Hon. James McCrae (Government House Leader): Madam Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Minister of Family Services (Mrs. Mitchelson), that Madam Speaker do now leave the Chair, and the House resolve itself into a Committee to consider of the Supply to be granted to Her Majesty.

Motion agreed to, and the House resolved itself into a committee to consider of the Supply to be granted to Her Majesty, with the honourable member for Sturgeon Creek (Mr. McAlpine) in the Chair for the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs; and the honourable member for Turtle Mountain (Mr. Tweed) in the Chair for the Children and Youth Secretariat.

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Madam Speaker: Because the Deputy Speaker (Mr. Laurendeau) and the Deputy Chairperson (Mr. Sveinson) are not available today, I am requesting the honourable member for Turtle Mountain (Mr. Tweed) to chair the section of the Committee of Supply meeting in the Chamber; and the honourable member for Sturgeon Creek (Mr. McAlpine) to chair the section meeting in Room 255.

The Acting Chairperson (Mr. McAlpine): Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This section of the Committee of Supply will be considering the Estimates of the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. Does the honourable Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs have an opening statement?

Hon. Mike Radcliffe (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs): Mr. Chairman, yes, I do. About three and a half months after I became minister, I am now very privileged to make my first presentation of the departmental Estimates. I look forward to this process and to outlining the plans and activities of my department for the coming fiscal year.

A theme that will recur frequently in my remarks is efforts by different branches of my department to increase the amount, scope and access to information available to Manitobans about consumer matters and the activities of the department. Businesses and consumers, as well as landlords and tenants, need a wide variety of information in order to function effectively in the marketplace. Improving access to information, programs and services is a continuing departmental objective.

One of the highlights of the department's operations for the fiscal year, Mr. Chairman, is the change to a special operating agency status for the Property Rights Division effective April 1. The division, which comprises the Land Titles Office and the Personal Property Registry, will now be called the Property Registry and will be the largest special operating agency in the government service employing 157 of the 600 employees of such agencies. Revenue from Land Titles and personal property security registry fees will be used to finance the agency. Under a revenue-sharing agreement, the Property Registry will remit $1.8 million to the Consolidated Fund in 1997-98. Beginning this spring, the registry as well as the Companies Office is participating in the Better Systems Initiative. As a part of the initiative, new computer systems will be developed to help the public communicate with the government in a variety of convenient ways. The project is expected to be completed in the fall of 1998.

With respect to the Property Registry, we expect the initiative to transform the way the registry does business with clients. Here, Mr. Chairman, the goal is to enable clients, where feasible, to use electronic access to obtain the title information or services they want. It will give Manitoba the framework to successfully meet service requirements by using a variety of methods including electronic.

Our Residential Tenancies Branch is increasing its efforts to reach out to its clients and the public and make more information available outside office hours. Besides our website, we will introduce a 24-hour Talking Yellow Pages line. The line will answer frequently asked questions and will be updated frequently so the information will be as current as possible. The branch will, again, offer a series of information sessions to landlords of small Winnipeg apartment blocks, and these seminars will also be held in Brandon and Thompson. Staff will discuss key aspects of the landlord-tenant rights and responsibilities and answer questions. The positive responses received from past sessions indicate that they are a valuable two-way link between the department and the community.

In the last fiscal year, the branch completed a comprehensive policies and procedures guidebook. It was written to outline as clearly as possible the role and the activities of the branch. Unlike most such documents which are internal and intended only for staff, we have shared this one with both landlords and tenants. Not only has it increased our efficiency and effectiveness, but it has helped reinforce how The Residential Tenancies Act is fairly administered for the benefit of both sides, helped landlords and tenants prepare for hearings and answered common questions. The French edition will be distributed in May, at least that is the target date.

Mr. Chairman, one of our most successful programs is our community-based volunteer speaker program which has enabled the department to reach more than 7,000 Manitobans. Volunteers complement our services by expanding the range of direct community contact. Besides being a vehicle for feedback, our volunteers bring new insights and energy to our programs. Last year, we made a commitment to broaden the department's Consumer Education volunteer speakers program to include workshops dealing with the landlord and tenant issues. I am pleased to say that we now have 20 trained volunteers; five are now testing workshops for high-risk tenants with groups like the Urban Circle Training Program and Language Training Centre at Red River Community College. We are evaluating and revising these seminars and plan to have five to 10 more tenant education volunteers by the end of this fiscal year.

Mr. Chairman, the World Wide Web is fast becoming a vital means for both placing and obtaining information. We have given businesses and consumers ready access to information on our programs through our new bilingual Internet home page. Our website outlines the responsibilities of our branches, special operating agencies, boards and commissions. We have tried to make the website as user friendly and helpful as possible. For visitors who are not sure where to go for information or advice, there is an easy-to-use index and e-mail links to connect them with the right program.

Landlords and tenants may find the website of particular interest because the Residential

Tenancies Branch has expanded its page to include frequently asked questions, a sample of its policies and procedures guidebook and downloadable forms.

Mr. Chairman, an important part of the internal trade agreement between the provinces and the federal government was the agreement to harmonize legislation pertaining to direct sellers and to disclosure of the cost of credit. This harmonization will make it easier for businesses to operate in more than one province. It will also make it easier for consumers to adapt when the move to another province or conduct business in more than one province. We amended The Consumer Protection Act in the last session to adopt harmonized provisions pertaining to the cancellation rights and contract content of direct sales. These amendments will be proclaimed very soon. The Consumers' Bureau and the Research and Planning branch are continuing to work with other provinces and Ottawa on developing harmonized legislative requirements for the disclosure of the cost of credit. This harmonized legislation will apply to nearly all credit grantors and all forms of fixed and open credit. It would benefit both consumers through expanded consumer protection and businesses which will be able to operate interprovincially within the same set of rules and guidelines, and finally I would like note a change in the structure of the department. We are in the process of merging the former Trusts and Loans Branch with the Co-operative and Credit Union Regulation Branch. This will result in cost savings and more effective use of departmental resources.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my remarks and I am ready for the questions of the members opposite.

The Acting Chairperson (Mr. McAlpine): We thank the honourable minister for those comments. Does the critic for the official opposition, the honourable member for Elmwood (Mr. Maloway), have opening comments?

Mr. Jim Maloway (Elmwood): Mr. Chairman, I want to take this opportunity to welcome the new minister of this department and make a few comments about the lack of direction of this department over the last few years. I think, if memory serves me right, it has not been since Ed Connery was the minister that any real activity occurred in this department. I cite at that time the introduction of The Business Practices Act which was quite significant in those days and that takes us back to the minority government period of 1988 to 1990, so one would hope with a new minister in place right now, hopefully not on his way somewhere else like most of the others have been, that perhaps we will be able to address some of the pressing issues in the areas of consumer affairs that we have been arguing for a long time should be dealt with. There is a whole range of different areas that we are concerned with, but certainly one of them was looking at franchise legislation.

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I note that that is being looked at in some sort of detail by the minister's department and a number of different areas. I note in the Research and Planning area that reference is made to activities of this particular department. I will be wanting to ask the minister questions about what, in fact, is developing in there, because there are a number of initiatives that this government should be taking and maybe this minister will be able to put some direction in this department that has been lacking over the last few years.

The Acting Chairperson (Mr. McAlpine): We thank the honourable member, the official opposition critic, for those comments.

Under Manitoba practice, debate over the minister's salary is traditionally the last item considered for the Estimates of the department. Accordingly, we shall defer consideration of this item and now proceed with consideration of the next line. Before we do that, we would invite the minister's staff to please come forward and that the minister introduce his staff to the committee.

Mr. Radcliffe: I would invite my staff forward at this time. I would like this opportunity to introduce Ms. Alexandra Morton, who is my deputy minister, and Mr. Fred Bryans, who is seated at the table with us today. He is the director of the administrations branch for Consumer and Corporate Affairs.

The Acting Chairperson (Mr. McAlpine): I thank the honourable minister. We will now proceed to 5.1. Administration and Finance (b) Executive Support (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits on page 24 of the main Estimates book, $301,600--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $49,700--pass.

5.1.(c) Administrative Services (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $695,100--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $194,800--pass; (3) Less: Recoverable from Legislative Assembly ($228,100)--pass.

5.1.(d) Research and Planning (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $153,100.

Mr. Maloway: I wanted to ask some questions about the Research and Planning division, but my colleague has a number of questions on Vital Statistics agency. I know that if someone is here representing the agency that we might want to deal with those questions so that they can proceed to do something else if they wish. So if you wish to do that, we can jump ahead, do Vital Statistics and then my colleague will be satisfied for the moment.

Mr. Radcliffe: Mr. Chairman, at this time I would like to invite Caroline Kaus, the director of Vital Statistics, to the table, who has joined us now, and we would be ready to proceed with these issues.

Mr. Doug Martindale (Burrows): Mr. Chairperson, I have a few questions on a small part, I guess, of the department of Vital Statistics, and I apologize to the minister since I had told him in the House that I would give him my questions in writing in advance and I did not do that. However, it does mean that if the minister does not have answers today, I would be happy to get written responses in the future. So if you want to take things as notice, that would be fine with me.

My questions have to do with church records that are held by the Vital Statistics part of your branch, specifically, baptism, marriage and death records. Now it is my understanding that some of these records were compiled even before The Vital Statistics Act in Manitoba so we are talking about old records here, and for some reason they became the possession of Vital Stats rather than the church archives. This has created some problems, for example, people doing family genealogy research and also people seeking proof of treaty status.

If people go to church archives, they can do a search for free, but when they go to Vital Statistics, there is a $25 charge for a search, and I understand that it can be more. For example, it is my understanding that Vital Stats will do a search of a five-year period, and if they have to go into another five-year period, there may be an additional $25 charge. The result of this is a number of anomalies. For example, I am told that some other provinces do not charge. I am informed that other jurisdictions have information in the public domain, for example, information that is a hundred years old or more, but that in Manitoba the information never becomes part of the public domain. Also, some information that is in church archives is accessible, but identical information in Vital Statistics is not accessible. For example, marriage information, there could be a church marriage register in a church archive and also a registration of marriage form in Vital Statistics with almost identical information, one of which is easily accessible with no charge and the other would cost $25. One of the problems that has been raised with me is that some people find the $25 charge excessive or burdensome, especially low-income people. So I think I have outlined some of the problems.

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So some of the questions that I would have are, first of all, is it your department's policy to continue to keep all the records, as they are, without ever becoming part of the public domain?

Mr. Radcliffe: Mr. Chairman, the department is researching this matter right now, but their intention is that records that are over a hundred years old will become part of the public domain. That is the intention that they are working to at this point in time.

Mr. Martindale: Could the minister tell us when that might take place?

Mr. Radcliffe: I believe that the department will be bringing all their records forward to the next legislative session, and they will be seeking permission at that point. I am sorry, all their acts forward to open them up at that point in time and have it reviewed at that point in time.

Mr. Martindale: Perhaps you could explain what you mean by that. Does that mean that the legislation will be reviewed by the minister with the intent of amending it, or is it going before a committee for review?

Mr. Radcliffe: I believe the process will be that it will be presented firstly to the minister and then would proceed to the Legislative Assembly.

Mr. Martindale: Will there be any form of public consultation or input before the amendments are introduced?

Mr. Radcliffe: I do not believe there will be anything with regard any public review or consideration on the records that are 100 years old or older, but one of the things which I think is rather sensitive which will require some public consultation will be opening up of adoption records. I can speak to that from some of the background I have had on this issue which is that one must be very careful not to betray the confidences of individuals who have made contracts with the Crown on adoption positions; then subsequently when people become adults later in life to have that position reversed when they are perfectly confident that those records would be sealed forever; so that there are really the consideration I guess or the confidentiality of two innocent parties involved. One must deal with these often conflicting interests with some degree of sensitivity. I believe that there will be some consultation on this issue.

Mr. Martindale: I am also familiar with this because of amendments to the Child and Family Services legislation, as is the minister. When the information that I believe you said is 100 years old or more becomes part of the public domain, will you do that by putting it on-line, or how do you plan to make it publicly accessible?

Mr. Radcliffe: I believe that initially the first step will be to make it available in the public Archives, then as our technology advances to put it on-line.

Mr. Martindale: Would the information then be accessible, for example, from computers in public libraries?

Mr. Radcliffe: I believe the information would be as available as the information that is furnished by the Archives department at this point in time.

Mr. Martindale: I would like to zero in more specifically now on the church registers. It seems to me that there are a couple of issues here. One is accessibility to the information and the other is the matter of ownership. Is the minister saying that the information that is going to be made public will be made public as it becomes a hundred years old and older, or are you looking at something less than a hundred years as well?

Mr. Radcliffe: I believe that the practice in other provinces which we have been considering and I think will likely adopt would be that as the century advances that information would become accessible, and so it would be an ever-moving target; a hundred years at a time to start with and then one year at a time.

Mr. Martindale: Would the minister be willing to get in touch with the archivists at various churches and discuss their concerns about returning church records to them? For example, the archivist for the United Church is Diane Haglund, and that was why I was particularly raising this issue because I am aware that Vital Statistics has church records, some of which are quite old, like Wesley and Methodist records which would be more than a hundred years old.

I am wondering if the minister is willing to negotiate with the Conference of Manitoba, Northwestern Ontario to have these records returned to the United Church.

Mr. Radcliffe: There is no dispute that, in fact, these are church records, and the ownership belongs with the church. I believe that Vital Statistics has kept these records to date because they have a system of safekeeping to preserve them because with the advancing years they become more and more fragile and more and more vulnerable. I do believe, as well, that there have been requests for and compliance with requests for furnishing microfiche, microfilm copies of these records, and I think upon request that these records would be returned.

Mr. Martindale: Thank you very much for such a positive answer. I am sure that will be good news to the United Church.

I have a couple of more questions. Vital Statistics used to be part of the Department of Family Services. When was it switched to Consumer and Corporate Affairs?

Mr. Radcliffe: April 1, 1994.

Mr. Martindale: And when did it become a special operating agency?

Mr. Radcliffe: The same date.

Mr. Martindale: Why did it become a special operating agency?

Mr. Radcliffe: Well, to answer that question, Mr. Chair, I guess one would have to reflect upon the advantages of a special operating agency, and I can attest to this from personal inspection, which is that a special operating agency is allowed fiscal control of its own operation, makes a commitment under a business plan to the central government to donate X amount of revenue to the central coffers and beyond that has the obligation and the authority to be revenue-neutral, to sustain its own costs and to provide the service at the level that is supplied in the business plan. So, for example, in Vital Statistics, they have an obligation to preserve and keep and furnish records upon request of major milestones of people's lives, be it birth, marriage, death, baptism, et cetera, as we have discussed. The advantage to this is that there is a significant degree of autonomy and authority for the management of the special operating agency to meet the exigencies of the management of the department.

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As issues develop through the course of the year, they do not need departmental approval; they do not need legislative approval; they do not need cabinet approval, and so long as they function within the umbrella of their service commitment and the fiscal responsibility, then this is looked on with approval. The reason for moving a branch of government out into a special operating agency is to give them more independence, more pride of being and to give them greater flexibility, so that they can furnish better service at a more reasonable and economic fashion to the people of Manitoba.

I can cite, for example, one particular issue, that when I was on tour of the Department of Vital Statistics I was being courteously escorted about by the director, and we had an occasion to look at an imaging machine. It was explained to me in quite some detail that, in fact, the administrative decision made on her part and on the part of a number of her employees in a collaborative fashion was that they did not need to buy the most expensive machine that had been recommended to them but rather that they could settle for one that was significantly cheaper because in their professional opinion this fit their needs of service.

I remarked and commended them on this, that I thought this was really commendable, and this illustrated to me the idea that they have this administrative capacity, whereas had there been a requisition done for a purchase, there would have been straight-jacketed or very formalized processes which would have been evoked, and then there would be no deviancy therefrom.

Mr. Martindale: I seems to me that governments do not have to buy Cadillacs; they can buy Chevys. You do not have to be a special operating agency to buy a Chevy.

Does the fact that it is a special operating agency explain why there are user fees?

Mr. Radcliffe: I do not think we can attribute either the existence of fees to the consumer or user of the service nor any rise in fees to the consumer or user of the service to the existence or nonexistence of the special operating agency. In fact, I am told that the custom of the administration in this special operating agency is to observe and keep abreast of rises or decreases in fees in other provinces across the country and to move our rate schedule accordingly.

There is obviously an obligation on the part of the department, or the special operating agency in this case, to recover the cost of service and for it to be borne by the individuals who are using the service, but beyond that any relative change is done consistently with other jurisdictions across the country.

Mr. Martindale: I wonder if the minister could table a list of fees for the various services at Vital Statistics?

Mr. Radcliffe: Certainly, we would be glad to. I do not think we have them right at this point in time, but we would certainly be glad to do that as expeditiously as possible.

Mr. Martindale: One of the fees that I tell people that they do not have to pay is for a marriage licence. If they are regular in attendance at church they can have bans read, and they do not have to pay for a marriage licence, but in the last 16 years I have never had the opportunity to have someone take advantage of that. Thank you, Mr. Minister.

Mr. Radcliffe: Mr. Chair, I can advise the honourable member that I in fact did have my banns read in church prior to my marriage, and I would heartily encourage all individuals of the province of Manitoba to comply with that custom and avoid the user fee. Absolutely.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, just to follow up with a few questions on the SOA. I would like to know if the minister would also provide us with a list of the fees that were charged at the inception of the SOA. So I would like to see how they have changed since they began as an SOA and where they are now and also, perhaps, if we could get a list of the fees that were in place before the SOA became a reality, because I think I would have to take exception with the minister that this is a benign move on the part of the government.

To me and to us in the NDP, I think we see this as an attempt by the government to basically bring in a hidden tax. It allows the public to pay higher fees for services that they may have at one point gotten for free or almost for free, and this saves the government, allows it to make its political claim that it has not raised major taxes for 10 years or whatever it is going to be when the next election comes around. So clearly there is a positive benefit to the government in the process of using SOAs in that it allows them to increase user fees and thereby take a larger chunk of flesh out of the people who need the services and many of these people really cannot afford some of the fees that are being charged and, in fact, I see an increase in these fees over time.

I also have observed that these SOAs, in a way, are just a step towards the privatization process. Privatization has become the rage in the western world ever since 1979 when Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in England and over 20 years what most of the rest of the western world have followed to one degree or another in privatization. In fact in New Zealand the entire country has been privatized in one massive sweep. I guess for every benefit that can be shown out of that process, horror stories can be pointed to as well. In fact in England when the bus routes were privatized we saw service deteriorate and buses would not run on time and things would not work the way they had under the old system.

The minister squirms a bit here, but I think if he wants to check into the situation in England that privatization has not necessarily accomplished what the ideologues in the Conservative Party had planned in the beginning other than perhaps make a few individual owners richer but, in general, the wages of the workers after privatization tended to drop. So we have said all along that this government's long-term aim will result, if they are in power long enough, and it has been a long time now, nine years--it feels like 10 or longer--but over time that is the logical extension of the SOAs.

So I would like to ask the minister for his comments and also to tell us how many more SOAs are planned in his department. I believe there are about 14 now. It is moving target. But I wanted to know how many there are now and how many are in the planning stages. Where is this going to end?

Mr. Radcliffe: Mr. Chair, firstly, in response to some of my honourable colleague's initial remarks, I would be glad to table the fee schedules that were in place at the time of the inception of the SOA.

I can advise the honourable member at this point in time that there have been two increases in Vital Statistics since April 1994, and that is that there has been a general, across-the-board increase in the production of certificates which is a $5 rise, and there has been a $10 rise in the charge for marriage licences. This is the sum and substance of the rises.

With regard to the general philosophy, I do not know that this is the correct forum to debate, only to say that I would suggest with the greatest of respect that my honourable colleague's remarks as to some sort of undercurrent or Machiavellian plan to move to privatize is speculative at best on his part at this point in time and that there is no plan to privatize public service facilities which are in this particular domain. So I would with the greatest of respect challenge his conclusions on that point.

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I would also point out to my honourable colleague that the ownership of the database of the records at Vital Stats remains vested in the Province of Manitoba. I think that is a significant issue which should be taken into account, and I would overlook a number of the other comments that my honourable colleague made with regard to political motivation, only to say that I hope that the Filmon government or its successors are in power for a long time.

Mr. Maloway: I would like to ask the minister whether any approaches have been made by people in the private sector to this SOA or any others that he is aware of in terms of privatization or in terms of contracting out services?

I draw the minister's attention to, for example, the province of Ontario, and it may be the same here, in the workers compensation area, which, as the minister knows, is private in the United States, but the Insurance Bureau of Canada has been making representations to various governments to not necessarily take over--while they would like to take over the whole workers compensation scheme without the debts, as a backdrop, they have been lobbying for handling of the claims. So it is logical that somewhere along the line if outright representations have not been made to take over the entire SOA, be it Vital Stats or be it another one, certainly there must be some private business interest in portions of it or handling certain services that are provided by it.

I would like to ask the minister whether his government has done any studies in this area or whether it has been approached by different interest groups that would like to see the dismantling of these SOAs.

Mr. Radcliffe: I have not personally been approached by any private industry group to take over any of the SOAs or any suggestion even that that be done in any of my departments, and I am not aware of any policy that has been developed within the central cadre of our government to even explore any of these sorts of issues.

I can say, if there is a vehicle with which to dispense service under the auspices of Vital Statistics, for example, death certificates and issuing death certificates through the aegis of the funeral parlour, rather than over the top of the counter to make it more speedy service or convenient service to individuals who are involved in funerals, that, as an attempt to furnish additional and superior service, Vital Statistics will not turn something like that down. This is in no way an attempt to privatize or escape its responsibility of supplying a public service to the people of Manitoba.

Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Inkster): I actually had a couple of questions just to do a little bit of following up. Today, SOA for Vital Statistics, do they contribute to the general revenues and, if so, how much do they actually contribute?

Mr. Radcliffe: I am advised that any excess revenue right now in Vital Statistics is being retained at Vital Statistics because they are saving up for purchase of an information system. I believe they are very close to acquiring same at this point in time and paying it off. I believe they have the hardware in hand at this point in time.

The proposal for next year, the next fiscal year, which, I guess, would start in April of 1998, is that Vital Statistics would contribute $100,000 to the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Province of Manitoba and thereafter any funds which were in excess, which were not needed by the special operating agency in the years to come, would be contributed rather than being retained down at the operating agency level.

Mr. Lamoureux: I am wondering if the minister would agree that when, in fact, you establish an SOA--and I am looking specifically at Vital Statistics--you could use different arguments for different special operating agencies; but, speaking strictly with Vital Statistics, here is a service that Manitobans require. It is not an option. If you want to be able to get a passport, you have to have your birth certificate.

There are some things in which you do not have too much of a choice, and when the government decides that it is going to provide a service--and I think one could get into a philosophical argument. My friend from Elmwood on the left of me would ultimately argue that maybe service should be provided at no cost. Then I look across the Chamber from where I sit, and they might argue that maybe, yes, we should have money coming in from the Special Operating Agency of Vital Statistics to the Consolidation Fund or into general revenues, in more plain language.

I would ultimately argue that here is a service which Manitobans need. It is not an option for them. By creating the special operating agency, is it really necessary for this agency to create a surplus? Does the minister believe it is necessary for them to create a surplus?

Mr. Radcliffe: Mr. Chairman, I think that, as I stated earlier, the fees that are derived from the service, furnishing the service, from the users of the service are comparable to those levels of charge that are made across the country, so that we are consistent with our sister provinces.

I believe that the efficiencies which are granted, which are opened up for Vital Stats to provide this service may result in revenue surplus from year to year, and other years there may not be, as their operating mandate continues. I believe it would be precipitous at this point in time to say that they ought not to be allowed the flexibility that a special operating agency offers, or that they should be pared to the bone. They should be allowed the flexibility to be able to increase staff in certain cases if they need to, or increase purchase, or avail themselves of equipment or training as need be. The revenue or the income for such improvement would come out of the surplus.

I do not think that we are talking astronomical numbers at this point in time. My honourable colleague has mentioned the acquisition of a passport. I do not believe that he is espousing that his colleagues at any point in time should be granting--or maybe he is--that passports should be issued for free, because I just renewed mine very recently. This is a user-driven service. I think I had to pay about $60 for my passport. I do not object to that. Certainly, if I want the passport to travel abroad, then that is something that I am obliged to pay for, just as you go to Eaton's and get a pair of socks.

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Mr. Lamoureux: The minister is right in one sense, but what I want to focus on is the fact that, yes, one could articulate as to why it is Vital Statistics might require maybe possibly to build a reserve, and they can use some discretion. We do not want to see, for example, civil servants within a special operating service being paid disproportionately more or disproportionately less than other civil servants working from within the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs.

A lot depends on the expertise, the training, and so forth, but to establish a reserve, you have a base reserve. I would think that, given the service that is being provided, the cost, if you like, of receiving your birth certificate which is different than a passport, a birth certificate, you are going to require your birth certificate at some point in time in your life. You do not have any option. You do have an option with a passport, ultimately. You do not have any option with respect to a marriage certificate. If you want to be married, you are going to have to get a marriage certificate. Now, the member for Burrows (Mr. Martindale) did point out an exemption, but there are atheists, if you like, that maybe do not want to go through the church.

Mr. Chairperson, what I am suggesting is, does the minister believe that Vital Statistics should be able to, in the long term, make money off of a service that Manitobans, by and large, have to rely on, and if so, would he then not agree that what you are really doing is imposing another form of taxation? You are being very specific on who you are taxing. You are not taxing everyone, or the general population. What you are doing is you are penalizing anyone that requires that particular service, or if they have lost their birth certificate and they require to get another one, or if a person decides to get married twice possibly, I do not know.

Now, you are talking about small fees, relatively small fees, and I acknowledge that. But what we are really talking about here is the principle of it, the principle being, does this special operating agency have--well, obviously it has the authority to generate excess amounts of what it actually costs to function. It has that authority. But does this particular minister believe that that access amount is necessary to the extent that it has to be contributed to the general revenues because, if the answer to that is yes, then what the minister is saying is that that is in fact another form of taxation.

Mr. Radcliffe: Mr. Chairman, I believe that the honourable member is correct, that the previous individual asking questions did indicate that if one is an adherent to a religious denomination, one has access to baptismal records and marriage certificates without cost for the production of the actual paper. However, if one does want to rely upon the services of the state, due to the fact that the individuals who are working in the special operating agency are subject to collective agreements and members of different labour unions and that the special operating agency is maintaining database on an ongoing basis, and I am sure I have had the opportunity to observe the honourable member with his computer laptop in the Chamber from time to time, so I know that he is literate and aware of all the ongoing expense of maintaining computers, software and database, there are ongoing expenses for the furnishing of this service.

Further, I think that I would respond by perhaps answering by way of posing another question, which is, if we are talking about equity and fairness and clean hands and all this sort of stuff, is it proper and appropriate for someone to come on a repeated basis and continually use the Land Titles and request time after time out of negligence or disregard for their records reproduction of their records, whereas one person who perhaps might obtain records and save them and be very frugal and prudent and preserve them, that the people of Manitoba should fund the cost of the indolent person or the careless person? I am led to the conclusion that in fact it is appropriate and proper for the users of this service to pay for it and not to have it financed at large through the tax base of the Province of Manitoba.

I know that both my honourable colleagues are looking to the statement, the political statement that we have made in this government from time to time, that we have not raised any major taxes in this province. That is not to say, and we make no bones about it, that we are keeping abreast of inflation as the value of the money deteriorates or as the value of collective agreements rises. This does have to be represented right across the economy. I am sure that my honourable colleagues have a very intimate grasp of economics to know that you look back to the 1950s and look at the value of our money in the '50s versus the value of the money today, that our money has depreciated significantly. So I think the only conclusion is that we are entitled to ask for modest increases, and I do not think that people are being unduly subjected to severe hardship by a rise of $5 over the last two years, three years for general certificates, nor $10 for marriage licences.

As my honourable colleague has indicated, he is not looking to the specific charges themselves but, rather, I think addressing the philosophical base in this particular case. So from a philosophical response, I would say that it is appropriate to maintain modest reserves and modest income, and that is in fact what this special operating agency is doing.

Now, if, and this is a totally speculative nature, a database or a technology advance would be made which were to revolutionize the form of record keeping, that my director be the single employee at Vital Statistics and furnish the services singularly by herself, unilaterally, then would we be justified in maintaining the same fee level? I think not. I think that you would see a diminution in cost and that this would be transmitted back. But, at this point, this would be highly speculative because we do not anticipate that would be the foreseeable result at this point in time.

Mr. Lamoureux: Yes, I picked up on a few key words that the minister indicates. One was the minister maintained modest increases, and, yes, for all intents and purposes they are relatively modest increases. But the total of those increases allows for the creation of $100,000 that goes over to general revenues. Expectations might be, I do not know, about what is going to happen with that $100,000. My friend from Elmwood says maybe it goes into the slush fund potentially, indirectly. How does it have an impact?

The bottom line is that it is some form of a tax increase. That leads to the other key word that the minister brought up, and that was major taxes. The government says that it does not increase or it has not increased major taxes, and it quite often overlooks some of those smaller taxes. This is an area in which we are seeing what I would classify as a tax.

The minister posed the question to me: Would I support someone going in and getting a birth certificate a month? By all means. He is paying for it. He or she is paying for it. In fact, the government is making money off it. The more that person goes in, the more the government is going to be making money. My argument with this particular--and I would not want to say that it applies to all special operating agencies--but with this one I am not convinced that the government should be making money off of this particular operating agency. Yes, it is a necessity to have a reserve.

Having said that, I do have another question that is very, very specific, and it is more of, I guess, a pet question that has been in the back of my mind for a number of years. Since my brother is very quick to tell me that I was born in St. Boniface, not Winnipeg, because on my birth certificate it says that in 1962 when I was born--yes, '62--it says I was born in St. Boniface, he is quick to point out that on my little girl's birth certificate it says that she was born in Winnipeg. Yet we were born in the same hospital, that being St. Boniface Hospital.

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Now, if I was to go down to Vital Statistics, I understand that in fact it would say that I was born in St. Boniface. I was curious as to the logic behind that. I am sure the government is not going to fall over this particular question, but it is just more out of curiosity.

Mr. Radcliffe: I believe that the certificate that is the result of a request for service at the counter of Vital Statistics is a result of the information that is compiled on particulars of a live birth. So I would indicate to the honourable member that when he is born, his mother or some other person, his father at the time or a nurse, would elicit the information, the particulars of the information as to his parentage at that point in time and the location of the birth.

I stand to be corrected, but I believe that in 1962 the area of the city--and I presume he was born in St. Boniface Hospital--that was in fact a separate municipality from the city of Winnipeg under the aegis of metropolitan Winnipeg; but it was in fact a separate municipal government. The Vital Statistics records only reflect the information that is recorded on the particulars of a live birth. So, presumably by the time your daughter was born, you supplied on your particulars, or somebody on your behalf, particulars that child was born in Winnipeg. Therefore, that would explain the anomaly in this situation.

Mr. Lamoureux: One final question, and that is, and one should never question my passion and love for St. Boniface as a community--get that on the record--but if someone wanted to make an amendment to that, is that possible?

Mr. Radcliffe: I would suggest with respect to the honourable member that in fact the information that probably was supplied at the time of your birth was correct as at that point in time. However, there is an amendment process for a fee with Vital Statistics and, on production of appropriate evidence by way of affidavit or other statutory declaration, there is an amendment process in order to rectify the records in question.

Mr. Lamoureux: I appreciate the free advice. It is just something in which I have had discussions with my brother as I have indicated and it is just, as you can tell by the length of the time it took to respond to the answer, one of those little, trivial things which I thought I would raise at this point in time. I appreciate the minister's patience.

Mr. Radcliffe: I would also like to put on the record, because my honourable friend has indicated that he received some advice from me, that I no longer hold an active practising certificate as a barrister and solicitor. I would not want, in any way, him to be under any confusion or misapprehension that I was tendering or proffering any legal advice at this point in time.

Mr. Maloway: Well, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Stefanson), who is, I guess, the real organ grinder in this case, is a pretty happy man because he gets to politically make statements that the government has not raised any taxes and, all the while, through the back door, the money is rolling in. I mean, new taxes are sprouting up all over the place as a result of not only the VLTs working flat out but also all these SOAs that are popping up all over the place.

So what you have developing is a series of hidden slush funds and I draw your attention once again to the Workers Compensation Board which is just now building up a surplus. That Workers Compensation Board in the next four years I think is going to build up a massive surplus coincidently just in time for the next election. There is no secret about that. So when the next election comes the government will be poised with a surplus, in a position to cut taxes and, at the same time along its flanks, will have the option of reducing Autopac rates if it has built up surplus in Autopac, reducing Workers Compensation rates in the Workers Compensation field. I mean, it is there. All you have to do is look at the financial statements. They have got a tremendous surplus that is increasing.

I do not mean to write their election platform but, I mean, it is being done as we speak. We have to recognize that these SOAs are just simply part of that overall plan of theirs to essentially privatize the government, to develop little slush funds through hidden taxes. That is what is really going on here, and I do not know whether the minister is aware of it or whether he is brought in at that level, because this government is run by one or two people. We know that, and I do not expect him to admit that he is the architect of all of this, but I do solicit his comments as a new minister.

Mr. Radcliffe: I guess my first remark would be to respond to the allusion by my honourable colleague that there was an organ grinder at work here, and if one were to extend that simile forward, is he inferring that the present company is the holder of the cup? If so, I would significantly challenge that description.

With regard to the Workers Compensation Board and the Manitoba Public Insurance--

An Honourable Member: There are others.

Mr. Radcliffe: And as he quite rightly points out, there are many, many other areas and departments of government, special operating agencies which, since the election of the Filmon government, have had the benefit of sound, prudent fiscal management. I think that I would like to take this opportunity to put on the record that I would like to congratulate all the managers and the directors and the administrators, and people who are running these different departments of government, that they have worked very, very hard, and the staff have all worked very, very hard, to furnish a high level of service to the people of Manitoba, and to do it in such a fashion that they are turning around these departments.

I am advised that only a very short number of years ago there was a very significant debt in Workers Compensation Board, and that, with some very frugal management and sound fiscal probity, the particular person, I think it is Mr. Fox-Decent, has been able to turn this situation around. He is to be commended for that.

As to what will be the result once these surpluses are established or these reserves are created and we can forecast that there will not be any significant demand or drain on these funds, I can only speculate at this point, and that would perhaps not be appropriate for me. But I can certainly undertake to my honourable colleague that I can pass his comments on to the Minister of Finance; I believe that I heard the honourable colleague saying that he was expecting that we would be passing on significant savings to the people of Manitoba by reducing fees for many of these services--

An Honourable Member: At the appropriate time.

Mr. Radcliffe: Well, timing in life is everything. I would share that with my honourable colleague Mr. Stefanson, and I am sure he would be very appreciative of that advice.

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Mr. Maloway: The minister made reference to the computer system being changed at the Vital Statistics SOA, and, in fact, the minister knows that the computer system is being changed throughout the government with the contract recently being given to SHL, I believe. I would like a detailed explanation as to what is contemplated here with the computer changes and what will be the end result.

Mr. Radcliffe: I am advised by the director that the computer system that is being anticipated to be installed at Vital Statistics will be consistent and compliant with the Better Systems Initiative of the Manitoba government. The proposal or the request for service was put out across Canada as a nation for response. I am told that the Vital Statistics department responded with choosing the lowest cost and the best quality that was furnished of all the individual proposals that were advanced.

I will refrain at this time from revealing the identity of the individual supplier of the system because they are still in negotiations. I would not want to jeopardize any of the negotiating process at this point in time.

I would add, and for my honourable colleague's enlightenment, that the existing system that was in place in Vital Stats was new, circa 1970, and was not the year 2000 compliant. So Vital Statistics' hand was forced. They were obliged to move forward and move forward very expeditiously because we could not be left advancing beyond 1998, was I think the curtain period by which we have to have a system up and running, in order to furnish service for the year 2000.

The object of the new system, as well, is to be able to produce records more quickly than we are at present under the existing system, so this is an added benefit.

Mr. Maloway: So what system, if any, does Vital Statistics have currently? The member says a system from 1970. Well, that can only be a paper system.

(Mr. Peter Dyck, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)

Mr. Radcliffe: I am advised that the system is a very early version of computerese and the name of it is NGEN, which means very little to me. It has very limited capacity but it can, I gather with some pain, produce the certificates, but is slow and cumbersome and has limited capacity as well for storage of database. So therefore there are problems with space or room on the database. I would say it is--I believe the appropriate vocabulary--a legacy system.

Mr. Maloway: So when this new system is put in, will it be the year 2000 compliant? The reason I ask that is that while it is hard to believe that the government is still buying computers-- I understand, today they are still buying computers, as are lots of people buying computers in computer stores that are not 2000 compliant--they are going to have a big problem in less than, I believe, it was 1,000 days from now, because they are going to find out that not only the software has to be changed, but also the hardware has to be changed.

Mr. Radcliffe: The system that we are purchasing will be the year 2000 compliant and we anticipate that is--well, I have stated that that has been one of the driving forces that obliged Vital Statistics to retool.

Mr. Maloway: So the minister is confirming that the new software and hardware is year 2000 compliant, because there is a difference there. I do not want to hear that we find out a year from now that only part of it is year 2000 compliant and we have to spend a whole bunch more money to upgrade it, because that is what is happening over at Autopac and other places right now. There are big messes all over the place. In fact, whole layers of software that have already been paid for are having to be thrown out because it is too expensive to make the changes, and the prices and the costs of the programmers is going up.

Right now if you are a computer programmer your salary is going up almost by the hour it seems, and so people are going to be making a lot of money on this change. The sooner you get at it the better off we are all going to be rather than leaving it to the last year.

Mr. Radcliffe: I can confirm to my honourable colleague that the hardware and the software is year 2000 compliant.

Mr. Maloway: Now, is this part of the SHL contract that has just recently been signed and is actually about three or four months late? Is SHL in charge of this operation?

Mr. Radcliffe: I can advise my honourable colleague that this is an independent purveyor from SHL, that SHL in fact is a desktop software, and this is a different system.

Mr. Maloway: Then how many of the SOAs in his department are in the same sort of situation, where they are going to be in a nondesktop situation for computers?

Mr. Radcliffe: I am told that Corporations, Personal Property and Land Titles are going to IBM for their programming and, just to keep the record clear, I am told that SHL will be supporting the system, but they are not the provider to the system in Vital Stats or in Land Titles.

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Mr. Maloway: When this system gets operational in Vital Statistics, will the same number of people that work there now be required, given that you are moving from a 1970s system to 1997, year 2000 compliant system? Is there not going to be a reduction in staff here?

Mr. Radcliffe: I am advised that there will be probably a reduction in staff years and employees of six to six and a half individuals, and this will be accomplished in a number of ways, first of all by vacancy management, by retirements, and there is a major initiative on the part of Vital Statistics that if individuals are going to be terminated that we are endeavouring to make sure that they have marketable skills so that they can find employment elsewhere either in the public or the private service.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, what percentage of the total staff does this represent, these six or 6.5 people?

Mr. Radcliffe: I am told it is about 18 percent. I would add, for my honourable colleague's benefit, that the turnaround time for response under the new system we are expecting will reduce from a 10-day turnaround to a two-day turnaround for production of documentation.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the minister is not in a position to tell us who the contractor is for this particular contract, but I assume that he can tell us when the system is planned to be installed and what the total cost will be.

Mr. Radcliffe: I am told that the system will be in excess of a million dollars, the acquisition price, and that some of the price is involved with the conversion costs, because a significant amount of the project is converting the existing records into the new system, the new database. The conversion process will commence May 1, 1997. It is anticipated that that will take approximately 12 months. At the expiration of 12 months, it should be up and fully running.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, now, does this mean then that once this system is up and running, and these systems oftentimes have lots of bugs and do not work as well as they are supposed to, but is this system in operation anywhere else?

Because I know with the Autopac system, it was quite an innovative approach that they took. I do not think they had had one of its kind anywhere else, and it has worked out quite well actually. It has had a few initial troubles, but the system works quite well right now. I understand that next to the pharmacies, who set up, they connected on a big network about a year earlier than Autopac did, that these two networks are the largest and second largest in all of Manitoba. So there are two networks that are working quite well right now.

I would be interested in knowing where you contracted these people from. Do they have any experience? Do they have any similar sorts of operations that they have got set up and working properly, or are you the test people?

Mr. Radcliffe: Mr. Chairman, I am advised that the system that we are looking at right now and negotiating with does exist in four other jurisdictions in proximity to Manitoba. When I say proximity, I mean on the North American continent, and I would not want to be pinned down to anything more specific than that at this point in time, because I would not want to reveal the identity of the--excuse me, I am told that in fact they are not contiguous to the province of Manitoba, that they are in fact in the British Commonwealth. Our administrators have received a high level of confidence that the particular purveyors are able to supply the program which will meet our needs because, where they are existing in other jurisdictions, they are supplying at a higher level with a larger database, and with a higher performance level than in fact are our requirements at this point in time.

Mr. Maloway: So, once they set this system up then, is that where their involvement ends, or do they have any involvement that allows them to earn ongoing revenues either through software upgrades or other little hooks in there that keep them in partners for life?

(Mr. Gerry McAlpine, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)

Mr. Radcliffe: I am advised that in fact there will be a maintenance relationship with this purveyor, that in the future I think we have the option for upgrades if we so choose, or if there is an overall decision to make an extension of future development of this system, we would have the option, because of the characteristics of this program, that we could put future development of the program out for tender. It lends itself to that sort of development.

Mr. Maloway: So what the minister, I gather, is saying is that this is essentially an open system that is not proprietary.

Mr. Radcliffe: Mr. Chairman, I am quickly getting beyond my level of competence here because I am literate with computers, but I am told that it is an open architecture compliant with BSI, but it is proprietary software, if that is of any assistance to my honourable colleague.

Mr. Maloway: I wonder whether SHL really did have any kind of a role in this because SHL just got the contract, albeit three or four months late, but they just got it in the last month. My guess is that they were being asked to approve something backwards in this case; I mean, they would not have been involved at this point.

Mr. Radcliffe: I am told that SHL did have the opportunity to bid and chose not to bid in the provision of this database. SHL will provide the desktop facility--and I do not want to mislead my honourable colleague in this respect--but, with regard to the acquisition of this particular database system, they were not involved.

Mr. Maloway: Now the minister has already admitted that the turnaround time with the new system is going to be reduced from 10 days to two days or whatever, hopefully, right?

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Mr. Radcliffe: That is an anticipated target.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, when this thing gets operational, and we are reducing our staff by six people or whatever, what then is envisioned in terms of access to this system? Are we looking at remote access where we can hook up to it as I do right now, hook up to, I think it is ISM or something, so I can access the property registries, and the who-is-suing-who registry, and all those other things that we use everyday for Question Period? Are we now going to be able to access into Vital--I do not know why we would want to do this, but are we going to be able to do this and avoid the walk over there?

Mr. Radcliffe: I would advise the honourable colleague that we will not have remote access to Vital Statistics because we do not want individuals having access to other people's records without appropriate authority or appropriate reason, and that would in fact be a breach of confidentiality. Therefore, there will be scrutiny of the requests and applications coming in. I regret to advise that he will have to attend at the branch, the special operating agency, in order to obtain this information.

However, we do maintain fax communication right now, and it is anticipated that type of communication will continue.

Mr. Maloway: I must say that it was my colleague from Burrows (Mr. Martindale) who wanted to deal with the Vital Statistics agency. It was not my intention to deal with it at all, and I see we have spent an hour and a half on it.

I think at this point--and we do ask for flexibility in the Estimates given the situation with the floods. Colleagues of mine and colleagues of yours on both sides of the House are out working building dikes and so on. One of my colleagues is in the other set of Estimates right now, and she wishes to come here to deal with the Rentalsman's office and so on. So I would ask you to be flexible enough that we can move back and forth. I would say that we are likely finished. The probabilities are that we are finished with Vital Statistics at this point. I do not see anybody else coming in here on this question right now, so I do not think we will need to call that back again.

Mr. Radcliffe: Mr. Chairman, I would ask my honourable colleague--because I look up from the table here and to the audience, and I see a large assembly of very high-priced staff waiting to give particulars--if we could have some guidance from my honourable colleague as to what departments he will be questioning on, or that he and his colleagues will be questioning on. I do not expect a response at this point in time, but if he could give us some indication so that we could be considerate to staff and let them go, and if we could schedule people within a half day perhaps so that people are not inconvenienced.

Mr. Maloway: I think for the rest of the day, that is to 6 o'clock today, we probably will not go beyond the Research and Planning department. I think that if we get into details that the minister or the deputy cannot answer, we can always consult and get back to me in writing or get back to me on another day. We have no definite plans as to how long we are going to stay here. We may be here for a long, long time, but in terms of today, I think Research and Planning is enough. Most of my questions are of a political nature, anyway, that you can answer yourself. I think that would be fair.

Mr. Radcliffe: I would thank my honourable colleague for that advice. On the basis of that advice, I will ask the staff if they would excuse themselves, then, and we will be able to give them more specific advice tomorrow as to when their attendance would be required.

Mr. Maloway: I would like to deal with the Research and Planning department for a while. In the past years we have sort of ended up usually at the end of the Estimates cycle and so oftentimes, with previous ministers whom we did not get along as well as the current two do, the Estimates would consist of me making a 40-minute speech and the minister making an equal 40-minute speech, and that was the end of the Estimates for the year. I am sure the people who were at those Estimates remember that. So now this year we have rejigged them to put some of these departments up earlier so they would get a little better looking at.

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Research and Planning is something that we have always been interested in because, quite frankly, we never really could understand fully what this department does. If you read what it says it does, it is very, very vague. Previous ministers, when they were asked questions about, really either were not able or were not prepared to answer many questions about it. So maybe the minister would like to just do a bit of an introduction here and go point by point as to what is being done in this department and what stage each of these things that they are working on is at.

Mr. Radcliffe: I can advise my honourable friend that Research and Planning has three staff years. There is Mr. Ian Anderson, who is the director and is present with us today. He has an associate, Mr. Mager, and then there is one secretary who works in this department. They are located in the Wordsworth Building. I can advise as well that the secretary is subject to secondment to other areas in the department, and in fact I can advise, much to Mr. Anderson's chagrin, that I am employing her currently in my office as the minister's receptionist and feel quite embarrassed at this point that he is having to stumble along without his regular staff. But he has been very generous in that respect. So there is some crossover to backfill, because I have staff right now that is away on maternity leave.

My honourable colleague is correct, Mr. Chair, in saying that the research is of a general nature, but I can tag some individual topics which the Research and Planning department does cover, and they are there at the disposal of the minister of the department, and theirs is an anticipatory role to give us future planning.

One of the issues that has come up this winter and since I have had the responsibility of this department is the cost of propane fuel. We have had a number of individuals from the general public who have written us complaining about the cost of fuel, and I have wanted to know who controls the fuel. What are the overall limits in the world market? Why has it gone up so radically? Is it going to drop? What are alternative measures that people, consumers can employ in order not to be subject to the depredations of these radical increases?

Another issue that Mr. Anderson has spent extensive time on is the pricing of petrochemical fuel, and I am sure that my honourable colleague and all members present here today are very aware that when we have price variations, or what they are euphemistically referred to as price wars, there is almost immediate response amongst the different chemical companies, or the fuel companies, and that their prices will vary up and down very radically. So Mr. Anderson has spent significant time in periods gone by researching the price of gasoline, seeing whether in fact there has been any--I will not say collusion because that is perhaps a pejorative term--relationship amongst the different fuel companies, whether there has been any agreement to control the market or control pricing. In fact, I can assure my honourable colleague that we have been able to come up with absolutely nothing, but in fact he has been very vigilant in taking some--

An Honourable Member: Not far enough.

Mr. Radcliffe: Well, now I hear the honourable colleague for Selkirk (Mr. Dewar), who perhaps does not approach this question with an open mind. In fact, he may already have a conclusion. But I would want to assure my colleagues that in fact I approached this topic with goodness of spirit and, in fact, formed no preconceived conclusions.

Some other specific issues that Mr. Anderson tells me he has spent some time on are the internal trade agreement, the cost of credit and disclosure of credit, the website, the development of the departmental website, monitoring of aboriginal self-government studies to see if they have in fact any impact on our department, because in fact we are, as you are aware, a registry and a regulatory department. Consumer and Corporate Affairs, albeit it is a small department, does in fact touch right across the sector of the population of Manitoba, and impacts on many, many individuals. So any development of the issue of aboriginal self-government is, in fact, a matter of significant concern to us.

The whole issue of life leases, which I do not know if my honourable colleague is aware of, this is a hybrid situation which is a cross between a condominium and a lease situation. There has been an upsurge in the market of life leases. Mr. Anderson has been very, very helpful in developing policy and an approach to the whole life lease market.

So those are a few. Those are by no means exhaustive of the topics that this department covers. It is an ongoing developmental issue.

Mr. Maloway: I wanted to ask the minister then about these gas prices. I recall a few years ago when the gas prices were fluctuating, when they were fluctuating upward more than downward in those days. The minister would stand up when I asked a question and say that he was out monitoring. That was what we thought this department did, was monitoring things. Monitoring consisted, I gather, of Ed driving around with a pen and paper writing down gas prices. That was what we thought it was.

But anyway, what I wanted to ask you is: What conclusions have been drawn? I have read stuff from the federal government. The federal government has done studies on price fixing and so on. It is fairly clear to people in the public that there is collusion going on with the gas companies, in the sense that the gas company phones the gas station and tells them that this is the way it is going to be. They do not have any option to be independent. If they want to be independent, they are not independent for too long. All you have to do is drive down to the refinery, and you will see that all the trucks gas up there. There is the Domo truck sitting beside the other truck, and it is all the same gas. I mean, it is the same stuff. So clearly there is no real competition in the gasoline business.

Maybe we have to be drawing different yardsticks or different standards here because, clearly, and I hate to use this type of analogy but in the United States, until they came up with the RICO laws, which the minister is probably familiar with, to deal with organized crime, until then they were never successful against the gangsters, you know, the organized crime, but the government sat down and they realized that this was not going to go away. They could send the tax auditors after these people and they would catch the odd one but, in essence, the criminal law was not effective in dealing with them. So a brain trust sat down and came up with these RICO laws, which have had the effect of putting away half the gangsters in the United States. I mean, they are deadly laws.

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I am wondering whether that is not, ultimately, the approach here? The current laws just are not working to deal with this situation, so we have to put some thought into maybe changing the standard. I do not exactly how you do it but, clearly, there is not any real competition in the gasoline business. All you have to do is go out and talk to people. During the last two gasoline increases, there was a fellow on Pembina Highway who did truck in gas during the Gulf War, and he started his own little gas war until he was tracked down by spies from the other side, I guess. They tracked down where he was getting his gas, and all of a sudden his supplies were cut off.

We got into that kind of thing too of trying to get a tanker and so on and bring in gas and that. This is what we found, that nobody would let us use their tanks because they were afraid of reprisals and so on from the gas companies. So there is a real hidden fear there. If you talk to anybody that has been in the business, they will tell you that the thing is tightly controlled and that they are really kind of slaves to the system. So unless people sit down and work up something that is going to be effective, we can do all the monitoring we want and all the chasing around on this issue that we want and, quite frankly, I am getting tired of it after 11 years, because it is just endless, and it is like chasing your tail.

So I would like to know what your research department is finding out about this whole thing rather than just checking gas prices at gas pumps.

Mr. Radcliffe: I am told that there are two petrochemical supply facilities in Winnipeg, one owned by Esso and the other owned by Shell in the city of Winnipeg, and that is it. Those are the only two outlets, and the different gas companies, I believe you mentioned Domo, buy gas from one of those two outlets.

What this department has done has taken the position that the pricing of this commodity is something of national significance, and one of the issues that they have debated and researched and studied and reflected upon is the cost of the commodity in Toronto versus the cost in Winnipeg versus the cost at the wellhead in, say, Calgary.

There have been a series of consultations between Mr. Anderson and many of the individuals involved in the fuel industry. He has asked a series of extensive, in-depth questions to try and explain why these costs vary. Why can the cost of fuel be cheaper in Toronto perhaps than it is in Winnipeg when you have got a significant more distance from the wellhead?

The response that we have received to date has been that it has been a function of the consumption, a function of the use and the volumes. The cost has been a function of the cost of supply at the wellhead, the international prices, the barrel price of oil that is produced and sort of what the cost is. You know, is it $18 a barrel at the wellhead in Saudi Arabia or is it $22 a barrel from Kuwait, et cetera?

I do not pretend to have an overall control or grasp of the situation and, in fact, am just beginning to get into trying to study what some of these responses mean. I am aware, and I can tell my honourable colleagues, that my predecessor, Mr. Ernst, did go to a national conference of ministers of Consumer and Corporate Affairs last year, I believe, in Toronto, and this issue was raised at that conference. Mr. Ernst did bring a motion to the floor at that ministers' conference saying that there ought to be some common resolution of the problem across the country.

At that point, I think, the collective will of all the different ministers across the country was that this was perhaps preliminary and too early and that they wanted to go away for a year and study the matter some more before they were prepared to make any significant comments on the issue.

It certainly is a matter of public concern, and I can join forces with my honourable colleague when one would reflect and see that the price of fuel goes up just prior to the Victoria Day weekend or the July long weekend and then drops significantly thereafter; perhaps the individual fuel companies know that there is going to be excessive travelling in these particular times.

I could reflect as well, coming out of the private sector as a lawyer, that the Law Society would make recommendations on what one could charge as a fee for doing a particular service, but so often what you actually got as a reward for your service was based on a function of the ability of the individual client to pay the value of your service and whatever the market would bear at that point in time. I am sure that in the unregulated enterprise, which is the fuel supply at this point in time, we are faced with some of these imponderables as well.

So I do not for a moment pretend to say that this is a simple, one-issue world in the supply of fuel. I think there are many, many different issues at stake that come to bear on the cost of fuel at the bowser or pump at our corner filling station, and Mr. Anderson, as you have perhaps facetiously say you know, has driven up and down the street and checked the prices. But his research has also gone far beyond that in a much more sophisticated level to reading reports, quizzing individual members and public relations individuals from the fuel companies and advising the minister and reviewing the proceeds, the proceedings of the last ministers conference. I would just be, you know, touching on some of the highlights of some of the activities on this particular issue.

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Mr. Maloway: Well, clearly I think the minister has hit on some of the problems, certainly. It is a market economy, and as long as you have 10 provinces here, you are never going to get agreement here. I mean, Manitoba does not produce any oil and Alberta does, and when the price--well, not very much oil, but relative to Alberta. But when the price goes up--I mean, I never noticed any wars in Alberta in the last few years, but yet they take advantage of the higher price when in fact they may be taking the oil out of wells that have been there for years and years and years. So there is no cost. When the price jumps 10 cents a litre, surely the person who owns the well in Alberta cannot argue that their price just went up overnight by 10 cents, because that is old oil.

So with that in mind, I started to think about this a little more and thought, well, it does not seem that we are going to be successful in beating these people, because there is a monopoly here. So there is probably only one answer for Manitobans, and that is if the minister wants to take a trip up to Churchill in the next little while, I think he might see a solution there. That is, that in the port of Churchill there are huge storage tanks, gasoline storage tanks, and I am not the only person that thinks this way. There are quite a few other people who have looked at it. It is certainly technically feasible to bring in a tanker of gas through however you get through to Churchill in a tanker, and you can bring in gas and basically flood the North with gasoline and bring it down south. You have a railway line up there, and it certainly would be--I mean, if you were looking at economic development, that is one thing to look at.

I mean, we are giving away the whole Churchill base, I believe, to some private company, right now OmniTRAX. Maybe they will come up with the idea. But it made sense to me with all those tanks there, and we did ask a lot of questions. It is certainly technically possible to handle that amount. There is enough storage capabilities up there. As a matter of fact, if somebody does not step in, those tanks and so on have to be maintained. There is a certain amount of work has to be done with them, and I believe that nothing is happening in there right now. Also, you understand, too, that that is a staging area for moving stuff even further north, Rankin Inlet and other places, and a decision is pending now. I do not know, it may have been made already, but there is a competition between Churchill and Rankin Inlet, I believe it is, to see who is going to be the staging area for moving these supplies. So the point is, the facilities are there, and if there was a will to do it, certainly a good experiment would be to try to do exactly that, to bring in some--because, as you know, the further north you go the more astronomical the gasoline prices get. So what we have been doing conceptually is, we have been hauling this gasoline from the south to the North. Has anybody thought of bringing it around and coming down south with it? So I leave it with you.

I spoke to Costas Nicolaou, who is a bit of an expert in this, and it was clear from my discussion with him that he had also thought of it, and so it bears taking a look at because you could solve a lot of economic problems with one little swoop and certainly get the price of gas lowered down south a heck of a lot quicker, too, with giving the oil companies a little bit of free market medicine, they think they are free enterprisers, but they are not. They just run a little monopoly, but on an east-to-west basis, right? So we just throw in a little bit of north-south competition here, and then watch how the equation changes.

Now another area that you might want to look at, and I am very pleased with--I know I am crossing departments now--the new minister in Government Services. I think he is, perhaps, a little more impressionable and more reasonable than the one that is leaving. But you know, with the fleet of vehicles, I know that you as ministers are involved in a cabinet, you are involved in a caucus, so you do have a say in these things.

It has occurred to me that with Thompson being a test site for Ford and for other vehicles for cold weather testing, I do not know whether you are aware, but in the United States, in the states of California, Arizona, and a couple of other states, they have mandated--and in the Province of British Columbia--that from now and each year hence a certain number of cars have to be sold that use alternative fuels. This is where the major car companies including GM have introduced electric vehicles. These are not the ones we had here in 1977, those old Renault 12s; we are not talking about those, all right. We are talking about new vehicles with new designs.

It seemed to me that Thompson should be promoted and sold as a test site for these electric vehicles. I mean, Manitoba is well placed with our hydro projects and so on. This California market is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger in their need through legislative changes and their need for power, because it is there. The legislation is in place. They must by the year 2000 be selling--so many percent of the new cars have to be electrically powered, right, and they have offered incentives. In Arizona they have given reductions in the insurance. They have offered different types of incentives, lower driver's licence fees. California has offered different incentives.

So these are things that we should be looking at. Forward-looking people should be looking at how do we position ourselves as compared to, say, Saskatchewan or Alberta or another province to test these vehicles up here, because they are going to have to test them in cold weather and the electrical sides of it have to be looked at.

When I brought this up in Government Services last year, the approach of the minister is that he is just looking at today. It is what can I get for the lowest cost in 1996 and to hell with the future. He is not interested in that, not even one little car of his 3,000 or whatever that he turns over in a year; he would not even look at buying one of them. That is shortsighted.

I mean, we understand that you are going to need--gasoline will be around for a long time. You are going to need that for distances. In Manitoba you have temperature problems. You have all sorts of other problems, but it does not mean that you should just put blinkers on and forget about the problem.

Now another area--there was an article in The Globe and Mail just last week, it was on TV last week, and there were a lot of articles in the last six months. There is a company called Ballard Buses. Now Ballard Buses--Ballard is a B.C. company. I think it is BMW or Mercedes Benz have just put millions and billions and gazillions into them, right, and bought 25 percent of them. But they have even had one of these Ballard buses in Winnipeg here. They had a TV clip and the person from Metro Transit drank the exhaust for the cameras, because the exhaust is water. It is a hydrogen fuel cell bus.

The B.C. government has invested in this thing. There are people in there, you know, with ManGlobe currently developing--I know that is not something that you would want to be too keen about right now, putting money into private companies like this. But I mean this thing has a lot of potential if Mercedes is putting the money in there. The current buses are costing--I think they are prototypes and they are a million dollars apiece, so their cost is quite high. But once again, we have to kind of think of five years from now and 10 years from now. We have to think that we should be part of the solution, not part of the problem. I think if the Manitoba government or somebody in the government took the lead and offered to get one of these things in Winnipeg, you know, sign on to the program and take one of them, then it would be helping out.

You see, where this is heading is that all of this stuff gets us in the forefront of technology, but also combats the gasoline prices. There are just more than--as the RICO law solved the problem in the United States. If one solution is not working, then pull back a bit and come up with another one that might be better.

If the minister is interested in pursuing some of these things, we have a fair amount of documentation on this stuff on the electric-powered vehicles, on the laws in B.C. and California. Matter of fact, second-generation cars are now coming out. You have got to understand the infrastructure problems you have here in that your houses have to be rewired now. B.C. Hydro is involved in this thing, too. They have to rewire the houses for the plugging in of the vehicles, because it is heavy-duty wiring. There is job creation there. [interjection] There is a future after politics, but there is job creation there, and they are working on this.

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But you see they have a smog problem that we do not have here. Their health costs are going up dramatically because of the smog in the lower mainland and so on, so they have a bigger imperative. But I guess my point is that we could be the feeder of this thing. We can provide the power. We have the power here; they do not. We have the testing and stuff like that, and we should be working on that a little more.

So I am sorry to hear that we are not making a lot of progress on the price of gasoline, but it is a free market. What are our options? We can suggest regulation, but the government's comeback to that is that it does not work in the Maritimes where they had regulation for a few years under the PUB, and, in fact, they had the highest prices in the country under regulation, right? [interjection] They still do; my colleague from Transcona says so.

I mean, clearly if that is not the answer--so I am prepared to do what it takes to get the job done, and it does not necessarily have to be with a system that did not work in the past. There is more than one way to deal with this.

Mr. Radcliffe: Mr. Chairman, I would thank my honourable colleague for these ideas because I think that moving from fossil fuel to renewable resource supply of fuel, moving from fossil fuel to renewable resource, is probably a superior form of energy supply. In fact, especially with Manitoba being so advantageously situated with our major northern rivers and the infrastructure, maybe we could get Conawapa up and running, which would be something nice to speculate about.

So I thank him for this, and I would ask Mr. Anderson when he has time in his schedule if he could contact my honourable colleague and access some of the research that you have, and I would be glad to review it. Thank you very much.

Mr. Maloway: We covered a fair amount of area there, and so I am going to move up my list here of things that we have certainly asked for in the past. We have asked for the octane levels to be posted on gasoline pumps. That is a common thing in the United States. No one knows at the current time what octane level you are dealing with, with gasoline in your car, and cars run better at different octanes. So maybe you could ask what has being done in that area.

Mr. Radcliffe: Mr. Chairperson, I am advised by Mr. Anderson that in fact some of the local filling stations do have octane levels on their pumps, but it is observed more on the noncompliance than the compliance in that respect.

He does point out that in fact different cars have different fuel requirements, so one must be able to match the octane level of the fuel to the car that you are driving. If you put a higher octane level in a low-performance car, you are not improving the situation at all, so one must be able to match that. Mr. Anderson advises that he has had some difficulty obtaining this sort of information, and he further remarks that even if the octane level is stated on the outside of the pump, that is no guarantee as to the octane content in the fuel. That is another thing of which one must be aware.

Mr. Anderson does advise me, though, that the Alberta Research Council did conduct a number of searches across the country in tests on octane level, and they found some discrepancy, but minor discrepancy, at that point in time. He does point this out, that this is an issue which should be taken into account.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, the reason I asked the question is because I have been asked that question several times myself by people, I guess, who have those requirements that a certain octane level would work better in their gas. I gather when they go to the gas station, they have three or four options of pumps to use, but they have all got the same octane in them, probably the lowest, you know. In gas, and this goes back a couple of years now, but if you actually ask any of the gas attendants--I tested that one day. See, I do some monitoring, too. I went to, well, three or four different stations and asked the attendants about the octane levels, and I got blank stares on all of them. I mean, there was not anybody that knew anything about octane levels.

If they do it in the United States pretty well all over, from what I can see, then why is it such a big problem here? What do other provinces do in Canada?

Mr. Radcliffe: Well, in response to my honourable colleague's remarks there, I can advise him that I happen to deal with one particular filling station consistently, and I in fact asked my operator that question. I drive a Ford Taurus and was told to take the mid-level octane level, which was supposed to be the best fuel for that particular car, but if you will just indulge me for a moment, I will inquire as to what is being done on this study across the country.

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Anderson tells me that in fact the Alberta Research Council did do some consistent reports or research across the country some time ago, found little inconsistency so, therefore, our research department has not done anything recently, although they do believe that the Alberta Research Council is still continuing with their research on this issue. He advises that the information he has received from some of the car manufacturers is, if you use a fuel of a higher octane level than the level that is prescribed for that automobile, you are in fact just blowing the fuel out the rear end of the car and wasting it. So that is an issue of which I think we must be aware.

Mr. Maloway: So are you planning to study this more? I did not detect a definitive answer here.

Mr. Radcliffe: In response to my colleague's question I would advise that Mr. Anderson is prepared to contact the fuel companies. He advises me that he was told by the fuel companies that they had a toll free number one could contact to obtain booklets on the octane level of their respective fuels. He is prepared to research this matter again and bring back to me the products of this research, so I thank you very much for directing our attention to this.

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Mr. Maloway: At this opportunity I would like to ask about the CAMVAP program. This is something that I have done a fair amount of chasing around after over the years, even to the point of going to some of the adjudication hearings in Florida. That was a tough job I must say. It was January, so somebody has to do it.

Florida had the toughest laws. In the United States there was--I do not have any of my notes here, I am just doing this from memory, but about 45 out of 50 states actually have lemon laws in place. Of course, as you can appreciate, some of them are tough, and some of them are pretty weak. Some of them are supporting. I would not expect that in Michigan you would get a very tough lemon law with Detroit sitting there. So you would look to Michigan as probably one of the weakest. I am not suggesting it is, but it is probably a good place to look.

I believe Florida, New York, other states were really good. As a matter of fact, the minister might be interested in knowing that they have developed it so far in Florida that--and I think Florida is the second or third largest state in terms of purchasing new vehicles, so we are talking about a huge market in Florida. But they have an annual report that comes out. They sent me this annual report that gives a breakdown. It is similar to your reports here. They have refined it to the point where they have even got it on used cars, a lemon law for used cars.

Now to be fair, if you did a survey in Florida you will find a lot of people do not seem to know about it either. In Canada we now have, I would say, a watered-down version of some of the better programs in the United States. What Canada did was, you signed on or your predecessor signed on to the CAMVAP program a couple of years ago. So now we have a national program. The key to this program is that it does not really work very well if nobody knows about it. It is mandated, or persondated, in Florida that every purchaser of a new vehicle must get this booklet given to them, and there has to be an explanation. It is required when a vehicle comes off the lot.

Now maybe it is because Manitobans are driving 10-year-old cars now, and nobody can afford to buy new cars anymore because the prices are so darn high on them. The fact of the matter is that anybody who does buy a new car does not get--I mean, I defy you to find one dealership in town that actually tells anybody about this program. As a matter of fact, I have asked just out of interest a couple of car dealers and car salesmen, who have been in the business for years: Are you aware of this program? They are not even aware of it. So not only are they not handing out the books, but they are not even aware of the program. Quite frankly, it is not something you want to think about or deal with if you are a car salesman. You know, you want to sell the product, get it off the lot and go on to your next one. You do not want to be drawing people's attention to Lemon Aid questions, right? You know, you do not want to be saying to them, well, here is a little booklet and the Florida book has got a picture of a lemon on it, so that ought to inspire a lot of confidence in the purchaser right there, you see.

So I never said anything about it, having purchased a vehicle in the last, what, I guess, year and a half now, and I am very happy with the car salesman and dealership and everybody involved in it. I am just pointing out that, in that case, I was never given a book. I know enough about it that I know that it does exist, and if I did have a problem, they would be hearing from me, you know. [interjection] What about the public? That is right, the member for Transcona (Mr. Reid) mentions. So I guess if I talk long enough, the minister will have time to have read the briefing paper on it.

Mr. Radcliffe: In response to my honourable colleague's remarks, I can tell him that CAMVAP began in Manitoba on October 3, '94 and at the close of business in '95 the plan had resolved 31 cases, 20 of which were through arbitration, nine through mediation, and the balance were settled during arbitration hearings. Along with the other awards, 20 arbitrations resulted in four vehicle buybacks and one vehicle replacement.

The 1996 data is expected imminently on this plan, on this CAMVAP plan, and in fact I can tell my honourable colleague that I believe within the last month, we, either through my office or through Mr. Anderson's office, did refer somebody to the CAMVAP people, and they have been in to see me--the people who administer the plan in Manitoba--to apprise me of their function and process in Manitoba, and I was quite impressed with them.

So I think it is something that bears some fruit, and I think some consideration as to your suggestion of publicizing this service, this mediation service and alternative dispute resolution, to in fact move dispute away from court litigation, which I can assure the honourable colleague, although I have found it quite fruitful myself, was often arduous and expensive and less than satisfactory for many of the Manitoba consuming public through the years.

I was involved with a number of motor vehicle disputes between dealerships and consumers, and on the very issue of which you speak. So I think that it is something that bears some fruitful research, and I thank him for the recommendation. I think it very appropriate to use our best efforts to publicize this service.

Mr. Maloway: The minister read from the report on the CAMVAP program for whatever year it was, '94-95, I believe. In his list of adjudications, could he tell me how many decisions were made in favour of the car companies versus the individuals?

For example, a good program, a balanced program, at least the Florida program evidently works out at roughly 50-50. At least the hearings that I sat in on in the morning, they were primarily about air conditioning, which you can understand being of interest in Florida. I think it broke down roughly even, that in four hearings or four cases, two would be decided against the car companies, and two would be decided against the individuals bringing the claim. That was supposed to be an indication of a pretty fair program, that if you took 1,000 cases, 500 of them would go against the car companies and 500 of them would go against the individuals. I mean, you could not have a program that went 100 percent against the car companies, right? You could not have a program that went 100 percent against the individuals, because people would say, well, it would be biased one way or the other.

So their program, the Florida program anyway, appeared to--and the minister's office might want to subscribe, phone Tallahassee and get on their list because they are only too willing to send the stuff out to anybody that wants it.

Mr. Radcliffe: I thank my honourable colleague for those comments. I can advise that the summer of 1995 CAMVAP awards, the breakdown that I am informed was that there were eight cases where there was no liability found out of, oh, 19 cases heard, there were eight cases of no liability; there were two with a buyback with reduction; two with a buyback with no reduction. I guess those would be liability in whole or in part going against the dealership. [interjection] Yes, Mr. Chair, I believe my honourable colleague has a comment on that.

Mr. Maloway: I just have a sensitivity on this issue, and it has nothing to do with anybody in this room. But years ago around 1988, I believe it was, when we brought in a private member's bill to bring in lemon law, at committee we had the issue blatantly misrepresented by the then president of the Motor Dealers Association, Lefty Hendrickson, and the then president of the Consumers Association, Jenny Hilliard, the subsequently defeated Tory candidate. They worked together hand in glove to deliberately misrepresent what we were doing as being against car dealerships. [interjection]That is right. It was there in black and white that we are dealing with the manufacturers only, not the car dealers.

As a matter of fact when Mark Chipman came on as the president of the Motor Dealers Association, that was the first thing he said to me was, I am sorry about all that. He, as a dealer, said, I love this program. I think the lemon law is a good idea. We fully understand that it is the manufacturers that we are dealing with here, that we as dealers have problems with these manufacturers all the time.

So if we have another piece of legislation here that says, look, you have got to buy--because think about it, the unsatisfied customer is taking it out on the dealer. The dealer is the meat in the sandwich here. The dealer does not want this aggravation. He wants Ford or he wants GM to deal with the car. He did not make the car; GM or Ford did, or Chrysler did. Why should he be pilloried, right? I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, the comment there got me going on this issue.

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Mr. Radcliffe: I do stand corrected obviously. I bow to my colleague's superior source of information on this, but I guess my response to that would be also in the form of a question. Perhaps I will finish with the material I have here by way of information, and then respond with another question on this issue.

So we are looking at 19 cases in '95; two were buyback with reduction; two buyback with no reduction; one was a totally replaced vehicle; two were reimbursed for repairs; five were make repairs; one was, the heading is, out of pocket, so that would be that the consumer was compensated for out-of-pocket expenses that were incurred; and eight were no liability. [interjection] Oh, I see, for a total of 21 awards, but there were, in fact, 19 cases, because I gather in two cases there was more than one award made. My query was I was concerned about the privity of contract issue, and Mr. Anderson tells me that in fact there is a consent to enter into a commercial relationship between the manufacturer and the consumer. That is the basis on which CAMVAP proceeds, because I have been looking only at the limited relationship between, of course, the dealer where the privity of contract exists with the purchaser. So I now understand, and that was going to be the basis of my question. So, thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, now what representations has the minister or his department made then to CAMVAP, because, as one of the stakeholders in it, you are in a position, I would think, to review it and see how it is going and make some representations as to where it should go from there. Has there been any research or thought given to trying to expand it to used cars, and, if so, how would that work? If it works well on the new cars--and it works on used cars in Florida--then why can we not do the same thing?

Mr. Radcliffe: Mr. Chairman, I am advised by Mr. Anderson that in fact the CAMVAP scheme, as it exists right now, applies to the current year and the four preceding years. So there is some application to used cars, used vehicles, and it is irrelevant how many intervening owners there may have been. [interjection] Yes, so there is some limited application to used vehicles. In fact, I can further add to my honourable colleague that to date I have only had an informational meeting with the CAMVAP people. I have not been in a position yet to give them any direction or reflection as to extending their mediation processes further, but it is certainly something that I am quite open to looking into.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, maybe we are moving through my list of things here. I am making very good progress, I must say. Maybe I should ask the minister at this point about the cemeteries. He offered some really good advice which I think I took the liberty of passing on to a certain reporter for a future article. So he may get a call on that some day. The Elmwood Cemetery has been in the news for some time now, and his letter detailing what the solutions might be, while he was saying that he did not think this would be a solution for the Elmwood situation, it certainly would be a solution, in my mind anyway, to avoid any future Elmwood situations. That was that we would increase the amount of money that was, by regulation, required to be put into the perpetual care fund. Once again from memory, I believe the minister said that there is $1 million in the fund.

First of all, around 1959, I gather, the laws came into effect, and I believe Elmwood Cemetery voluntarily came forward and started doing this on or about that time. So over the years they have managed to amass $1 million, and with low interest rates the way they are, they are bringing in roughly $60,000 in income on this fund. The $60,000 is not sufficient to handle the cemetery because the cemetery is all filled up, or more or less filled up, and so there is no new source of revenue. So that is the problem with it. As you know, the riverbank is having problems, and so this thing is turning into a big, hot potato with the province throwing it to the city and the city throwing it to the province and both parties saying, where is the owner in all of this? Which was what I am saying, because I do not know what circumstances the owner is in, but my guess is that this owner has been making profits out of this cemetery for years and years and years, and now, at the end of the day, it is the taxpayers that are going to be stuck sorting this whole thing out.

So once again, to be proactive and to make sure this does not happen again, I thought that the minister's suggestion in the letter hit the nail right on the head, that what we should be doing, perhaps, is looking at requiring all of the other cemeteries in the province to increase that 30 percent or 35 percent, that they put in right now, to a higher level so that we can accelerate the buildup of funds in their cemetery, so when they get to the point in time when they are full and decreasing revenue hits them, they will at least have something to take care of their problems and not become a football like the Elmwood Cemetery has become. It is a big problem, and nobody really knows how to deal with it.

Now you have a situation where people have surfaced. One fellow surfaced, and I am sure he has the best of intentions, but you know it was reported in the press that he is going to set up his own collection. He is going to be collecting money on behalf of the cemetery. It is close to home, and I do not really like the idea of people going door to door collecting money for the cemetery. The owner is in Ontario and does not know what is going on, and the city does not want it, and the province does not want it. Nobody wants this thing. It is a big problem, and we have got to somehow solve it. I do not know how you are going to solve the Elmwood problem, I really do not, but certainly in the future could we not look at, right away, increasing those fees? I am assuming that your best advice is that that is a solution, increase the amount put in the perpetual care fund so we do not have this happening again.

Mr. Radcliffe: Mr. Chairman, I can advise my old friend that I have spent a significant amount of time looking at this Elmwood Cemetery problem, and there are, I think, about two or three areas of concern.

My honourable friend is quite correct that in fact this is a cemetery which has very little available land for new plots. Therefore, the income that nonfaith-based, nonmunicipal-owned graveyards usually derive, future income, the private graveyards--and I think this is the only one in this particular nature in the city of Winnipeg--is from the sale of new plots, and these are very limited at this point in time. There was additional property that was owned by the individual who owns this corporation and resides in Ontario, and that property was sold off a number of years ago. This is a privately owned corporation, and I believe that the individual in Ontario who owns it, has taken a somewhat hands-off attitude and is looking to the local people here in Winnipeg to try and solve his problem for him, and it becomes our problem.

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One of the issues that immediately presented itself and is a matter of ongoing concern with the onset of the flood which we are facing right now, is there was a real risk with the erosion of riverbank, and I believe there have been up to about 15 bodies that were in jeopardy of being washed down the river with the erosion of the riverbank, so our department, on a without-prejudice basis, donated $15,000. I think Urban Affairs donated $10,000. Maybe it was more than that, because the provincial allotment was a total of $35,000. My math is off a little bit, but we donated $35,000 on the understanding that the city was going to come up with an additional $35,000 for a total price of $70,000 to move these bodies further inland. So that was a band-aid solution to fix the first problem, but that is only a very ad hoc solution and in fact does not address the real issue of maintenance of this property and the maintenance of the riverbank. That was the solution that was reached this winter on an almost quasi-emergency basis, because we anticipated the flood being very destructive of the riverbank in Elmwood.

Another problem that we are faced with at Elmwood is that I gather and I have observed from driving past it that there is a very significant elm trees forest, urban forest there, and that Dutch elm disease has got into the stand of elm there, and we are facing perhaps a major loss if there is not some significant hygiene exercised with this forest. So we have launched some inquiries internally within government to get an assessment right away--right away, I mean as soon as the trees get into leaf--as to the extent of the dead trees and get some estimates of costs to see how extensive our problem is right now to see if it can be curtailed. So that is another problem.

The third problem which we are faced with in Elmwood Cemetery is that it is an old-fashioned--and I do not mean that deprecatingly, but it is an old-fashioned graveyard with the upright stones. So, therefore, there is a lot of manual labour that has to be exercised to keep the grass down and to keep the place groomed. That is where there is, I think, a good deal of expense with just the cost of labour today to keep the place properly maintained in a respectful fashion. So that is on the debit side of the whole ledger.

On the positive side or the credit side, I am aware that as my learned friend agrees this is an old cemetery. There are many, many families still very vibrant and active in Winnipeg, who have their relatives buried in this graveyard, and it is not an abandoned cemetery by any means. There are still many prominent families, many wealthy families, many poor families that are very interested in this particular site.

One of the issues that, I guess, I had discussed in my office amongst some of my people was with regard to the gravestones. Could we remove the gravestones, and if so, what were the--and this is all, you know, a highly speculative conversation at this point. We have taken no active steps at this point and create a composite wall of the dead apropos of what was done in Washington, say, with the veterans from the Vietnam War or with the wall of holocaust survivors in the backyard here of this building. I do not believe that we have taken any positive steps with that, but that was one concept that we came up with in an attempt to try and be creative. I think if we were to do something like that, we would have to consult with the local churches who relate to this particular graveyard. I would imagine there are some Protestant denominations in the neighbourhood. We obviously would have to consult with the records of the individual owners of the plots. To date we have not gone very far with that, but that is certainly something on the hopper that we are looking at as a suggestion.

The difficulty we are faced with, of course, is that if the owner abandons the registration of the corporation, will the asset which is the common walkways and roadways in the particular graveyard escheat to the Crown? That is where the province has some liability. Right now I am told that the property is under tax sale. There has been a tax notice registered by the City of Winnipeg, and the City of Winnipeg is also reluctant to take responsibility for this graveyard, because they see it as an ongoing liability and expense with very little upside for them. I would say on the record that it is a responsibility that is going to have to be sorted out, and there are ongoing discussions with the City of Winnipeg at this point in time directed at Elmwood. We are not walking away from it; we are not hiding from it. We have no solutions at this point in time. I want my honourable colleague to know that, in fact, this is a matter of significant concern to us, because we realize that it is a significant shortfall with the income.

As to just undertaking at this point to raise the percentage of asset for perpetual care, that is something we are considering. We are looking at it. I am not in a position today to give a commitment that I am going to unilaterally do it, but it is certainly something that has been under discussion as well. So we are looking at being creative with the solutions for this thing; we know it is a real problem. We know it is not going to go away--and it has got to be reasonably quickly, I would say within the next year. I would think within this growing season, certainly from the elm tree perspective, we cannot waste much more time talking. We have got to come up with some action I would think within the next three, four months, because from my information from living in Crescentwood, which is also an urban forest area, the elm bark beetle flies in late August, goes after dead wood and spreads very quickly in the circulation of these beautiful trees. So we have got to take some active steps pretty soon.

So nothing definitive yet and that, I guess, brings my honourable colleague up to date with where we are at with the discussion, with the research, and with some of the directions we have been looking at.

Mr. Maloway: Thank you--

Mr. Radcliffe: If I could interrupt, Mr. Chair, for a second, I would ask the honourable member for Elmwood, are you through with Research and Planning, and we could excuse Mr. Anderson? Or would you like him to stay for a few minutes more? Okay.

Mr. Maloway: It has occurred to me that perhaps we should be looking at shoring up the bank at the Elmwood Cemetery. I am thinking of what is at The Forks. There is riprap or stones, whatever, put along the side to keep the river from eating away at it. I am sure there is good reason why the graves were removed on an emergency basis.

An Honourable Member: They were going to fall in the river.

Mr. Maloway: Right, but if we do not do something to shore up the bank and drop riprap in there or something to keep the bank up, we are just going to be moving another 12 next year and another 12 after that, because we are allowing the water to eat away at the bank. We take 12 this year, then it is going to be another 12 next year. Nobody has done anything with the bank over the last years that I can see.

Mr. Radcliffe: I believe that my honourable colleague is correct that we have got to direct our attention to the maintenance of shoring up the riverbank. I think that probably the first step is to research the extent of the wasting of the bank. I presume, with my knowledge of prairie rivers with the oxbow, that this is on the wasting side rather than the building side of the river. We have got to get some idea of cost for shoring it up. I think that is a very reasonable suggestion on the part of my honourable colleague.

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Mr. Maloway: I would like to ask the minister whether any work has been done or research has been done to deal with these out-of-province sellers who use the phones? They phone from Montreal, I believe that is a popular place but I believe also from the States. They sell vacation packages. Businesses for years have been getting what looks like invoices from the telephone system, from Manitoba Telephone System, and if you did not look at them too closely you might write a cheque. I guess enough people do, because these people stay in business.

So there are all sorts of these different scams that are perpetrated out there. The police evidently claim they are having problems with tracking them down, because I gather when they get a hold of them these guys run away. So you have countless Manitobans writing cheques and giving their credit cards out to people. They are told they have won a prize, and the prize they get turns out to be a little rubber boat or something, or they buy hundred-dollar pens.

So there is a whole range and variety of these things, but they all turn out to be, when you strip away the veils, just an attempt by some of these shysters to separate people from their money. I would like to know what it is that this research department is doing about that?

Mr. Radcliffe: I can be quite responsive to this and in fact give a very personal experience to my honourable colleague. One of my mother's friends was a woman about 94 who lives in the Lions home on Portage Avenue here. This woman is living independently. She has been very creative and in some very striking circumstances. She was brought up to expect great things out of life, and then when her husband died prematurely she was left bereft financially. She, although a person of very modest means, has exhausted every piece of savings of her own on these sort of telephone solicitations. I in fact had to rip up her credit card after she had loaded it up. She had consulted me as a solicitor, and she is in effect judgment-proof so that nobody was able to bring any legal process against her.

But I can assure you that I feel very strongly personally about these sort of solicitations, as well, and was exceedingly angry at the treatment and almost borderline abuse and harassment of these individuals phoning from out of province. Mr. Anderson advised me that the OPP, the Ontario Provincial Police in Ontario, have a phone busters detail, because the problem is that--and my honourable colleague has mentioned it, and you are quite correct--these people are based in Montreal. They are based in Toronto, and they phone into our jurisdiction, so that they are beyond the reach of our police or our peace enforcement officers. The OPP have been quite effective in following up where they can be identified, and we have referred a number of cases from our Consumers' Bureau to the phone busters, and this is one of the issues that Mr. Anderson's department is following up on with the co-operative enforcement where there is potential of Criminal Code violations or breach of better business or breach of consumer standards, et cetera, by way of harassment or abuse. I think that is one of the limited resources we have. The other, of course, is perhaps education.

But I can assure my honourable colleague that in this particular case that I am referring to, I think it is Reader's Digest and Columbia publishing are the two culprits in this case, and they have this particular woman involved with the sweepstakes. She thinks perpetually she is just on the verge of acquiring an incredible fortune. It just seems to be a moving target. It is month after month after month. She will phone me up month after month with these ongoing tales that Ed McMahon is about to come beating on her door and whisk her away in a limousine to Montreal to the opera and buy her a fancy frock. It is just--[interjection] No, this is a friend of my mother's.

This is a woman who was brought up with my mother and been a lifelong friend of my family. She has no other relatives in the city of Winnipeg. In fact, I have inherited her as part of my extended family and look after her to some very limited extent. It has just been something I tear my hair out--I know it is getting thin, like my honourable colleague from Transcona--[interjection] Exactly. We are follicly challenged.

It is recognized as a real social ill, and to date we have not been able to invoke our consumers officers here, because these people are operating in from out of the jurisdiction. Education is an issue, but if these victims are almost willing to be preyed upon or are reluctant to disclose the extent of their victimization it is very difficult.

I can tell my honourable colleague that in fact I had an appointment for this particular friend of mine at Addictions Manitoba, and I was that morning phoned up from my law office to go and pick this woman up and just to confirm the appointment and she backed off. She refused to go and told me to mind my own business.

So I am personally aware and we as a department are also aware of the depredations and the social ills that this sort of practice effects on our population, and it is a limited element of the population, but still often they prey on lonely and needy and isolated people. Sometimes it is downright vicious.

So Mr. Anderson is advising me that in fact there is ongoing consultation across the country with different members of the Consumers departments in Canada talking about these sorts of people. As I said, I offer that one positive solution has been the OPP phone busters. Now, I am not aware of any positive results of what they have been able to accomplish, but I give you that as information.

Mr. Maloway: Well, for the second time this afternoon the minister has read my question, stolen my next question, because I was in fact going to ask him what sort of enforcement results were here to show for this because, I mean, this all sounds good, and on the surface of it it is a pretty big problem. It is difficult to solve, but I would be interested in knowing what sort of results they are getting with their operation phone busters and whether they have actually put anybody out of business, or is it just a case of their moving down the street and changing their phone number?

Mr. Radcliffe: We certainly will undertake to make those enquiries and get back to the honourable colleague on this. I would add, as well, that the more publicity that is given about these people, the way that they operate, and the fact that different jurisdictions are prepared to take steps to enforce sanctions against them has, in effect, and does start to change the statistics.

I can advise my honourable colleague as well, and again I am thinking back to the days of my legal practice that there was an individual here in Winnipeg who made it a practice of selling one-write bookkeeping systems. [interjection] Yes, and in fact I believe he has been prosecuted here in Manitoba, and I think that would be imminently deserved, which is sort of an unsolicited opinion on my behalf. I happened again, for another family member, to sue him to recover a significant deposit. I believe this was an individual who was within our jurisdiction, and there were criminal sanctions brought against him because that was fraudulent and the Consumers' branch did, I think, react quite aggressively with him and worked co-operatively with the Winnipeg police.

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That is where he would imply or infer that if you bought the one-write bookkeeping system that he had a whole string of clients that would then support you, and with very little personal effort you could achieve financial independence if you bought his system. Of course, you had to put your money up front and buy his inventory, and it was just an incredible flimflam.

These people seemed to have the knack to locate people who were unemployed or people who were not satisfied with their present system of employment and are looking for additional income and are, in some ways, vulnerable. That, with one case that I do recall, I ended up as solicitor suing him, recovering money from him and, I am aware because I just read something recently, that he was being prosecuted.

Mr. Maloway: I would like to ask the minister whether there have been any pyramid schemes operating in Manitoba lately. They roll through here periodically, everything from selling gold sales--well, there is a whole range of things that they do, and, once again, when you strip away the veils it turns out to be a pyramid sale, although there is always another twist to it. So they fool enough people into believing that it is actually legal, when it is not. Have there been any recent examples of this?

Mr. Radcliffe: What we could do with that question, I would suggest Mr. Chairman, is to defer that perhaps until Mr. Robidoux from the Consumers' Bureau is here, because I think he will have more specific information on that.

Mr. Maloway: That is fair as far as I am concerned. I would like to ask the minister and his Research and Planning staff about their role in what has become known as the house-flipping ring of 1994, and what sort of research has been done in an effort to make sure that that does not happen again?

Just on the surface of it, I would say that the only advice I can give right now to solve the problem from happening again, and it is actually a simple answer, that is, that the appraisals that are done by The Appraisal Institute, that they are required to be given to all the parties in the real estate transaction. If that had been the case, that would have made some appraisers unhappy, okay, because they appraise the same property three or four times and collect fees for it, so they will be very unhappy, but the homeowners in all these cases would have been very happy because, as you know, when you buy a house and you get a mortgage on the house, the bank orders an appraisal, you pay for it, but you never get to see it because it belongs to the bank.

Now, if you decide you want to sell the house at some point and you need another appraisal, then you have to pay for that yourself. So typically people through the 10 or 20 years they own a house end up paying for appraisal after appraisal, all of which are the property, I guess, of the person that ordered the appraisal, but they are not shared among the parties.

What happened with these house-flipping cases--and I was involved in sorting out about 100 of them in total, and I guess that is what they come to right now. In all cases there was an appraiser involved in this whole thing too. It could not work. If you were looking for the end of the funnel, it was the appraisal, okay, because you had the lawyers from both sides, you had the house-flipping people that were involved in doing the flipping, and then you had the people that were buying it. You had all these different people involved in it to make it successful, but it would never have operated without the appraiser. That was the key. If the appraisal had been shown around, then the people that were buying the house would have known that the house was not worth that kind of money.

So that is what I would like to know what the research department knew back then and what they have done since then.

Mr. Radcliffe: If I could just ask a question for clarification of my honourable colleague. These are in the sale of used houses, and you are not discussing the fraud perpetrated by these appraisers on second mortgages or anything like that of overmortgaging. Rather, this is on a sale situation and a series of successive sales when there was in fact nowhere near the amount of equity that these--

Mr. Maloway: Precisely.

Mr. Radcliffe: Yes, okay. I am advised by my deputy that there has been nothing recent on this, that in the incident that my honourable colleague is referring to there was, I believe, a lawyer involved as well, and there was some disciplinary action taken at that point in time. This would be a matter which perhaps we could raise again when the Securities Commission folk are present because there was some action taken by the Securities people because part of their responsibility is the real estate board or the real estate conveyancing.

Mr. Maloway: I was simply trying, at this point anyway, to find out whether your Research and Planning department had any role to play in addressing this problem--

Mr. Radcliffe: No.

Mr. Maloway: --because this actually became knowledge of the department as early as April, I guess it was, of 1995, when they first found out about it. Presumably, it is still winding its way through, and we will have a conclusion, I guess, sometime before the end of the century. Out of that has to come some knowledge about how to make sure this does not happen again, and the planning department should be involved, I would think.

Mr. Radcliffe: I am advised that in fact this might well be something of a policy nature which might come from the Securities Commission because they do adjudicate over the real estate brokers.

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Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, I would like to deal with the whole area of negative-option advertising, and I know that is something the Research and Planning department has dealt with over the years. People get right upset when they are negative optioned, particularly in the cable field, and I know that right now the cable companies are asking for back-to-back increases. At least in my cable area, they are exceeding the limits that they are allowed to get from the CRTC. They are allowed I believe it is a 10 percent increase, and they are asking for more than that. They are asking for more than they are allowed, but there is an exigency provision that allows that exception to be made. So that is what is happening right now with the cable people, and I have filed with the CRTC to make representations.

I guess I would like to ask the minister whether it would be appropriate for him to be doing the same thing on behalf of the cable subscribers in the province.

Mr. Radcliffe: Mr. Anderson tells me that he was quite active at the time when the Rogers Communications issue was current and before the public. He indicates that he met with both cable companies at that point in time, pointed out what an unsatisfactory effect this could have on the population, received the assurance from both cable companies that, were any complaint brought to them of somebody on a negative-option advertising who had been fished in and then realized subsequently that this was not the service that they wanted and wanted to suspend it and cancel, the cable companies would suspend that service immediately with no ulterior effects, no subsequent bad effects to the consumer.

Mr. Anderson tells me that subsequent to that undertaking he has had no complaints in his department that have come to his attention on this. My honourable colleague is perhaps his first complaint. We cannot say that he has not had any. You are the first complaint that he has perhaps had, and we will take due judicial notice.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, I actually asked, though, whether his department would be intervening on behalf of the residents of Manitoba to object to this increase that goes in excess of what they are allowed.

Mr. Radcliffe: At this point in time, the position of the department is that the department would hesitate to take an advocacy role on behalf of consumers at this point. There are advocacy groups out there who more properly, perhaps, fulfill this role, but it is certainly something that could be considered at a future date.

Mr. Maloway: Could the minister tell us what he has decided to do about negative-option advertising? In Quebec, I believe they have banned it. I do not know what the status is in other provinces. I do not know what the status is federally. To give a bit of balance to it, I do not want to argue both sides of it, but I can tell you that negative optioning is done also in the insurance business. You recall the floods of three years ago. There are a pile of people who are very happy that they were negative optioned because they woke up the day after the floods to find out that they were going to collect $10,000-$20,000 to fix their new basement, and that was thanks to their being negative optioned.

So I know that we tend to be critical of negative optioning at times, but there is that balance to throw into the mix that, while it is objectionable to a lot of people that some service would be just put on your bill without consulting you, the fact of the matter is, I guess--and this is what the cable companies have argued with me and told me--that it would cost too much to go and put these--they have these plugs--to plug every residence in Winnipeg to cut the signal and then unplug it just for those who wanted to buy the signal, if you understand what I am saying. It would cost them enormous amounts of money to buy this little thing, little black box that they have to buy; then they would have to run around in their little trucks and physically put one of these blockers on everybody's cable; and then they would have to come back in their little trucks as people ordered the service. That is the justification they gave to me for why there was no other way. They said they did not like negative optioning, but they could not see any other way around it.

I know the other example is the insurance business where companies negative-option and the public have the right to take it off, but in the case of the floods I would not want to be on the other side of the fence having said that this is terrible and we are not going to negative-option and then have thousands of people not have their basements fixed.

So where are you going with negative optioning at this point?

Mr. Radcliffe: Well, Mr. Chair, I would advise this honourable committee that I have never really understood my house insurance nor the role that my agent plays. I have always suspected the insurance agents, perhaps, with the same level of program that is heaped upon us poor lawyers from time to time.

I can only respond to my honourable colleague that in fact, other than the two cable companies that I have just related to you, there was another corporation in which, Mr. Anderson advises, he pointed out to them, after a complaint, that they were involved in negative-option advertising. They withdrew their advertising from the market at that point in time. Other than that, there has been no activity either in the form of any regulatory or any complaint, so we have not to date seen that there has been a particular need to become involved with this type of activity.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, so the minister then is saying that there are no plans for legislation at this point in time.

Mr. Radcliffe: There are no plans at this point for any legislation in the coming session with regard to this type of advertising. No.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, I believe the Research and Planning department has spent some effort looking at franchise legislation. They may recall a few years ago we introduced franchise legislation based on the Alberta model or modifications of the Alberta model. In Alberta, at that time, I believe they were the only province in the country that had such legislation. I do not know who in the States had legislation, but I think there was some down there. There were certain aspects of the legislation that we liked in the Alberta legislation. Once again I do not have my notes here, and I will make sure I have them here on Monday to deal with this more fully.

It seems that this is an expanding area. With people taking early retirement and buy-outs and so on, the number of people that are willing to invest their life savings in franchising is frightening. I mean almost everybody, including people today in this very committee room earlier on, is contemplating what they are going to do with the rest of their lives after they finish their careers and whatever it is that they are in. So what we see is increasing numbers of people retiring as teachers, policemen, and other professions, getting buy-outs and looking around for something to do with the rest of their lives and with this money.

What I fear is happening, in fact what I know is happening is there are all kinds of people willing to accommodate these people. I think what you are going to see is a lot of lost life savings. I mean people who have never spent any time in business are going to jump into buying franchises, not checking them out properly, and are going to lose everything they have got.

Statistically we know that franchising is a more sound way of doing business than just getting in on your own kind of business. Statistically it is better, especially if you lack experience. Whether or not it is enforced slavery and whatnot, I guess that is debatable. You find that out once you have signed the franchise agreement I guess. I guess if you are successful and make a lot of money, you will not complain.

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But Alberta had requirements that disclosures had to be made. One of the things you find in franchise companies--there is no secret as to why they avoid Alberta when they are setting up. Franchise companies that are, for example, operating out of Toronto, when they are setting up their plans to sell their franchises, it is curious that they tend to miss Alberta. The reason they do not like Alberta too much is because they operate on a prospectus basis almost, that before you are going to sell a franchise in Alberta, you have to draw up a prospectus, and you have to give full disclosure to the people you are selling this thing to.

More importantly, you have to live up to the promises you make. What the big problem is with any kind of franchise--and the minister being a lawyer has probably run into this before--you hear it over and over and over again, that the person signs a franchise agreement. These franchise agreements by the way are 100 pages long and nobody but a lawyer--even lawyers do not understand them. But they are always geared against the person signing it. There are all kinds of gag orders and stuff written in automatically into this thing. So the result is that when things go wrong, and they always do, you never hear about it in the press because one after another these people that want to talk to me cannot because they are stuck with gag orders. They have lost all their money; they are out of business, and on top of that they have a gag order that says they cannot criticize the franchise owner.

Typically what happens is there are promises that have not been kept. A franchise operator with all the best of intentions comes in and says they are going to spend a million dollars in advertising, say in Manitoba. Then they do not sign up enough franchise people, so they are not able to spend the million. They are just taking money from Peter to pay Paul, that sort of operation, because they expanded too quickly or whatever the reasons.

So the franchise buyer, the person who buys them, frequently finds that the promises that were made are not kept. Alberta's legislation spells it out. It says, if you promise to spend a million dollars in advertising in the first 12 months, then you had better spend that million dollars in the first 12 months; not a million over 24 months but a million over 12. If you are going to promise in the first place, then you had better follow through with your promises, right? So certainly if you are franchise operator operating in Alberta you do not want to make many promises, and if you do make them, you are going to want to keep them. There are a whole bunch of other rules that they have that were particularly useful and helpful. If I were going to buy a franchise, I would be wanting to buy it in Alberta; and if I wanted to be selling them, I would be wanting to be selling them anywhere but Alberta, based on the laws.

Mr. Radcliffe: Just by way of clarification, I would ask my colleague: Would not the strictures of the civil law apply that, if a franchisor had failed to live up to his side of the agreement, one could either issue civil process against him or refrain from making payments in the franchise agreement and use that as a shield to protect yourself?

Mr. Maloway: Well, it is a more widespread problem than you would imagine, and I guess that is because people are embarrassed. They are embarrassed, they are tied, they have got their gag orders. There is a whole range of reasons. I know your Research and Planning department has been involved in this before because I bring this up every year and I have introduced this bill several times now. I just finally gave up because I just got ministers who were less and less inclined. I must admit that it has been getting better. The list of ministers has been improving and is really improving now, so there is some hope.

But since Ed Connery was the minister--Ed was the last activist minister. Ed really did believe in doing things, and he would go to cabinet and he would browbeat them. He browbeat them until he got his Business Practices Act, and I give him full credit for that. I said I did not care who brought it in as long as it was brought in, and, to his credit he did it. But after Ed left, things kind of fell apart, and they kind of improved a little bit under Jim Ernst but not a lot because he does not really believe in intervention. He was good on the gas price issue because he was kind of interested in that one.

So anyway we should be bringing this back, this franchise legislation, because you know we are nine years down the pike here and people are nine years older than they were when this government took effect, and this government, a lot of them are going to be unemployed after the election. They are going to be looking at franchises, and I want to protect them. I want to see them protected in advance because I do not want them coming back here. I want to launch them on successful careers and see them be successful and not come back here.

Mr. Radcliffe: Well, in partial response to my honourable colleague's question, I would say that, of course, members of the Tory government are quite wise as to business practices and we would take due diligence to make sure that these agreements have been well circulated--[interjection] Well, he responds and says that we should consult with Mr. Bessey. I do not think there is a better consultant that has come out of the province of Manitoba than Mr. Bessey, and look how he has prospered and what wonderful things he has done for the good people of Manitoba. Of course, the Tory members of this government would not hesitate to contact and consult expert legal counsel. Of course, we would rely on the wisdom of the legal profession, which often gets short shrift in some circles, but I am sure that my honourable colleague would agree with me that in fact one should never take a significant step in one's life, especially one's commercial life, without the due diligence and the thorough investigation by a skilled attorney.

But I will inquire of Mr. Anderson as to what steps he has taken with this regard, if you can just indulge me one moment.

The Acting Chairperson (Mr. McAlpine): The honourable Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, with a very short answer.

Mr. Radcliffe: All right. Well, perhaps, we can continue this answer tomorrow, but I can start off just by saying that there appear to be two areas of activity. One is the requirement for disclosure and the other is dispute resolution.

Mr. Maloway: You are working on it.

Mr. Radcliffe: Yes, and this is being addressed under the internal trade agreement interprovincially. I am told that there is a consumer measures committee that is studying this now with some attempt at getting some consistency and harmony interprovincially across the country.

Mr. Maloway: So Alberta will collapse its--

Mr. Radcliffe: Yes, I am told that Alberta's legislation calls for a good faith body and also resorts to courts for resolution of dispute. In fact, if they are successful with this consumer measures committee, there would be some rectification of that.

Mr. Maloway: I think Alberta actually changed their--

The Acting Chairperson (Mr. McAlpine): The hour being six o'clock, committee rise.