointed because we wanted to get attention to it. The member for St. Boniface (Mr. Gaudry) has raised this, and I just like us to get a plan to propose to the federal government.

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Mr. Filmon: I appreciate the considerate manner in which the Leader of the Opposition is putting this forward, because I share his concern about how this might play out in Quebec and in the context of a national debate. Despite the fact that the folklore in Quebec still talks about Manitoba in the early ’80s and the lack of services, there is a growing awareness there of tremendous progress that has been made over the last decade in the provision of French language services in many of our public institutions, hospitals, personal care homes, highway signs--all sorts of ways in which government services are now provided in French as well as English.

I am aware because of efforts that were made several years ago by not only our government, but my wife chaired a fundraiser that led to money being raised to move the national volleyball team here. If you have watched the national women’s volleyball team, you know the contribution that is made by some of the players from Quebec. At the time one of their difficulties with being located in our neighbouring province was that their only French-speaking coach had quit and several of their players were in the process of leaving the team, because they could not pursue a post-secondary education in that province in French.

One of the great assets that we had going for us in convincing the team to come here was that we did have those options at Collège de Saint-Boniface. In fact, it has resulted in a complete reversal of that attitude. We have, I believe, not only a French-speaking coach but a number of players who are stars of that team. So that added to the expansion that we are making right now of economic development using the Francophone chambers of commerce throughout the province and utilizing that skill availability for promotion of the call centres and other important economic opportunities here in the province.

There is not any way in which I cannot speak of the attractiveness and the advantages that it brings to our province to have these post-secondary options for training in French. After my meeting last week or the week before with the federal minister there was a staff follow-up with his staff on specifically on that sensitivity and the way in which this might be portrayed in the upcoming national debates. I know they are aware of it.

I know as well we have had the Minister of Education and Training write directly to the deputy prime minister who is also responsible for this particular OLE programming again laying out a lot of these arguments for her. We will certainly take this as an all-party effort and try and see what can be done. I would invite perhaps my staff to develop a strategy whereby we can speak as one and try and ensure that they assist in the recognition of the problem. If it means that we have to find a short-term transition solution, hopefully we will work very hard to do that if we can be assured that there is a better long-term response from the federal government.

Mr. Neil Gaudry (St. Boniface): Mr. Chairman, I would just like to comment on the fact that I would like to thank the Minister of Education (Mrs. McIntosh) and the Minister of Finance (Mr. Stefanson). I did meet with them in the Collège de Saint-Boniface. It was I think a good meeting and that is probably one of the reasons why I did not raise a question in the House, because the work was being done and the Minister Stephane Dion was made aware of the situation through a member of St. Boniface also.

I spoke to the M.P. from St. Boniface, Mr. Duhamel, on Monday, and he was going to bring it to caucus this coming week, so I am sure he had made aware several of his colleagues in Ottawa in regard to having a solution. I think looking at the long-term solution like the Premier has mentioned here is not just a short-term solution whereby I think all Manitobans recognize the fact that it is important to have that technical schooling, if you want to call it, in St. Boniface and the development that has happened over the last couple of years with the help of the province.

I am certainly prepared to work with the other two parties and support them in their all-party negotiation in speaking with the community. Rather than taking it to the media or whatever, I think a solution can be found for the College without that kind of an attitude. I will continue working with the member for St. Boniface, the M.P., to make sure that we come to a solution for the Collège de Saint-Boniface. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Doer: I am moving along. This moves us to the constitutional dossier. I understand the Premier met the minister responsible, Mr. Dion, Honourable Dion, last week. I had met the individual prior to his quick ascendency from academic life to one of the lead ministers.

An Honourable Member: Was he a New Democrat then?

Mr. Doer: There are lots of New Democrats in Quebec, about as many federal New Democrats as there are federal Conservatives I think now in the province of Quebec, so I do not think either of us are peaking too early in the belle province, monsieur. We are going to have our next bet again about who is going to win more federal seats. I told the Premier, of course, that we were going to win more seats in the last federal election than his star Kim Campbell who is now apparently making the rounds. Little did I know it would be one-nothing, and that was not much to talk about. He will, of course, come back that he is happy with the provincial results, so I will not pursue that any further.

I want to ask the Premier, in December his public comments and his electronic comments that I listened to and his TV clips that I watched supported the federal government’s package on the so-called national unity file, with the government’s proposal to parliamentary legislation to bequeath, I guess you could use, the veto to various regions in the country, the provision of the distinct society clause as a single clause for Quebec and the other provisions of power.

I would like to ask the Premier, does he still support what the federal government has passed in Parliament, in a very rushed way, I might say, before the December 16 adjournment of Parliament?

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Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, I think that the member opposite will find, no matter what clips he chooses, that I always--well, no, of course, clips end up clipping some of what you say, but I always said that my support for the distinct society clause was contingent on it being part of the Canada clause, and the Prime Minister, I know, confirms that. In fact, Mr. Dion said that he had had those discussions with the Prime Minister and knew of the qualifications that I put on my support for the distinct society clause. It was a qualification, I might say, that arose out of the two reports of this Legislature, all-party reports, in which the so-called Canada clause was developed by the former member for Crescentwood, Mr. Carr, along with the members of that committee and became our unified position.

I must admit that my position on the veto was that I am not a fan of vetoes, but that if the federal government was going to take its own action, lending its veto, then that was something that we had no control or influence on, that it was something that in my view could be changed, particularly with the review of the amending formula.

When they went to the five-province veto--I guess it is the five-region veto--my comments which I shared with Mr. Dion were that that was an abomination, that, in fact, what they have done by that process is create, as in the Animal Farm analogy that the Leader of the Opposition likes to use, some animals being more equal than others, and in this case, it is quite a mixed bag when you consider the way, in effect, it works. You have three that actually do have a veto, Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia, and then you have some that have a veto only partially, only if they can convince somebody else to go with them and then the only thing they really have confirmed is that in this whole process of constitutional change, PEI is irrelevant because it cannot exercise a veto on its own or even with another province, so it is a very, very, I think, disharmonious approach.

My preference would be as it was when we discussed Meech Lake, not to have vetoes, because that will forever block an opportunity to get Senate reform that I believe we ought to have as part of any future constitutional change.

Mr. Doer: That is why in my speech in December, and now I thought we had a bit of a parting of the ways. First of all, I thought the federal government’s motivation was two parts, one part national, the second part Lucien Bouchard, that they were so interested in trying to trap him. Their preoccupation was with Mr. Bouchard. They were so interested in trying to trap him that they were trying to rush something through the House of Commons that bequeaths certain powers through delegated parliamentary authority to certain regions and provinces by definition so that they could try to tactically trap him in voting against it and then try to use it tactically back in the province of Quebec.

So the Premier is right. In terms of the veto, it is almost as if a number of provinces have the veto and a number of provinces do not. Now in Atlantic Canada, you have this compact where PEI has joined with New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to have, you know, we are all okay, Jack, or we will not agree to the constitutional proposal, so the federal government has given PEI a veto through their compact arrangement in Atlantic Canada.

Newfoundland does not have a veto. The three other provinces have one. Manitoba and Saskatchewan certainly do not have one. Quebec and Ontario have them.

An Honourable Member: Alberta does not have one.

Mr. Doer: They do have one.

An Honourable Member: No. If they convince the others who have one.

Mr. Doer: Yes, that is right. We have three provinces that do not have vetoes right now. I do not know how this happened, and I am not even going to blame the Premier for this, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland. I do not agree with the Premier that the federal government--the problem is, the federal government has given this away. If you have an amending formula of 7/50 for most constitutional changes, why is the federal government giving away its veto and does not that now become the benchmark? How are you going to get a premier from B.C. or a premier from Quebec if they come to the table or a premier from Ontario or a premier from other regions to ever agree to something that is less than what the federal parliament passed last year in December.

I do not think this government--again we talk about planning. I do not if they have a plan to get us through the April of ’97 challenges that we have with the automatic opening of the Constitution. I do not believe that anything that was passed in Parliament--I do not believe it was just a token exercise, because it will become the starting point for various regional people and premiers to come forward to that April exercise. Why should the federal government not have a veto? Why do you not amend the Constitution then to make it 50-50 funding formula for health and education and the federal government does not have a veto to stop it? Put it in the Constitution. Initiate it from the provinces, put it in the Constitution, and they cannot stop it. Then we can deal with our deficiency of funding. I think the federal government should have a veto of a constitutional change. What kind of system of government do we have where the federal government says we are not interested in having a say on the Constitution of the country, especially a Constitution, the British North America Act, and other constitutional amendments that were passed since then that affect the balance between federal and provincial powers?

So I do not agree with the proposal of the federal government. We did not ask questions about it. We did not, as the Premier would say, play games with it, but I do not agree with it. I think what you are doing in December of 1995 should be very much moving it towards where you want to be in April ’97, and I think it was just moving us towards a vote in the House of Commons with two weeks notice where, you know, we are adding vetoes like people add courses to meals in terms of constitutional change. The big story was what each region got.

So I want to move to a question to the Premier. The Premier mentioned the Canada clause, which certainly I support. There are a lot of people taking credit for this clause now, I see, and that is fair enough. Both former Liberals are taking credit for it. I know that. There were a lot of people involved in that task force, and it was a good document, and obviously we failed in Meech in the sense that we did not get something positive moving ahead, but we probably succeeded in terms of what the public wanted.

Charlottetown, now, we have a document prepared for Charlottetown, but Charlottetown was rejected in this province, and I think we were the second highest no vote. Now, I know it is one of those other issues that the Premier was not exactly leading the charge on and, of course, neither was I. I did not like parts of it, I have to tell the Premier. I was critical of the Senate proposal. I thought it was absurd. I thought you should have proceeded if you could not have got an agreement, and I did not think you could get an agreement. I thought you could have got an agreement to abolish it, which would have been better than the formula for fixed seats in the province of Quebec. But there was the Canada clause, there was the sense of a strong national government as proposed by the Meech Lake Task Force, and there was a strong recognition that aboriginal people, pursuant to what happened in this province in 1990, would have to be recognized in the Canada clause and we would have to move forward in partnership with the first peoples in this province.

(Mr. Mike Radcliffe, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)

Now, the Premier was stronger on Senate reform than I was. My reform was abolish, which I thought was attainable. I had this argument with former Premier Rae and Premier Romanow, and I think Premier Harcourt was amenable either way. That is my sense of him. [interjection] He is a good poker player.

So I guess what my question to the Premier is, given that Charlottetown was rejected in Manitoba, and it was rejected, I told our caucus before I even signed on with the Premier that it was going to go down, there was a firestorm out there and it was going to go down big time. I said, I do not think we should join the yes committee because that is the Mulroney committee, but I think we should support the equalization provisions in there and some of the other parts that I thought were positive.

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I thought there were some positive parts there, but I was not surprised when seats were guaranteed for one region and not the other that the thing was defeated. I think the only constituency that passed it was the constituency of River Heights, which of course was the home of the only person, the Leader of the party that was opposing it, who now is voting for the same proposal in the House of Commons under the proposal put forward by the Prime Minister, not to make too fine a point on it.

What does the Premier now use, given Charlottetown was rejected? What does the Premier now use? That report, that document that he signed, that I tagged along with partially and then supported and got on the open-line shows with him and got my head kicked in along with him and then the day after I noticed he was trying to say, it did not hurt me, it hurt him more than it did me. I noticed that but I will not take any exception to that.

How do we have a position here in Manitoba given the fact that all the parts of Charlottetown were overwhelmingly defeated and only British Columbia had a higher no vote than Manitoba, if I recall correctly?

Mr. Filmon: If we get into constitutional discussion there will have to be a good deal more consensus building done here in the province. I made the comment in a scrum last week that if aboriginal rights or aboriginal issues are to be discussed under the Constitution that I certainly felt they ought to be at the table.

I also believe that an all-party consensus would be a wise thing to do with respect to constitutional change. My impression is that we are going on the other half of the agenda at the moment, which is the disentanglement of federal and provincial responsibilities and, as Charlottetown identified, there are more than a dozen areas in which the federal and provincial governments overlap. I think that it has a number of obvious impacts, one of them being that we have confusion and duplication of efforts and services between levels of government and, secondly, it costs all of our taxpayers more money to do it in the way in which it currently is done.

I think that this, of course, is the evolution of 130 years of government under a constitutional distribution of responsibilities that could never have anticipated the way the country has grown and developed. It is time to rebalance the federation and it is time to do it on as much as possible a pragmatic basis.

I will say, because I know the Leader of the Opposition would be interested in my position on it, that I am not one that wants to emasculate the federal government. I am not one that wants to simply strip it of powers and turn it, as the saying went during Meech Lake, into a post office sending cheques out to the provinces. I am not one that believes that there is not a role for the federal government to play in setting national standards in areas of social policy or ensuring that there is some continuing ability to assure that our social safety net is able to be accessed on a relatively equal basis across the country.

I also believe that there are a number of areas in which a good, strong case can be made for us to transfer powers both ways, and I know that our administration has been in the forefront of trying to work with the federal government to create a harmonized environmental assessment review process. The trade-off for that has been that we acknowledge and in fact urge the federal government to take the responsibility for setting the environmental standards across the country, because I believe that pollution control standards have to be identical province to province. Otherwise, when we have proposals for any kind of major development that impacts the environment, whether that is a pulp and paper mill or hydroelectric plant or anything else, you cannot have different standards of pollution control for our water, our air, our land, moving across an artificial border on a map.

At the same time, I think it is in everybody’s interest to have a harmonized assessment review process so that you do not have a confusing tangle of different processes that take forever, and by the time you are through it people who have wanted to make the investments and create the development are so frustrated that they pack their bags and leave. That, I might say, is shared. There is no ideology there. Whether it is Liberals, New Democrats or Conservatives in office across Canada, that is a shared view, and certainly even the separatist government in Quebec, I know, shares the desire to arrive at a harmonized environmental assessment review process.

I also believe that we have to continue to move towards greater standards in education--I should say, harmonized standards in education across the country--and that there is a federal role to play in that, even though education is not one of the national powers in our Constitution. I also believe that it is worth looking at the proposal that the federal government is currently discussing to have a national securities commission. Our bottom line includes a number of issues on that, one of which is that there has to be an office of the national securities commission everywhere that there is a commodities or stock exchange. The reason is, of course, that we have a number of organizations, including the largest mutual fund company in Canada, headquartered here, that issues more prospectuses on mutual funds than any other mutual fund company in Canada, and they cannot be forced to go to Toronto or Vancouver or Calgary or Halifax to get their issues approved. So that is one of the issues that we would have as bottom line in any such proposal.

Having said that, there are, I think, not only synergies but probably many practical regulatory advantages to that kind of concept. If it is helpful in the rebalancing of the federation to allow people to recognize that this is one that is being done on a pragmatic, nonpartisan basis, and not just a means of stripping power from the federal government, I think we ought to consider these kinds of alternatives.

But then in the other direction, of course, I think there is a clear indication that all sorts of areas could far more easily be administered more efficiently and at much less cost in the hands of the provinces in many of our resource areas, whether it be forestry or fishing or mining. What else have we looked at in that respect--recreation, labour market development? All of those areas are ones in which a strong case can be made for the primacy of the provincial delivery of those services.

We will continue to work with that, and I think the federal government has laid out some modest proposals in their most recent throne speech, and we will probably have more discussions as they go along with that.

Mr. Doer: I guess we have 12 months. That is not a lot of time, and we had Charlottetown rejected overwhelmingly here. Some of the things that we are talking about were rejected in Charlottetown. Some of the same people who voted against Charlottetown would be opposed perhaps to some elements of the federal government’s initiative and our responses.

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I happen to believe that we should look at modernizing some of the jurisdictions in Canada. As the Premier knows, though, and I think it is very similar to what I heard in the Meech Lake Task Force reports, I do believe in a strong national government. I believe that one of the weaknesses we have had in the debate with the separatists, which was exploited effectively by Bouchard--thank goodness, it did not go too far--was the whole issue of the strengths of Canada: health and post-secondary education and income support programs, which make us in a lot of Canadians’ minds a more equitable society, a more tolerant society, a fairer society than our American neighbours to the south.

We are being reduced dramatically at the same time as people were asked to fight for Canada, and I think that all of us should be looking at the constitutional changes in a positive-- affirming strong programs that people identify with in their daily lives from coast to coast to coast--health care, post-secondary education. Let us look at the bureaucracies in the income support area, whether it is social assistance, UI, compensation programs. Let us look at having a floor of income support on a national basis that I was hoping Minister Axworthy would have looked at before, that would deal with many of the income support programs, instead of just cutting and running in terms of the investments across the country.

I think some powers should be moved to the federal government. I believe the Environment department should be a federal jurisdiction. How that works, I think we could look at the how-to, but I have always believed if you look at the Shoal Lake water for Winnipeg or whether you looked at the ecosystem on the Saskatchewan River in the North, the Hydro projects in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, or Louisiana-Pacific and other proposals--I agree that we do not want some system that takes forever, but I believe the environment should be federal jurisdiction.

I would like to have it international jurisdiction. I liked the co-operation we got from the International Joint Commission when we were dealing with items like the Garrison Diversion project. If people perceive it just to be one way on these issues of power, I think that in this province it will be judged harshly as before.

I would also want the Premier to get off sometimes--my own suggestion is, do not make the Senate the only issue. Just leave that one. We will have this debate again, but I am in favour of abolishing the Senate. You would have had a better chance, we would have had a better chance of getting that last proposal through with equalization if we had abolished the Senate instead of this--I call it the animal farm Senate, some senators are equal and some are more equal than others.

My friend in the West did not like the term, so I did not use it after that. I just leave that with the Premier. How are we going to get a process to get moving here in Manitoba? We got the second highest no vote. How are we going to get the next 12 months ready for the next automatic round? I just raise that with the Premier.

Mr. Filmon: I have indicated publicly that should we be embarking on another round that we will have to get an all-party committee together and a process for trying to engage Manitobans in discussion. I would just point out that there is quite a body of thought that has, I think, support in many areas of the country that suggests that we are not facing any automatic requirement for another constitutional discussion. As I understand it the constitutional requirement is that this discussion had to take place before 1997 on the amending formula as one element. The body of thought is that that discussion did take place both during Meech Lake and Charlottetown and, in fact, the legal requirement has been taken care of. The question is whether or not it is in anybody’s interest to pursue the matter with another constitutional round. Clearly the federal government is evaluating its option right now.

Mr. Doer: I believe the member for The Maples has some questions. Okay.

The issue of health and post-secondary education and social services, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Stefanson) indicated that he was going to do everything possible to get that funding reinstated. Yet last year in the parliamentary bill that dealt with the massive funding reductions contained within the federal budget that we all disagreed with, not one minister of this government appeared before the parliamentary committee. Three ministers of the government appeared in the other committee room almost simultaneously on the gun registration proposal of Minister Rock.

I raised this question before. I think that I personally believe that that reduction from the federal government was a major reduction. It was a massive change in terms of the priority of the federal government for health and post-secondary education and social services. It has had profound implications on the people that are most vulnerable in our communities today. Our children under the age of one year of age are getting a 33 percent reduction in the social assistance provisions. We have sit-ins in ministers’ offices, but the next day a child is still going to have a 33 percent reduction. I do not agree with the Premier in passing all of that reduction on from the federal government on to children under the age of one year.

Why did the government, which presents so many presentations to federal committees on so many occasions, not present to that parliamentary committee and treat it with equal importance and profile and energy and effort and initiative to the gun registration proposal of the federal government?

I believe the committees were sitting simultaneously that same week in Parliament. The Deputy Premier (Mr. Downey) even could have walked across the hall and presented a brief on behalf of Manitoba. It would not have even required any more money.

Mr. Filmon: I guess it is the difference between perception and real opportunity to try and persuade and convince the federal government. I know that each of the individual ministers and their senior officials had countless meetings, briefs were sent, letters were sent by ministers to their federal counterparts, to the federal government. In addition to that, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Stefanson) had a very strong opportunity to dialogue directly with the federal Minister of Finance.

I guess ultimately it was concluded that, with all of those efforts, the appearance before the committee was not an exercise that could produce any results that the direct approach had failed to produce.

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I would just say that the Leader of the Opposition, I think, is being a little misleading when he talks about the reduction of the support payments for children and people on social assistance. It was the City of Winnipeg that passed through its loss of federal support directly. It was not the decision of this government.

Mr. Doer: The money for the municipalities comes from the federal government through the provincial government to municipal payments on social assistance. Is that not correct?

Mr. Filmon: My understanding is that the city government negotiated directly with the federal government for the cost-sharing, and it was that federal cost-sharing that was removed.

Mr. Doer: Who sets the rates in Manitoba for welfare payments to families?

Mr. Filmon: We, of course, set the rates, which the city had previously chosen to top up.

Mr. Doer: So we have in essence--I think there are three decisions that have taken place on social assistance in the last four or five months: (1) a decision from the City of Winnipeg, which did top up the provincial assistance grants, to go to the provincial rates; (2) a provincial rate that was changed and reduced by the provincial government, effective April 1; and (3), a further change in social assistance, effective May 1, 1996. Is that not correct?

Mr. Filmon: Partially correct. Our decisions with respect to rates did not impact families with children under six. They were not reduced.

Mr. Doer: The bottom line is, you know, I can look at the federal government, provincial government, the civic government, we can talk about it all day long, Manitoba children, under the age of one year old, this April 1, Manitoba children residing in Winnipeg and in northern communities, which had the other rates before, received a 33 percent reduction in their food allowance. I am very worried about the impact on those children. I am very concerned that all the studies--and the Premier has read the Postl study on the first year and how important it is for child development, nutritional development, educational development. These rates, of course, for children under a year, according to David Northcott and others that deal with these kids on the front lines will have a devastating impact, they feel, on kids. They have had a 17 percent increase in the amount of kids that have had to use a food bank in the last one year. I know the federal government has reduced support and all that other stuff, and I know that they camped in David Walker’s office. The cameras come in David Walker’s office; the cameras go.

I am very worried about the nutritional impact and the educational impact and the economic impact of that reduction. Does the government have, dare I ask, any studies on the impact on the nutritional value of children, and does it have any concerns about what is going on, notwithstanding who is to blame in jurisdictional terms?

Mr. Filmon: Well, of course, I indicated that we were concerned, and that is why we did not, in our rights under our jurisdiction, make reductions to families with children under six years old.

Mr. Doer: Did the province consider, for babies under one year of age--and you are already making major reductions in your social assistance budget, looking at the reduction that was taking place for the municipal government--did it consider the impact of what municipal governments are going to do? I would bet that 70 percent to 80 percent of the kids--well, I would not bet that. I think close to 70 percent of the children affected by social assistance would be in the city of Winnipeg. It would be a lot higher in the provincial jurisdiction because other communities are under federal jurisdiction. How much would it cost for a level of government to maintain the food allowance for babies under the age of one year old? How much would it cost us, and is there not any way that the people that are in government today, federal, provincial or civic, starting with the Premier, could find a way to backfill that amount to the most vulnerable kids that did not decide to not to have a job or did not decide not to get an education or did not decide anything except they were born in circumstances, you know, that resulted in them being on social allowance. Was there any way that we could--how much would it have cost society to make sure those kids did not get a 33 percent cut? So I ask that question of the Premier.

Mr. Filmon: That would be a question that the member would have to ask the minister responsible. I can tell him in terms of the global policy that, given that in so many different areas we were getting direct reductions, and this is one example, from the federal government to the various recipients of federal program dollars, we were getting all those specific program cuts. In addition to that, we as a province were getting $116 million less in transfers. There was absolutely no way that we could backfill for these federal reductions. That is why the situation came up with College St. Boniface, that is why the situation came up with the OLE funding, that is why the situation comes up here where the federal government gives us a double whammy. One, it gives direct program cuts, and two, it reduces our ability to backfill by another $116 million. So as a global policy we just simply cannot find the money to do that.

Mr. Doer: Could the Premier find out--and I would ask the Premier to find out because it is a government policy paper across a number of departments dealing with Healthy Child. The Healthy Child paper--I am sure the Premier has read it--deals with a number of concerns. It tells all of us that we and the individual will pay for the rest of our lives if we do not provide proper nutrition at the front end, at the first year. In fact, the period of time where a mother is pregnant, the first year of that child will have tremendous, tremendous health consequences, will have tremendous educational consequences, will have tremendous therefore economical consequences.

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I guess what I am asking the Premier, are we better off, you know, we have got money and corporate grants, not all of which I have criticized in the past, in other areas of government, but how much would it cost all of us, without apportioning blame, to find a way to backfill those children under a year’s age? I am really, really concerned about that, and can we not look at a way of finding in a $6 billion budget, even if it is coming out of surplus, even if it was $9 million, say we would have a $15-million surplus instead of a $24 million or $22 million or whatever it is going to be? We are making hundreds of millions of dollars out of lotteries. I just want to know how much it would be and why we cannot backfill.

You know, St. Boniface College, we have got to deal with that issue and we have got to deal with health care, and we have got to deal with education in terms of cuts, and I do not dispute that. We were the ones I think that came up with a figure that was equivalent to all the hospitals outside of the city of Winnipeg. I think we have developed that comment to try to put cuts, which are huge amounts of money, in real terms so people understood it. Because huge amounts of money are huge amounts of money, they are very hard to come to grips with. But I think we have made the wrong decision as a society for those children. I really do believe we should find a way to honour some of the comments made by the child report, not only for the short-term reality that those families face but for the long-term opportunity that all research indicates it would provide. I think the member for Burrows (Mr. Martindale) cited the recent study from Scientific American and I am sure as an engineer that the Premier reads Scientific American. I do not. David Orlikow read it. He passed it on to both of us. I was surprised, he reads everything. But I just again ask the Premier, how much and what can we do to solve this?

Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, I just want to remind the Leader of the Opposition that we have taken countless actions to try and address precisely those issues of early childhood development and recognizing families with children as having special needs. We made the changes to the tax system in 1989. The Manitoba tax reduction for personal income tax was substantially increased from $50 per child to $250 per child, one of the most generous child tax benefits in Canada, $23 million I believe annual additional contribution to the families with children.

We initiated the development of a Healthy Start program dedicated to prenatal and postnatal nutrition, initiated the co-ordination of services and polices for medically fragile children, a new Child and Adolescent Treatment Clinic that provides additional treatment for children with acute psychiatric needs, a province-wide approach to fetal alcohol syndrome and fetal alcohol effect children, a commitment to develop a sudden infant death syndrome diagnostic laboratory. We established the pediatric centre of excellence at the Children’s Hospital at the Health Sciences Centre in 1993, as well as the Children and Youth Secretariat that now provides I think a stronger cross-government focal point to co-ordinate the policies and services for children than we have ever had. The Taking Charge! program, of course, is designed to provide community-based support for welfare dependent single parents, and a number have become self-reliant through this process, and we continue to work for ways to try and enhance that.

Mr. Doer: I would ask the Premier--and I do not need it in his Estimates--to have his senior staff, who I know are not too busy getting inquiries to questions answered--no, I know that they are, but I will find out about it later. Just kidding. I know they are working furiously at those answers, inquiries in health. I know we will find out eventually.

I would ask the Premier, could he find out for me, for my personal attention, what are the cost implications of this 33 percent reduction? I am not interested in the jurisdictions. I am interested in the jurisdictions, but I really want to know what is--if we were to return the rate to what it was effective March 31, ’96, for children, babies--I have a young child, and the Premier has had many more children than I have had, and we all know how fast they learn and how fast they grow and how fast they adapt. We do not need the Scientific American to know this. I would like to know from the Premier if he could find out, if the Clerk of Cabinet could find out from the appropriate department the cost impact of rates to return to the March 31, 1996, rates for social assistance for children in all our communities in Manitoba. So if the Premier would do that I would appreciate it.

Mr. Filmon: I think we could do that, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Doer: Can the Premier tell us how successful his Minister of Finance was, who was unshakeable in his belief on health and post secondary education--I noticed his comments on this year’s budget is, oh, they sure got away with that one, make the announcement last year and appear not to make the cuts this year. What is the strategy to deal with the federal government who seems to get little accountability for major shifts in costs in last year’s budget, and what is to stop the federal government who promised to enhance spending in health and post-secondary education in the red book who has gone back on that promise subsequent to the election?

What is the strategy to deal with the federal government in the future on these arithmetic formulas that reduce tremendously investment in health and in postsecondary education and social assistance, that reduce dramatically by definition the equity each Canadian citizen has in terms of their services? How can we believe that the formula is frozen in ’99 when we were told in ’93 that it would be enhanced by the same--the person who was finance minister was the co-chair, co-author of the so-called red book? When everybody was giving us peace in our time a couple of weeks ago I think most of us should have been pretty worried, because the best predictor of future behaviour is past, and the past behaviour for the government was to go away from a condemnation of the Mulroney government--I should not use that name because I hear he is in court today--

An Honourable Member: He will not sue you much.

Mr. Doer: I have no money. He only goes after $50 million. Not many of us in the House do have that. That is what I like about him. He really enhanced his reputation going after $50 million law suits.

So what is the longer-term strategy of the premiers and this provincial government?

* (1720)

Mr. Filmon: Well, I would say that the Finance ministers and the First Ministers and in fact most provincial politicians in government have been very consistent in their condemnation of the federal government for its transfer payment cuts, and what has been inconsistent has been the treatment by media and editorialists who have gone from acknowledging firstly that there have been these big federal reductions and that they are going to have their impacts to writing editorials or making comments saying provincial government is just whining and complaining over the cuts, and they should get on with the job of governing and take responsibility. The fact is that these are huge reductions. In fact, the $220 million two year--by the time we get to the second year and it is $220 less than it was in 1995, we are going to be short just about 4 percent of our total revenues. That is a huge impact and not something you can make up overnight. These are the kinds of major, major consequences of government action that ought to be roundly condemned, but it appears as though people who for their own partisan purposes do not want to let their ability to criticize us disappear continue to just say that, well, the provincial government makes its ultimate choices. I dare say that members of the Leader of the Opposition’s party do that from time to time, saying it is your choice. It is true, but we are making our choices in the context of having $116 million less this year and $220 million less next year. Those choices are not easy.

The federal government continues to be on a relative honeymoon right across the country, where people do not seem to be too concerned about having them take responsibility for some pretty severe actions by way of transfer payment reductions. We will continue to speak out. I can send the Leader of the Opposition my press clippings or, indeed, the communiques from Western Premiers’ Conferences, annual Premiers’ Conferences. It does not seem to have its impact on the federal government right about now. They clearly do not feel the heat for the decisions they are making, and strategically I think they bet that we, the provinces, would bear most of the flak for the ultimate decisions that filter down. They are probably sitting back smiling, thinking that they were right, that we are taking the flak and they are getting off with pretty little condemnation from the public.

Mr. Doer: Judging from that tape that was shown at the Charlie Curtis dinner with the federal Deputy Minister of Finance I do not know what to think.

An Honourable Member: Was that at the Beaujolais?

Mr. Doer: I do not know whether it was the Beaujolais, but it looked like the food was served after cocktail hour, let me put it that way. It looked like a Foster Brooks movie. No, I take that back.

We tabled documents and we had documents indicating the equalization would be higher in the fall of ’95. In fact in July of ’95 the government indicated that there was a large amount of money that had been adjusted in the ’94-95 fiscal year. I know the press release said all the extra money comes from old source revenues. I will not get at the validity of the press release, not the validity, the accuracy or the spin, and I guess not a lot of people pay attention to those statements in July. I thought it was over $100 million in equalization money and a large amount of money. We were aware in the fall that (a) Saskatchewan’s equalization was going to go down, and we were not getting it from Saskatchewan we are getting it from the federal government; and (b) that the provincial government here was going to get increased equalization. Do you think the Premier would have a greater case dealing with the public of Manitoba if he in the Speech from the Throne was using more up-to-date information about the overall impact of the federal cutback, because we thought he was overstating the federal cutback relative to the equalization? Of course the budget to many people appeared that it was overstated last year. I do not know why the government does this as a communications strategy except to justify cuts.

Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, I would hope that the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Doer) would agree with me that they are two distinctly different sources of revenue and there is a purpose to having divided the sources of revenue. I think it is fair to say that there was a reason why the federal government did not lump the CAP in EPF along with the equalization because you have to treat them as different sources for different purposes. One is a transference for social programming and EPF and CAP were developed on that basis.

The second is to try and smooth out the differences in the wealth-generating capacity of the provinces. That, as you know, is a very complex formula. In fact, when I try and describe it to people I end up having to bring in experts who can describe the various elements of that formula. I think there are three elements of equalization formula, and I believe the Opposition has probably heard them described. But I know that even the Free Press editorial board does not understand it. They try and simplify it and say that if the economy is going poorly, then you get more. But it is all on a relative basis amongst the pool of the seven provinces that are equalization recipients.

So there are the impacts of the pool and the relative performance of your province within the pool. There is the element of how much is going into the pool vis-à-vis the wealth-generating capacity of the three contributing provinces. Then there is the fact that it is on a per capita basis, so that if your population is growing more rapidly than the other seven within the pool, then you can get a greater share of that pie.

That is a very complex formula that is designed to do a particular thing of smoothing out the economic wealth-generating capacities of the various provinces within the equalization system.

The other though, and I think it is fair to say that we as a province--and every province, entered into all sorts of social programming on the basis of federal cost sharing, in fact 50/50 under CAP. I think it started out probably under EPF as 50/50 but eventually because of a whole series of measures it eroded from that position.

So if you do assume that the federal government has a responsibility to provide transfers for health and education and then the federal government massively cuts its transfers to you for health and education, I think that getting the equalization muddies the waters completely because equalization is smoothing out your ability to provide equivalent levels of services on all areas of your provincial expenditures. The transfers on the CHST are for a specific part to which, presumably, Ottawa has a greater or lesser commitment than what they are showing us now is that they have a much lesser commitment.

I give you just the example that over the last while I know he has heard us proudly trumpet the fact that of every new dollar that we have spent in this province in the last eight years, 90 cents has gone to the three departments of Health, Education and social services--Family Services, and that is priority setting, in my judgment.

What the feds are doing is also priority setting, and they are saying that their lowest priority is their transfers for health, education and social services to the provinces. I think they have to be held accountable for that, and I do not think you do that when you lump in the equalization payments. If the Leader of the Opposition wants the comparisons year over year, year ending March 31, 1996, versus the budget year that we are in now, March 31, 1997, I can tell him that our equalization under the current projection, and that is the other aspect of his question that I want to emphasize as strongly as I possibly can.

Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. The hour being 5:30, committee rise. Call in the Speaker.

IN SESSION

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hour being 5:30 p.m., this House is adjourned and stands adjourned until 10 a.m. tomorrow (Thursday).