LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF
Monday, April 6, 1992
The
House met at 1:30 a.m.
Mr.
Clerk (William Remnant):
It is my duty to inform the House of the unavoidable absence of Mr.
Speaker, and therefore, in accordance with the statutes, I would ask the Deputy
Speaker (Mrs. Dacquay) to take the Chair.
PRAYERS
ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS
PRESENTING PETITIONS
Ms.
Marianne Cerilli (Radisson): I beg to present the petition of Jennifer
Dubienski, Debbie Clement, Carol Pawluk and others requesting the Minister of
Justice (Mr. McCrae) call upon the Parliament of
Ms.
Becky Barrett (
Mr.
Daryl Reid (Transcona): I
beg to present the petition of Dawn Thompson, Royden L. Walsh, Paul Robillard
and others requesting the Minister of Justice (Mr. McCrae) call upon the Parliament
of
Mr.
George Hickes (Point Douglas): I beg to present the petition of Patricia
Harder, John Sinclair, Steven Gabriel and others requesting that the government
show its strong commitment to aboriginal self‑government by considering
reversing its position on the AJI by supporting the recommendations within its jurisdiction
and implementing a separate and parallel justice system.
Mr.
Conrad Santos (Broadway): I
beg to present the petition of Charles Toop, Alison Stanwick, Cornelia
Vandenberg and others requesting the Minister of Justice (Mr. McCrae) call upon
the Parliament of
Madam
Deputy Speaker (Louise Dacquay): I have reviewed the petition of the
honourable member, and it complies with the privileges and practices of the
House and complies with the rules (by leave).
Is it the will of the House to have the petition read?
The petition of the undersigned citizens of
the
THAT locally controlled public housing with
elected and appointed board members encourages democratic and accountable decision
making; and
Many housing authority boards included tenants
on the board of directors; and
Volunteers serving on boards made worthwhile
contributions to local housing authorities by serving their tenants, their community
and in saving taxpayers' money; and
With no consultation, the provincial
government fired 600 volunteer board members, abolished 98 local housing
authorities, laid off staff and centralized purchasing and administration;
WHEREFORE your petitioners humbly pray that
the Legislature of the
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I have reviewed the petition of the honourable
member, and it complies with the privileges and practices of the House and complies
with the rules. Is it the will of the
House to have the petition read?
The petition of the undersigned residents of
the
WHEREAS there has been increased provincial
involvement in matters of immigration settlement, English as a Second Language programs,
and other immigration matters; and
WHEREAS the Department of External Affairs has
made a decision to discontinue the practice of processing applications of
domestic workers under rules that would give them the right to apply for
permanent status under the Foreign Domestic Program; and
WHEREAS this decision will have a negative
impact upon both employers and domestics; and
WHEREAS domestic workers perform a valuable
child care service in today's labour market, especially in two‑income families;
WHEREFORE your petitioners humbly pray that
the Legislative Assembly of
MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS AND TABLING OF REPORTS
Hon.
Jim Ernst (Minister of Housing): I would like to table, Madam Deputy Speaker,
the Annual Report of the
Hon.
Eric Stefanson (Minister responsible for Sport): Madam Deputy Speaker, I have a ministerial
statement.
It is with great pleasure that I rise before
the members today and, on behalf of the province and citizens of
I am certain those who followed the progress
of each of the rinks throughout the week would agree that the
I would ask all members to join me in
extending congratulations to the Laliberte and Peters rinks on their excellent
performances throughout the year. Their
exciting play has been a pleasure to watch.
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Mr.
Clif Evans (Interlake): Madam Deputy Speaker, it is with great
pleasure that we on our side extend our congratulations to Vic Peters and his
rink, Connie Laliberte and her rink for their fine performance at the recent
world curling championships.
We had the pleasure of watching them over the
past week with great anticipation for their performance throughout the week,
and I am sure, along with the rest of
Mr.
Reg Alcock (Osborne): Madam
Deputy Speaker, I would simply like to join with the others in this House in
congratulating Connie and Vic. I had an
opportunity to be part of their sendoff at the
Introduction of Guests
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Prior to Oral Questions, I would like to draw
the attention of all honourable members to the Speaker's Gallery, where we have
with us this afternoon, President Rod MacCrae and other members of the St.
Andrews Society of Winnipeg representing the MacCrae Clan, Douglas Clan,
MacIntosh Clan, MacFarland Clan, MacGregor Clan, Fraser Clan, Ross Clan and MacPherson
Clan.
On behalf of all honourable members, I welcome
you here today.
Additionally, I would like to draw the
attention of all honourable members to the Speaker's loge to my left, where we have
with us this afternoon the former member for Radisson.
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ORAL QUESTION PERIOD
Health Care Facilities
Bed Closures
Ms.
Judy Wasylycia-Leis (
I refer the House back to April of 1988,
specifically Tuesday, April 28, 1988.
The Premier said, a Tory government would not close any hospital beds
until a thorough review of the health care system is completed. Later, the Minister of Health tried to
clarify that commitment by saying that there would be no bed closures for
budgetary reasons. Well, Madam Deputy Speaker,
we have received a number of letters recently and calls from patients of
several different hospitals about being kept in emergency room hallways on a
stretcher for periods of five days and even up to 10 days.
We want to know from the Premier why his
government is breaking an election promise, why this Premier is compromising patient
care by ordering
Hon.
Donald Orchard (Minister of Health): Madam Deputy Speaker, I look forward to this
afternoon's debate in Estimates, because I know that you will not allow me the
opportunity for a full answer to a rather long preamble, et cetera.
I know my honourable friend is wanting to
discuss health care, the provision of services, the funding of the system. My honourable friend wants to discuss it in
terms of system‑wide change and reform, which from time to time, Madam
Deputy Speaker, even members of the New Democratic Party have acknowledged is going
to happen. Even from time to time,
although not publicly, my honourable friends in the New Democratic Party
acknowledge that the system will change and change significantly away from institutional
care to community‑based care, such as is happening from time to time when
my honourable friends in private have the honesty to discuss the rather
significant and radical changes happening in provinces currently governed by
their political soul mates.
Madam Deputy Speaker, let me deal with the
issue that my honourable friend wants to talk about in terms of a plan and understanding
of the system and where the system can change to meet a number of agendas that
Canadians have put before all of our elected representatives, whether it be in
What we are doing in
I look forward to furthering my answer later
on this afternoon, but certainly this afternoon, in Estimates where I know I
will hear from the wisdom of my honourable friend as to how the system should
change.
Funding
Ms.
Judy Wasylycia-Leis (
I would like to ask the Premier, since the
minister in this House stated that hospitals would be getting in the neighbourhood
of 4 percent to 5 percent increases in their budgets, yet hospitals are telling
us a different story, will the Premier confirm that the
Hon.
Donald Orchard (Minister of Health): Madam Deputy Speaker, I know my honourable
friend wants to always describe increase in funding as cutbacks. That is sort of the new nuance of language that
New Democrats in opposition use. New
Democrats in opposition call a $100‑plus million dollars of increased
funding to health care in this year's budget, a cutback from opposition in
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(1345)
The budgetary process that the hospitals are
going through is as it has been for years.
They make requests of government.
We cannot accede to the dollars they ask for. Therefore, they are provided funding at a
level which the taxpayers of
Madam Deputy Speaker, with a little patience
from my honourable friend, we can deal with that issue when we get to the hospital
line with full detail, full discussion and full suggestion as to how to do
things better as the New Democrats would no doubt wish to do.
Health Care Facilities
Bed Closures
Ms.
Judy Wasylycia-Leis (
We have been trying for days to find out what
is the exact nature of the government‑directed bed and budget reduction
for each hospital in the
What is the policy of this government on bed
closures in our hospitals?
Hon.
Donald Orchard (Minister of Health): Madam Deputy Speaker, with all due respect to
my honourable friend, my honourable friend knows full well that there were no
bed closures during our first term of government, 1988‑1990, for
budgetary purposes. My honourable friend
knows that. My honourable friend cannot
accept that because during the time when she was around government, they ordered
the closure of 120‑plus beds for budgetary reasons.
Also at that time when my honourable friend
sat in that Treasury Board‑‑not Treasury Board but in cabinet,
there was a policy put in place by the New Democratic Party under Howard Pawley. It said, there shall be no deficits in the
hospital budgets.
The first piece of advice that the Deputy
Minister, Mr. Reg Edwards, gave me in May of 1988, when I was sworn in as
Minister of Health and had my first briefing meeting, his first question was,
do you intend to change the no‑deficit policy put in place by the
previous government. My answer was, no.
My answer is consistent today, but not
according to my honourable friend from the New Democrats who when in
Madam Deputy Speaker, that is the kind of
classic hypocrisy and flip‑flop that New Democrats practise from
opposition and claim they can solve all the problems, but in government unilaterally
cut beds, reduce budgets, et cetera, a two‑faced approach to health care
policy that Manitobans are wise to.
Funding
Mr.
Leonard Evans (Brandon East): Madam
Deputy Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Health. Last Thursday, over 500 very angry and
frustrated people attended the first ever public meeting in
Meanwhile, a petition has been signed by over
5,000 people in Westman, representing over 84 communities in southwestern
A straightforward question, Madam Deputy
Speaker, on behalf of over 5,000 citizens and taxpayers of southwestern
Hon.
Donald Orchard (Minister of Health): Madam Deputy Speaker, I did not think my
honourable friend the member for Brandon East would have the audacity to ask
such a question, because what my honourable friend is asking this government to
do is to reverse the New Democratic Party policy, put in place when he was in cabinet
under Howard Pawley, of no deficits at Brandon General Hospital or any other hospital. That was a policy put in place by the New
Democrats. Now from opposition, my
honourable friend the New Democrat from Brandon East, is saying, oh, reverse
that; cover deficits.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I want to read from a
January 1987 letter from the Honourable Len Evans, senior cabinet minister in Brandon
and Westman area. First paragraph: I would like to point out that when we
subtract the 31 closed beds, closed by the NDP‑‑in
parentheses: mine added, the number of
beds available at Brandon Cornwallis residence is 253, which is still
considerably higher than the 200 beds needed to meet MHSC guidelines.
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The second paragraph of this letter, Madam
Deputy Speaker: You should understand that the decision to close beds at
My honourable friend, when he was in
government, forced them to close beds because of a deficit and now in
opposition says we should give them the money‑‑what hypocrisy.
Mr.
Leonard Evans: I have a
supplementary question, but I had hoped that I would have received the answers
for‑‑
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Order, please.
The honourable member for Brandon East to put his question now.
Mr.
Leonard Evans: On behalf
of these people I am asking, 5,000‑plus people from Westman which
includes just about every constituency that is represented on that side, will
the minister review the operation of the
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Order,
please. The question has been put.
Mr.
Orchard: Madam
Deputy Speaker, what I am going to do to those 5,000 petitioners, should I
receive the petition, is send them the letter sent to them in 1987 by the
Honourable Len Evans, because it actually deals with the issue, not honestly
but at least openly.
The second thing I want to do to my honourable
friend, for my honourable friend‑‑I do not do things to him‑‑I
want to read an answer from a Health minister, a colleague of mine across
My honourable friend has selective amnesia
when he is in opposition. He goes
underground when they cut beds‑‑back in his days around cabinet
responsibility‑‑and then comes out of the bushes now saying we
should cover deficits. Is that a
reversal of the policy because, Madam Deputy Speaker, the policy stands: no
deficits to be funded by government in the hospitals of
Labour Adjustment Strategy
Mr.
Leonard Evans (Brandon East): A minister of broken promises‑‑
Madam
Deputy Speaker:
Order. Does the honourable member
for Brandon East have a final supplementary question?
Mr.
Leonard Evans: I have
another very serious question and I hope we will get some answers, because they
have not for those 5,000 people yet. We
are still waiting for an answer. On
behalf of the workers, will the minister and this government commit some funds
to allow the laid off nurses to take training for other health care
occupations?
There is an industrial adjustment committee
looking at alternative employment for the affected nurses, but there are not enough
funds‑‑
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Order,
please. The question has been put.
Hon.
Donald Orchard (Minister of Health): Madam Deputy Speaker, I hope my honourable
friend shows up in Estimates this afternoon because I have a lot more
information for him.
In 1987‑88, the last year my honourable
friend was around cabinet, the revenues of the
Within that budget‑‑[interjection]
Madam
Deputy Speaker:
Order, please.
Mr.
Orchard: Madam
Deputy Speaker, I am going to recommend rabies shots for the member for Brandon
East.
Point of Order
Mr.
Steve Ashton (Opposition House Leader): On a point of order, one would be tempted to
respond, especially from that minister, in kind, but one should recognize that
is not parliamentary. Quite frankly, Madam Deputy Speaker, we are growing
increasingly frustrated by the fact that this minister will not give answers, instead
totally avoids the legitimate question being asked by the member for
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(1355)
Madam
Deputy Speaker:
Order, please. The honourable
government House leader on the same point of order.
Hon.
Clayton Manness (Government House Leader):
On the same point of order, Madam Deputy
Speaker, I have looked at the list of unparliamentary words and certainly the
word referenced by the Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard) is not on that list.
I would ask you to bring the opposition House
leader to order because under the guise of a point of order, he himself engaged
in a tirade on the Minister of Health, and I would say that certainly is out of
order.
Madam
Deputy Speaker: The honourable member for Thompson did not have
a point of order. However, I would
remind all honourable members to address each other courteously in the House.
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Mr.
Orchard: Madam
Deputy Speaker, I am neither a medical doctor nor a veterinarian. I apologize to my honourable friend the member
for Brandon East (Mr. Leonard Evans).
North American Free Trade Agreement
Water Sales
Mr.
Reg Alcock (Osborne):
Madam Deputy Speaker, I have a question for the minister responsible for
Trade.
In reviewing the draft agreement for the North
American free trade agreement that is being proposed, I discovered in Article 1401,
a provision that is not in the bracketed text but is in the already‑agreed‑to
portions of the agreement that suggest that we will allow the transportation of
materials other than energy that require transportation by pipeline.
I would like to know from the minister whether
or not in his meetings in
Hon.
Eric Stefanson (Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism): Madam
Deputy Speaker, at the last Trade ministers' meeting in
As I have indicated in this House on a couple
of occasions, we are in the process of completing a detailed review of the text
to do an all‑encompassing response to several concerns that have come to
light as a result of reviewing the draft text that we currently have a copy
of. Certainly, the honourable member raises
one further point that merits part of that review.
Mr.
Alcock: Madam
Deputy Speaker, the minister has had a couple of weeks now and had officials
working on it for a couple of weeks. I
wonder if he can tell us whether or not their review confirms that there is an
intention to ship water south of the border.
Mr.
Stefanson: No, it
does not, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have a
draft initial response to the federal minister that I am sending today
outlining several concerns that are extremely apparent in the draft text, also
reiterating the six conditions that this government has put in place to any
potential agreement; but the the answer to that question is, no.
Mr.
Alcock: Madam
Deputy Speaker, I wonder, given the concerns that Canadians had about the
shipment of water south, if the minister would consider adding a seventh term
to his conditions that just guarantees that there will be no sale of Canadian
water south of the border.
Mr.
Stefanson: Madam
Deputy Speaker, we have already conveyed our position, and certainly one of
them, the first one as a matter of fact, is no opening up and no changes to the
current Canada‑U.S. Free Trade Agreement.
So implicitly, to a certain extent, it is covered under there, but I
think more importantly as any issues, even though we feel they are covered
under that particular term, we are still doing the review and focusing on them
in terms of our detailed response, so that it is not only that it is covered
under that clause but that the specifics are also addressed.
Social Assistance
Common Law Regulation
Mr.
Doug Martindale (Burrows): Madam Deputy Speaker, on March 26, I asked the
Minister of Family Services to eliminate the discriminatory practice of
transferring women on student social assistance to city social assistance, but
not men. The minister acted as if he was
unaware of the problem, yet later he told the media that he had known of the
problem for 10 days.
Given that the minister has now known of the
problem for almost three weeks, has he taken steps to eliminate this discriminatory
practice against women?
Hon.
Harold Gilleshammer (Minister of Family Services): Madam Deputy Speaker,
the issue that was raised by the member a couple of weeks back was one that we
had become aware of in recent times, and the issue is currently before the
department.
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Mr.
Martindale: Will the
minister take action to stop the same discriminatory practice from adversely
affecting disabled women who are also transferred to city welfare and lose
their $60 per month disability supplement if they enter a relationship with a man
who is deemed employable? Why are women
being penalized when men are not? What
is the minister going to do about this?
Mr.
Gilleshammer: Madam
Deputy Speaker, the rules and regulations that govern the social allowances
within the province both at the provincial level and the municipal level are
under review. We have recently, as the
member knows, brought forward a new program that has been in place now for a
matter of a few months. The department
is reviewing the manner in which the new program is being taken up by the
people who are eligible for it, and if there are glitches in the program we
will address those.
Discrimination
Mr.
Doug Martindale (Burrows): Can the minister ensure the House that no
other group of women on social assistance, in addition to students and the
disabled, are similarly being discriminated against? If so, will he quickly put an end to this practice
and all other practices which discriminate against women on social assistance?
Hon.
Harold Gilleshammer (Minister of Family Services): Madam Deputy Speaker, I have already indicated
to the member that issue is before the department, and we are reviewing it at
this time.
Borden Company Ltd.
Labour Adjustment Strategy
Mr.
George Hickes (Point Douglas): Madam Deputy Speaker, my question is for the
Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism.
On Friday, the minister said that he was not aware of the situation facing
the workers at Catelli pasta plant in my riding. This despite the fact that my colleague
informed the House over two weeks ago that the plant was another victim of free
trade and would be closed.
What action has this minister now taken to
help the 32 more Manitobans who are losing their jobs due to the free trade
deal?
Hon.
Eric Stefanson (Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism): Madam
Deputy Speaker, I have to correct the honourable member on two comments he
made. One, I never indicated that I was
not aware of the situation, in fact, I have addressed the issue briefly in here
and also through the media on at least two separate occasions. Also, there was no indication from the company
and no indication whatsoever that their decision has anything to do with the
Canada‑U.S. free trade.
In terms of the issue itself, the day that we
were informed of the announcement, I spoke to officials from Borden Catelli to see
if there was an opportunity for them to reconsider their decision, not unlike
what happened with at least one other company here in our province. They indicated there was not. I directed my department to look at all
options available from potential co‑ops to employee ownership, to see if
there are any other potential purchasers out there.
It was reported in the media on Friday that
there might be a group or an individual interested in acquiring the plant. As of that date, they had not approached my
department. I questioned the reporter
who raised that point whether or not he could provide me with the names of
those individuals. He unfortunately was
unable to. I suggested to him that if
they are legitimate and genuinely interested in purchasing that plant, that
they make contact either with me directly as soon as possible or with my department.
Free Trade Agreement
Labour Adjustment Strategy
Mr.
George Hickes (Point Douglas): Madam Deputy Speaker, why does this minister
continue to pretend that the trade deal is good for this province, when in the
inner city we see plant after plants being shut down and the assets removed and
shipped to
Madam
Deputy Speaker:
Question?
Mr.
Hickes: That is
my question.
Hon.
Eric Stefanson (Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism): Madam
Deputy Speaker, I am a little confused by the suggestion that while we do not
like to lose any operations to other parts of
I have answered that question on various
occasions from the member for Flin Flon (Mr. Storie) and indicated that in
virtually every instance, there is no evidence when there is a change made in
our province to indicate that it is the Canada‑U.S. free trade deal. In fact, what analysis has been done by
organizations such as the Royal Bank and the Conference Board of Western Canada
indications are that while it is not significant, the Canada‑U.S. free
trade deal has a slight benefit to all of
Clearly the more important issue is whenever
an unfortunate situation faces
When we were doing the consultations on the
Impact Food Processing Industry
Mr.
George Hickes (Point
Hon.
Eric Stefanson (Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism): Madam
Deputy Speaker, when we look at sectors such as the manufacturing sector, we
look at employment levels that again
So in the employment sector, Madam Deputy
Speaker, we are holding our own in the manufacturing areas. In fact, the projections in terms of capital
investment, which I am sure the honourable member will be pleased to hear, in
manufacturing in
Mr.
Neil Gaudry (St. Boniface):
Madam Deputy Speaker, my question is to the Minister of
Environment. The problem of managing the
farm chemical container waste problem was given to the Association for a Clean
Rural Environment. In the past few years
Madam Deputy Speaker, my question is to the
Minister of Environment. Will the
minister assure the House that he will not change the classification of the
chemically contaminated waste in the bags to nonhazardous so it can be
transported out of the province for disposal?
Hon.
Glen Cummings (Minister of Environment): Madam Deputy Speaker, first of all, the
member is incorrect in his preamble. The cleanup and collection of the
pesticide containers that occurred over the last two years in this province is
light‑years ahead, as my colleague says, compared to where we were under
the previous administration.
Secondly, I want to assure the member that the
metal containers that have been collected by
Environment Act
Violation
Mr.
Neil Gaudry (St. Boniface): Madam Deputy Speaker, can the minister tell
the House why
Hon.
Glen Cummings (Minister of Environment): Madam Deputy Speaker, I think the member would
want to accept the fact that there has to be a violation that is considered to
be capable of being prosecuted in court.
Any information that we have today does not suggest that we would be
able to successfully prosecute in court.
Just to put a little information on the
record, Madam Deputy Speaker, let me point out that the amount of material that
was presumed to have been spilled at the occurrence that he is referring to is
equal to about one cup of solution that would be a less harmful solution than
what is sprayed on the agricultural fields on a regular basis.
Review
Mr.
Neil Gaudry (St. Boniface): Madam Deputy Speaker, given that
Hon.
Glen Cummings (Minister of Environment): Unfortunately, Madam Deputy Speaker, I do not
think the honourable member understands the source of the funding or the
concepts behind the
North American Free Trade Agreement
Supply Management
Mr.
John Plohman (Dauphin): Madam Deputy Speaker, we have, on this side of
the House, opposed the principle and the fundamental concept of the North
American free trade agreement based on what happened to
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(1410)
I want to try to get some clarification from
this Minister of Agriculture. Does this
Minister of Agriculture agree with and support the federal government's sell‑out
on supply management by accepting tariffication as they have done in the
agreement in their proposals and subsequent tariff reduction as the basis for its
position in the negotiations, Clause 3 page 5 of the that proposed agreement?
Hon.
Glen Findlay (Minister of Agriculture): Madam Deputy Speaker, in terms of free trade
agreements or arrangements or discussions that have gone on, whether they are
bilateral or trilateral or whether they are multilateral, they have involved a very
basic principle of the standpoint of
First, in a free trade agreement the supply‑management
boards were not on the table. It was not
part of the agreement. Secondly, the MTN discussions, the marketing boards, we
have objected to the position of the Dunkel text, which called for tariffication. The member said we accepted
tariffication. No, we have not accepted
tariffication.
Those basic principles continue in any trade
discussion we are involved in. We
believe in the principle in this country and we believe in the right of our
ability to run that system in our country.
We do not accept tariffication for that program in this country.
North American Free Trade Agreement
Sanitary Standards
Mr.
John Plohman (Dauphin): Madam Deputy Speaker, the federal government
does‑‑
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Order, please.
Will the honourable member please put his question now?
Mr.
Plohman: In other
areas of the agreement, Madam Deputy Speaker, there is reference to sanitary
standards. Does the minister concur with
the federal position that
Hon.
Eric Stefanson (Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism): Madam
Deputy Speaker, in response to a similar question from the member for Osborne
(Mr. Alcock) a little over a week ago, I indicated that we would not accept any
lower standards, that we cannot support any special consideration for
In addition, in response to my honourable
friend the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Findlay), again, we have verified our position
which we have taken under GATT in terms of support,
North American Free Trade Agreement
Supply Management
Mr.
John Plohman (Dauphin): Madam Deputy Speaker, based on that answer and
the minister's stated support for supply management, will this Minister of
Agriculture be now recommending rejection of this agreement based on the fact
that the federal government is accepting tariffication as the basis for its
proposal in the agreement, not the Mexico‑‑
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Order, the question has been put.
Hon.
Glen Findlay (Minister of Agriculture): Madam Deputy Speaker, on many trade funds
discussions continue, and we want to stay at the table, advancing the
principles we believe in. We will stay
at the table advancing those principles for the good of the industry of
agriculture and all export opportunities that we have around the world. We will continue to negotiate those points at
the table. We will not walk away from
the table as that member would suggest that we should.
Judicial System
Public Defender System
Mr.
Dave Chomiak (Kildonan): Madam Deputy Speaker, my question is for the
Minister of Justice. I recognize that
the minister is negotiating on a number of fronts regarding the delivery of judicial
services in the province. However, it
appears that the province is embarking on some significant changes regarding
legal aid delivery and the delivery of prosecutorial services around the
province. I do not know if these actions
are mere tactics because of negotiations or actually government policy.
Can the minister specifically advise this
House whether the province is in the process of establishing a public defender
type system which would change the delivery of legal aid as we know it?
Hon.
James McCrae (Minister of Justice and Attorney General): Madam
Deputy Speaker, the government is not proposing a public defender system. We are attempting to fund the system we presently
have. In fact, this year we are adding
$1.3 million to the legal aid budget, an increase of 11.7 percent over the government's
contribution to the plan from last year.
We have had to do that to make up for shortfalls in funding from the law
foundation and shortfalls that have resulted from a capping by the federal
government in 1989. Now more recently,
we have received word that the federal government is going to remove that capping,
but the amount that is going to add to our budget is extremely small in relation
to the whole budget.
The honourable member is concerned about going
to a public defender system. There are
pros and cons for a public defender system.
They have, basically, that kind of system operating in
Two-Tiered System
Mr.
Dave Chomiak (Kildonan):
Madam Deputy Speaker, can the minister advise specifically the House
whether the province is in the process of establishing a two‑tiered
prosecution system utilizing junior attorneys in some areas and senior Crown attorneys
in other areas?
Hon.
James McCrae (Minister of Justice and Attorney General): The
honourable member is asking a question which relates to a couple of news
articles, the source of which is unnamed people. I am not going to respond to
unnamed people except to say that there are discussions at the collective
bargaining table and that is where they should be had, those discussions. I am not going to help or hinder collective
bargaining discussions by discussing them in the House or in the public.
I can say one thing though, because of
discussions that are going on, there are some stories floating around that
somehow the government is backing away from justice services and that is not the
truth. The truth is that we intend to improve
justice services, especially in the North and in remote aboriginal communities.
Mr.
Chomiak: Madam
Deputy Speaker, can the minister confirm whether or not there is any overall
plan or strategy in the department for either the public defender system or for
the establishment of a two‑tiered prosecutory system? Can he just confirm yes or no whether in fact
that is the case?
Mr.
McCrae: Well,
the honourable member is supposed to ascertain the correctness of the facts
that he brings to the House, but he wants to float a rumour in here. I do not think that is a very good thing to
do. It is not helpful in the public
administration of the people's business.
I will confirm this, that I look forward to
improvements in the justice system in the days, months and years ahead.
Madam
Deputy Speaker:
The time for question period has expired.
NONPOLITICAL STATEMENTS
Mr.
Gerry McAlpine (Sturgeon Creek): Madam Deputy Speaker, do I have leave for a
nonpolitical statement?
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Does the honourable member for Sturgeon Creek
have leave to make a nonpolitical statement?
Some
Honourable Members:
Leave.
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Leave has been granted.
Mr.
McAlpine: Madam
Deputy Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise in the House today and say a few
words on Tartan Day.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to thank
you for recognizing the clans that were in the Speaker's Gallery. One clan that was not represented there today
that is represented in this House is the McAlpine clan and standing right here.
Madam Deputy Speaker, our Premier (Mr. Filmon)
has proclaimed April 6, 1992, as Tartan Day in
Madam Deputy Speaker, starting with the
Selkirk settlers' modest beginnings in the Red River Colony, Scots have been a constant
and significant part of this province's development. They fought the barriers
of distance, climate and immense hardship in their efforts to build futures of
promise for themselves, their children and their children's children.
Through courage and determination, they
succeeded. In the process, they brought
with them the rich culture and traditions of bonny
*
(1420)
We see, Madam Deputy Speaker, evidence of this
determination in the community names around our province‑‑Kildonan,
Selkirk, McGregor, McDonald and hundreds of other names reflect both the Scottish
influence in general, as well as that of specific individuals in building our
province.
Manitobans have long been aware of this rich
highland legacy, and this is represented by the fact that we are also
celebrating the 30th anniversary of formal registration of
Madam Deputy Speaker, I would note that we are
not unique in having a strong Scottish cultural heritage. Many countries around the world also boast a
strong Scottish contingent in their midst.
What does make us unique is our tremendously
positive emphasis on the multiculturalism which encourages our many different
cultures.
Scottish‑Manitobans and Scottish‑Canadians
are not only proud of their heritage but are also eager to share its exciting
and colourful aspects with others in a multicultural community. Every year, the
various groups and organizations within the Scottish community present us with
a wide range of activities and opportunities for partaking of their heritage
and appreciating its many elements.
At every level‑‑social, economic
and cultural‑‑we have benefited from the contributions and
participation of Manitobans of Scottish descent. They have followed proudly in the footsteps of
those first settlers to enrich, develop and better the communities of
Madam Deputy Speaker, I am delighted that
today, April 6, has been proclaimed Tartan Day in
Mr.
Doug Martindale (Burrows): Madam Deputy Speaker, do I have leave to make
a nonpolitical statement?
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Does
the honourable member for Burrows (Mr. Martindale) have leave to make a
nonpolitical statement? Leave has been granted.
Mr.
Martindale: It is
pleasure on behalf of my caucus to join in paying tribute to the first Tartan
Day, April 6, 1992. Not only is it a
pleasure on behalf of my caucus, but also because I am a member of the Fraser
Clan; in fact, my middle name is Fraser, named after my great‑grandfather
John James Anderson Fraser.
The Scots and their descendants have, as the
member said, played an important role in the history of
We normally think of the first settlers, the
Selkirk settlers, who came to
Many of their descendants became well‑known
names and people in the history of
In addition, Scots played an important role as
labourers in the CPR shops. Many of them
went on to become leaders of the unionized movement in
The contribution of Scots has extended to all
areas of public life and professions in
Mr.
Kevin Lamoureux (
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Does the honourable member for
An
Honourable Member: Leave.
Madam
Deputy Speaker: Leave has been granted.
Mr.
Lamoureux: Madam
Deputy Speaker, it is with pleasure that I join with the member for Sturgeon
Creek (Mr. McAlpine) and the member for Burrows (Mr. Martindale) to put a few
words on the record on behalf of the Liberal Party.
You know, just prior to Question Period, I
heard out in the foyer the bagpipes playing.
Of course, there are many different things that signify the Scots, if
you will, and the tartan, what we are honouring here today, is one of those
things. Another thing is the kilt, and
of course the lovely music that many of us would have heard, as one individual
in the gallery had pointed out to me, music from the Gods, if you will, is the
bagpipes.
Madam Deputy Speaker, those symbols are very
important. I just wanted to make note of
those three symbols, albeit they do have other symbols, and also give a tribute
to the ethnic group of Scots, because as every other ethnic group in the
province of
So again I just wanted to congratulate the
government on proclaiming today as Tartan Day and only hope that Tartan Day sometime‑‑from
the member for
Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker.
ORDERS OF THE DAY
Hon.
Clayton Manness (Government House Leader): Madam Deputy Speaker, before I move the Supply
motion, we are planning to go into Estimates of the Department of Health and
begin the Estimates of the Department of Family Services.
I move, seconded by the Minister of
Environment (Mr. Cummings), that you, Madam Deputy 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 St. Norbert (Mr. Laurendeau) in the Chair for
the Department of Health, and the honourable member for Seine River (Mrs.
Dacquay) in the Chair for the Department of Family Services.
COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY
(Concurrent Sections)
HEALTH
Mr.
Deputy Chairperson (Marcel Laurendeau): Order, please.
Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This afternoon this section of the Committee
of Supply, meeting in Room 255, will resume consideration of the Estimates of Health.
When the committee last sat, it had been
considering item 1.(b) Executive Support:
(1) Salaries on page 82 of the Estimates book. Shall the item pass?
Ms.
Judy Wasylycia-Leis (
We have been trying for weeks to get some clear
answers and some straight answers from the Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard). We
have pursued this matter on every occasion since the House reconvened. We have based our questioning on very serious
statements and concerns expressed to us by administrators of hospitals, health
care professionals, workers in the health care system, patients, consumers, and
volunteers of boards of hospitals.
Day in and day out we have heard from those
individuals about directives coming from this government, directives pertaining
to targets for bed closures, directives pertaining to reductions in base
budgets of hospitals, directions pertaining to monies being designated for so‑called
restructuring purposes. We know that there
are very clear directives from this government.
They come from the top. They are decisions being made around the
cabinet table at Treasury Board that the minister and his staff are fully
responsible for. We know that this
minister and his staff are actively involved in presenting these bed‑ and
budget‑reduction targets to hospitals, to urban hospitals.
We know that the highest ranking official in
the Department of Health, the Deputy Minister of Health, has taken this message
forward to meetings and presented these targets and demanded responses. We know that hospitals have been under great
pressure to come forward with responses to these arbitrary and difficult directives.
These are not rumours, Mr. Deputy
Chairperson. This is not fearmongering;
these are not opposition tactics to get under the skin of the Minister of
Health (Mr. Orchard) or to create issues out of thin air for political
purposes. We are messengers bringing to
this Legislature and to this committee real information, real concerns that
require some straight answers.
We have been very unlucky in getting straight
answers from this minister. In fact, I
want to note that it took us a month of questioning in the Legislature and four
and a half hours straight of Estimates time before this minister finally
conceded that this government had set a bed‑cut target for the two teaching
hospitals, the Health Sciences Centre and
You will recall, Mr. Deputy Chairperson, that
after great pain and agony of much questioning and listening to long, lengthy statements
that had little to do with the questions in the first place from the Minister
of Health (Mr. Orchard), the minister, on Monday, March 23, finally conceded
that the government, this government, this minister had set a reduction target
in beds for the St. Boniface and Health Sciences Centre hospitals. [interjection]
Mr. Deputy Chairperson, I do not need the
Minister of Health suggesting I should read this into the record. I do not need to read it into the
record. I lived through that horrifying,
painful experience of trying to pull information out of this minister and this
government, information that should have been presented in full, clear detail
to the people of this province because, when it comes to health care, there is
nothing more worrying for people in this province than to hear rumours about changes
in patient care, reductions in hospital services, the emptying of beds in our
hospitals without that being placed in the overall context of a plan that is
clearly understood and that makes sense.
*
(1500)
Mr. Deputy Chairperson, we are operating in a
vacuum. We have a government and a
minister and a department who are pulling numbers out of thin air and going to
hospitals and saying, here, here is your number; you achieve this; here is your
budget target reduction for so‑called restructuring purposes, you achieve
it‑‑no plan, no comprehensive plan, not the kind of plan that the Premier
(Mr. Filmon) talked about in April of 1988 in the middle of an election when he
said, no beds would be closed, no hospitals would be emptied without a full,
comprehensive plan.
Well, Mr. Deputy Chairperson, you know, I
know, we all know there is no comprehensive plan. We have been asking about these studies that
are piling high to the ceiling without any release of final reports, without
any plan of action around those studies.
We know that before any studies get finished, the minister embarks upon
another series of studies, and we are left trying to scramble and figure
out: What is the real plan here? Where is
it going to come out of? Which group is
responsible? Where is the centre of power?
Who is making decisions? Where is
the reform? Where is the
creativity? Where is the intelligence in
this whole operation?
So there is no study that has been finalized,
that has provided the basis for these bed‑cut targets and these hospital budget‑reduction
targets that hospitals have been hit with this year. On top of that, Mr. Deputy Chairperson, there
has been no public consultation, no input of an open, widespread nature in terms
of health care professionals, patients, consumers and community health care
interests. So there is fear, and there
is understandable fear, growing everywhere in our communities.
What is required is for this government and
this minister to be open and forthcoming and straightforward about their intentions. We should not have to waste all the time of
the House and the Estimates to pull answers out of this minister. Those things
should be laid out initially. I think
the minister might find, if he thought about it at all and looked at issue management
and damage control, that it might have made sense from Day One if he had simply
said, here is the plan; it is based on these studies; this is what we hope to
do; we would like your input‑‑open it up and then, on the basis of
that input, act and act with confidence.
Mr. Deputy Chairperson, we will continue to
ask for some basic information that the people of
I dare say, there is not a soul in this
province who does not understand the need for changes in our health care
system, but they are not going to sit by and see that change on one end of the
equation in the form of bed cuts and reductions to hospital budgets without any
direct transfer of money saved in that regard being put into community
facilities or home care arrangements or into any of those programs and ideas
that have been so much a part of health care reform strategies for a number of
years in this country.
So, Mr. Deputy Chairperson, we will start
again today and ask some basic questions.
If the minister‑‑as he has said in the House and has said
outside in the hallways that everything is clear and fine and great and
everybody is happy, then he will be not hesitating today to give us some of
those details. He will have no reason
for not coming forward with some of this information.
Let me begin by asking the minister about the
budget decisions pertaining to hospitals, particularly to urban hospitals. The minister has said in the House that hospitals‑‑first
of all, Mr. Deputy Chairperson, let me back up. The last budget of this
government indicated some 5.7 percent overall increase for hospitals. The minister, after questioning in the
Legislature, indicated that each hospital would be getting in the neighbourhood
of 4 percent to 5 percent. We are
getting different messages than that from hospital administrators in our urban
hospitals.
I think, quite frankly, there is confusion and
uncertainty and unrest out there among hospital administrators. So we would like to know today, very clearly
and very simply, what is the breakdown for each urban hospital? What is the percentage increase that each
urban hospital will be seeing as a result of this budget?
Hon.
Donald Orchard (Minister of Health): Mr. Deputy Chairperson, I am going to suggest
to my honourable friend that we can discuss that detail line by line when we
get to the hospital line of the Manitoba Health Services Commission, when I have
the appropriate staff here.
I want to take this opportunity to follow up
on what my honourable friend is talking about because I want to tell my honourable
friend that the one thing that I believe Manitobans are demanding first and
foremost from health care administrators, board members, health care
practitioners and care deliverers, and politicians is a little bit of honesty.
Mr. Deputy Chairperson, at the risk of getting
into quite a long debate with my honourable friend from the New Democratic Party,
I do not sense that coming from the New Democrats, because my New Democratic
friend, aided and abetted by her soul mate to her immediate right, the member
for Brandon East (Mr. Leonard Evans), is not exactly being honest with the
people of
Mr.
Deputy Chairperson:
Order, please.
Point of Order
Ms.
Wasylycia-Leis:
Mr. Deputy Chairperson, I hate for us to start off on this note so early
on, but it strikes me that the Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard) is imputing
motive by suggesting that myself and the member for
Mr.
Deputy Chairperson: It
is not a point of order, to start with, but I would like to advise all members
to please pick and choose your words carefully so that we do not stir any unnecessary
debate this afternoon.
* *
*
Mr.
Orchard: I agree
100 percent, and that is why I chose my words extremely carefully about a
little honesty in public presentation and statements. I just want to remind my honourable friends,
because both of them were in cabinet in 1986, the government under Howard
Pawley, a New Democratic Party government, passed by cabinet order a policy
which said there will be no more funding of deficits in the hospitals of the
Now today, we continue to operate under that
policy passed by Howard Pawley and the New Democrats, passed by the member for Brandon
East (Mr. Evans) while he was in cabinet, the member for
Before we go any further in the debate, I want
to know whether the policy of the New Democratic Party today is that hospitals
can run deficits large, small, any size they want in government and the
taxpayers will pick them up. Is that the
new policy of the New Democrats? If it
is, I am sorry, I can engage in no more debate with hypocrites, because that is
what they would be if that is the policy of the New Democratic Party.
*
(1510)
Point of Order
Ms.
Wasylycia-Leis: On
a point of order, I tried before to indicate that the minister should watch his
language and asked whether or not the suggestion that members on this side of
the House were not honest was unparliamentary, and I appreciate your ruling and
your caution to the Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard) to watch his words. The minister has once again, I believe, used unparliamentary
language in suggesting that members on this side of the House are hypocrites.
I would like you, Mr. Deputy Chairperson, to
ask the Minister of Health to withdraw those words because they are clearly unparliamentary. They impute motives and cast slander on
members of this side of the House.
Mr.
Deputy Chairperson: Order, please.
Just one moment, please.
I would like to advise the committee that the
word in question has been ruled both parliamentary and unparliamentary in Beauchesne
under Citation 489 and Citation 490, but I would like to remind the minister
that he was impugning motives so that would fall under Citation 489 for impugning
motive. So it would be a point of order,
and I would ask the minister to withdraw that statement.
Mr.
Orchard: Mr.
Deputy Chairperson, to the same point of order, I would beg of you, before
making that ruling, to review the words that I put in Hansard, and I think that
is a legitimate request to the Chair.
Mr.
Deputy Chairperson: I
am going to take it under advisement and get back after I have read Hansard
then.
Mr.
Gulzar Cheema (The Maples):
Mr. Deputy Chairperson, on a point of order.
Mr.
Deputy Chairperson: On
another point of order?
Mr.
Cheema: No,
Mr. Deputy Chairperson. I think it is an
important issue, and I want to get into this debate of this hospital
funding. It is a very important
issue. I mean, I understand that my turn
is going to come after the NDP, but I think it is an important issue, and I do
not want anybody to get the impression that we are not participating. It is a very important issue, and I would
like to get some time to speak on the issue.
Mr.
Deputy Chairperson: The honourable member did not have a point of
order, but we will continue on.
Mr.
Orchard: Yes, I
was interrupted by a point of order, Mr. Deputy Chairperson.
Mr.
Deputy Chairperson: The
honourable minister was in the middle of answering his question.
Point of Order
Ms.
Wasylycia-Leis: You will recall, Mr. Deputy Chairperson, that
the minister in fact said he could not proceed one moment further until we on
this side of the House had answered his questions, so I would be quite happy to
ensure that our Estimates process is not held up, and that the minister does
not feel he can go a moment past this point to answer those questions and to deal
with these concerns and ask some more questions.
Mr.
Deputy Chairperson: The
honourable member did not have a point of order.
* *
*
Mr.
Orchard: Mr.
Deputy Chairperson, as I indicated to my honourable friend, the policy that was
put in place while she sat around the cabinet table was no deficits in the
hospitals. As I indicated in Question
Period today, one of the very first things that the Deputy Minister of Health,
Mr. Reg Edwards, asked me, one of my first briefings, was the question: Will it be the policy of the new government
to continue the no‑deficit policy that was put in place by the previous
administration? My answer in May of 1988
was yes, and it remains yes today.
Now we are going to discuss the issues that my
honourable friends laid out, and we are going to discuss the issues of health
care reform in detail. We are going to
use
I know my honourable friend the critic is anxious
to answer it. I will give her the same
cautionary advice she gives me: Answer it clearly, yes or no.
Mr.
Leonard Evans (Brandon East): Come on, let us have a little politeness.
Ms.
Wasylycia-Leis: Mr. Deputy Chairperson, my colleague the member
for Brandon East (Mr. Evans) suggested that the minister try a little
politeness. I am glad he said that. However, I want him and others to know that
we are getting used to this kind of style and approach and mean‑spirited,
vindictive, personalized approach to Estimates.
We will try hard not to stoop to that level of debate. I am going to try very hard not to call the Minister
of Health (Mr. Orchard) any names, whether they are parliamentary or not.
In the past I have made a few slips. I do not want to personalize this
debate. I am not going to. I am going to get into the issues at
hand. The minister would like to turn
every question back on the opposition.
He has tried that over the last number of sets of Estimates. He has always been consistent. He has very seldom answered a question. He has always tried to turn the question back
and act like it was the opposition who were up for questioning in Estimates.
Well, Mr. Deputy Chairperson, it is this
government and this Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard) and his department that is
under the microscope today and for the next month or more. We will be asking the questions, and we will
keep asking the questions until we get some answers.
On the question of deficit, that is a very
clever strategy, Mr. Deputy Chairperson, because in fact we have not been
asking questions about deficit policies.
We have not been raising that issue.
We do not need to revisit it at this time. We need to hear from the minister about his
directives pertaining to hospital base budgets and bed cuts.
Mr. Deputy Chairperson, this debate is not
about whether or not governments, the government of the day, should tolerate hospitals
running up deficits. This is about
getting at the roots of why hospitals are presently in such difficulty, and why
in fact some are dealing with deficits, why some are in fact looking at cutting
into the meat and bones of their operations. It is in fact, Mr. Deputy
Chairperson, because of arbitrary budget reduction directives from this
government that happened last year, are happening again this year and are
promised for next year.
Let us use for example the Health Sciences
Centre, Mr. Deputy Chairperson. By all
accounts, from the highest ranking officials to workers on the wards, this
major facility has been asked to chop 160 beds and to reduce its base budget by
about $10 million this year. Now, yes, a
small part of that is a deficit from last year, but the bulk of it is as a
result of a directive from this minister last year and this year to cut from
their base.
The $10 million that they are looking at
chopping, which will affect service delivery and will affect patient care, is a
result of the unachieved portion of this minister's $19‑million directive
to urban hospitals, $19 million to be cut from their base budgets, something to
which all hospital administrators have indicated and agreed that this was a new
phenomenon, this was an absolute change in government policy in terms of
funding of hospitals. That is what we
are talking about in the first instance in terms of hospital difficulties,
budgeting dilemmas.
The second, Mr. Deputy Chairperson, has to do
with the new target for restructuring being handed to urban hospitals, the unachieved
portion from last year and a new multimillion dollar figure thrown on top of
that, making it a requirement for urban hospitals this year and next year to
come up with $27 million from their base budgets. So the difficulties hospitals are facing are
not because of poor planning and poor administration and poor budgeting and
ineffective management, whatever the minister might want to suggest by those
words; the problem has to do with government policy and this minister's
budgetary directives to hospitals.
*
(1520)
Brandon General Hospital, yes, has difficulties,
has a deficit situation to look at, not because of poor planning and bad
management decisions and poor administration, but because last year that
hospital was directed, like all urban hospitals, to cut from its base budget a
certain percentage of the $19 million and because that hospital has been asked
to do the same this year and to do the same next year. The
Let us be clear about what we are dealing
with. We are not dealing with a narrow
issue that the minister would like to keep coming back to in terms of policies
of governments with respect to tolerating hospital deficits. We are talking about a shift in policy, new
policy, new directives that get at the heart and soul of our hospital delivery
system in the absence of an overall health care reform plan. Is it not interesting, if there is nothing
here to be concerned about, why with every question that we ask, the minister
first refuses to answer, secondly, talks about previous government decisions
and goes back to NDP days even though this government has been in office for‑‑what
is it?‑‑four years?
An
Honourable Member:
Four years and five months.
Ms.
Wasylycia-Leis:
Interesting. Going on five years
and this government can still not stand on its own two feet and take responsibility
for decisions and account to the public and the people of this province. Now, those are two tactics of this minister. Now, do you want to hear the third? We will hear it again after every question
day in and day out for the next 40 days or whatever it is. We are going to hear about what is happening
in other provinces, not what is happening in
If the minister wants to make a farce out of
them, as he has done in the past, he can be sure it is not going to work. We are not going to give up. We are not going to stop asking the questions
that the people of
Mr.
Deputy Chairperson:
Order, please.
Ms.
Wasylycia-Leis: The minister does not need to deflect questions
about the budgetary increases for each hospital. He can find a way to answer them if under
pressure in the Legislature. If we have
four or five hours of persistent questioning, he can finally find a way to
answer detailed questions about hospitals.
He does not have to deflect these decisions to some later line in the
Estimates because he knows we are going to get to hospitals many, many hours
away from here, many days away from this point when the damage has been done, when
hospitals have been forced to take those decisions and when there has been no
opportunity for public scrutiny and for open consultation.
Mr. Deputy Chairperson, there is an urgency,
and the Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard) has an obligation to answer these questions. He knows the answers. He has the information. He has his top‑ranking officials right
beside him. So he can give us those
answers, and I will ask once again: What
is the budgetary increase for each hospital for this fiscal year?
Mr.
Orchard: Mr.
Deputy Chairperson, as I indicated to my honourable friend, when we get to the
hospital line, we will deal with each hospital as she requests.
The policy of no deficits in hospitals is
everything in this debate. It is not
just a simple little issue that my honourable friend says does not matter. Now, my honourable friend erred rather
significantly in the factual accuracy of one of her statements. She indicated that the base budget of the
Now, I want to point out to my honourable
friend, and I will give her these figures, because I have given them to her colleague
to her right in the House. This is
Now, in the next year, which was the last year
that my honourable friend was in cabinet and set the budget, the bed‑rating
went down to 279 because my honourable friends in the NDP ordered the cut of
that many beds from Brandon General Hospital.
The budget increased to $32,098,104.
An
Honourable Member: Did you order these cuts here?
Mr.
Deputy Chairperson:
Order, please.
Mr.
Orchard: Mr.
Deputy Chairperson, I will tell my honourable friend. My honourable friend from Brandon East (Mr.
Leonard Evans) asked, did I order the cuts that have recently been proposed at
the
Now, Mr. Deputy Chairperson, let me carry
on. In 1988‑‑
An
Honourable Member: Who revenued that?
Mr.
Orchard: Well, we
will get to that. We are going to get to
the revenues.
In 1988‑89 the bed‑rating of the
In 1989‑90, the bed‑rated funded
capacity of
In 1990‑91 the bed‑rated capacity
is 291, increased from the reduced level of the NDP. The budget went up to $40,975,464. In 1991‑92, the fiscal year just ended‑‑just
ended, so this is a preliminary figure‑‑the budget is increased to
over $44 million.
Now, I want to deal with that. That is not a reduction in budget as my
honourable friend the member for
Mr. Deputy Chairperson, that is totally and
unequivocally a false statement. It may
have been made inadvertently by my honourable friend the New Democratic critic,
but I will revisit the figures again so that no one can say that there is a reduction
in the budget of
Mr.
Deputy Chairperson: Order, please.
Point of Order
Mr.
Leonard Evans:
Unfortunately, the Minister of Health was not in
So I did not say it was cut back. Nevertheless, the management has said that
they cannot maintain the status quo with even that amount of money. But do not ask me about it. I am asking you‑‑
Mr.
Deputy Chairperson: Order,
please. The honourable member did not
have a point of order.
* *
*
Mr.
Orchard: Mr.
Deputy Chairperson, I thank my honourable friend the member for Brandon East
(Mr. Leonard Evans) for setting the record straight, that the budget in
His soul mate on his left, the critic for
Health for the NDP, has said there was a reduction in the base‑line
budget of
Well, you know, Mr. Deputy Chairperson, in
this case I have to congratulate the member for Brandon East (Mr. Leonard
Evans). He is right. The budget at
If I from time to time get exasperated and
short‑tempered, and quite out of character for myself to be this way, but
if I do that, I have to say that it is from the extreme frustration of always
having to correct, whether deliberate or not deliberate, false information put
on the record by my critic.
I mean, how can you have a budget that went from
$32,098,104 in the last year the NDP were in government to over $44 million today,
'91‑92 fiscal year just ended, and call that a reduction? That is exactly
why I do not want my honourable friends the New Democrats to dodge the issue,
because the budget of the
My honourable friend the official critic for
Health, in a press release about
The member for Brandon East (Mr. Leonard Evans)
is saying, pay the deficit. His critic
is saying, just pay the deficit. I want
to know whether the NDP have flip‑flopped on that policy of Howard
Pawley, because it is very fundamental to budgeting. If the New Democrats in government say that
hospitals can run deficits and they will pick them up, that is a fundamental
change in policy on health care funding, of the NDP.
I do not believe for a minute that the Leader
of the NDP would ever enunciate that policy publicly, as his critic has and as
the member for Brandon East (Mr. Leonard Evans) has in
That is why if we are talking about health
policy and reform of the system, fundamental to that is knowing whether my New Democratic
friends have reversed themselves on a policy fundamental to the planning of
health care expenditures and reform, that being no deficits in the Brandon, at
any hospital in the province of Manitoba, because what my friends have asked is
that we pick up the deficit in Brandon at the hospital.
My honourable friend‑‑
Mr.
Deputy Chairperson: Order, please.
Point of Order
Mr.
Leonard Evans: The
member keeps on putting false information on the record. I have stated publicly, it has been in the
*
(1530)
I have stated that publicly‑‑
An
Honourable Member: So
what is the point of order?
Mr.
Leonard Evans: My point
of order is that the minister states something that is not correct. I want him to know what my position is, and I
refer this particularly to BGH, and that is, you have to look at the specific
circumstances of the particular hospital‑‑
Mr.
Deputy Chairperson: Order,
please. The honourable member for
Brandon East did not have a point of order.
It is a dispute over the facts.
* * *
Mr.
Orchard: Mr.
Deputy Chairperson, again this is almost getting scary but I agree with my
honourable friend from Brandon East that we ought to look at each individual
hospital. That is why we put the Peer
Review Committee into
Now, who did that? Was it Howard Pawley and the NDP? Of course not. It was Jim McCrae and the Progressive Conservatives. We went in and took a look at what the
hospital did. We found that it was
providing services above the community hospital level funding that we had based
their funding pattern on and subsequently reflected that‑‑exactly
what my honourable friend comes up with as a suggestion‑‑done by
us, not by him, not by the NDP. Despite
doing that,
Now, you know, that is why I started this
discussion this afternoon by saying, let us have a little honesty. If the policy of the New Democrats has
changed from government to opposition then just state so, just be candid enough
to say, we have abandoned the no‑deficit policy, because that puts us in
an entirely different debating forum.
That means that if you say that if you want deficits to run amuck in our
hospitals then you really do not believe in health care reform, you believe in feeding
the monster budgets of hospitals‑‑$950‑plus million to hospitals
and you want them to grow without any constraints, any control, because you
want to remove the no‑deficit policy.
I do not for a minute believe that Mr. Doer, the Leader of the NDP, standing
at the back of the room, will enunciate that as a policy of the New Democratic
Party, but his critic has.
So I just want to get a little clarification,
because that is fundamental, Mr. Deputy Chairperson, to the debate of health
care reform. If you let hospitals run
amuck and cover their deficits and no budgetary constraints or discipline on
the hospitals, they will consume the entire budget of health care and leave
nothing left for home care, Pharmacare, medical services, ambulance funding or
any other area. They will consume the
whole budget. My honourable friend the member for Brandon East (Mr. Leonard Evans)
well knows that.
That is why you cannot have a debate on health
care unless you understand the basic starting point for which you are going to
debate the issue. Mine is no deficits in
hospital budgets, the same policy I inherited put in place by the NDP under
Howard Pawley. I simply want to know,
when we start this fundamental debate, is the NDP still adhering to that policy
of 1987 or have they done a 180 degree change in policy‑‑fundamental
to the debate‑‑Mr. Deputy Chairperson?
Mr.
Cheema: Mr. Deputy Chairperson, I
wanted to get into this very serious debate, and I simply want to put some of
the things which I think‑‑and most people got in touch with us and
most health economists and the health care providers and the groups which are
representing many communities, and they are telling us one thing, that the
health care debate has to be taken out of the political arena. That was very clear in
Within four years, as of April 1988, this was
the first week where‑‑I mean I was able to discuss this health care
issue in many forms, and I have never felt the feeling that people want the
truth, the honest truth, and then if they are well informed then they will make
the right decision and we should leave it up to them. But the government's responsibility is to
educate them and have an at least clear‑cut agenda, because people do not
really know where we are going in terms of the hospitals are not aware of, the
health care providers are not aware of, and moreover our patients are really
frightened when there are headlines of 240 beds, 440 beds, 200 beds, 150 beds,
50 beds. That is really causing turmoil and people are saying something is being
taken away from them so dear to them.
So I would ask the minister, we discussed this
issue on the first day. We asked for an
open and frank discussion, and we are still going to do that. I am not going to change one day or the other,
because I do not think it is very positive.
We are not doing our service properly, because if we are going to
discuss one bed there, one bed over there, then I think we are doing the same
thing as each and every interest group is doing outside. We have to take care of each and every
patient as a whole and the taxpayer, above all, and people want that at debate.
If we are going to cater to the 25 percent to
30 percent of people who are supporting each and every individual party, then I
think we should be not in this House, but working somewhere outside and working
for a specific organization so that they can pay them their bills so that we
are at least doing a service to their communities. I think that is very dangerous.
If somebody tells us here today‑‑I
will ask the member for
Who is going to benefit if the changes are
made today? Not this government, but the
government which is going to come in two or four years' time. The negative impact is on this government and
all of us, but I think we have to think about people in the long run.
So, from our point of view, I want a frank
discussion. We want a clear‑cut direction
from this minister of where this government is going to move and what is their
time frame, how they are going to deal with all those issues and when they are going
to start a public campaign. People in
Brandon were telling them that probably they may accept some of the changes,
but if they are not well informed because they do not have access to some of
the services, some of the information we have or the minister's office has, I
think it is very, very unfortunate. We come
every day. For ten minutes we are there
and in the next 20 minutes we are somewhere else. So we have to make sure that we keep our
focus on the debate.
I would ask the minister, please tell us when
the campaign to get people involved is going to start, when we are going to have
a major restructuring of the Urban Hospital Council. He should not be afraid of making such a
decision. It will go in their favour in
the long run. Who is going to
benefit? The patient and the
taxpayers. If a 90‑year‑old
patient is going to be frightened by someone telling them your health care is
going to be taken away, it is such an irresponsible attitude because you do not
expect each and every person to be a health economist or a health care
provider. It is a very, very difficult
problem.
So let us not frighten people. Let us not take advantage of the vulnerable
people. If we want to have a debate on
health care, then let us have an honest and frank debate. If the decision has to be made which may be
tough in the short term, it will serve people in the long run. If anybody in Manitoba will tell us today‑‑ask
anybody, I was talking on a show that people are saying the same thing in their
own backyards, but when they are coming to the tables in the public forum, they
change because they have their own interest.
You have a responsibility, a moral obligation
that you have to provide and we have to provide a system. As a member of the Legislative Assembly, I
think we will be doing a disservice and as a caucus we have decided that we are
going to be very responsible, very open and have a discussion. We are not going to worry every day about
making news which could be negative.
Right now, even the media is picking up. I think they are being very, very
positive. They want to know how you would
do it. That is why I want that each one
of us tell us within the next 30 days how we are going to fund it and who is
going to pay the bill, how we will deliver different things, because 35‑days
campaign for 10‑second clip does not do a damn thing because people can
be fooled very easily and people have done.
I do not think that has been the practice, but I would like to know from
the NDP how they will deliver the health care in
*
(1540)
Mr.
Orchard: Mr.
Deputy Chairperson, the kind of debate that we are going to have in these
Estimates will bring out many of the details that my honourable friend wants to
have presented. I said it before and I
will say it again, that there are opportunities to make the health care system
in Manitoba change with the dynamics of change that face all health care
systems across Canada and to make the change happen with the patient at the
centre of the change.
That is where we are heading and, as the
course of the afternoon goes on, I want to lay out some information for my honourable
friends about Brandon, because Brandon decision‑‑and I appreciate
that there are 5,000 people signing a petition circulated by the member for
Brandon East (Mr. Leonard Evans) at the meeting on Thursday of last week, I
appreciate that. When you get into a
political issue you can have any number of people sign a petition, but if you
do not have a full explanation of the issue before them, naturally people will
react in a negative way. Five hundred
people come out to a meeting, but you know the results of that meeting, I
think, were fairly accurately outlined in an editorial in the
How that decision‑making process and the
targets for decision making get laid out in the public will happen in the near
future, but there has been a substantial amount of ground work discussions done
with the hospitals through the Urban Hospital Council. We have 41 issues before them, all of which
are potential issues that may help us reform the health care system. Some of
them are common sense popular decisions, some are going to be unpopular
decisions, but when arrived at, the justification behind them will be laid
out. Any decision that I accept as minister,
I will defend on the basis of information arrived at, so that we can conclude a
logical decision on whether it is bed closures at the Health Sciences Centre
and St. Boniface, whether it is a removal of service from inpatient to
outpatient and bed closures, whether it is a removal of chronic care patients
from teaching hospitals to less expensive facilities with the closure of the
beds at teaching hospitals.
Regardless of what the decisions are, when
they are made and accepted by this government, I will defend them. I will defend them with the same kind of
logic with which I have defended the board of
When I defend the decisions that I accept from
our institutions, my critics, whether it be my honourable friend the member for
The Maples (Mr. Cheema) or my other honourable friend the member for
If my honourable friends disagree with a
decision, and my honourable friend the member for The Maples has disagreed with
some of the decisions we have made and he has made suggestions, and we have
revisited our decisions and incorporated some of the changes he has
suggested. I would love to do that for
my honourable friend the member for
If they are going to have the luxury of
saying, oh, no, no, we were wrong; that man over there hanging on the wall was
wrong as Premier; and this person who is now critic agreeing with that decision
was wrong as a cabinet minister; and they are going to reverse their decision
now that they are in the comfort of opposition‑‑that is a pretty
fundamental change in policy.
Mr. Deputy Chairperson, I am going to turn it
right over to my honourable friend, provided my honourable friend for The Maples
is finished, and I want to hear from the New Democrats. I want to know if they have reversed their
policy on funding deficits of hospitals.
Are they saying now that government should fund hospital deficits?
Point of Order
Ms.
Wasylycia-Leis:
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Chairperson, I have now been asked by
both the Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard) and the Liberal Health critic to make
some statements, so I presume they are willing to concede the floor to me at
this point.
Mr.
Deputy Chairperson: The honourable member for
* *
*
Mr.
Cheema: Mr.
Deputy Chairperson, I think that within these 40 hours we will have a lot of
time to explore this, and I have no problem if the member for
Can the minister tell me, to go back to my
issue again‑‑[interjection]
Mr.
Deputy Chairperson: Order, please.
Mr.
Cheema: Mr.
Deputy Chairperson, I do not come to this House to say empty rhetoric. I do not come to this House and put nonsense
and irresponsible statements on the record.
I do not come to this House for a job.
I do not come to this House by putting bloody brochures and putting
signs. I want to do my job, and no
member is going to stop me because of being irresponsible.
Can the minister tell me when the campaign in
terms of public education is going to start, when the minister will initiate a program
that will tell the public what is in store for them, how they are going to deal
with the health care reform so that people can be primed for a change?
Mr.
Orchard: Mr.
Deputy Chairperson, we hope to have a discussion paper‑‑I would
liken it to some of the discussion papers we have had in mental health reform‑‑hopefully,
ready before the end of April.
Mr.
Cheema: Mr.
Deputy Chairperson, can the minister tell us in terms of the request we asked
him the other day about expanding the role of the Urban Hospital Council, is he
going to have the membership reviewed so that other groups who are not on that committee,
and also the consumer groups, can be part of the health care reform?
Mr.
Orchard: I am not
giving consideration to that in terms of the Urban Hospital Council itself
because that council is structured deliberately of the CEOs and the
subcommittees of it are people involved first‑hand with the question
being posed.
Now that structure is useful, very useful, and
I do not think that it would serve to have the Urban Hospital Council's focus moved
away from delivery issues, if you will, into the public forum issues, the
public discussion issues.
What I cannot tell my honourable friend is
what process we would envision in terms of making the public discussion happen around
the discussion paper. We have had good
success in the past with fairly substantial distribution of those discussion papers
and the subsequent feedback from professional groups and people and consumers
alike. Right now, without further
thought on it, my tendency is to stick with that sort of process, because it
has worked in at least six other occasions when we have tabled discussion
papers.
Mr.
Cheema: Mr.
Deputy Chairperson, can the member for St. Johns (Ms. Wasylycia‑Leis)
then tell us now‑‑I think she is very excited and she is very
energetic‑‑has she discussed her policy and the policy of their
governments in Ontario and Saskatchewan.
*
(1550)
Does she know how they are funding the health
care system? Is she going to tell us here today how much they are going raise taxes? How many other people have to lose jobs? How many times do they have to visit
People want to know exactly because health
care for them is a part of the whole package.
They want to deal with all issues. They want to make sure that not only
will they continue to have health care, but their children can even have
important services in the long run. The
way we are doing it now, they may not have because the way the NDP is promising
I think is irresponsible, not reflecting on a personal integrity of the member.
I think they must rethink, because deceiving
the public is not going to do anything in the long run. It looks very good. You go there and make
noise, so and so is doing bad things, the Liberals and Tories are co‑operating
on health care issues. I think any
sensible person is co‑operating on the issues, it is not Liberals and
Tories. A lot of people in
Mr. Deputy Chairperson, I would like to know
how many suggestions came out of the NDP within 236 hours?‑‑not
even one, and I have been on each and every hour of Health Estimates as of 1988.
Mr.
Deputy Chairperson:
Order, please. I would like to
remind all honourable members that the questions are to come through the Chair
to the minister and not be put to other members of the committee, No. 1.
Number two, we are dealing at this time with
1.(b) Executive Support: (1)
Salaries. The issues on the hospital
should be asked under Section 5.(b) which is Hospitals and Community Health Services.
Ms.
Wasylycia-Leis: I
am glad to have this opportunity now to address a number of issues that have
been raised by both the Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard) and the Liberal Health
critic. I really regret coming in the middle of these two dancing cheek to
cheek, in this very cozy tete‑a‑tete relationship, but let me certainly
try to continue to do my job as an opposition critic and remind the Liberal
critic why we are all here and what our job is in opposition.
First and foremost, our job is to ask
questions and to get answers. When one
does not get answers, one keeps on asking questions. What is most interesting about today and
about previous discussions of late around health care issues, particularly in
Estimates, is that the Liberal critic, the member for The Maples (Mr. Cheema)
is not prepared to continue doing his role, exercising his responsibilities to
ask questions.
Mr. Deputy Chairperson, the Liberal member has
challenged me. The Minister of Health
has challenged me. I think I should have
the courtesy of some time without heckling to be able to address these
challenges and to pursue the very important issues before us.
Very interestingly, I noted that the Liberal
critic said that this is not about one bed here or one bed there; this is about
the overall picture and the role of the public and the consultations and health
care reform generally.
Well, Mr. Deputy Chairperson, first let us put
this in context. We are not dealing with
one bed here and one bed there. We are
dealing with 440 beds in the city of
I think we have a responsibility to ask, as I
have done consistently and will persist in doing, what is the reform plan? What
are the elements of it? When will the
consultation start? Where is the comprehensive review promised in 1988 by the
Premier (Mr. Filmon) before a single bed would be closed? That is precisely why we are here‑‑to
ask those questions, to get to the bottom of it.
Our job is to clearly find out where this
government is coming from and the impact its decisions are having on all members
in our society.
Mr. Deputy Chairperson, when 440 beds are
being cut out of the system without any announcement by this government,
without this Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard) taking responsibility for that
big decision, without any clear idea of what the reform plan is, we have to
keep asking those questions.
Where are those beds coming from? Why are they being chopped here? What is the rationale? Those are the questions we have been asking
for a month and I am going to continue to ask.
I think that is an attempt at least to be responsible in this role in
opposition and as critics for the biggest policy area in this provincial
government.
Mr. Deputy Chairperson, in line with the
Liberal critic's dissertation about his being so co‑operative and helpful
and this co‑operative relationship going on between the two, the Minister
of Health (Mr. Orchard) suggested that, yes, the Liberal critic was right, that
we should not be about simply disagreeing with what the government is doing.
Well, I agree, but we cannot get to the bottom
of what the government is doing because the Minister of Health will not tell us
what the government is doing. So we have
to go back to the basics and ask, what is the plan? What is the percentage increase going to each
hospital? What is the bed cut reduction target
going to each urban hospital? What is
the base‑line budget target reduction going to each hospital? When are hospitals going to be
consulted? When is the public going to
be involved in the process? We have to
keep asking those questions because we do not know what the government is
doing, and the Liberal critic should start to realize that all this is
happening around us. If he thinks back
to the way in which this minister operates he will realize this is a critical
situation.
In the past, over the past several years we
have heard about things through rumour, through innuendo, through unidentified sources,
through confidential documents and had to raise important issues on the basis
of that information, only to be told time and time again we were fearmongering,
that we were out to lunch, we were making this up, this was a figment of our imagination,
it was politics, then only to find out a short time later that those decisions
had actually come to pass.
Let me remind the member for The Maples (Mr.
Cheema) about an issue he took up with great vengeance in the last set of Estimates,
that of psychoanalysis and the question of deinsurance and how we heard that
this was happening, how when we raised it we were told we were fearmongering,
only to find out it was a done deal, it was a fait accompli, it was a final
decision without consultation, without input.
Let me remind the member for The Maples about
the emergency nursing teaching program at the Health Sciences Centre, where we heard
rumours about this program, this important program being shut down at the
Health Sciences Centre because of provincial budgetary requirements. We asked about the emergency nursing program
at the Health Sciences Centre, and the minister said we were fearmongering and
being malicious and raising nonissues, only to find out that that decision was
done. It was finished and there was no
opportunity for anyone to raise concerns and raise questions.
Well, Mr. Deputy Chairperson, we as opposition
members have a responsibility to raise those issues when we hear about them, to
ask those questions and try to get answers.
So, that is what I will continue to do.
The minister, interestingly, said, we cannot
proceed any further until we deal with the question of no deficits for hospitals. He said, that is fundamental.
That is news to us. Suddenly this is the fundamental issue. Before,
we heard some other wonderful rhetoric about health care reform and about the
need to shift resources to community base and about the goals of prevention and
healthy public policy and all kinds of other things, but today, now we are
hearing that the first, the starting point, the overriding issue, the
underriding whatever is the question of deficits to hospitals. We are back to Tory approach to health care
issues‑‑bottom‑line accounting, budgeting, numbers, costs,
balancing the books, the first and foremost, that is the issue.
It is very interesting, Mr. Deputy
Chairperson. Let us go back to one of the
first speeches that the Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard) delivered back in
November 23, 1988. Interesting speech,
and I quote: So I have told them that I
am not the minister of health costs, I am the Minister of Health. There must be more to government's health
policies than a concern about cost. We
must be concerned about quality, about insuring that Manitobans have access to
health services they need, and about finding ways to improve our health
services.
An
Honourable Member:
That has a good ring to it.
Ms.
Wasylycia-Leis: It
has a very good ring to it. I certainly support
those words. But that is not the
framework from which the minister is operating.
He is not operating from the basis of quality and patient care and
community service. He is operating from
the basis of bottom‑line figures and budgeting and accounting, a
preoccupation with costs.
So our concern has to keep coming back. We have to keep bringing the Minister of
Health back, and obviously the Liberal critic, back to the question of impact
of government decisions that are taking place without any announcement, without
full exposure, without public revelation.
They are being done clandestinely, they are being done secretly behind
closed doors, slipped in, and done before you know it, and before we have a chance
to scrutinize it, and before the public has a chance to have any input.
So the question, Mr. Deputy Chairperson, comes
back to, what is the budget increase for each hospital? It is interesting, the minister again said: Well, we cannot have those figures until we get
to the line about hospitals. But he just
had, interestingly, all those details ready about the
Well, he has all those numbers at his
fingertips, okay.
An
Honourable Member: Maybe he has more credibility than you have.
Ms.
Wasylycia-Leis:
So the member for Brandon West (Mr. McCrae) suggested that perhaps there
was some deliberate selection of material, because the member might have more
credibility‑‑
Point of Order
Hon.
James McCrae (Minister of Justice and Attorney General): Mr.
Deputy Chairperson, the honourable member has impugned me with her comments,
and suggested that I had deliberately done something wrong. I would like her to withdraw that because the
reference to the honourable member for Brandon East (Mr. Leonard Evans) was
that when he was here a few minutes ago, he was speaking the truth when it came
to the matter of the policy of the New Democrats, even though he did not answer
in the way that the Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard) might have liked.
He was making truthful comments, and making
the same points as the honourable Minister of Health, and now the Health critic
for the New Democrats is suggesting that somehow I have said something wrong
and deliberately, and I would like her to correct that please.
Ms.
Wasylycia-Leis:
Yes, if I have said anything that offends the member for Brandon West or
impugns motive, I will be glad to withdraw it.
Mr.
Deputy Chairperson: Thank you, that concludes the matter.
* *
*
*
(1600)
Ms.
Wasylycia-Leis: I
was merely referencing the fact that the member for Brandon West (Mr. McCrae)
suggested that perhaps the information about hospital budgets was not available
to me, when in fact detailed budgetary accounting statements about the
The member for Brandon West suggested that may
be because the member for Brandon East (Mr. Leonard Evans) has more credibility. I certainly hope that is not the case, and
would question, again‑‑because I know the minister has this
information readily available‑‑if he would not, at this point, be
prepared to tell us.
This is a basic request for information, the
budgetary increase for each hospital. As
well, I remind the Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard) that over the past number
of hours, I have also asked for a breakdown of the bed cut targets, the bed reduction
targets for each urban hospital.
As I mentioned earlier, in the last set of
Estimates, the minister finally did acknowledge that there were 240 beds, that this
government was directing the Health Sciences Centre and the St. Boniface
Hospital to cut 240 beds from their hospitals.
I would like to know specific to that the precise breakdown.
I would also like to know about the 200
community beds, the beds being cut from our community hospitals. Again, I remind the Minister of Health and
the member for The Maples (Mr. Cheema) that that is a fairly large, substantial
number of beds for which there is no explanation or plan or public input.
So we need to know what hospital has been hit
with which target in terms of bed cuts.
What is the rationale for it? Is there
a chance that the public can be consulted and the hospital can be involved in
an open, thorough consultation process before those directives are imposed
finally on hospitals?
Give us some indication of the overall plan
this government has with respect to redirecting any resources saved in those areas
directly into the community end of our health care system so that people will
know that their services are not being cut back and that there will be other
ways in which they can access the health care system to ensure that quality
patient care is not sacrificed.
Mr.
Orchard: Mr.
Deputy Chairperson, you might recall that I inappropriately interjected when
first my honourable friend made the statement that I had confirmed a given
number of bed closures at the two teaching hospitals. I asked her to quote from Hansard wherein she
concluded that wondrous statement. She
did not then, but she persists in perpetuating the placement of incorrect information
on the record.
My honourable friend drew that
conclusion. I did not give my honourable
friend any such figure on Monday when we started the Estimates, nor will I give
her any such figure today. So I just want
my honourable friend to harken back to my words about honesty earlier on,
because that is not exactly an honest statement that she just made.
My honourable friend was concerned about the
budget detail that I had at my fingertips.
Surely, my honourable friend must acknowledge that there is some
difference between the budgets for this fiscal year, '92‑93, which
commenced on April 1, which I will give to my honourable friend when we reach
the hospital line of the Estimates.
Surely, my honourable friend must recognize a
difference between this year's budget and the historic figures that I shared with
the member for Brandon East (Mr. Leonard Evans), wherein I pointed out what the
actual net payments for a series of years were to Brandon General Hospital and
a projection of what the net payment will be to Brandon General Hospital for
fiscal year ending March 31, 1992, which will be confirmed in two to three months
time as to a final figure, that last figure for Brandon General Hospital being
in excess of $44 million.
There is, for my honourable friend's
knowledge, a difference between budget figures yet to be struck for this coming
year and finalized and historic figures of what has actually transpired.
My honourable friend talks about the issue
being Tory emphasis on bottom line in budget and the Tory policy of no deficits
in hospitals. That was not a bottom
line, neo‑Conservative driven policy of a Conservative government, it was
the policy that my honourable friend passed in cabinet in 1986‑87 while
she served as minister of whatever for Howard Pawley. It was an NDP policy.
It is a very fundamental policy to planning
health care. That is why it is rather important that my honourable friend stop ducking
the question. Are the New Democrats now
ducking and reversing themselves and flip‑flopping on the policy they put
in place? That is fundamental to the
debate today on hospitals because you have got to remember how we got here
today. In Question Period I was accused
of cutbacks in the hospital budgets.
When both the member for Brandon East (Mr. Leonard Evans) and the member
for
*
(1610)
My honourable friend ducked the issue. She ducked the issue again. She refuses to answer and I understand that,
because, you know what?‑‑my honourable friend does not have the
ability to make that statement as party policy of the New Democrats. I watched the body language of Mr. Doer, the
Leader of the New Democrats, at the back of the room when I was asking him if
he would come forward and put on the record today whether the New Democrats in
opposition have flip‑flopped and reversed their policy put in place under
Howard Pawley of not funding hospital deficits.
The leader refused to come and clarify what his critic and his member
for Brandon East (Mr. Leonard Evans) were saying publicly.
So I have to suspect that the policy still
exists for the New Democrats that they would not fund deficits and that the
request for budgetary money to Brandon and, no doubt, to other hospitals that
will be made by my honourable friends in the New Democrats are not a sincere
reflection of what their policy would be should they be in government, but
merely political opportunism to try to make people believe that they would do
things differently when, in fact, they would not.
Now, I asked my honourable friend not to put
incorrect information on the record, and my honourable friend the member for
The second falsehood my honourable friend put
on the record, again after I corrected her the first time, she talked about base‑line
budget reductions in the hospitals. I am
going to read into the record again the budget, historic, for Brandon General Hospital
starting in 1986‑87: 308 beds,
$30,549,816; 1987‑88: 279 beds, a reduction under the NDP, budget
increased $32,980,104; budget, 1988‑89:
279 beds, budget increased $35,178,312; 1989‑90: beds increased to 291 at Brandon General Hospital,
budget increased to $37,310,496; 1990‑91 fiscal year: bed capacity, 291,
budget increased to $40,975,464; budgetary year, 1991‑92: bed capacity, 291, estimated budget
expenditures over $44 million.
(Mr. Bob Rose,
Acting Deputy Chairperson, in the Chair)
Every single year an increase, not a
decrease. Yet my honourable friend,
after me putting that information on the record and correcting her, said: base‑line budget reductions in hospital
funding. That, sir, is false.
Now, I want to help my honourable friend
because I want to take my honourable friend through the rated‑beds
funding for the Health Sciences Centre.
I am going to take her back to '82‑83, rated beds: 1,190, net payments from MHSC, $132,840,912;
'83‑84, beds down to 1,173, budget up to $151,072,896; 1984‑85‑‑now
these are years that the NDP were in government‑‑bed rating down to
119, in other words, 71 beds not funded from '82‑83 to '84‑85 at the
Health Sciences Centre under the NDP, cut by a number of beds, I mean cutbacks,
gasp, budget, $166,692,816, an increase.
Now, I will go right through to '86‑87‑88,
rated beds: 1,113, again a reduction, budget:
$208,414,296. Now, every year there
has been an increase in the budget, even though the number of beds are going
down. Since we have come into
government, we inherited a budget that was $208,414,296 to the Health Sciences Centre. That was the last budget in which you removed
six beds at Health Sciences Centre, rated beds in the last year you budgeted
for them. That was a budget of almost
$208.5 million. Now, my honourable friend says we have‑‑she is
going to use this language consistently‑‑"base‑line
budget reductions" in her discussions because someone has given her that
language, not giving her the full explanation.
So my honourable friend without full knowledge is coming here saying,
there is base‑line budget reductions, got to be, because somebody told me.
Well, it was $208 million the last year the
NDP were in government. It is projected
to be in excess of $270 million at the Health Sciences Centre for the fiscal
year just ended. Wherein, sir, do you go from $208 million to $270 million and have
a base‑line budget reduction as alleged falsely by the member for
So I just have to put that kind of information
on the record because if we are going to have an intelligent debate about health
care reform, we cannot be putting false accusations on the record. Beds closed from 1,190 at the Health Sciences
Centre in '82‑'83 when the NDP were in government down to 1,113 rated bed
capacity when we took over budgeting for health care. Those reductions, every one of them, took
place out of the NDP. These people now
are saying, well, you know, you should not do that. I mean, when they are in government they do
one thing, and when they are in opposition, they do the other. That is why we have to know from my
honourable friend, do the NDP still believe in the policy they put in place of
not funding hospital deficits?
I want to tell you, you know what the Health
Sciences Centre wanted to spend in the year that they are probably going to
spend $270 million? They probably wanted
to spend closer to $285 or $290 million.
They ask for more money than we give them. That is the amount of money they would have
spent in deficit, and if there was a no‑deficit policy in place like my
NDP friend is talking about, then that is what they would have spent. Where would the money have come from? Well, it would have come out of Education,
Family Services, Highways, higher taxes, or more borrowing to fund a higher
deficit, interest on which takes away more services the next year.
That is why Howard Pawley and the NDP put in a
policy of no deficits. That is why it is
critical to know whether today's version of the NDP are renouncing that
policy. You cannot have a debate around
hospital budgets if you start from the premise, yes, we are going to give a
budget, and we are going to set it at $270 million, but if you spend $290
million, go ahead, we will pick up the tab.
Where in the world will that take health care
funding? Will that take it and allow you
the resources you say are needed for reforming the health care system if
greater amounts are consumed by our hospitals?
Where in the world does my honourable friend with the NDP think‑‑who
does she think she is trying to fool with that kind of half‑hearted,
feeble attempt at political opportunism?
When they are in government they reduce the funding to the Health
Sciences Centre, $2,000 in general hospital for beds because the beds ratings
go down, beds close when the NDP are in power, but budgets still go up.
The NDP put in a no‑deficit policy. We adhere to it. In opposition, they say do not close beds,
which they did when they were funding and managing the health care system, and
now they are even saying, do not worry about the deficits, reverse the policy. Well, that is flimflammery of the worst
kind. That is political opportunism.
*
(1620)
So if my honourable friend thinks that we can
have a meaningful debate in health care reform with her trying to be all things
to all people, she is wrong. Manitobans
and Canadians have said, we want straight goods. We do not want Bob‑‑well, I will
not get into Bob Rae, what Bob Rae said in opposition what he does in
government. I mean, there is a classic
example of people from opposition promising the world and then hit with the reality
of government. They even stop buying
cars made by auto workers, Bob White's union who support the NDP in
When my honourable friend says certain things
in opposition, they are seriously questioned by anybody who is paying
attention, because they say all of a sudden, well, how is it that in opposition
the New Democrats in
That is why we have to have an answer from my
honourable friend. I know she is ducking
the question. She will not clearly
answer whether they are maintaining the policy of no‑deficit funding in
hospitals or whether they have reversed themselves now that they are in the
comfort of opposition.
Mr.
Cheema: I
just want to get into this debate again on a basic principle.
The member for
I think the important thing is, when we are
raising the issues and we know what is wrong with the system, when everybody else
knows‑‑the patient knows more than all of us what is wrong with the
system and they want answers. The role
of opposition is, we are going to question the minister, but at the same time we
would like to tell him how we would do it.
I will tell at each and every point how we would do it, because I think
that is the issue people are asking.
I am not questioning her capabilities as a
member. I am not. That is the last thing I would do for any
member, but I would still demand that the taxpayers have the right to know. They
are paying my and her salaries and other people's salaries in this room. Each and every hour is costing a lot of money
and money does not grow on trees, I keep on repeating. You have to spend it wisely.
If we are not going to discuss the issue, when
I was talking about one bed here and one bed there, she again missed the point. The issue is that we have to discuss patient
care whether that involves a bed situation or community care. We cannot say, have community care and then
keep everything open.
How do you fund the system? There are going to be a lot of problems. I think the only responsible way that we can
do‑‑the minister knows that every time something goes wrong, we
will be jumping, but we want to make sure that at least the taxpayer has given
us confidence. Let us do it in a way
that they will feel more comfortable.
There is going to be some pain and there are
going to be some problems, but the system has to change. It does not matter which government
comes. The system has to change, and if
tomorrow the member for
That is what I am asking, an open debate, and
I am asking how the government is going to do.
We were the first ones to raise the issue of public campaign and I think
it is a very important issue. I was
echoed by the Minister of Justice in
Now I will let the member for
Ms.
Wasylycia-Leis: Mr. Acting Deputy Chairperson, I would like to
pursue asking some questions about government policy on our hospitals, on bed
cuts, on budget reductions, on consultation and on reform, areas we have tried
to pursue in the past and for which we have received very few answers.
I want to say to the member for The Maples
that there are no easy answers in this whole area of health care and change and
reform. I said that many times. I said that in my opening remarks. I am not government. I am not executing decisions that are having
an impact on people's lives. I am not
making those decisions. I am not putting
out decrees in terms of hospital base‑line budget reductions. The minister hates those words, but we will
get back to the source of those words.
It is our job to acknowledge the difficulties,
certainly, but when the government makes decisions either in the open and publicly
or secretly and clandestinely, then it is our job as opposition to get to the
bottom of those decisions, find out what exactly is the precise nature of those
decisions and what impact they will have.
Are the Minister of Health and the member for
The Maples saying that there are no decisions, that all of these headlines going
back two months about 440 beds being cut from urban hospitals is nonsense? Are they saying that all the reports‑‑are
they questioning the accuracy of all these reports and the credibility of all
these reporters who have been told about $27‑million cuts to hospital
budgets? Are they ignoring the letters
that we are all getting from patients who are telling us about sitting in
emergency wards for five days and 10 days?
It is real out there. There is a reality. Decisions are being made. Maybe they are not being made directly and
openly and up‑front, but they are being made and it is our job to get to the
bottom of them, Mr. Acting Deputy Chairperson.
So I will try again to ask some questions on this very important area,
and I wish I had the help of the Liberal critic in asking these questions,
because obviously I am not getting very far with the Minister of Health.
The Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard) suggests
that we are making up this terminology and spreading rumours that are not founded
in terms of base‑line reductions to hospitals. Mr. Acting Deputy Chairperson, we did not
make up the words. Number one, we heard
the terminology, the scenarios, the concerns expressed fairly regularly from a
great many sources since last year when this government first made a
fundamental change in policy and in the funding of our hospitals.
So, Mr. Acting Deputy Chairperson, it is not
the NDP making up stories about last year about the $19‑million reduction
to the base budgets of hospitals. It was
confirmed. It was documented. It was talked about in the media by heads of
our hospitals, heads of administrations, and time and time again we heard how
this was a fundamental shift in policy.
That is one source where this came from‑‑not out of my head
or anyone else's, not made up, not fearmongering.
The second source for this information came
out of hospital minutes. I have, as one
example, minutes from St. Boniface Hospital outlining changes that were being
proposed by this government in terms of, in this case they suggest a $18‑million
shortfall, which is‑‑we had two figures. Of course, the government has never owned up
to any one of these figures, so we do not know if it is a $18‑million cut to hospital budgets
or $19 million last year, but it is one of them. Those minutes clearly outline that the
government came to the St. Boniface Hospital and said: Here is the situation; here is the problem; now
either we can impose a solution‑‑and I am quoting from these minutes‑‑or
there would be a collaborative attempt.
*
(1630)
Finally, Mr. Acting Deputy Chairperson, we
come to the minister's own briefing book and material provided by his own departmental
staff last year. I will refer again to
the memorandum done by Sean Drain, Director of Urban Health Facilities in the
Department of Health, a memorandum for the minister's briefing book entitled
Budget Targets/Larger Winnipeg Hospitals and Brandon. That memo outlines the unique situation facing
the provincial government as a result of the reduction of transfer payments by
the federal government. It goes on to suggest
how that problem was being addressed and it very specifically states, and I
quote: Hospitals requested and were provided
with specific information on the proposed increases that they might anticipate
for 1991‑92 and how the overall targeted reduction might affect them if
this amount was allocated on a pro rata basis.
Mr. Acting Deputy Chairperson, these are not
our words. We are talking about hospital
base‑line reductions, acknowledged in the minister's own briefing book,
verified in the minutes of hospital meetings, clearly documented by reporters
over the last couple of years, not concocted by the opposition.
(Mr. Deputy
Chairperson in the Chair)
Mr. Deputy Chairperson, we know that the
government is carrying on with this dramatic shift in policy for this year and next
year. We know that this government has
said to urban hospitals, they must come up with money for restructuring purposes.
Mr. Deputy Chairperson, we are talking about a
lot of new language and a lot of new developments that have nothing to do with
regular budgeting process. We are
talking about government officials from the highest ranking in the Department
of Health going to urban hospitals and saying there is a fund that must be met,
a target that must be met for restructuring purposes. They are being told that last year's $19
million or $18 million, whichever figure you want to choose, was not met and
that the unachieved‑‑these are not my words, these are words from
hospital administrators‑‑portion would have to be met this year as
well as an additional amount for restructuring purposes.
So this is all new language, new ideas, a
shift in policy. I am not dreaming it
up. I am not trying to take a normal budgeting
process and blow it out of proportion.
We are talking about a shift in policy for which there has never been a
public statement, an announcement by this minister. We are asking for some details about that. We have been asking for the overall plan into
which all of these different announcements or different developments fit. We have been asking for the specific
breakdown of the budget reductions for each urban hospital budget. We have been asking for the government‑directed
bed reduction target for each urban hospital.
We have been asking for the percentage increase for each urban
hospital. The minister says he does not have
that information once again.
I would like to ask him once more if he can come
up with that information and specifically put it in the context of the reports,
indicating that
I think it is only reasonable to be able to
ask for that information at this point in the Estimates process, given what is happening
around us, given the concern in our hospitals, given the growing fear among
I refer specifically to page 1569 on March 23
of Estimates where I asked the minister the following, and I quote. I asked him where the 240‑bed cut
target for the two teaching hospitals came from. That is a figure which came from either the
minister or his deputy minister or someone in his department. It did not come from the hospitals. It has been a directive issue to the two
hospitals, a figure put before them for serious consideration.
I am simply asking, on what basis was that
figure based? On what research is it
founded? The minister responded:
"It was founded on the principle that our
teaching hospitals undertake care delivery in sections of the hospital for
which appropriate and equivalent and sometimes better care can be provided in
other locations, such as the long‑term care, such as the outpatient
surgery procedures, et cetera, such as lower‑risk operations, low‑complication
operations which can be carried out in less expensive and less complex teaching
hospital areas.
"Those services which can be performed .
. . ."
I could go on.
I will stop there, Mr. Deputy Chairperson, but I think you get the drift
that the minister responded to a very specific question, took responsibility
for the information provided him, accepted responsibility for the decision and
gave us the rationale, the reasons and the basis for that decision.
Now I am simply asking the minister today to
give us all the missing pieces of information and then, yes, we will be able to
understand and play a constructive role in this whole process, but without the
information and without the government acknowledging the full range of the
decisions that they have taken and are now executing, it is impossible to get
beyond this role of asking questions which the member for The Maples (Mr. Cheema)
may construe to be less than constructive, because they do not offer
solutions. But I say to you, Mr. Deputy Chairperson,
one cannot offer solutions if one does not know the decisions that are being
made in full by this government and what is the plan into which these elements
fit.
Mr.
Orchard: Mr.
Deputy Chairperson, I note with a great deal of interest, my honourable friend
read from a memo from Sean Drain to our major urban hospitals. In that memo, my honourable friend was trying
to make the case that we had ordered a $19 million or an $18 million‑‑you
know, she is bouncing around on the figure‑‑cut from their budgets.
Yet she went on to quote from that letter
proposed increases for the fiscal year, not $19 million less budget, but
proposed increases. That is why the net
payments from the
In
That is why Sean Drain's letter to the
facilities say it proposed increases.
Now this fundamental and dramatic change in
policy that my honourable friend is alleging that happened last year is this: Hospitals‑‑and
let us just deal with the Health Sciences Centre just because they are a major
teaching hospital‑‑this year we expect to pay from the Manitoba
Health Services Commission in excess of $270 million. At this time last year they were drawing up
their budget and they were saying to government, well, we would like to receive
two hundred and‑‑and let us pick a figure because I do not have it
at my disposal‑‑but I would suspect the Health Sciences Centre made
an initial request that they would like to have their budget for fiscal year
ending March 31, 1992, to be $285 million, some $30 million over their previous
year's budget, would probably have been their initial request.
*
(1640)
We said no, we cannot afford to give you that
kind of money; however, we believe we can fund you to the tune of approximately
$270 million. Not a decrease year over
year, but an increase of some $14 million.
It was not as much as they asked for.
The reduction in request to projected funding is roughly the $19 million. That is what I have explained every time it
has been asked of me. There is a
difference between what they ask for and what we budget they can receive, and
that, sir, Mr. Deputy Chairperson, is why we have to get down to this bottom‑line
question of whether government should pick up the deficits and allow a deficit
to become the base‑line budget from which further annualized increases will
be tagged onto.
Let us do a hypothetical situation. Let us say that out of a $270 million budget,
which we have agreed at the start of the fiscal year to provide to an
institution, is overexpended by $5 million, i.e. a deficit. Under the policy that we inherited from 1987
from the NDP‑‑I will repeat again my honourable friends sitting
around the cabinet table who passed that policy‑‑they said there
shall be no deficits. If deficits are
incurred that cannot be justified according to program guidelines under the normal
review that takes place at the end of every fiscal year, they must come out of
the funding increase from the next year. That is the policy that the NDP put in
place. That is the policy we adhere to.
If that facility hypothetically with the $270‑million
budget target exceeded that by $5 million, that $5 million is going to come out
of this year's funding because the policy we operate under is the policy we
inherited from the NDP of no deficits being funded by government at year end.
My honourable friend is saying, I believe,
disregard that policy, fund the $275 million, the $5‑million deficit, and
then add on whatever their request for programming is this year. That is not budgeting. That is not what my honourable friend did in
government. That is this dramatic change
in policy my honourable friend is talking about, exactly the policy that has been
followed probably for 20 years in the
In years previous to 1986‑87, the
hospitals disregarded in a lot of instances their budgets. They exceeded them, they ran deficits, and
then they came to government after the fact‑‑and this was the NDP
that were in power‑‑and said, we have got a deficit, pay it. Pay it taxpayers, because we know doggone
well that you are not going to stand the heat publicly of us saying, oh, well,
we have got to close beds, we have got to curtail operations, we have got to
lay off staff, and they put political pressure on the government. They still do that from time to time.
That is why in 1987, Howard Pawley and the NDP
said, no, no more deficits as a policy of government. That is why Howard Pawley and the NDP ordered
the closure of‑‑I do not know‑‑120, 130 beds without
consultation, without discussion, without any programs being in place to
underpin the services delivered in those beds in the community, none of them,
none of the policies were put in place to underpin that dramatic shift, I mean
that callous decision, by Howard Pawley and the NDP.
Howard Pawley and the NDP did it because
deficits were looming out of control in the hospital sector. There were a number of St. Michael's
Hospitals in the making in
That is why I say to my honourable friend she
cannot have it both ways for the NDP.
She cannot blithely slip around the issue and say, oh well, really that
is not the issue, just pay them what they spend, and then add on to them
whatever their request is and everything will be fine.
You did not do that when you were
government. You would not do it if you
were government today. That is the point
my honourable friend from The Maples (Mr. Cheema) is making.
My honourable friend the member for The Maples
is in close contact with administrations that may well be Liberal in the rest of
My honourable friend from the NDP contrasts
quite dramatically. She wants to have it
one way in government and another way in opposition. She wants to tell hospitals, oh well, we
would have picked up your deficit had we been government, I mean, no
problem. Yet when they were government,
they put in a policy of no deficits.
That is why this debate is meaningless until my honourable friend stops
ducking the question of whether they have reversed themselves on the policy of
no deficits in hospitals, because my honourable friend will dig out the information,
and they will say that these adjustments were not met.
Do you know what that means in lay
language? That means there are deficits
at the hospitals. I would suggest to my honourable
friend, when she talks to her "sources" in the hospitals, ask them if
they are incurring a deficit for their operation this year‑‑just
one simple question. You know what the answer
is going to be, depending on which hospital you go to? It is going to be, yes, we are. Ask them the next question: Will you have to retire that deficit from
this year's funding increase. Do you
know what the answer will be? Yes. So the issue is hospitals running deficits,
in 1992, the exact same issue that was in place in 1986‑87 when the NDP
said that hospitals shall not run deficits; they shall operate within the structured
budget.
My honourable friend used
Today, when we are dealing with hospitals, we
have maintained that we will not provide funding for deficits incurred in a fiscal
year unless there is a significant program reason which would mitigate against
those deficits being incurred. Occasionally, we do make adjustments to the
budget end of the funding level, mid‑year and post‑year, but not
very often. That is not a new policy;
that is the same policy that we inherited.
*
(1650)
My honourable friend, when she quotes her
sources had better ask them clearly, are you incurring a deficit for the fiscal
year '91‑92; if so, how much, and will you have to retire it from this year's
increase? Then see what answers she
gets, because they will be somewhat different than the painted picture my
honourable friend is trying to deliver today.
She will find that our budgeting process is not a wit different than
what it was when the NDP were in, except for one thing: we are enjoying a substantially greater
degree of co‑operation between the hospitals in the province of Manitoba
so that hospital A will not meet their budget requirements by offloading
program on hospitals B, C and D. We have
the system dealing with system‑wide issues on acute care, and that, Mr.
Deputy Chairperson, is a first. It never
happened before in the
Ontario would dearly love to have an urban
hospital council, and, in fact, the deputy minister is attempting to structure something
of that accord to operate in Toronto with the major hospitals in Toronto,
because the example I gave to my honourable friend that they rightfully
intervened in 1986‑87 to prevent happening was a mini St. Mike's in maybe
several hospitals in Manitoba. St.
Michael's Hospital ran a deficit which they believed was going to be $3 million
to $4 million, and by the time the smoke cleared after two years of
investigation the deficit at St. Michael's Hospital in
I want to read, for my honourable friend's
edification, Hansard, November 26, 1991, from the Ontario Legislature. Here is Ms. Lankin, who is the Health
minister, in response to a question about hospital bed closures, some 3,092
beds that are projected to close in Ontario by the end of this fiscal year, which
would mean by March 31, 1992‑‑Ms. Lankin says: The policy established as of 1989 is that
deficits will not be funded; we continue to put in place and support that
policy.
Do you want to know why Ms. Lankin as Minister
of Health in
Now, I do not want to do that, and that is why
I believe there was some sanity in the New Democratic Party policy of 1986‑1987,
where they said, no deficits in the hospitals.
Does my honourable friend not understand the
fundamental underpinning of that policy that she is now disavowing herself as critic
of today? If she says that we should
just simply cover the deficits, then I cannot debate budgets of hospitals,
because some hospitals overexpended and are running deficits.
If my honourable friend is simply saying to
them, pay the deficit, forget about it, pay the deficit and then build your funding
on top of a deficit base line, I cannot do that and I will not do that, because
of the taxpayers concern over escalating health care costs. It does not help reform of the health care
system. It does not help planning. It does not help achieving better management
in the health care system. It just lets
managers off the hook. That is why you
put that no‑deficit policy in place in 1986‑87.
So, you know, if my honourable friend is
saying that that policy is no longer valid, then I cannot have a reasoned
debate with her as to how health care reform will proceed, because health care
reform is underpinned by maintenance of budgets as produced. That is a fundamental underpinning of
it. It was in '86‑87 and it
continues to be today.
So maybe my honourable friend could just take
a brief moment again and say yes or no.
Would you pay for deficits in hospitals and reverse the policy you put
down, or are you adhering to the policy that you participated in passing in
cabinet in '86‑87?
Ms.
Wasylycia-Leis:
Mr. Deputy Chairperson, first of all I have to give the minister credit
for avoiding all questions we have put to him for the last two and a half
hours. We have not had a single answer
to our questions about the budget reductions being directed by this government,
about the bed target reductions being directed by this government, about the
lack of consultation with hospitals, with the community surrounding those
hospitals, with professionals and about the absence of a plan into which these
decisions would fit.
It is interesting that the minister would suggest
that the problem rests with the New Democratic Party in wanting it one way in
government and one way in opposition; well, interesting, especially given that
it was this Minister of Health (Mr. Orchard) who said in 1987 that under a
Conservative government not a single bed would be closed; interesting, Mr.
Deputy Chairperson, in the context of the election promise that I referenced in
Question Period today when the Premier (Mr. Filmon) said that hospital beds
would not be closed without a major comprehensive plan being done.
I am wondering, after two and a half hours of
the minister avoiding these questions, if there is a reason for that. Is he denying all of these reports from
hospital officials, administrators, reporters, concerned citizens, patients,
about the number of bed cuts that hospitals are looking at? Is he denying the reports about 440 beds for
urban hospitals? Is he now denying the
240 beds for Health Sciences and St. B. that he did acknowledge on March 23,
1992, here in Estimates? Is he disregarding
the reports from Health Sciences Centre as they went into retreat, talking
about getting ready and prepare for the worst‑case scenario? Is he disregarding the memos from the president
of the Health Sciences Centre to all staff indicating that they must stick
together through these difficult days ahead and talking about how the
government had imposed a plan to restructure the system?
In fact, it provides us with enough
information to suggest that it is more than just simply a question of targets,
but that the government's plan goes much beyond that. For instance, this memo that I have
referenced before in the House and in Estimates states specifically that it is,
and I quote: It is our understanding
that the province will be taking measures to implement employee adjustment
strategies to bring about every effort to diminish the extent of any negative
impact on staff.
So is the minister suggesting that there is no
plan, that hospitals are being advised government has a strategy for dealing with
terms of employee adjustment strategies?
Is the minister denying the reports going back
as early as March 10, when CBC Radio first reported from high‑ranked officials
in the Health Sciences Centre‑‑not from our sources, not from the
NDP, but from persons who did not wish to have their names disclosed‑‑indicating
that there was going to be the closure or transfer of more than 400 beds, with
specific information about those beds and where they would be divided up, and
how they would be dispersed?
Is the minister denying all of that? When will he come clean and simply tell us
how many beds is this government directing urban hospitals to cut, where are
those cuts, what will be the impact of those cuts, and what is the plan into which
these cuts fit?
I think that is a simple, straightforward
question, and I fail to see why we, after two and a half hours today, after
four and a half hours on March 23, and after a month of questioning in the
Legislative Assembly, have not been able to get any answers. I would try once
again: Would the minister come clean and
give us some basic, factual information about those directives and targets
coming from his department and this government?
Mr.
Orchard: Mr.
Deputy Chairperson, I have given my honourable friend more information on the
general direction of reform. If my
honourable friend cared to revisit my opening remarks, it is there in spades,
laid out for my honourable friend.
But my honourable friend, again, in I do not
know how many hours today, how many hours the other day, still has not answered
the fundamental question: Has the NDP
reversed themselves on no deficits in hospitals? Because if you do not have control over the
major expenditure line in your Estimates, and you let it go out of control, you
do not have any money for any reform.
The system merely spirals out of control. That is why New Democrats in
My honourable friend has ducked the issue,
ducked the issue completely, because she is afraid to say, we have changed our minds. Because when my honourable friend admits the
New Democrats in opposition are going to say they changed their minds, they
admit they have absolutely no concept of health care reform, that they are
merely going to try to politicize health care, the funding of health care, the
delivery of services, narrowly to get into government, and then to pull a Bob
Rae, say anything to get them there and then change their minds on every single
policy once in government.
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That is why we cannot have a reasoned debate
with the New Democrats around health care reform. I can with the Liberals, and that offends the
member for
Mr.
Deputy Chairperson: Order,
please. The time is now 5 p.m. and time
for private members' hour. I am
interrupting the proceedings of the committee.
The Committee of Supply will resume considerations at 8 p.m. Thank you.
FAMILY SERVICES
Madam
Chairperson (Louise Dacquay): Order, please. Will the Committee of Supply please come to
order. This section of the Committee of
Supply will be dealing with the Estimates for the Department of Family
Services. We will begin with a statement
from the honourable Minister of Family Services (Mr. Gilleshammer).
Hon.
Harold Gilleshammer (Minister of Family Services): Madam Chairperson, I am pleased to present to
this committee the 1992‑93 spending Estimates for the Department of
Family Services. In these difficult
economic times, our government has had to make many challenging spending
decisions. As in past budgets, our
government has clearly demonstrated that Family Services is a priority spending
area.
Our budget for the 1992‑93 fiscal year
shows an increase of 8.7 percent, more than four times the rate of inflation,
and more than double the increase in overall government spending. In total our department has been allocated
$640.4 million to provide services and programs to assist individuals and
families who are at risk or in financial need.
Overall the increase is one of the largest
amongst government departments. In these
Estimates discussions it is very easy to focus on dollars, on the bottom
line. If you look at our dollar commitment,
the priority this government places on Family Services is clear. In the past five years the Family Services budget
has grown at a rate more than double the rate of inflation.
But our commitment goes beyond the rhetoric of
more spending. Our commitment is the
action we are taking, whether it be introducing a monthly supplement for
disabled social assistance recipients, establishing an office of the child advocate
or injecting half a million dollars of new money in support of family violence
initiatives.
We have taken, and will continue to take,
steps to improve services, and target our resources to most effectively and efficiently
assist Manitobans who rely on our programs.
It is a difficult challenge. The
national economic recession has limited government resources at a time when
demand for services is increasing.
Now more than ever, government must meet the
demand for more with solutions for spending smarter. During our last Estimates discussion, I
talked about how the national economic recession and federal government
offloading were putting pressure on our ability to deliver needed
programs. These pressures remain.
Still, we have been able in this budget to
introduce new initiatives and enhance existing programs to better meet the needs
of Manitobans.
In the area of social assistance we have taken
many important steps to target our resources to those Manitobans most in need. Overall,
our Income Maintenance area has been increased by 13.4 percent to over $337.5
million. In part, this reflects increasing
caseloads due to the economic recession.
As well, this government has launched several
major new initiatives to improve living standards for Manitobans requiring social
assistance. Late last year I announced
the establishment of a monthly supplement in recognition of the special costs facing
disabled social assistance recipients.
The new income assistance for the disabled benefit will provide a new
$60 monthly benefit at an annual cost of $8 million.
Effective this past January we have also
increased basic social allowances, the rate, by 3.6 percent, an amount well in excess
of recent increases in the consumer price index. Monthly rates have also been increased to
provide social allowance recipients with provincial tax credit benefits on a
more timely basis and to discourage excessive charges for tax discounting services.
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As well, we recently announced a significant
increase in the liquid asset at exemption levels under the Social Allowances Program. In consultation with municipal organizations
we are undertaking a major initiative to bring equity to social assistance
recipients across the province through the standardization of rates and
benefits paid under the municipal tier of social assistance. Legislation enabling this important change
was introduced on March 25, 1992.
This government has also continued its strong
support of
At the same time and throughout the country,
daycare centres have been feeling the effects of the economic recession, particularly
in the area of reduced demand for their spaces.
We have been discussing these issues with the daycare community. In response, this budget will provide daycare
centres with a 4 percent increase in their operating grants. As well, and in response to many requests
from operators and their member associations, this government has agreed to
temporarily halt the licensing of spaces.
The Rehabilitation and Community Living
division will receive a 4.6 percent increase in its funding in 1992‑93
bringing its budget to $102.5 million.
This includes increased funding support for external agencies providing
residential and support services, day programs and children's special
services. Just as importantly, we have
been working with the community to find ways to help disabled Manitobans live
as independently as possible in their communities. Over the past two years the department and the
community have been involved in two major consultation processes. The working group on Community Living has
submitted its report to me, and I will be announcing in the near future a series
of responses to their recommendations.
As well, the committee established to
recommend improved legislation ensuring the rights of
This area is also the location of our
employment programming, and in these economic times it is more important than
ever to ensure that programs we offer are effective and appropriate. We have been reviewing our programming and,
as part of this review, we will be establishing a new $1.4 million Partners
with Youth program designed to create jobs for young Manitobans and provide lasting
benefits for communities. The cost of
this program will be shared with Rural Development, and eligible sponsors will
be municipal governments, local businesses and nonprofit organizations.
I am also pleased that our government
continues to take significant steps in bringing a renewed focus to quality and service
in the area of Child and Family Support.
For this coming fiscal year the government has committed $98.5 million
for child protection and family support services. We are proceeding with a series of reforms to
We are also progressing with our plans to
implement our service information system.
Many reports and reviews commissioned over the past several years have
pointed to the serious need for such a mechanism to track information on children
and families in the system. We will
begin implementing the new computerized system this upcoming fiscal year, and I
am especially pleased that the first phase will focus on providing needed case
tracking information to social workers in the field. Work on implementing the
high‑risk indicator which will assist front‑line social workers in
assessing children as they come into care has also begun.
We are continuing to build on these important
initiatives in the coming year, and as part of that, I am pleased to advise
that our spending Estimates will provide additional funding to support expanded
staffing in the Child and Family Services system.
We are also taking significant steps in our
efforts to more effectively respond to family violence. As you are aware, we are in the process of
modifying the funding formula for shelters.
I plan to announce the details of the new funding formula, funding model,
which is designed to stabilize revenue to centres in the near future. We have also made a significant financial commitment
to this area in the budget, increasing funding by $500,000 for existing support
and counselling services for victims of family violence. In providing support and assistance to
individuals and families at risk or in financial need, the Department of Family
Services affects the lives of many Manitobans.
It is estimated that in the course of a full year, as many as 180,000
Manitobans receive services or benefits from this department or the various
organizations we fund. It is a responsibility
we take very seriously.
As I stated earlier, the pressures and demands
on this department are increasing at a time when the revenue available is very
limited. The public, the taxpayer, is
asking government to find new and better ways of delivering important human
services within the limits of their ability to pay. They are asking government to make
responsible spending decisions. In
Family Services we are responding. We
are setting priorities and we are focussing on the effective management and
decision‑making that enables us to re‑allocate dollars to priority
areas.
We face many challenges in the upcoming fiscal
year. I have outlined some of the
initiatives we will be proceeding with.
As well, we will be taking action on a report this government commissioned
to examine the reporting of abuse allegations in children's residential
treatment centres. In response to the Aboriginal
Justice Inquiry, we will be looking at more effective ways to work with the
aboriginal community, to serve their families in a more culturally appropriate
manner.
As this budget and its spending proposals
indicate, this government takes very seriously its responsibility to assist
I look forward to members' questions and
comments.
Madam
Chairperson: We will
now hear from the critic of the official opposition.
Ms.
Becky Barrett (
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It is particularly appropriate, I believe, to
do so before any of the staff come into this process, because the comments that
I am going to make, I think, are legitimately directed solely to the minister,
who has the ultimate political and fiscal authority to make the decisions as to
what money gets spent where in this department.
The staff, to a greater or lesser extent, but generally speaking, can
make recommendations but they do not make the decisions upon which the basic
thrust of the programming is based.
I would like to say, Madam Chairperson, that I
read with great interest the annual report, tabled recently by the minister, of
the 1990‑91 fiscal year for the Department of Family Services and the
five major goals and missions of the department. Every time I read these, I am struck again by
the fact that they are excellent goals and missions. They, in and of themselves, cover the broad
range of programming that the Department of Family Services is responsible for
and talk quite carefully, I believe, and in a very positive manner, about the services
that this department is legitimately, legally and financially responsible for.
However, Madam Chairperson, over the past five
years of this government, and particularly the last three budgets since the government
has had a majority, the implementation of those mission statements and goals
has been less than exemplary. The mission
to ensure the basic needs of Manitobans while encouraging and supporting
efforts to reduce dependency and enhance self‑sufficiency is an admirable
goal. Again, still Manitobans are less
than 50 percent of the poverty line in income when they are relying on social
assistance programs. In many cases, the implementation
of those basic needs are very difficult to come by, protection of children and
insuring the well‑being of vulnerable adults, providing a wide range of
alternate or institutional care.
We could and have in this House gone on at
great length about the protection of particularly children in this province and
will be looking at this yet again as we get through the lines in the department,
the Estimates of the department. Again I
would say that the government has not managed to fulfill that mandate.
The alternate or institutional care for those
requiring such services, I will be bringing forth several comments and concerns
and suggestions from a range of community interest groups, community groups,
agencies, organizations and individuals who have shared with me and have shared
with the minister and the department their concerns about particularly the
services available in alternate noninstitutional care.
Independent living and participation in the
community for Manitobans with mental or physical disabilities, again, the need far
outweighs the government's response even in the light of difficult economic
times. Assisting families to maintain
their integrity, resolving their own problems and fulfilling their responsibilities,
this is an area of the department that I think probably has arguably suffered
as much as any of the other areas because it is one that is less easy to
quantify.
It is an area that talks in terms of
counselling and working through emotional and psychological problems in many
ways. The resources that the department
has available to it do not allow in many cases for that kind of activity to
take place, so that this area is also underresourced very clearly.
Finally, to help Manitobans facing serious
barriers to stable employment adapt to and participate in the province's work force. Here again, we have seen very little movement
over the course of the life of this government's term in office and in some
cases step backwards. So we need to look
at the missions and goals of this government in this regard.
In many cases, as I have said, they have not
moved forward to the degree that the government may perhaps want the people of
This phrase, this statement has been made time
and time again since the budget of the province has been tabled. I find it very interesting because,
particularly the 8.7 percent increase to Family Services, 80 percent of that
goes specifically to the income maintenance, social assistance programs‑‑80
percent.
That is, as I have stated before in this
House, Madam Chairperson, not a reflection of a positive move on the part of the
government, but a reflection of their mandated, required necessity to provide
the basic necessities, even at the very minimal level that we have in this
province.
Yes, it speaks to the federal government's
offloading, but it also speaks to the total lack of any kind of meaningful job creation,
educational upgrading, support for community colleges, support for programs
that can provide job training, job retraining, education upgrading‑‑the
sorts of things that families and individuals need to be able to get off the
poverty cycle and get off social assistance.
So the concept that the government is being very positive in its
response to the requirements of the Family Services department is on the face
of it not an accurate statement.
The 13.4 percent increase in the Income
Maintenance line, as the minister stated, in part representing the increase in caseload‑‑I
would like to ask rhetorically, the minister, what his definition of in part
is? The vast majority of that increase is
due to the numbers, the caseload increase, not just a portion of it. It reflects, as I say again, not only the
lack of any kind of short‑term or long‑term economic program on the
part of the federal government, but also the same shortfall on the part of the
provincial government.
When we talk about again‑‑and I
will get into some of the specifics‑‑the child daycare program is
one of the major areas of concern in this department to me and to many other
Manitobans, particularly those who have in the past found the daycare system in
this province to truly be accessible, affordable and of high quality.
The restructuring of the fee structure that
the government implemented last April has led to a major crisis in the daycare system
which the government is partially recognizing through its increase in the
operating grants but, again, there are literally thousands of families and
daycare operators and daycare parents who are suffering needlessly by this
government's ideological change in the funding formula. Again, the lump sum payment discussion that
we have had in the past with social assistance recipients, we will continue to
have again in its fullest form.
The special employment programs have been cut
so that the government can establish its Partners with Youth program. There are some very serious questions that I
have to ask about that program, and I am hoping that the minister can provide
us with some very specific details about the program and the numbers of young
Manitobans that he anticipates being able to assist, particularly in this first
year of its functioning. It appears to
be the type of program that may be a fairly lengthy start‑up kind of
program, so that you do not see the benefits as immediately as you might
have. We are particularly concerned that
money has been taken from the current special employment programs to help fund
this new Partners with Youth program.
The reforms to Child and Family Services, yet
again, I find the word "reform" very interesting in this
context. To our way of thinking on this
side of the House that change had nothing of positive reform about it. It was a regressive backward step that was
done in a narrow‑minded punitive fashion, literally in the dead of night
over a weekend, and I would be very interested to see what kinds of positive
feedback has come out of that, quote, reform.
Family violence initiatives‑‑since
this government took office in May of 1988 the issue of stable funding for the
shelter system and other elements of the Family Dispute division have been a
discussion for this government. I happen
to know that the previous government had plans to within six months make
changes to the funding formula, because they realized that the funding formula
that was currently in place placed too much emphasis on per diems. It was too volume driven and did not reflect
the needs particularly of the organizations outside the city of
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I find it passing strange, as one of my
colleagues is wont to use, to see that literally five years later, there has
been no major restructuring of that funding formula with enormous costs as we
all know to the family violence services that are being provided in this
province. I will also be very interested
in hearing to what programs and initiatives the additional money in this
section is going to be used. There has
been no information to date on that, and so I am quite interested in that.
Again, the minister spoke about taking action
on the Suche report about dealing with the residential treatment centres. We are looking forward very much to that.
Providing services to aboriginal children and
families in a culturally appropriate manner‑‑I would be very
interested to see what kinds of specifics there are that are being worked out, because
I know that there are organizations and agencies within the aboriginal
community that are having serious concerns about the governments commitment to
the issues that were raised and the recommendations that came out of the AJI
report.
Again, the Pedlar report‑‑most of
the Pedlar report dealt with the judicial system, but there were some very
interesting, excellent middle and long‑term recommendations in that
report that I would hope the minister's budget reflects. It is difficult to see in reading the
Estimates at this point how many of those recommendations are being worked on,
but we will be asking very specific questions on that.
The other brief area that I would like to talk
about, or go back to very briefly, is the child daycare issue, and we will again
specifically ask the minister about his consultations with the child care
community and would hope very seriously that his consultations with the child
care community in this last year since the last time we met in Estimates were a
little more forthright, forthcoming than the working group consultations that he
undertook in the year and a half prior to that‑‑or that his government
undertook in the year and a half prior to that.
In closing, Madam Chairperson, I was
interested in the fact that approximately 180,000 Manitobans, at one point or
another in a year, use one or more of the services that this department either
funds through its own staff or through its funding of external agencies. That is almost 20 percent of the population of
the
So the services that this department provides,
I believe, are arguably the most important in the province because they are going
to the people who are most in need. I
wish I could say that the Estimates that have been provided for this department
for 1992‑93 gave some of those or a majority or even a large number of
those 180,000 Manitobans some sense of progress, some sense of security, some sense
that the government was actually listening to their needs and prioritizing them
in a very high manner.
I am afraid, Madam Chairperson, that the
beginning of the Estimates process does not lead me to that conclusion. But I certainly am open to and will be very
interested in discussing those particular issues with the minister as we go
through the Estimates process.
Mr.
Reg Alcock (Osborne): Madam Chairperson, I did not ever expect to
find myself back making opening remarks on the Department of Family
Services. It is only that my Leader
(Mrs. Carstairs) is unwell today, that I am standing in.
I said at the close of Estimates last year
that I would not be back, because in many ways the issues that affect this department
are simply too personal to me. They
involve people that I have known for many, many years, and people I have worked
with, and people whom I have a great deal of respect for.
The feelings that are generated inside of me
as I look at the actions of this department, and as I try to bring some level
of objective comment to the actions of this minister‑‑the feelings that
I feel are simply so negative and so angry and so corrosive that I have
difficulty stepping back and being the objective critic of the functioning of
the government.
I say that, as much as a comment on myself, as
on the minister and the department because I realize that anger of that sort is
probably more destructive to the person who is feeling it than the person who
is the target of it. So I will attempt
to enter these discussions, in part in an attempt to free myself of some of
those very black and very negative feelings that have accompanied my
presentations in the past.
I want to try in this session to offer some
advice to the minister. Now I am of the
mind that I have been doing that for the last few years, and I certainly, when
this minister was first appointed, welcomed his appointment because I felt that
a fresh look at this from somebody who might have something to contribute to a
debate on how we provide support to vulnerable people was exactly the thing
that this department needed. I tried at various
points throughout certainly the first year to offer what I felt were
constructive observations on some of the activities that were taking
place. My faith in the willingness or
the desire of this minister to produce positive changes in the system was
shattered rather badly by the takeover of Child and Family Services.
I was at a meeting with the various boards and
directors of the old agencies just a few weeks prior to it at which time the spectre
of takeover was raised. I went to some
length to assure people that no, this minister was positively directed, wished
to make improvements in the system, not to destroy it and that they should work
with him not continue to battle him.
Three weeks later I was proved rather radically wrong.
I want to maybe frame my opening remarks and
the work that I will do until the member for
I was of two minds. Do you bring in somebody who has a depth of
experience in child welfare and therefore is able to comment knowledgeably on
various activities in the system but who also brings in a particular point of
view and a particular set of values and a particular set of already‑formed
opinion, or do you do as the minister has done and bring in somebody from
completely outside the system who has an inquisitive mind and ability to do very
detailed research and most important of all an open mind?
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I had an opportunity to meet with Ms. Suche in
I believe it was January of this year to discuss some of her findings with her,
and she had a series of questions for me.
I must confess I was delighted with the experience. I found her to be extremely knowledgeable. She is someone who took this commission very seriously. She worked extremely hard at it. She looked in great detail at the
system. She spoke with an enormous
number of people and she wrote a report which to my mind is a very thorough,
interesting and detailed view of some of the problems that are occurring in the
system and frankly some of the strengths that exist in the system.
She ends her report on page 175 with a
quote. Her quote I should say‑‑she
highlights it. It is not actually a
quote from somebody else. It is a
statement that she sets apart from the text and says: There is a deeper and more troubling problem.
Many senior members of the child welfare community express concern over the
lack of direction the system receives.
The system seems to have lost sight of the fact that it exists to protect
children. Now, if there is any
indictment on this minister's term as the minister of this department, I think
it exists in that statement, that after a considerable period of time of
leading this department, of providing some, shall we say, buffering to public
comment on this department, to have the minister's own consultant go in and
utter such an opinion about the work that has been done to date, I think speaks
volumes about the work that has been done in this department.
I wonder, frankly, how the minister is able to
sleep at night. I wonder how some of the
senior staff in the department are able to.
I know I have difficulty when I reflect on this. This is, as the member
for
The minister makes much in his opening
statements of the fact that they received 8.7 percent which he identifies as
being four times the current rate of inflation.
I should point out that is four times the January rate of
inflation. One month does not a year
make, and we will see just how bountiful that largess is.
I would like to point out, however, that the
bulk of it, as has been pointed out by the member for Wellington, goes into income
security and is more a reflection of the failure of his government to do
anything to address the economic issues that confront this problem, not
something to be held up with great pride as though somehow this government has
decided in these very tough times to prioritize this particular service area.
When you go through the areas where they have
some discretion, you note quite a different pattern. You note that in Child and Family, for
example, the total increase is 2.5 percent.
In child daycare there is an interesting question here because the
increase on the surface, the year over year, would appear to be something in
the order of 6.3 percent, the bulk of that in financial assistance and
grants. I believe I heard the minister
in his opening statements indicate that they were freezing the creation of new
spaces.
What we confront when we look at these kinds
of statements on the part of the minister and this kind of reality in the documents,
is something that we confront with this government in most of its
activities. Certainly, we saw it in the
budget. We live in an age of sound byte
democracy, it has often been called, a time when information has gotten out to
the community not through lengthy discourse, not through careful evaluation of
the issues, but in short clips that are presented to the media that average
just something under 10 seconds.
Governments increasingly, and this government
is a leader in the field, have stepped aside from any attempt to provide a picture
of reality and have instead focussed on trying to provide comforting or, I
would say, misdirecting messages to the community. So when the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness)
stands up on budget day and says we have prioritized Family Services and we
have given them an 8.7 percent increase, that does not reflect any priority at
all.
In fact, the reality is quite the
opposite. When the minister stands up
repeatedly and seeks to emphasize the great priority they have placed on these
services, that is simply patently false, that all that they have done is put
into their budgets those sums that they have had to put in as a result of the
very poor economic climate. It is very
difficult to deal with this government in a rational or in an objective manner
when they make statements, as the minister just did, about their great concern
about unemployed youth and you find that their increase in this particular area
is almost negligible, that what they have done is change the focus of it. They have moved some money around, but they
have done nothing to substantively address the fact that we have an incredibly
high unemployment rate among people under the age of 25.
That is not to say that all they have done is
wrong. Some of the changes that they
have made to Income Security and changes in the regulation which, while they do
not reflect increased costs to themselves, they do reflect some increase in the
ability of people to retain income. In
these very difficult times I think that is a move that is to be welcomed.
There is, however, a greater concern, and it
comes to me in part around the question of, and I think the member for Wellington
(Ms. Barrett) actually made this statement in her remarks, that how a
government prioritizes its spending is very much a reflection of its values,
that what we are talking about in this department, almost more so than when we
talk about any other department, is a reflection of the values of the
government and whether or not it is prepared to do something to advance those
people who receive services through its department or whether it is simply
attempting to provide some political shielding to the kind of comment that
might otherwise come at them.
I think that what we have seen in the actions
of this particular minister in this particular department throughout the tenure
of this particular minister is the latter.
We have seen simply a concerted and continuing effort not to advance the
cause of those who receive services from this department, but simply to continue
the presentation of comforting 10‑second messages to the populace of this
province that are not backed up by any reality that is contained in the
operations of this department.
To that end, I want to comment on the
minister's single initiative that he referenced in his opening remarks, and
that is the creation of a child advocate's office. The call for a child advocate came a long
time ago, and I am going to speak on this in much more detail when the bill is
before the House.
I want to lay out some of it, because if there
is anything that I think that this minister can do that might disabuse me of the
notion that I have that his interests are simply short‑term political and
not long‑term best interest of the children that this province chooses to
parent, it will be to change the current direction that they are heading with
this particular office.
The minister has stated‑‑he has
used a comforting term, child advocate, and in the sense that we are going to
have someone there who will advocate for children and who will oversee the operations
of the government when it chooses to be a parent. That is a concept that has
been around for a long time. I shall not
go into the long list of people who have called for it. I will say that it was raised during the time
that I was the director of Child and Family Services, that it was discussed at some
length and it was felt then that we would not proceed with it because it was
felt that the Ombudsman was able to take on some of those responsibilities.
I think that the subsequent events have
suggested that the demand in this particular department is simply so large that
the creation of an advocate's office is something that is warranted. I would
support the recommendations that have been made, and I support, frankly, the
acceptance of that concept by the minister, because the concept is a simple
one.
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When a parent does something that falls outside of the law as we write it, particularly child welfare law, we intervene, and we have a great many mechanisms that allow us to go into a home and remove a child and to act as an accountability structure to a parent who is not providing for a child in a manner in which the community thinks is appropriate. However, when the watcher, when the child welfare system does something that can be considered to be not in the best interests of the child, we have no mechanism. We have used the Ombudsman, but we have no formal mechanism whose sole