The way the Jobs Fund worked with the NDP is, every department had to contribute budgetary dollars to this $200‑million Jobs Fund and, lo and behold, the Minister of Natural Resources had to contribute his share of money to it. He found that money in his tree planting program, and those 40 individuals who were hired had to be fired so the money could go into the Jobs Fund and then the Jobs Fund could, lo and behold, hire people in the forestry renewal under Manfor, the forestry renewal under Moose Lake, and the reforestation project‑‑

An Honourable Member: I do not believe that.

Mr. Orchard: ‑‑and that is exactly what happened. It was an embarrassing circumstance in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I used that analogy because that was phony job creation. It was designed to create a political exercise of apparent job creation, with no real depth behind those jobs. That is, unfortunately, the trap that my honourable friends the New Democrats fall into. They fell into it in Ontario, and they will fall into it again in Manitoba.

Every indication seems to tell us that our Liberal friends will fall into the same kind of trap, because I have listened intently to Liberals who have spoken on the Budget Debate in this House, and I have not yet heard a single recognition amongst the Liberal Party in this House of an understanding of the private sector business community role in creating jobs and wealth.

Now, Mr. Speaker, let us revisit the history, let us talk about what the globalized economy is doing and the new challenges that are out there that are very, very real and very, very significant. They face every single business enterprise in Manitoba in some fashion or another.

The globalized economy has made capital a global commodity. Capital can move anywhere in the world, and that capital, in moving anywhere in the world, takes with it the power to create wealth through investment and, hence, the creation of jobs.

Now there was a very interesting article in the Globe and Mail on Friday, February 4, 1994. It was under a little column they have called Worth Repeating, and I want to repeat it because it was worth repeating. It talked about quicksilver capital. Everyone in this House knows what quicksilver is. It is mercury. It was written by the economist Richard McKenzie, and I will quote, Sir: Today technology permits people and their capital to be far more fugitive, far more capable of bounding over government borders, far more like quicksilver‑‑slippery, illusive and hard to contain and control. As never before, political leaders must be concerned that raising tax rates in their own jurisdictions will mean that capital will migrate to adjoining or even distant governments who have not raised their tax rates but who will still enjoy rising revenues.

Think about that, colleagues, and think about when you stand in this House and you say this government has not had a plan for economic growth and development, for job creation, because for six budgets this government has not raised the major taxes in the province of Manitoba. Why, one might ask? Well, it is because we understand the global mobility of capital needed for investment to strengthen current industries in the province or to bring new industries to the province.

If we continue around the bankrupt path of Eugene Kostyra and other finance ministers of the NDP and try to drive taxes up to such a rate that we believe will not thwart growth‑‑because after all those companies are here, they cannot leave, that is not correct in today's global economy.

So when my honourable friends say we have done nothing to create jobs, which I hear from time to time regularly repeated, you are not accurate. You are absolutely inaccurate. It was even demonstrated in the Saskatchewan budget of just last month where in the high‑income earners we have moved since 1988 from being the seventh highest‑taxed province to the third highest taxed because of our levelling of tax rates.

What does that do to us? That allows us for instance, Mr. Speaker, to bring such job creation investments to the province of Manitoba as for instance‑‑and I will do a little bit of Pembina constituency bragging at this moment if my honourable friends will allow me the liberty‑‑3M expanded by some $11 million in Canada, in Morden, Manitoba, to export products to the world. Their pipe‑coating products are going to Saudi Arabia, to other oil‑producing companies across five continents.

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A very important initiative has to be recognized in that investment in Manitoba. It is there because of the dreaded GST, because under the former taxation system on the manufacturers sales tax the taxation rate was approximately 13 percent on their production for export out of Canada. Today that tax for export is not there. Their investment is in job creation and production in Manitoba to serve a global trading market.

Mr. Speaker, Monsanto located in Morden, Manitoba. Carte International has got a production plant down there. All of these plants are exporting to the world market, building products for world consuming individuals and building them economically in competition with any place else in the world.

Let us talk about a couple of other initiatives in my constituency, first of all supported by Grow Bonds because Grow Bonds are capital formation. Now I am not sure how honourable friends in this House voted when we brought in the Grow Bond legislation, but it seems to me that they voted against Grow Bonds as a capital formation mechanism to be used in rural Manitoba.

Winkler Meat is expanding their capacity to produce a very, very marketable product, Winkler farmer sausage, a food of Mennonite tradition that is in demand across Canada.

I want to draw my attention to my honourable friend from Radisson because my honourable friend from Radisson claims to be the only person in this House who cares dearly about the environment. I want to invite my honourable friend to Continental Rubber in Winkler. They are recycling used car tires on the basis of a Grow Bond issue that was sold out. They now have 25 people working, and this plant only started production in about October, November‑‑25 people working. They are down to two shifts on shredding and one shift on the process of forming. Eighty‑five percent of their product is exported to the United States, and they are cleaning up the environmental problem of used passenger car tires.

Mr. Speaker, I mention that in the House today because my honourable friends in the opposition say we are doing nothing on the environment, doing nothing on job creation. Well, let me tell you why Continental Rubber is undertaking that. Grow Bonds provided the capital financing, Grow Bonds that we introduced, that my honourable friends in opposition voted against. The Environment Act introduced by my honourable friend the Minister of Environment put a $3 tire recycling fee on which established the fund which enables the processing of those tires, which enabled the recycling of those tires to happen in Manitoba. That provided the seed capital.

Now my honourable friends say we do nothing. We have no vision. We have no plan. But in a very definitive way two initiatives come together with the purpose of encouraging the recycling for value‑added manufacturing of hazardous and wasteful products in the province of Manitoba, a plan which is now succeeding beyond anybody's expectation.

We are going to be the first province in Canada to recycle all of our annual production of passenger car tires. Now, is that not remarkable? I know my honourable friends in the opposition have not heard this, and I see some heads nodding that they had not heard this. Do you know why they have not heard it? Because it did not happen in Winnipeg. With all due respect, my honourable friends in the Winnipeg Free Press and the Winnipeg media would not take in an event outside of Winnipeg on recycling which was creating jobs, which was creating a value‑added industry shipping that product, 85 percent of it outside of Canada, creating wealth.

It did not happen in Winnipeg; therefore, it did not happen. Well, that is shocking. That is a shocking attitude that we have in this province where Manitoba begins and ends at the Perimeter Highway according to those inside it in the media, but there is a bigger province and it is working. The entrepreneurs are coming forward with ideas for investment, for job creation, and it is working. Mr. Speaker, that is part of the plan. Is it not, Sir?

Now, Mr. Speaker, I want to deal very briefly with two other areas where the activities of this government have led to a significant interest in Manitoba, one of them ongoing, Ayerst Organics, which has doubled their production in Brandon, Manitoba, an $80‑million investment. Approximately 150 farm families have staked their lives. They have signed several hundred thousand dollar loans at their banks and financial institutions to go into that business, and it is supporting young farm families to create a product which is natural, not an artificial test tube created product of a pharmaceutical industry, but a natural product. Guess who is against that job creation in that investment? The NDP. The NDP is led by the environmental terrorism that we see from time to time on that side of the House.

The next one that may hinge on that kind of environmental terrorism, of course, is Louisiana Pacific who wants to take poplar trees, which die every 35 years, and turn them into a value‑added commercial product. But, of course, we have to be against that because that might create jobs.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to say this directed at the New Democrats, but the lesson is for the Liberals as well in this House. I have often said that the NDP ought not to stand any more for the New Democratic Party but rather ought to stand for the no development party because they are against every single development activity, investment and job creation activity that this government has come up with. They voted against Grow Bonds. They will oppose the environmental hearing process on Louisiana Pacific. They are trying to drive Ayerst Organics out of Manitoba. They are against development.

I have to think very philosophically about that from time to time, and now I understand. An individual, and I have to thank him, I cannot mention who it was, but an individual on the weekend indicated to me what drives the New Democratic Party in their policy initiatives. It was quite interesting.

An Honourable Member: Karl Marx.

Mr. Orchard: It was‑‑no, quite the contrary. He indicated that the NDP is now working under a policy called BANANA. Do you know what the BANANA policy of the NDP is? Build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone. He said that they philosophically have attached themselves to the BANANA policy through the NIMBY principle. We all know what the NIMBY principle is‑‑not in my back yard.

Mr. Speaker, I say that in jest to bring a little levity because my honourable friends in the opposition are known to be quite humourless most of the time, so I tossed that in as sort of a little joke. But it is not a joke because this is now a time in Manitoba and in Canada where when we are facing the global impacts of a quicksilver capital market, where we are facing challenges from corners of the world that we never give consideration to as being a competitor of ours, we have to get our minds fixed solidly around what are our strengths in Manitoba and how can we sell those strengths to the world.

Some of our major strengths in this province of ours are the strength of our people. That is why the call centres in the city of Winnipeg are now starting to be announced on an almost monthly basis because of the quality of workforce. People who invest in Manitoba recognize that quality even though the member for Brandon East (Mr. Leonard Evans) who supported $4 an hour Jobs Fund jobs is against call centre jobs because they are not good enough for the people of Brandon, or maybe Brandon is not good enough for them. I do not know where the member for Brandon East comes from.

Mr. Speaker, I want to say to my honourable friends that the real world is out there, and there are people in the NDP who represent northern communities and mining communities, and I want to say that they do not represent their communities all that well in terms of policy, because they have voted against every initiative that we have put in place in five years to try and develop a viable competitive mining industry in northern Manitoba and Manitoba in general, and the rewards are there.

Let me indicate to my honourable friends, and I will deal more with the mining industry at the next opportunity I have to speak, but the mining industry in Manitoba is probably one of the best kept secrets in Manitoba because of the investment in technology and what they have done in the mining industry in the last several years to make themselves competitive globally. One of the initiatives I want to point out to my honourable friends, because they will not understand this, but there is one of our mining companies who at its peak of employment had 4,400 employees. Today it has an employee count approaching 1,900, and do you know that they are producing the same volume of metal that they did at their peak? That is the real world of a competitive economy and effectiveness and efficiency that must be brought in place if you are going to survive in a global economy.

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What that tells us in government is that if we do not get our taxation policies, our regulatory policies and our attitude toward business investment and job creation and creation of wealth in this province on a right level playing field, as we have been doing for six years, that quicksilver capital can leave this province so fast and take the jobs with it, Mr. Speaker, that the future of our children and our grandchildren will be even more compromised. That is why I say this session is critically important to the people of Manitoba.

Now is the time for my honourable friends not to simply sit back and stand up and tell us what they are against. We have heard that for six years. This session tell us what you are for. Tell us what you believe in. Tell us what you would do differently, because that is the crying answer that the voters of Manitoba want to hear from opposition parties. They are tired of hearing what you are against. Tell us what you are for, and my caution, because my honourable friend from Swan River (Ms. Wowchuk) is over there nodding her head, do not tell us what you are in favour of in your own constituency of Swan River and let the member for Radisson (Ms. Cerilli) say the exact opposite in the city of Winnipeg when it comes to Ayerst Organics, when it comes to Louisiana Pacific. Because, there was one other Leader in this House of the Liberal Party, who is no longer the Leader, that used to say one thing in The Pas about decentralization and another thing on the front steps of the Legislature, and it catches up, Mr. Speaker. The electronic world catches up.

So, Mr. Speaker, I simply close by wishing the new members the very best in this upcoming session, and I look forward, certainly, to hearing the alternative positions that my honourable friends who would be government would be putting towards the people of Manitoba so that we can have the kind of honest and open debate that we should have if we are going to represent ourselves to Manitobans as government in waiting.

Thank you.

Mr. Gord Mackintosh (St. Johns): Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour for me to be in this position tonight. I want to talk a bit about my background and the values that I hope to bring to this Chamber tonight, the issues that are of particular interest to me.

First of all, Mr. Speaker, I want to commend you for the way you deal with the challenges in this Chamber. We are well aware of those many challenges. I also thank you for the bits of advice that you have given me from time to time since I have arrived here. It is appreciated. I now understand why members on all sides of the House hold you in such high esteem. You have the knack.

I also want to pay tribute to the officers of the House. I have had the honour, as many of you know, to have served the House for about four years in the early '80s. I think the officers often do not get recognized for the hard work they do, both in providing advice to the members and to you, Mr. Speaker.

On the first day in the House I came in here, and I guess I have to acknowledge that my eyesight is not as good as it used to be. I cannot see very well beyond 10 feet. I came in here and got up on a question. Things looked pretty fuzzy and I sat down and I could not hear the answer. So the next day I came in. I had my glasses and I had my earplug. So I have all the appliances, and now I am ready for action.

I left this Chamber 10 years ago and came back for another year on contract, so quite a bit of time has gone by since I was in this place. I know a lot of people think, well, you are not going to have any problem coming in here, Mackintosh, you are certainly familiar with the place, but there have been so many changes to the rules, there are some pitfalls obviously for me, and so I am being very cautious.

It is interesting to note that the hours are certainly more humane these days. That is a great improvement. I think it better accommodates the family roles that we have to perform as well.

Having said that, I want to first of all thank some people that have helped me along the way in the last little while in being able to attain office and come here on behalf of the people of St. Johns.

First of all to my family, to my wife, Margaret, first of all. Margie is an LPN by training, and she went through the traumatic experience of layoffs at Health Sciences Centre not long ago. It was a trauma that one has to experience to appreciate.

When you go through that kind of a situation in a family you see why a party like ours has always said that a job is more than just a contribution to the economy. A job is what defines one's self. It is where one gets their esteem. It is critical that we have as one of the primary focuses of government the maintenance of job security.

I also of course want to thank the workers in St. Johns. We have an organization there that is extraordinary, people that have continued to build on the strengths of labour movement representatives in the past in social democratic leadership and that have given their all to ensuring that social democratic values are represented from St. Johns in this Legislature.

The former member for St. Johns, Judy Wasylycia‑Leis, is someone who is very special in my life and the life of our family. She was a role model and I hope that she has, in the course of her tenure here in this Chamber, been a role model for many other members as well. She has balanced what is a very challenging home life in raising two young boys with a spouse that works full time in a demanding career, balanced that with tremendous, tireless dedication to fairness and to people and has represented St. Johns so wonderfully. I truly appreciated the contribution of Judy on the campaign trail, where at door after door people talked about how Judy had helped them.

I also want to pay tribute to the first member for St. Johns. St. Johns was created only in the 1950s, Mr. Speaker. At one time several Winnipeg seats‑‑I think it was proportional representation actually in the City of Winnipeg‑‑and in the late '50s St. Johns was created, and David Orlikow became the first member, the first MLA, and then, of course, went on to become the M.P. for Winnipeg North. I have to acknowledge Mr. Orlikow's help. During the by‑election campaign he was out there with me‑‑he could not be out there enough. We particularly went to seniors' homes, and it was great to hear him chat with people and learn more about him and his contributions and his insights into life, particularly in north Winnipeg.

I also want to pay tribute to Saul Cherniack, who as well gave me great assistance during the campaign and my nomination campaign. We have often said that St. Johns has continued to elect Labour or CCF and NDP representation not just because there are pockets of strong traditional support, but because the members have been so hardworking and dedicated and have reflected the values of that community.

I also want to pay tribute to the late Saul Miller, who passed away during the time of the by‑election campaign. Mr. Miller will be known to some still in this Chamber as one who worked so hard and was a great person. I always looked forward to Saul's contributions in debate. They were always founded on principle. He always went back to the principles of our party when dealing with any issues of the day.

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I suppose that there are some‑‑by the way there are just 11 members left in the Chamber today who were here when I was serving at the table. You can see the tremendous turnover in just a few years‑‑well, 10 years‑‑and there are many members, I am sure, who wonder how it is that two former Deputy Clerks could ever go on to be MLAs, and I am not aware of that kind of event happening anywhere else. It certainly is very odd particularly to have two Deputy Clerks in a row; I am referring to the former member for Springfield, Mr. Anstett, and myself, and I do not have an explanation for that, obviously, except I know that both Andy and I had lifelong interests in political affairs and, I suppose, that was only intensified by our work here in the Chamber.

My mother is from Rorketon, Manitoba. I do not think many people have heard of that, but it is north of Ste. Rose. She also lived in St. James for quite a while, and my father was from Selkirk, Manitoba, and both of them contracted tuberculosis at fairly early ages in their life. In fact, my father was in the TB san at Ninette for 14 years, and my mother, while she was in training for her RN, came from Dauphin General to the King George Hospital in Winnipeg for her practicals and contracted tuberculosis from a patient there. So my beginnings really were, I suppose, from the san at Ninette.

After many years my father got out of the san and was able to find employment in Fort Frances, Ontario, and managed a peat moss company there. He died when I was two years old, and my mother raised three kids. She had very poor health as a result of the ravages of TB. It was in the course of my upbringing in that kind of environment‑‑and I might say with a mother who was firmly grounded in the CCF tradition or social democratic principles and who identified herself as a suffragette‑‑that I came to, I think, attain my early view of the world and economies, but I thought that was not good enough.

I wanted to make sure that I was not going to simply inherit an ideology from my mother that was inaccurate or that had not been tested. I was fortunate enough, despite the challenges in our family of what you would call poverty, I would say little means at least, and the stigma of being in a single‑parent household in a small town in the '60s‑‑I know I was loved and I was encouraged. I have often applied those reflections now in looking at the issues of youth crime today and I will refer to that later, but I was able at least to get an education at the University of Manitoba and study politics. It was on completion of my education that I came to the conclusion that the principles of our party contained truth, and it is on that I built my different careers from time to time and my community work.

Before I became Deputy Clerk in this Legislature, I worked with the Human Rights Commission as a counsellor and as an officer. When I left here I went back to law school‑‑some of you know‑‑and then on graduation was fortunate enough to article and then be retained by the firm of Thompson Dorfman Sweatman where I got into civil litigation work and environmental law.

Before I came into this Chamber I was actively involved in trying to get, in particular, the aboriginal communities in Manitoba to use the offices of the Human Rights Commission. There was a real barrier there.

The aboriginal communities perceived, and I think rightly so, the Human Rights Commission as just a white, distant bureaucracy. So I was involved in reaching out to those communities, and I remember having very many fond memories of working on Selkirk Avenue with different organizations.

As well, I became involved in the Manitoba Association for Rights and Liberties when it was first founded in Manitoba. In particular, my concern was in the area of patients' rights. That was a natural flow I think from my background where our family recognized that there was nothing more important in life, nothing more important at all, than health. In fact, if you are going to look for a vocation that would have a positive influence on humanity, perhaps there is something even more important than medicine, and that was politics, because politics does determine issues of health care.

So, when I came into the Chamber, Mr. Speaker, I had left behind me a history of activism in the community, and it was one that was somewhat difficult for me to reconcile with my own strongly held beliefs. When I came out of law school, I again got reinvolved, particularly in the health care and consumer rights movement and the patients' rights committee and there went on to reach out particularly to legislators and to other health care consumer organizations and try and build an umbrella group of health care consumers.

I say that I think that we have built up a great health care system in this country generally, but the health care system has been built largely on the input of the medical profession, called the gatekeepers of the different professions of the hospitals, the administrators and the public policy makers.

The most important aspect of the equation, that is, the health care consumer, the patient, has been left out. So I thought it was important that we bring to public policy making the input of the health care consumer, and the health care consumer sees things that health care providers do not know from those receiving the service how the service is being received. I do not see how we can really make improvements in our medicare system. So we worked on issues such as access to medical records, fine tuning the immunization system, trying to establish in Manitoba an advocacy office for health care consumers so that there was someone on their side to cut through all the red tape, someone out of the bed that can deal with their issues and complaints.

I think there was some success although, I might add, the government, this government, the former Minister of Health, appeared to make it an issue to make sure that that organization was not heard by the government, and refused to meet with us. In fact, eventually he sent us a letter, and this is well known in the health care consumer community, but sent us a letter saying that he was just too busy with the Legislature to listen to us.

The other caucuses did meet with us, and I did meet with a senior official, Dr. Guilfoyle, in the department and we had excellent hearings. I think as a result there were several pieces of legislation introduced in the House.

So that has been a major focus of my volunteer life and my personal life, and it is an area that I will continue to pursue in this Chamber.

I also, as you know, Mr. Speaker, came back to see you once since I left 10 years ago. That was during the Meech Lake Accord. I came down one day just to see how things were going. The experience that I had during the Meech Lake Accord as adviser to Elijah Harper was an experience that changed my life.

Those two weeks I think changed the lives of everyone involved. In fact, I have many conversations with people from the media who say that it really changed their lives as well and it was not just because of the excitement. It was because of the insights that we gained into the needs and aspirations of aboriginal peoples. I might say that when I was first retained I was of the personal opinion that the Meech Lake Accord should go through, otherwise‑‑well, it was based on a fear that the country would split up.

Over the course of those two weeks, it was particularly after one very intense meeting with the chiefs just following your ruling, when the chiefs went around and talked about the experiences of their community and of their own lives, I realized just how wrong the process and the result of the Meech Lake Accord process was. In fact, the Meech Lake Accord process had become a symbol of oppression against aboriginal peoples.

Following the Meech Lake Accord process, I became involved very much in aboriginal issues, both on the constitutional front and providing legal services and continued to act and provide services to Elijah.

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I will, as well, be paying particular attention to this Chamber's movements in empowering aboriginal communities and moving on the principles and on the recommendations set out in the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry, for example, and in so many other areas.

During the course of my career as a lawyer, I was also very fortunate to work as a junior lawyer with Alan Scarth on the Rafferty‑Alameda dam project, and we acted for two farmers, the Tetzlaff brothers, who lived at Alameda in Saskatchewan.

The course of that litigation spanned five years and over the course of that time the litigation helped define what the federal environmental law was. I think it helped clarify for Canadians what environmental assessment meant, that it was sustainable development in its earliest form. It meant that we have to assess projects before we build them instead of after we build them and that we have to make decisions on projects based on information that is vetted through an independent process.

If we do not do that, we can make very unfortunate decisions. What I learned from the Rafferty‑Alameda dam issue was how the Devine government of Saskatchewan won in the battle between politics and law, that the sexiness of a large megaproject can overcome a considered analysis, and a review of what mitigation can take place to ensure that a project is going to be sustainable. So I will as well be addressing, in particular, environmental issues in this Chamber, and to projects that are currently on the drawing board in Manitoba I will pay particular attention.

I was very dismayed to see the government's pitting of jobs against the environment and accusing our side of trying to kill jobs with the Louisiana Pacific initiative. I think that is exactly the kind of move that is rejected by those who say we need sustainable development. I do not know how the government can reconcile its fanfare about being sustainable developers and putting in place the legislative schemes for that kind of development while saying that kind of thing.

I remind members opposite that if you are going to have sustainable jobs, you must have a sustainable environment. This side wants to ensure that there are jobs but that those jobs are sustainable and that they will be here for many, many years and will provide security for the people of Swan River. That can only be done by a full, independent, environmental assessment, not this kind of assessment where there are assessments, one for the bush operation and one for the mill. I think if the government thinks it through, I think playing fast and loose with environmental assessment regimes can only end up in prolonged litigation. Look at what happened in Rafferty‑Alameda. So I expect the government to live up to its word that it is fully committed to sustainable development and that it will have a full, impartial, independent environmental assessment of the entire project so that we can see the cost benefit of that initiative.

As well, because I have been involved in the justice system and I have a background in human rights, I have a special interest in justice issues. What we have in Manitoba currently is a crisis in justice. We have a court system that is in chaos. Never before in the history of this province has there been anything like the backlogs that we are now suffering under.

There are two courts in particular that I am concerned about, Mr. Speaker; first of all, the youth court. There are waits 11 months from the date of charge to the time of trial, or from the time of the offence to the time of trial for many people. There are some estimates that it is less than that, and there are some more than that. Eleven months for people in this Chamber may not be that long a period of time, but for a youth that is a millenium. That is one of the greatest threats to meaningful consequences coming to bear on young offenders in this province. The government can talk all it wants about the eventual consequences, but if it takes 11 months to get there, what is the connection in the youth's mind between the sentence and the offence? What is happening is that youth are going to trial so long after the commission of an offence that they are committing other offences in the meantime, because they see after a couple of remands that this system is a joke.

So I want to do everything I can to persuade the government and the Minister of Justice (Mrs. Vodrey) in particular to step back and take an innovative look at how to deal with these backlogs. I would hate to see in this province develop what happened in Ontario where that Liberal government created such a terrible backlog in the courts that cases were getting thrown out for undue delay. That is real injustice, and when we hear the words justice delayed is justice denied, it is justice denied to everyone.

I also will be looking forward to the amendments to The Provincial Court Act and what plans, in detail, the government has regarding the accountability of judges to the greater community. I also have concerns about the access of ordinary people to the courts in Manitoba. I am concerned that the courts in Manitoba have become the exclusive domain of the wealthy, and I think we have to look at different ways of reconciling disputes. We have to look at youth justice committees. We have to look at alternative disputes mechanisms for civil cases.

I will also be looking at the record on human rights of this government, how well the Human Rights Commission deals with complaints, and how well this government deals with the threat of racism to the fabric of our community.

I want to talk briefly about the constituency of St. Johns. St. Johns is comprised of half north end and half West Kildonan, and within its boundaries there is a tremendous mix of people, both in terms of their ages and their backgrounds. We have a very large senior population in St. Johns. As well, we have a very large new or young family population. We have people who have contributed to the Manitoba economy by the work of their hands, a high blue‑collar population, and there is a high population of first‑generation Canadians, particularly from eastern Europe. Now we have a new population that is coming into St. Johns from aboriginal communities, particularly from the North, and they are adding to the richness of our constituency.

I know from both the nomination campaign, which, by the way, went on over the course of five months, and from the election campaign during the by‑election, that all of the homes in St. Johns have felt the pain of this government. At the doors and in living rooms we have talked about the loss of medicare as we know it under this government, about a neglected educational system, about how the government lags behind our concerns over the environment. We have talked about the decline of child care, about unfair taxes and about free trade. We are now talking about how Manitoba has the highest recorded number of unemployed in its history. We have talked about how Manitoba now has the lowest rate of private investment in Canada.

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We have talked about how the Tories, how this government is blaming its deficit on workers and small business, on those on fixed incomes, on vulnerable people, on the people of the north end and West Kildonan. It should be blamed on the privileges of the well‑to‑do, the large corporate interests, unfair taxes, loopholes, mismanagement of an unplanned and directionless economy in this province.

You know, we all know, it is heard so often in this Chamber that we suffer the highest rate of child poverty in Canada right here in Winnipeg. That is strange because this is a country that has the highest number of billionaires per capita in the world. One would have thought it was Oman or someplace, but it is not, it is Canada‑‑the highest number of billionaires per capita in the world.

Tax credits have been taken away from us, Pharmacare's deductible increased, payments slashed, and more and more drugs have been taken off the insured list. The cost of subsidized child care spaces has more than doubled and the spaces capped. Child care workers are paid a shameful wage.

One of the most heinous cuts of all was the elimination of the Student Social Allowances Program enabling people to get off welfare and into the workforce. Yet is is my understanding that there are 60,000 profitable corporations in this country that pay no income tax. My Leader has been saying that a teller at the Royal Bank pays more taxes than the Royal Bank. Six thousand five hundred of the wealthiest Canadians pay no tax at all. In fact, the wealthy in Canada pay among the lowest taxes of any industrial country.

I understand there is over $9 million in uncollected sales tax in this province. We will be pursuing that further with the Minister of Finance (Mr. Stefanson). Yet corporations last year enjoyed a payroll tax cut.

Then over in St. Johns we have people up the street, they must use colostomy bags. Now they have to pay. The children's dental program was slashed. Bed closures, staff layoffs left and right in our hospitals, no increase in home care, Mr. Speaker, home care use is on the decline. Then along comes Connie Curran, $4 million. They are still talking about that every day.

This government has been chipping, chipping, chipping away at all the little bits of fairness that we ever enjoyed, Mr. Speaker. It is a slow procedure. It is like the sun going down. You do not realize it is moving until all of a sudden it is dark. It is getting dark now.

I think the saddest thing of all is that this process is really destroying our province's future. Investment in health, education and child care is the greatest creator of wealth, Mr. Speaker. This government's attack is hurting not only ordinary people, but it is hurting the most vulnerable and that is the generations yet to come.

The increase in violent youth crime, it is all cause and effect. After six years of cuts, of a tax on family and youth programs, there is an effect. Why should I care about posterity? What has posterity ever done for me? That is what Groucho Marx said, and it sounds like this government. Posterity has no votes.

I will say that I think for all the time we get caught up in specific struggles, though whether it be in health care or education, child care or the other areas under attack, we must spend an equal amount of time talking about the big picture, and that is how to turn around the decline of the economy. If we ignore that big picture, we will be long caught up in struggles trying to catch those of us who are falling.

We can turn around our economy and secure good jobs and therefore healthier communities. If there are good jobs, women will be freer from family violence, and they will have greater opportunities in the workforce. Families will not be pulled apart by economic stresses. If there are good jobs, we will have revenues for our valued social services; and, with good jobs, we will have a safer community and we will have pride.

So how do we turn around the economy? I would say the first step is we do not give up on our political institutions. If we give up on our political institutions, we are really just giving up on ourselves.

Our party was born in 1961 with a social purpose. It acknowledged that human dignity would be placed above the mere pursuit of wealth. It was public welfare over corporate power. It was to be the party of full employment achievable through economic planning, economic growth with a social purpose. It called for co‑operation in planning. Let us decide where we can succeed as an economy, let us do it right, let us plan it out. The party called for progressive taxes, increased corporate tax rate, reduction and depreciation allowances, taxes on capital gains. It called for great emphasis on education and universal health insurance, security for seniors. It called for a commitment to workers. Commit to workers; the workers commit to the company. It called for participation in workplace planning, to retraining, to job security. It recognized those things, so we could all develop our talents to the fullest.

We have to look back at these principles, and our party will be pursuing them vigorously, with the objectives of real gender equality and sustainable development and efficient government.

The principle of responding to the voices of people without power and privilege and empowering them is a principle for all time, Mr. Speaker. We often feel that problems are not ours, that they are someone else's, but as I often say, if a neighbour has a problem, so do we. We are all in it together. That statement, I think, is my interpretation of the essence of our party.

So when the government stands up and says, you know, we are here to serve the economy, we have to stand together and say no, the economy is here to serve us. When the government treats workers as a mere commodity, we stand together and say no, there is more to our lives; we are not just economic tools, not just consumers. We are beings. We cherish security; we cherish love, the quality of life, dignity, family. When this government says, let big business take care of your community, we have to stand together and say no, our community as a whole will take care of itself, thank you very much. When the right wing says the most important word is "me," we have to stand now and say no, the most important word is "us."

I think that a lot of the principles that can ensure a successful, healthy economy and jobs will be realized in part by what I see as a new transition now to empowerment of people that have not historically had power and privilege. Community empowerment, whether it is in education, school‑based decision making for example; and health care, community‑based health care, or input into decisions in health care, whether it be from consumers or whether it be from people on hospital boards; in justice, whether it be youth justice committees or community‑based policing, which is in concert with the community; whether it be in community economic development initiatives. It is a new movement, Mr. Speaker, one that I am confident will lead to a social and economic renewal in Manitoba. Thank you very much.

* (2100)

Mr. Jack Penner (Emerson): Mr. Speaker, it is certainly a pleasure to stand again in the new session of the Legislature and welcome you back. As you have so ably demonstrated your ability to control the debates and discussions in this House, as you did just a few minutes ago again, we all congratulate you and admire you for that.

I also want to welcome the five new members that were elected to this Legislature and sit here for the first time to enjoy‑‑we have just finished hearing an excellent presentation by one of the new members. I certainly look forward to working with all of you in this Legislature, because it is a a co‑operative effort, whether it is opposition members or government members, and we all at times must enter into the debate and engage vigorously in that debate while we are in this Chamber. I think that we also all must have the ability to set aside those debates and walk out of here and join over a cup of coffee and speak about the real world. That is where we are at.

I also want to welcome the Pages who are here for the first time. I assure you that you will have an absolutely marvellous experience. It will be tedious at times, because whether you serve us black coffee or white coffee or something else that we ask for and demand, it is something that you will never forget, and the educational experience that you will take away from here will serve you well in your future endeavours. So we welcome you here. We congratulate you and hope that your stay here will be enjoyable.

I also want to say to the Speaker's staff, the Clerks of the Legislature that sit here and have to bear with us at all times, it is certainly good to see some of you back again, and those that were here before, we certainly appreciate the assistance and the guidance that you provide to all of us if and when needed, specifically sometimes in committee debates, committee proceedings. It is certainly most welcome assistance.

I want to, Mr. Speaker, tonight take the opportunity to raise points on the number of issues that have been addressed in the throne speech and in setting the agenda for our government. I believe the Lieutenant‑Governor articulated rather well the direction that we want to take not only in this Legislature but the direction that we want to take this province in over the next decade. I have heard a number of people and a number of the debates, and I suppose one of the benefits of being one of the last speakers on the debate on the throne speech is you have been able to hear all the views from all sides. I find very interesting some of the opposition comments that have been given with regard to the throne speech and some of the opposition that has been voiced, or concern that has been voiced.

I want to direct my attention basically to three or four areas. One of them is education; one of them is health care; and the other one being something that was touched on in the throne speech as an issue that I think we will be into on an ongoing basis, and that, of course, is the trade issues, not only the international trade, the GATT, the NAFTA and the FTA agreement, but also the interprovincial trade discussions that we are into now and some of the agreements that I think must be forthcoming over the next number of years.

(Mrs. Louise Dacquay, Deputy Speaker, in the Chair)

I think it is extremely important that I also make mention of some of the things that have happened in my constituency and are happening on an ongoing basis, and as the member for Pembina, the Minister of Energy and Mines (Mr. Orchard) indicated a little while ago, there are some very significant economic things that are happening in many parts of rural and urban Manitoba, not only driven by government policy or initiatives, initiatives such as the Grow Bond and the REDI program and many other programs we have initiated over the last six years of me having been in this government, but initiatives that are driven by the will of individuals to excel in what they do. I think we have a vast majority of the people in this province in entrepreneurs that are willing to put their knowledge to good work and develop and create jobs. I believe it should never be government that drives these kinds of initiative. It should be the private entrepreneurs in this country, or the corporate sector should be creating these kinds of jobs. It should be government's role, in my view, to stand aside and allow these things to happen without too much restriction.

Whether you talk about the ability of our people to have the knowledge through the educational process that we are into, and whether it is government's intention to ensure that young people, such as our Pages here, will depart our educational system with the kind of knowledge that is required to get them through their lifetime, through the next six or seven decades, is something that is questionable. I think the Minister of Education (Mr. Manness) has clearly stated this on numerous occasions, and only recently, at the youth forum in Brandon, he indicated clearly to those young people his desire to change the educational system to ensure that the young people of this province would in fact be equipped well enough by our educational system to ensure that they would have the knowledge to proceed into the 20th and 21st Centuries.

So we have appointed a Boundaries Review Commission, first of all, to see whether the administrative bodies that were structured some 20 or 30 years ago and the school boards are still adequate, the geographics are still adequate, to serve the needs of those young people.

Sometimes we allow the political rhetoric and the political decision‑making process to get in the way of those kinds of things, and we should not do that. We should stand aside and allow the people who are going to be most affected by the process to make the decisions and make their views known well. Therefore, the commission travelled across this province and had a very significant number of hearings across the province. I think some of us were a bit surprised at some of the reactions that the commission encountered, and many people saying that they did not want boundaries changed much. They wanted them to retain them.

However, in my constituency, there was a different response, because my constituency, or the southeast part of my constituency, is very significantly different than many of the school divisions in this province are. I have many times said that the southeast part of the province should be looked at in terms of some of the remote areas of northern Manitoba, that we should deal with them in that manner because they are so sparsely populated in that area. I think it is simply unreasonable for young children, five‑ and six‑, seven‑year‑old children, to be put on school buses and asked to travel an hour, up to two hours by bus to their schools.

I wonder how many of the members sitting in this Legislature would want to travel to their jobs an hour and a half every morning and an hour and a half back every evening and still say that they were able to, and not be too tired, do their job. That is what we are asking some of our kids in the southeast part of our province to do.