COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY

(Concurrent Sections)

CONSUMER AND CORPORATE AFFAIRS

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

Hon. Jim Ernst (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs): Last year in my remarks I described our emphasis on quality and customer service. This included our initiative in making Vital Statistics a special operating agency and the award given the Corporations Branch for customer service.

Building on that award, I am pleased to announce that we are proceeding with making the Corporations Branch a special operating agency by year-end. This will allow the Corporations Branch to explore new technology that will simplify not only incorporations but other types of business licensing as well. Our long-term goal is a one-stop shopping facility where people can go to one place for a different number of transactions instead of going to many places to register or check something at each place.

Another of our quality and customer service initiatives for this year is the compiling of an initial publication of residential tenancy administrative policies. These will be available to both landlords and tenants. Gathering together the many policies and putting them in plain language is a major task for the branch. The publication of these administrative policies should not only allow the public to see what policies are used in different situations but should go some distance to making the parties to disputes see that decisions are not arbitrary. This is particularly important when cases affect people in significant personal ways, such as rent arrears or any increases in orders for possession.

Also, in the Residential Tenancies area, the hearing rooms, waiting rooms and public counter are being renovated somewhat to improve public service and to reduce some of the congestion that occurs from time to time.

The rest of the department is also embracing our quality service initiatives, including changes in the Administration branch's process of appointment for commissioners of oaths and notaries public, which eliminates the requirement for applicants to file documents twice in order to register. Combining the two forms will save about 3,000 commissioners for oaths and notaries public applicants an extra mailing every year.

In the Consumers' Bureau, we will be automating its licensing procedures this year, which is expected to speed up licensing and improve response time on inquiries.

Last year I mentioned our efforts over several years in trying to establish a national new vehicle arbitration program, and that was started in October of 1994. This is, I think, a hallmark; it has the hallmark of an excellent program. I am happy to see it in place and look forward to it working very well.

I believe, Mr. Chairman, that the department has an important function that it does very well, and doing even better is our focus. Any improvements, anyone on the committee wishes to suggest, are welcome and will be more than considered.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: We thank the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs for those comments.

Does the official opposition critic, the honourable member for Elmwood, have any opening comments?

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Mr. Jim Maloway (Elmwood): Just a couple of brief comments before we proceed with the questions.

I, of course, have a different view as to what this government is not doing in the area of Consumer Affairs, and I see this government sitting on the sidelines when it should be taking action in a number of areas. I see it as a very reactive government and not a proactive government, which it should be.

There are a number of areas that we have pointed out in the past and over the last year that the government has failed to take any visible or concrete action on, and one of those, certainly, is in the area of the gasoline prices which I certainly get a lot of complaints from the public about.

Another area, Mr. Chairman, is the area of the regulation of loan brokers. The minister will be aware that we have had complaints over the past year or so about people who have been taken advantage of by loan brokers operating in the province who seem to appear and disappear with some degree of regularity. The Business Practices Act would be very interested in knowing how that is shaping up, and what use the public is making of the provisions of the act.

I would be very interested, also, Mr. Chairman, to spend some time asking the minister about the special operating agencies that have been set up. The government has four special operating agencies in operation already, and is now planning a fifth one. I would like to know how they are faring at this point, and there are a number of other areas that we will get into as we go through the sections in the department. Maybe we should just head into that in short order. Thank you.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: We thank the critic from the official opposition for those remarks. Under Manitoba practice, debate of the Minister's Salary is traditionally the last item considered for the Estimates of the department. Accordingly we shall defer consideration of this item and now proceed with the consideration of the next line. At this time we invite the minister's staff to join us at the table, and we ask that the minister introduce his staff present.

Mr. Ernst: Leading the parade here is the deputy minister, Mr. Don Zasada, followed by Mr. Fred Bryans, who is our administrative officer. Mr. Bryans is also known to members of the Legislature as the administrative officer for the affairs of the House.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: We are now on line 1. Administration and Finance (b) Executive Support (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits, $298,800 on page 27 of the Estimates book, and on page 17 of the yellow Supplement book.

Mr. Maloway: As a matter of procedure, might I suggest that we operate on the basis of section by section such as we just completed in the Finance department Estimates. That would allow members who may come and go through the committee to ask questions on the whole section, rather than on a line by line basis. We found that it worked quite well in the Finance department Estimates.

Mr. Ernst: If I could seek some clarification, you are proposing, then, we would discuss all of the issues under 1. Administration and Finance.

Mr. Maloway: That is right.

Mr. Ernst: See, there are only three sections.

Mr. Maloway: And then deal with Consumer Affairs and then Corporate Affairs as a section.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Is it the will of the committee, then, to deal with the Estimates of Consumer and Corporate Affairs by section? [agreed]

Mr. Maloway: My first questions deal with the--under Executive Support, the department deals with the administration of The Embalmers and Funeral Directors Act, and I wonder if this is the appropriate place for me to make some inquiries about the business of the Elmwood Cemetery, a subject that has been brought up several times now. I am not certain what the provincial role in this would be, but my understanding is that a complaint was made as early as this morning to one of the city councillors about the cemetery being in disrepair and that some of the graves are evidently almost falling into the river. I do not know that that is the case. I have been there, and I have not seen that, but there are some close to the river.

My understanding from the city councillor is that the cemetery, I believe, is bankrupt, certainly could be taken over by the city for back taxes, but I believe that the situation has developed over the years with the company operating the cemetery. This could be consistent with other companies doing the same sort of operation as well whereby they have sold prearranged funeral propositions to people. People have contributed to these plans, and at the end of the day the operator runs out of money and walks away from the cemetery, so that people who prepaid their funeral expenses for many years find themselves 20, 30 years down the road where they have got an unkempt cemetery with the grass growing up and holes all over the place and the place in rack and ruins, and the operator is out of business.

What sort of provisions do we have in place to make certain that this does not happen another time? I invite the minister to make as many comments as he proceeds.

Mr. Ernst: I do not want to be obstructive, but all those issues come under the Public Utilities Board, which is under the Corporations Branch section. I would be happy to discuss them at that time.

Mr. Maloway: Perhaps the minister then, given that he has some advance notice of the subject matter, could endeavour to obtain all of the information that he can possibly get for that time that we get to the PUB sections.

This particular department formulates and reviews legislative proposals. I am wondering if the minister can give us some sort of ideas as to what the department is currently working on.

Mr. Ernst: We have one bill before the House at the present time dealing with the question of residential mortgages and whether the personal covenant under the residential mortgage should in fact not transfer with the sale of a property. So that bill was before the House last session and has subsequently been introduced again this session. That is the principal legislative amendment we are considering at this time.

Mr. Maloway: Can the minister tell us whether there are any other reviews or proposals that are being looked at?

Mr. Ernst: We are also looking at, together with all other provinces in Canada, harmonization of measures related to interprovincial trade, where the consumer legislation related to that needs to be harmonized in order to have a consistent policy across the country. It is a rather enormous job when you consider not just the consumer-related issues, but all the other issues related to internal trade. That is an ongoing process, and at what point we will need to introduce legislation we are not sure just yet, but we are working toward that end.

Mr. Maloway: Could the minister elaborate a little further and tell us at what stage these particular negotiations are on, because they have been going on for some time now? The fact of the matter is that the Free Trade Agreement probably took less time than this particular agreement will take.

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Mr. Ernst: I am advised by staff that the expectation or the goal is to have by the summer a package ready to go forward to the respective government jurisdictions. Given that there are two elections in process now, and perhaps a third on the horizon, we are subject to the whims and fancies of nine other governments. That only relates to our portion of the whole agreement, that is, the consumer protection end of it, direct sellers and things of that nature. Whether that will happen separately or whether it will happen as a package with all of the other issues related to the internal Treasury situation, we are not sure, but our end of it, hopefully, will be ready this summer.

Mr. Maloway: Well, that really was my next question, as to how we are possibly going to have an agreement when the governments keep changing. If the major governments swing in terms of their philosophical bent and approach to items on the table, it is going to be a very difficult job to do that. Now, could the minister then tell us how many elements are involved in this particular agreement? He has already mentioned the direct sellers, but how many different categories are involved in this agreement?

Mr. Ernst: At the risk of perhaps being a little self-congratulatory, of course, the government did not change in Manitoba, which eases issues related to at least dealing with one province. Notwithstanding that, they are dealing with direct sellers, the cost of credit disclosure, bedding, upholstered and other stuffed articles, and enforcement measures related thereto.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, there is a reference made to liaison with consumer-oriented groups. I wonder if the minister could give me an example, or several examples, of the consumer-oriented groups that he is liaising with at this point, because my assumption is that these groups would, in some cases, change over a period of time based on an issue-to-issue basis.

Mr. Ernst: The Consumers' Association of Canada is one of the two groups that we deal with sort of regularly, and in fact we provide a grant through our department to them on an annual basis. The Manitoba Society of Seniors, we also consult with on a regular basis. There are a host of others that come up from time to time with respect to issues largely related to housing issues and residential tenancy issues that come up from time to time.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, under the area of Administrative Services, I did note that there is a reduction in rent charged by Government Services to most of the areas here. I am wondering what brought about the reduction in rent.

Mr. Ernst: There are two reasons. One is, I think last year was the first year that rent was actually assessed to individual departments and, I guess, by a general reconfiguring of their expenses and so on related to those, that caused a general reduction. Then there were three areas, I think, where we actually changed space, you know, moving from either more expensive space to less expensive space and/or larger space to smaller space, which would account for rent reductions.

Mr. Maloway: I would like to ask the minister, then, how much of the space used by this department is in government owned buildings versus private sector leased buildings?

Mr. Ernst: I do not have an exact number. I can tell you though that there are three areas of work within the department that are housed in nongovernment owned buildings. The Residential Tenancies Branch and Commission are housed in a private building, the Public Utilities Board and the Autopac Appeal Commission are all housed in private--[interjection] It is in the Heaps Building, Consumers' Bureau.

Mr. Maloway: Could the minister endeavour to provide us with the details of the three leases that would be involved in these portions of his department?

Mr. Ernst: Well, those leases are held in the name of Government Services. It would be more appropriate to ask Government Services for them. They lease space on our behalf. We simply move into it and pay them whatever is required, based on their cost breakdown. I would suggest to the member that you should ask the Minister of Government Services (Mr. Pallister) when those Estimates arise.

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Mr. Maloway: That is precisely what I, of course, intend to do. I felt it was certainly fair enough to try to approach it from at least more than one department, but the minister is, I think, telling me that his department has no involvement in the negotiating of these leases that, in fact, Government Services negotiates the levels of rent and the terms and does all of this on behalf of the department.

Mr. Ernst: That is correct.

Mr. Maloway: Is he also indicating to me that the department does not have copies of these leases?

Mr. Ernst: That is also correct.

Mr. Maloway: I will take that matter up with the Government Services minister (Mr. Pallister) when the time comes for those Estimates.

I would like to move on to the Research and Planning part of the department. I would like to note that the department, the Research and Planning section which I believe has or had three people, it investigates marketplace problems, and I would like to ask the minister to give me an indication of what marketplace problems this particular department has been researching over the last couple of years.

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Mr. Ernst: Firstly, let me introduce Mr. Ian Anderson, the gentleman in the middle here, who is the Director of the Research and Planning branch of the department.

Mr. Chairman, principally, while there is a host of small issues related to any number of things that occur from time to time, principal work effort has been firstly with CAMVAP, the automobile arbitration program which was successfully concluded last fall, and currently the interprovincial trade barrier information and work has been ongoing, as well as of course he is helping with the whole policy manual aspects for the Residential Tenancies Branch.

Mr. Maloway: I did want to take this opportunity to follow up on the CAMVAP question. I would like to know, given that the operation is only six months or so old, I would still like to know what the latest statistics are for usage from Manitoba. I would like to know how many complaints have come out of Manitoba and any information that you can give me at this point, so take your time.

Mr. Ernst: We do not have, Mr. Chairman, the number of complaints or day-to-day kind of inquiries or so on that come to CAMVAP, because of course it is not our program. It is set up by the automobile dealers and manufacturers and the Consumers' Association, but I can tell you that so far, to the end of May, there were 11 arbitrations and seven mediations. Of the 11 arbitrations, three were determined to be no liability on the part of the manufacturer, eight were to be determined in favour of the consumer and resulted in the following awards: three buybacks, one replacement, one make repairs, and two reimbursed for repairs, and one where there was reimbursement of out-of-pocket expenses.

Regarding the seven mediations, you should be advised, mediations occur where an arbitration has been arranged; a settlement occurs before the arbitration and the consumer chooses to withdraw from the arbitration process. Manufacturers cannot withdraw from arbitration once it has been scheduled. The consumer can, if he wants to opt out, but the manufacturer cannot.

We do not tabulate the outcome. It is not tabulated. We do not do it, but they do not do it either. The settlement could be for one of the arbitration-type awards or an extended warranty or something like that. We do not have that detailed information. I should indicate also that regarding the three buybacks, the total value was $60,000, so it is not insignificant.

Mr. Maloway: Could the minister endeavour to contact CAMVAP and see whether it is possible for them to compile their statistics on a province-by-province basis and also broken down by the type of default and the model of the car?

The reason I asked for that information is that the information that we get on the Florida program, for example, gives that information. For example, in Florida we can obtain information as to how many of the complaints are air conditioning versus brake jobs, for example. We also have them broken down as to the type of vehicle. I think we all agree with this, that the goal here is to put pressure on the manufacturers to build proper cars. One of the ways to do that is to let people know which cars are built with fewer defects so people will buy those cars and people will penalize the manufacturers by not buying the type of cars that do have a lot of defects.

At this point, do we have any information in this particular vein, or could we find out any information in this vein?

Mr. Ernst: The member has raised a number of issues, and I will make some inquiries with CAMVAP to see what is available and what is not and what can be done.

Mr. Maloway: Will the minister also tell us how the new car owner is notified that this program in fact exists?

Mr. Ernst: Mr. Chairman, I am advised that it is a relatively new program, so after it has been running for five years we might see something different, but currently it is in some of the owner's manuals of new automobiles. It is in the form of pamphlets in dealerships, Canadian Automobile Association member branches, and the Better Business Bureau who runs the program actually in Manitoba and the Consumers' Association. As well, there are, from time to time, articles in the news media and so on. There is a toll free number for people to call, and so there is reasonably widespread advice to the public.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, one of the basic problems with some of the lemon-law programs has been exactly that, that the weaker programs are often characterized by not having a requirement to provide the information to the new car owner. So, after you buy that new car, if the dealer hides the brochures, you may never become aware of it.

In Florida that is one of the tougher laws, and there are several others in that category, but there is a requirement that the owner must be given this information. It comes with the vehicle. So there is no possible way that you would not know about the program, and I, unfortunately--and I stand to proven wrong here--but I still think that the CAMVAP program is going to turn out to be comparable with the lower rung programs in the States. It is not going to be up there with the high level programs, and we are seeing some evidence of that already just five months into it when we do not have a legislated requirement that the manufacturers and the dealers provide that notification with the sale of the car. I would ask the minister to comment on that.

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Mr. Ernst: Mr. Chairman, first of all, CAMVAP is a program entered into by all provinces in Canada on a voluntary basis--sorry, except Quebec--but nonetheless the rest of the provinces in Canada. It is six or seven months old. It has not had a chance really to operate yet with any degree of accuracy in terms of the statistics and so on, but even considered that there are 700,000 cars or something like that in Manitoba and there have been potentially 18, but 11 arbitrations at least anyway--a potential of 18 different cars having been dealt with over four model-year periods. Time will tell, I suppose, as to whether it works accurately or not or as effectively as perhaps others. Let me say also that with respect to the consumer, it is not costing them anything either, either publicly through the government, through enforcement measures or privately. This is run totally by the automobile industry.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, could the minister tell us what the appeal procedure is for people that are dissatisfied with this arbitration program, or in fact is there one?

Mr. Ernst: The consumer has a choice. He can go to court or he can go to arbitration. When it goes to arbitration, it is binding on both parties unless there is an error in law.

Mr. Maloway: So the person does not get to do it both ways. If he is not successful at the appeal through the CAMVAP route, he cannot go to the legal route. It makes sense that he would take the CAMVAP route because it is not going to cost him anything, and he gets direct results one way or the other.

Mr. Ernst: Basically, yes, that is correct, and not only that, there are distinct time frames too. If you go to court, I mean not only may it cost you a lot of money for legal fees and other costs associated with it, it could take two or three or four years. Under the CAMVAP situation, there are very distinct limited time frames with respect to applications under this program. They have to deal with it, and they have to deal with it very quickly, so that there is no great, long delay. I think the longest period of time is something like, the average approximately now is about 64 days, which is pretty fast action, generally speaking.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, of the 11 arbitrations thus far, does the minister on an individual basis have the substance of what was at issue here, as to whether it was air conditioning or brakes or seat belts or the airbags? There is a problem with a large number of airbags now where there is a recall on them and where airbags are exploding, and it is not exactly the most comforting thought, but this is in fact happening out there with vehicles that were manufactured in even the last six months.

Mr. Ernst: As I indicated earlier, we do not have any details with respect to the individual arbitrations. Of course, again, we are reminding the member this is not a government program. This is run by an outside agency to which all provinces have acknowledged or subscribed, if you will. But in my inquiry I will find out if that information is available.

Mr. Maloway: I would like to ask what the minister and his department have been doing over the last year in the issue of gas prices. We have seen a variety of nonapproaches by ministers of this government over the last few years, and it never ceases to amaze me how at each opportunity they come up with excuses for why they cannot do things. I would like to know what the minister's story is today on the matter of gas prices, because I liked what he had to say last year at one or two points, but it seems that he just simply makes some positive statements for public consumption when the heat is on him and then he disappears, never to surface again until the matter is raised again. So I would like to know, just where is he at with this issue right now?

Mr. Ernst: Well, Mr. Chairman, let me say firstly that inflammatory allegations by the member for Elmwood (Mr. Maloway) will not go very far in eliciting co-operation, I might say, but let me tell you that the story today is the same as the story has been before and every day. There is no change with respect to gasoline prices. I notice he did not raise a question in the House when the gasoline prices went down last week, but he did, of course, when they went up. They seldom do stand up when the prices go down and congratulate the minister, even though he is blamed when they go in the other direction. And, of course, he has responsibility for neither, but nonetheless.

The question of gasoline prices in general has been of concern to Manitoba consumers I think for some time and whether they are justified or not justified. We learned last summer, particularly three times just prior to long weekends where prices rose that were not necessarily all accounted for in terms of the price of increases in crude oil, and where companies for one reason or another were increasing their margins. We met with all of the major oil companies and a number of the independents during that period of time to try and elicit their views as to what was going on in the marketplace and so on. At the same time we looked at what was happening in other provinces in Canada and discovered, of course, that there were significant price changes, not only in Manitoba but across the country.

Manitoba is a rather small player in terms of the overall marketplace in Canada, and we saw similar or larger, in some cases, increases elsewhere in Canada, so I broached the subject with the minister responsible in Ottawa, Mr. Manley, as to what on a national basis might be done, whether he would ask his Bureau of Competition Policy to review the question of gasoline prices, because it seemed to us not just a localized problem but one that was occurring in most provinces, if not all.

I wrote to Mr. Manley and suggested that he have the Bureau of Competition Policy look at this issue. I suggested that he call together a meeting of Consumer Affairs ministers from across the country who have not, incidentally, met certainly since I have been the minister and for some time, I think, prior to that. There were not just this but other issues relating to consumer issues across Canada. To no avail, I might add. He did refer, ultimately, the issue to the Bureau of Competition Policy who, after a cursory review, came back and said there is no problem, tell the consumer to shop around. Well, that might work in Toronto, or Montreal, but it certainly does not work in Winnipeg or in Manitoba, and it certainly does not work in most places in western Canada.

So I wrote him back and I said that is not good enough, let us get on with the meeting to see what else can be done with respect to the issue of gasoline prices. The minister eventually wrote back--it takes about four or five months to get a response out of a federal minister these days. This, I might add, is supported by other ministers of Consumer Affairs from different provinces across the country, of all political stripes. Anyway, he wrote back and said, well, I did phone one of your fellow ministers and suggested that we have the meeting in the spring. This was last fall. Well spring has come, and I guess it is summer now or will be, officially, in a few days and still no meeting, still no response. I think I have written him four or five times looking for that kind of response.

The only thing that is actually positive that has happened with respect to this issue is there is a parliamentary committee, I believe, meeting on the question of gasoline prices and their work is ongoing. Whether anything will come from that or not, I have no idea. Certainly we are still pressing the federal minister for a meeting of Consumer ministers to try and deal with this issue which is of significant importance to the consumers of Manitoba.

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Mr. Maloway: I would like to ask the minister about plans that he may have to deal with the loan brokers. The minister will know that this has been an ongoing problem in Manitoba and I suspect other jurisdictions, as well. Perhaps he could enlighten us as to what his department is doing and what is he doing about the regulation or the stopping of loan brokers from operating.

Mr. Ernst: Interesting question, Mr. Chairman, because in my opening remarks I omitted a section that dealt with the issue of loan brokers. I would like to point out the success we have had in dealing with loan brokers, particularly with those who promise loans no matter how bad your credit rating is and give phone numbers in a Manitoba location that come from--the ads that they run are run all over the U.S. and have them perhaps routed through two or three different telephone numbers in order to arrive at the number here in Winnipeg. We saw a few of these last year.

Actually, our department, I am very proud to say, led the way in terms of shutting these people down. We have done it now on three occasions where these people have operated for anywhere from seven to 20 days maybe at the most before we have been able to shut them down. But actually our people, interestingly enough, under our legislation, have more power than the police do with respect to dealing with these particular kinds of scam artists. We work closely, very closely with the police department. In fact, they utilize our investigators and our powers because they are more extensive in some cases than the police have at their disposal at least in initial instances.

As a result, we think we have both adequate legislation and excellent staff to deal with it. We have close co-operation with the police department, and we have, in fact, protected consumers, not necessarily consumers of Manitoba because, by and large, that is not where--they may physically operate here. Usually, the consumer that is taken in by this kind of scam is from elsewhere, Canada or the U.S.

Mr. Maloway: I would like to ask the minister about the usefulness and benefits of The Business Practices Act, which has been in force now for, I guess, two or three years. I would like to know roughly how many actions have been taken, how many seizures so on have been taken under The Business Practices Act--I suspect not too many--and what the results have been. Basically, a question about how the act is operating.

I would also like to know whether any actions have been taken in the area of advertising. That was one of the areas that the department was hoping to step down on, false advertising that was plaguing certain industries in Manitoba. The Business Practices Act could be used in cases of false advertising.

Point of Order

Mr. Ernst: Mr. Chairman, we were dealing with I thought section by section. This line of questioning actually falls under Section 2. I can inquire if we are finished with Section 1, and maybe we can dispatch it and then go on to Section 2.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: The honourable member for Elmwood, can we proceed to Section 2?

Mr. Maloway: Yes, that is not a problem. Pardon me. No, I do have questions on Vital Statistics and the special operating agencies, so if the--

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Then, if the member could hold his questions for Section 2, and I will proceed with the Section (e) of No. 1--line (e), pardon me.

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Mr. Maloway: I would like the minister to tell us about how successful the special operating agency has been. I mean obviously he has felt it successful because he is now setting up No. 5 in a series.

Mr. Ernst: Overall, in the government--it is not me necessarily-- we are heading for 8, 9 or 10 special operating agencies for implementation by next April 1, next fiscal year.

Let me say with respect to the Vital Statistics Agency that I am extremely proud of the way that the staff there have taken hold of this and really made it operate in the way it was intended to operate. They have done an exemplary service: Marlene Zyluk, who was the chief executive officer of the agency, and all of her staff. I attended the changeover day, as it were, last year between government departments, and I was very, very impressed with the way the staff viewed the opportunity for a special operating agency and the way they had planned on operating it. Through the year I do not think we have had a problem; I just do not remember one.

I am sorry, I neglected to introduce Janet Usher here, who is the acting CEO now that Marlene Zyluk has left the agency and gone to the Department of Highways, I believe, as the Deputy Registrar of Motor Vehicles. She is an excellent employee, and obviously we are not going to stand in the way of her career path in government and opportunities that present themselves. Janet is in charge while a search is being conducted to fill that position on a permanent basis. I know from the staff that I dealt with right on down the line, it has been a really, really pleasant experience to see the culture change in the staff there in the way they have operated.

Mr. Maloway: Perhaps the minister could refresh my memory and give me a list of the nine or 10, because I always thought there were four and this one was No. 5.

Mr. Ernst: I think this is No. 4 in the government, but there are a number that started on April 1st of 1995. I am just going from memory at the moment, but I think one is the tree nursery. I am sorry, I do not remember the others. There are no others in my department at the moment--but only going from memory and from what I have heard.

Mr. Maloway: I would like to delve into the rationale for setting up the special operating agencies. I would like to know what this special operating agency can do that it could not have done where it was before. What can it do now that it could not do before?

Mr. Ernst: Unlike a government department, special operating agency has an opportunity to be a lot more flexible, firstly, with respect to its capital. While it must file a business plan each year detailing where it intends to go and something like that, it has some additional revenues generated that were unanticipated, and whenever it can deal with issues related to capital, service improvement and investment in its operations, that would entail a fair bit of red tape were it to go the standard government route, income going into the Consolidated Fund, Treasury Board, and other internal approvals required for additional expenditures and so on.

So it gives the staff, I think, a sense of ownership and a sense of quality management that they can implement, because they have the power to do that. They also have the same flexibility in terms of their staffing. While they still have to deal with the civil service guidelines and so on, they do have flexibility in terms of their own staffing requirements.

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In the case of the Vital Statistics Agency, it is a service agency to the public. It is basically a library of records, births, deaths and things of that nature, so that it provides service to the public virtually on an ongoing basis. To be able to provide that service and to do the job that it is required to do, that flexibility is desirable from government's perspective because it is totally cost recovered. There is no tax dollar, per se, going into it, but it in fact is totally cost recovered, and the staff have an opportunity to provide the service improvements that the public are demanding.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, so I would like to know then why it would not be turned into a Crown corporation. I mean, I assume that it is sitting out there, it has no board of directors--[interjection] Oh, it has a board of directors. Okay, perhaps you could enlighten me on a bit of that.

Mr. Ernst: It has a board of directors. The special operating agency has advisers from outside of government, people with some interest or expertise that relates perhaps to the operation. I can more easily demonstrate it, I guess, with respect to the Fleet Vehicles Operating Agency which has people from the automotive industry sitting on that as members of the board by providing expertise that may assist the operating agency in how it operates. So, no, it is not out there operating all by itself. It does have direction, and the deputy minister, I believe, is the chair of the board.

Mr. Maloway: How many members does the board of directors have, and who appoints the board of directors?

Mr. Ernst: There are six members on the board of directors. They are all appointed by the government. We look for people, for instance, like in the case of the Vital Statistics Agency, people who utilize and search records on a regular basis, like the genealogical society, where people are tracing family histories and things of that nature. They are big consumers of the product here, and may well can offer us advice as how better to serve their needs and things of that nature.

Mr. Maloway: Could the minister provide us with the remuneration levels for these board members and maybe a list of the names of the people on each of these four, now five, soon to be 10 operating agencies?

Mr. Ernst: I cannot with respect to other operating agencies, but certainly with respect to Vital Stats I will endeavour to get that information.

Mr. Maloway: I believe we may have asked the question at the time that this particular agency was set up but, if not, I will ask it now, and that is, the question of confidentiality would always be a concern with respect to the Vital Statistics. What guarantees does the public have that all of the information is being kept confidential as opposed to the way it was structured before?

Mr. Ernst: Mr. Chairman, there is really no change from what it was when it was a government department to what it is today in terms of confidentiality athough, in many cases, when somebody died and when they were born is not really all that confidential. You could find it in other places besides the Vital Statistics Agency, you know, look it up in the archives of newspapers and things of that nature, to provide much of that information as well but, certainly, one of the hallmarks is the fact that access is limited with respect to a number of these areas and we have a very good record in terms of maintaining confidentiality of those records that should be so.

Mr. Maloway: I would like to ask then, what is the computer setup for this particular special operating agency? How is it structured?

Mr. Ernst: Firstly, let me say with response to his earlier question that we are restricted by statute in terms of security, and that will not change regardless of the type of system that we are on. Currently the system, by and large, is paper based. It has not been automated to any significant degree, although there is some automation. The business plan requires us to proceed down a path toward full automation over time, and we are just at the beginning stages of that now, and there is an analysis--this summer our FPs will be called for a systems design to deal with the question of converting to electronic means and, of course, security will be one of the major factors of that.

Mr. Maloway: So will this special operating agency or any of the others for that matter be using the new government's Finance department's open system that they are putting in place for what they said was the whole government?

Mr. Ernst: As far as I am aware, all of these plans--there is an information technology review office established in the Department of Finance who oversee all the computer operations within the government, and all computer operations are headed to open systems, not proprietary ones.

Mr. Maloway: Then, presumably, these operating agencies are set up to at very worst break even but at very best make a profit. Now, if they make a profit, does the profit stay with them or does it go into general revenue? What happens to the profit.

Mr. Ernst: Mr. Chairman, excess of revenue over expenditure, which is the socialist term for profit, there is a business plan established each year. The business plan, in the case of Vital Statistics, for instance, contains in it some excess revenue which is used to capitalize its new expenditures in terms of information technology, computers. So built into the business plan is an expectation of more revenue than expense, and that additional money, profit, if you will, will go toward the capitalization, the cost of installing and upgrading and so on of the new computer systems. If there is anything over and above the business plan, then that money is returned to general revenue.

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Mr. Maloway: Well, the question I suppose is, who decides, or who approves the business plan?

Mr. Ernst: The Treasury Board.

Mr. Maloway: So is there potential here for a special operating agency to get out of control and to be spending money in areas that perhaps the government would not want them to be spending money? We have had some previous bad experiences with arms of Crown corporations wandering around in places that they should not have been, and the minister knows well of which I speak, and I know all too well myself. I am just wondering whether there is a potential there for some of these special operating agencies to wander off and get themselves into trouble.

Mr. Ernst: By and large, no. The business plan is pretty specific. It is approved on an annual basis. The board of directors are in place including the deputy minister of the department to which it is assigned. So that there are pretty reasonable controls on it, I think, from that perspective, unlike a Crown corporation that has a separate board of directors and it reports to no one really. Although there may be a minister assigned for policy guidance from time to time and so on, the board is autonomous in terms of its operations. Not quite the same here. The business plan is approved and must be followed, approved by Treasury Board on an annual basis, must be followed. There is a special operating agency secretariat also that does some monitoring work and so on.

I suspect that those kinds of things--that is not to say somebody is not going to do something. I mean, human beings are involved here, and from time to time human beings do silly things. Something may happen at some point along the way, but the structure is such that it is pretty closely held.

Mr. Maloway: Would the minister tell us who would be making decisions then on hirings and firings in these special operating agencies?

Mr. Ernst: Mr. Chairman, the CEO generally is involved, and they draw upon the resources--because they do not have a human resources department internally within the operating agency per that expertise, they draw upon the department human resources people to assist them in the hiring processes and generally follow the Civil Service guidelines. But they have an authorized complement of people, so if there is a vacancy they will go out and hire somebody to fill the position.

Mr. Maloway: If a special operating agency has a vacancy, they advertise, and they hire somebody. They do not go to the government and say provide us with a person. They do not interview him, the special operating agency does all of that themselves.

Mr. Ernst: No, the member did not quite listen to what I said. I said the CEO would be involved, certainly, of the agency. And again it depends on the size. I mean, we do not have a whole lot of people in the Vital Statistics department, but they do not have their own human resource people, so they draw upon the human resource component of the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs for assistance in terms of hiring and interviewing, that sort of thing.

Mr. Maloway: Presumably payroll is still through the government?

Mr. Ernst: Yes, it is.

Mr. Maloway: How many of these special operating agencies does the minister expect that this government will set up during its current mandate?

Mr. Ernst: First of all, I am not qualified to answer that and secondly, it is highly speculative and I do not have an answer.

Mr. Maloway: I expect that the minister would provide an answer like that, but what I would like to know is that surely there is a limit to how many of these things can be set up if we follow it through. I would assume that the decisions are based on the basis of how much cost recovery can be put in place for government services. Therefore, Vital Statistics is the logical portion of the department to deal with. Somewhere along the line there will be some pressure on the government to, in fact, fully privatize this service. Is that not possible?

Mr. Ernst: Again, Mr. Chairman, these questions are, I would suggest, out of order. They do not relate to the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs nor in particular to this section. Again, it is highly speculative. What might or might not happen in the future, who knows? I cannot comment.

Mr. Maloway: Has the minister had any direct interest, then, on the part of any independent business interests to take over the department of Vital Statistics, the special operating agency, from the government?

Mr. Ernst: No.

Mr. Maloway: Certainly it is a trademark of right-leaning governments throughout the country, and in fact around the world, in preparation for privatization of government services that they in fact do have to dress these things up and make them profitable for private enterprise to take over. It just seemed to me that perhaps this special operating concept might be just a transition to a privatized government service. Does the minister have any comments on that?

Mr. Ernst: The member can speculate how he likes and have his own fantasies if he wishes, but we are doing what we are doing.

Mr. Maloway: I think I could ask a lot more questions about the special operating agencies but perhaps we will wait for another department to get into that. I think we could go on to the next area which would be Consumer Affairs.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: 1. Administration and Finance (b) Executive Support (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $298,800--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $49,700--pass.

1.(c) Administrative Services (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $531,500--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $147,700--pass; (3) Less: Recoverable from Legislative Assembly ($200,000)--pass.

1.(d) Research and Planning (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $153,700--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $25,900--pass.

1.(e) Vital Statistics Agency--pass.

2. Consumer Affairs (a) Consumers' Bureau (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $919,200.

Mr. Maloway: I would like to ask some questions of the minister regarding the Automobile Injury Compensation Appeals Commission. It seems to me that the government has provided $852,000 to run this department, or part of the department. I would like to know how many appeals this body has actually dealt with.

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Mr. Ernst: Mr. Chairman, I would like to introduce Mr. Brent Kroeker, who is the manager of the appeal commission.

At one stage or another, approximately eight.

Mr. Maloway: So, in the first year, it just seemed to me that that is an awful lot of money to be spending for, really, very little activity. When we asked questions about this particular area, about six months into the no-fault program, I believe the committee dealing with the MPIC, there had been, I believe, no appeals at that point. When I opened my book this morning and saw this, what is a fairly large amount of money here, I was expecting that perhaps--and I realize that we are only a year into this, but surely it does not take $852,000 to handle only eight little appeals from MPIC.

Mr. Ernst: Let me, first of all, explain to the member that the legislation related to no-fault insurance provides an opportunity for a couple of avenues of appeal for the consumer, the insuring public. The first is, what happens when you have a bodily injury claim, you go to the Crown insurance corporation and they deal with the issue internally with an adjuster and so on. They will arrive at some form of proposal for settlement.

If the consumer is not satisfied with that, then the consumer has a right to appeal that internally within the confines of MPIC who have a separate internal process to deal with that. Then failing a satisfactory resolution of that, it goes to the Autopac appeal commission. But the legislation is clear. The commission needs to be there to be able to hear the complaints from the public and is paid for, in fact, entirely by MPIC.

The fact of the matter is, though, in terms of bodily injury, very often bodily injuries are not very clear-cut and have long-term potential disability problems and so on. As a result, they may take much longer to settle, ultimately, because you are waiting for long-term effects to perhaps manifest themselves or whatever. It is a very technical kind of thing, and a lot of it is related obviously to the medical opinions of people and so on. So it will take some time to get rolling in terms of the numbers of appeals that ultimately will get dealt with.

If MPIC does an excellent job, they will not get many appeals. Because the situation is all so new, that is, the no-fault insurance people are unfamiliar and are not necessarily fully aware of all of the things that are available to them, and the system will have to mature over a period of time so that people will understand more, it may be that ultimately--in Quebec where this system operates there were hoards of appeals, and so far we have been fortunate in the sense that there have not been many.

Either we are not getting a lot of people injured all that seriously, or people are being satisfactorily dealt with by MPIC so that they do not need to appeal, or there are an awful lot of them in the wings waiting to ultimately come to some form of final settlement arrangement and then have the opportunity to appeal. We will not really know that for two or three years until the system has been in place long enough for a lot of these to work their way through the whole system.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, can the minister advise at this point as to whether or not the appeal board is overstaffed at this point?

Mr. Ernst: I can tell the member that we did not spend $800,000, we spent $400,000, and in fact reassigned staff because the volume was not there that was originally anticipated. You still have to maintain the core of your commissioners and functioning staff there, so we reassigned a whole bunch of people and then tend to reduce their overall costs. The costs, the actuals for 1994-95 were $466,000.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, it may well happen that the appeals may increase dramatically over the next couple of years and you may, in fact, have to add more staff. I just want to make certain that there were not people sitting around, like Maytag repair persons, waiting for appeals to come in when there were not any. But I have confidence, like every other area of life, that when it becomes more well known I think over time there will be more appeals, and I think that you can probably look to the Quebec example to be a reasonable parallel to--or Manitoba will be a reasonable parallel to Quebec over the long run. Of course, they have history there behind them, from 1976, is it, that they started in Quebec, the early '70s.

I do not think this department deals with my next question, so perhaps I will save it. I know that in Quebec they are allowed to use the surpluses that are raised in the fund, and they are allowed to put them into direct revenue. In Manitoba that is not allowed, and the surpluses of the no-fault program in Manitoba are to stay with the MPIC. But once again this department does not deal with that.

Mr. Ernst: That really does not relate to this department. They simply fund whatever--MPIC funds whatever the cost to the commission is. So we send them a bill, and they send us a cheque, so to speak, and that is that. There are no surpluses or anything of that nature.

Mr. Maloway: I would like to ask my question about The Business Practices Act here. The question has been asked. If the minister remembers what the question was, perhaps he would like to provide his answer now.

Mr. Ernst: Mr. Chairman, during 1993-94--it is outlined on the bottom of page 13 of our annual report--The Business Practices Act was utilized in the handling of 423 complaints. I might say that it is also used extensively dealing with loan broker scams, that this is the appropriate legislation for dealing with those people, and it has worked very well.

We also deal in terms of advertising, particularly misleading advertising or potentially misleading advertising, with a large number of complaints. Our people review the newspapers and things of that nature on a regular basis, and when we spot something that we think is inappropriate, we will call them and, generally speaking, get voluntary compliance. A lot of people just do not know or never thought that, hey, looking at it from a different perspective, perhaps you are right; or they try to get away with it. But we deal with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of situations where we have voluntary compliance. You do not need to take anybody to court. You simply point out the problem and they correct it, and we have had excellent co-operation, quite frankly, in terms of dealing with businesses in the province in voluntarily complying with changing their advertisements.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairperson, could the minister tell us how many times the provisions in the act dealing with the seizure of bank accounts and so on have been used at this point?

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Mr. Ernst: On page 15 of the annual report, three bank accounts were frozen under The Business Practices Act. That is for the fiscal year 1993-94, and I think we have done it once or twice this year already.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask a question about the grants. Now, I know that the department provides $91,000 to two agencies, and I am wondering what accountability there is on these grants, if any. How does the minister ascertain that the taxpayers are getting value for these grants?

Mr. Ernst: There are two agencies which are funded by this department. One is the Consumers' Association of Canada, Manitoba chapter, and the other is a Community Credit Counselling Service. Both agencies, of course, file audited financial statements with us, but more importantly, particularly the Consumers' Association, they are available not only to our department but to virtually every department of government in terms of advice related from a consumer perspective on a host of issues. You virtually name it and they are quite ready to provide that advice and to provide information and to offer their opinion collectively on, say, a host of different issues related to all different departments of government. Of course, they also provide it and solicit it from time to time. When they have an issue, they bring that forward as well.

Mr. Chairman, if I may, we also run a volunteer program respecting consumer-related issues where we provide some training and some information and so on for people who will do proactive consumer education work. They will assist us with that program as well so that we can go out and talk to folks who may not be aware or have perhaps an appropriate awareness of what their rights and protections are, and we will try to provide them with that information in order to better educate them toward consumer practices, consumer protection practices, that is.

Mr. Maloway: My colleague the member for Radisson (Ms. Cerilli) has a number of questions dealing with Residential Tenancies, and since we are on that section right now, I would like to yield the floor to her to ask questions on Residential Tenancies and then, when that is finished, I will be asking more questions on the Consumer Affairs area.

Mr. Ernst: I think we kind of voluntarily agreed to give the staff a few minutes break at mid-afternoon, so maybe we will do that, Mr. Chairman, if you like, for five minutes or so.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Is it the will of the committee to take about a five-minute break? Agreed? Agreed.

The committee recessed at 4:15 p.m.

________

After Recess

The committee resumed at 4:23 p.m.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please. 2. Consumer Affairs.

Ms. Marianne Cerilli (Radisson): I am pleased to get the opportunity to ask questions of the minister. There are a number of issues that I want to cover.

I think I am going to start off with one that I first became aware of as a local constituency issue but, as I understand it, it affects a number of properties and tenants throughout the city of Winnipeg. That has to do with the changes in the provision of Cablevision as a bulk service to tenants, usually in larger apartment blocks.

I have had a number of different correspondence exchanges with this minister as well as other ministers of the government to try to ensure that tenants are going to be treated fairly both by cable companies, by the landlords and different property owners. I am not convinced at this point that that is the case. There are still some outstanding issues in this area that I want to get clarified.

The first thing I wanted to ask is if the minister can tell me how many properties in the city of Winnipeg had their agreements changed when the cable companies wanted to discontinue offering bulk rates for Cablevision.

Mr. Ernst: Firstly, let me introduce Mr. Roger Barsy, the gentleman here, who is the Director of the Residential Tenancies Branch, to members of the committee.

With respect to the specifics, there were 265 buildings that were affected by this change of practice by the cable television companies.

Ms. Cerilli: Of the 265 buildings, how many of those buildings have had their rent decrease fixed by the department?

Mr. Ernst: We do not have an exact number for you at the moment, but it is about 25 or 30 where there have been decisions taken; 265 have applied for withdrawal of service, so we have dealt with 25 or 30 of them.

Ms. Cerilli: Can I ask the minister to explain what is the procedure for deciding which apartment blocks are going to be dealt with first? What is the procedure for giving priority to the 265 apartment blocks that are going to be affected by the Cablevision change?

Mr. Ernst: If it was based solely on the application for withdrawal of cable television service, then it would be on a first-come, first-served basis. However, often you will get situations where a rent increase above the guideline is applied for in conjunction with that. So in those cases where the rent increase above the guideline has been applied for as well, then those buildings tend to take priority.

Just as an example, we have dealt with a couple--the Courts of St. James, which is the largest single apartment complex in Winnipeg. That matter has been adjudicated by the department and, I think, is in appeal at the moment with the Residential Tenancies Commission. The next biggest one, I think, just about to have its decision rendered is Whellams Lane in East Kildonan, which is, I think, the second biggest complex in the province. So we are dealing with--that one is just about, almost the next day or so we probably will see that occur.

Ms. Cerilli: So I am to understand that the applications are dealt with on a first-come, first-serve basis in order of the buildings applying for rent reduction?

Ms. Ernst: If that was the sole basis for consideration, yes, but as I indicated, where there are situations where there is combined application, that is, one for rent increase and one for withdrawal of service, we would take the combined ones before the ones for simple withdrawal of service. Of course, they cannot withdraw the service until it has been approved.

Ms. Cerilli: Can I ask the minister to clarify that? They cannot withdraw what service before the rent is approved?

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Mr. Ernst: I misled the member there. What happens is the landlord makes an application for withdrawal of service and proposes a rent reduction, whatever he thinks is the value of that rent reduction. When we deal with it, and given the large number it make take some time to deal with it, but when it is dealt with then we either confirm the landlord's rent reduction or make an alternative decision, higher or lower as the case may be. It is not likely to be lower but it certainly may be higher. That is retroactive to the date of withdrawal of service. Let us use an example. If apartment A comes in and wants to withdraw cable television service and proposes that his value of that service is $10 a month in rent, then when we deal with it we find out that it is $15 a month in rent, then the $15 is retroactively applied.

Ms. Cerilli: One of the issues is that a number of these apartment blocks have lost their service. They have had a decrease in the rent. At the same time their new leases, because it has not been approved, withdrawal of service and rent reduction has not yet been approved by the division of the government, their new lease is telling them they still have cable service. This is presenting confusion and a number of disputes, I would think, and I am wondering why the approval is taking so long. That is one of the questions I have. It seems that this is creating a lot of confusion where if there is going to yet be an appeal, because these people cannot appeal the withdrawal of service until their rent has been fixed.

I know in my own constituency we have an apartment block complex that is in this situation where they are still waiting to know if their rent reduction is going to be fixed at the $14 less per month. They are waiting so that they can appeal it. I guess the big question is, we have a lot of confusion and why is it taking so long for this to work through the system?

Mr. Ernst: You should understand, first of all, that on or about the first of January the cable companies arbitrarily decided, without warning to anyone, to take this action, so we had no clue particularly that this was coming. As I indicated, 265 buildings have applied. Many of them have different agreements; they are not the same.

First of all, there are two cable companies, one much more co-operative than the other. Unfortunately your constituency landed on the side of the other. Shaw has been much less co-operative in terms of trying to work this business through than Videon has, and we have met with both of them. The CRTC has simply thrown up their--they are the ones who regulate the cable companies, not our department--hands and said, we are not dealing with that.

Yes, we do have confusion, we do have some problems, and we will work through them. No tenant will ultimately lose as a result, but if people have problems or concerns I would encourage you to have them call the Residential Tenancies Branch, and we will endeavour to provide them with as much information as we can. The fact of the matter is it is a huge volume of work to be dealt with, and it simply cannot be done--there is a process you have to go through--overnight. You cannot make decisions on one building that necessarily will apply to another, because the agreements may be different.

These agreements were entered into at the time when cable first came into being in the province, where they were encouraging apartment building owners to put cable television in, so they made deals of different kinds with various apartment building owners over a period of time in order to get them to install cable television into their properties. So each agreement has to be looked into, and there has to be determination made upon what value it affects the rent and so on. It is a very large problem that we are dealing with.

Ms. Cerilli: I am going to continue asking questions on this issue, but I have a phone call that I have to return. So I am going to ask if the member for Elmwood (Mr. Maloway) could ask some questions. But, before that, I would just like to ask the minister if the department would provide me with a list of the 265 apartments that are being affected by this.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, just to follow up on the member for Radisson's question. When does the minister see providing us with a list of these blocks.

Mr. Ernst: It will probably take a couple of days or so.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, the reason that I am sensitive to that is that I have asked for information from other ministers over the past and have waited a year and still have not got the information. So we have to ask when the information will be made public to us or provided to us when the minister agrees to provide the information, because we do not always get what ministers promise to give us.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the minister, just going back to the Consumers' Bureau for a couple of minutes, I would like to know what sort of problems the Consumers' Bureau is having with regard to the actions of bill collectors in the province over the past year or so.

Mr. Ernst: There are kind of two general areas where most of the problems occur. One is attempting to collect more than the actual debt. Of course, no one is allowed to collect more than actually the debt outstanding.

The other is the question of harassment. There are specific times allocated and bill collectors may not carry out their activities beyond the prescribed times even though from time to time they do, but legislatively they are not permitted to do that. From time to time, too, they will allege that they have certain things like a court order or something like that, which they do not have. Those are basically the kind of areas where we have problems.

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Mr. Maloway: Recently, we had information that indicated that Equifax bill collectors were collecting arrears on rent and charging interest at, I believe, 24 percent, which I believe the minister responsible has taken care of, but what actions would this department have taken in this regard when this came to light?

Mr. Ernst: We did not hear directly from any individual. We heard from Housing with respect to this issue. We explained to them what the rules were and Equifax, as their agent, were told what they can and cannot do and the problem was cleaned up by Housing so we did not have to take any action.

Mr. Maloway: Would it not seem reasonable that the minister might take this opportunity to send a letter around to the bill collection community reminding them that they are not to collect interest on overdue accounts when there is no agreement to collect interest? I assume, Mr. Chairman, that in actual fact the ability to collect overdue rent and interest on there would be perfectly legal if there was a contract that allowed them to do it. But there is nothing in any rental agreement, I believe, that would allow them to do it.

Mr. Ernst: Any interest charged on overdue rents, for instance, is at the rate of the QB rate of interest. That is generally what is being used. I think it is around 8 percent or something like that. They are well aware of these things, but it cannot hurt to remind them, I suppose. We will look into that.

Mr. Maloway: In addition to that, there was an article recently in, I believe, the Winnipeg Sun two or three days ago in which a bill collector anonymously, but candidly, was admitting to certainly flouting the law, I believe, by phoning into Saskatchewan and trying to collect accounts there. He was suggesting, I believe, if the article is correct, that in fact it is a widespread practice.

Mr. Ernst: That is really Saskatchewan's problem, I guess, in a sense, rather than ours. They are operating in Saskatchewan on an unlicensed basis. We have not heard from Saskatchewan and we do have reciprocal arrangements with other provinces so that if we do have a problem that occurs from time to time cross border, we would co-operate. If Saskatchewan called and said, look this is happening and we do not like it, crack down on these guys, we would assist Saskatchewan in doing whatever we could. I do not doubt from time to time that these things happen. This is not exactly the highest calling in the business world, this type of activity. The law is there. If they flout it and they are caught, they pay the price. We have no hesitancy in investigating and prosecuting, as the case may be. A lot of times, bravado tends to take over sometimes when it is less than factual.

Mr. Maloway: Well, will the minister endeavour then to send a letter around to the registered collection agencies reminding them of all these laws and rules that they are supposed to follow, given that there have been two or three different examples where the rules do not seem to be followed.

Mr. Ernst: Well, it is anecdotal evidence at best, and I learned, particularly since being in this business, that you do not always believe what you read in the newspaper. At the same time, that is something we will give consideration to.

Mr. Maloway: I would like to turn the floor over to my colleague the member for Radisson (Ms. Cerilli).

Ms. Cerilli: I was just going through my file here, looking for the letter that was copied to the minister on this issue, and I received a response from the Minister of Housing--then it was Ms. McIntosh--but I am as yet to get any kind of response from this department and this minister, related to the cable issue.

Mr. Ernst: If we have not responded, shame on me, and I apologize, although staff think we have. The staff say they have a copy of the letter we did send you. Anyway, we will get you another copy.

Ms. Cerilli: Okay, I would appreciate that. It does not seem to be in the file that I have on this issue. I know one of the questions I raised in the letter was in these apartment blocks that have had cable service withdrawn from their rent or withdrawn from the services and are now getting a rent reduction, was the rent reduction calculated before or after the application for rent increase of the 1 percent?

Maybe to clarify that further--I see some confusion on the face of the minister. There was a comment made earlier on this that if there was an application for greater than the 3 percent allowable rent increase--

Mr. Ernst: One percent.

Ms. Cerilli: Oh, it is fixed now as 1 percent, so those people that applied for a greater increase in the rent had their applications dealt with at a priority basis. Those that were only going to have the allowable 1 percent increase in the rent for that year, was that 1 percent calculated before or after the rent reduction for loss of cable service?

Mr. Ernst: The guideline for rent increases clicks in on the anniversary date of the tenancy agreement. So, if the anniversary date occurs sometime after the application for withdrawal of service, then it is calculated before. If it happens at the same time, it is calculated with or in conjunction with the rent increase, and if it, of course, occurs after, then it is after.

For instance, if the anniversary date was January 1 and the application for withdrawal of cable service came after January 1, the 1 percent would already be included in the rent January 1 and would be conducted after. But, if for instance, they applied to withdraw their cable service, again, on say the 15th of January but their anniversary date is not until April 1 or October 1, which are two common dates for residential tenancy renewal, then they would be taken off it as of the date of application, and the 1 percent could be applied on the anniversary date. So if they apply on January 15, it is dated January 15, but the anniversary date of April 1 or October 1 could have the 1 percent applied after the amount has been withdrawn. Clear as mud.

Ms. Cerilli: What I am understanding is then there are going to be people who have paid a 1 percent increase on services that they are not getting and that they are then paying--they have had their rent increase more than what it should have because they have had a decrease in the rent.

Mr. Ernst: The calculation of the amount is also calculated considering all of these kinds of issues, so it should, theoretically at least, when they deal with it, take that into account.

Ms. Cerilli: Have there been any tenants or tenant groups appealing their rent increase based on this, the withdrawal of cable service and rent reduction?

Mr. Ernst: This is a fairly complicated issue, because the ones we have dealt with and so on are issues of rent increases beyond the guideline in conjunction with the withdrawal of service. I do not think that we have had any sort of direct--but we have had a 1 percent increase and then had the withdrawal of service calculation. So it is very difficult to answer the question because circumstances, at least so far anyway, are considerably more confusing than the simple question that you put.

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Ms. Cerilli: Well, like so many of these issues dealing with residential tenancies, it seems that you need very tenacious tenants to ever follow through on any of these matters. They have to be people who are willing to put a lot of time and pay attention to a lot of these kinds of details, and I think we do find there are some tenants willing to do that, but I think what happens more is they end up wanting to trust their landlord and trust that when they do go to the division of the government for information they are going to be given full information.

Related to that and to this issue, I want to ask the minister if, under the act, tenants have the right to a breakdown in the costs for their rent so that they will be able to find out how much their landlord is having to pay for anything that is included as a service in their tenancy agreement.

Mr. Ernst: That information is available when there is an application for an increase above the guideline, or within the guideline where the tenant objects. The breakdown of those costs are available to the tenant, but if I simply walk in and I want to rent an apartment from you and I want to know what the breakdown is between the various component costs of your operation, that is not an entitlement. The entitlement occurs when an increase in rent is applied for either within or above the guideline.

Mr. Ernst: So it does not apply when there is a withdrawal of service from the lease agreement?

Mr. Ernst: When there is a withdrawal of service, then the landlord makes an application indicating how much he is prepared to reduce the rent for that. He has to justify his case obviously to any tenant who objects and to the Residential Tenancies people. If somebody walked in and said I want to withdraw cable service and I only think it is worth $2 a month, we obviously are going to question that and say why do you think it is that way? what are you paying your bulk cable company for the service that you are getting? and any other questions that we might have related to that. That information would be available to the tenant.

Ms. Cerilli: So it is available to the tenants on a withdrawal of service. Will they be able to get a breakdown of the costs to the landlord for the rent that they are paying?

Mr. Ernst: You are correct that it is available to the tenant for the cost of the service that is being withdrawn, not all, but the cost of that service that is being withdrawn.

Ms. Cerilli: What is the rationale for that? What is the rationale for not having a policy where the tenant could find out how much of the rent is profit, how much of it is going to pay cable, hydro, property taxes, whatever else their rent is being used for? What is the reason for not having that information available to tenants?

Mr. Ernst: The act is predicated on dealing with the issues of rent increase or withdrawals of service and things of that nature. It was not predicated on any other purpose, so that there is preparatory information. Somebody wants to rent an apartment from somebody else, or a house, or whatever kind of space, that is their choice. They make a decision based upon what the landlord asks for. The landlord may or may not make a profit. There may or may not be, you know, with the fluctuating costs of utilities and other services, mortgage interest rates, a hundred and one other things that relate to the operation of a building are the landlord's business, and if you want to rent an apartment from him, based upon an agreed upon amount of money, that is your choice. You do not have to rent the apartment.

However, once in, or once having made that rent, then you are subject to all the applications of The Residential Tenancies Act which deals with the question of increases in rent, and the costs associated with that, or withdrawals of service and related costs of that. So you are protected, once in, by The Residential Tenancies Act in terms of changes to the contract you have originally signed on to.

Ms. Cerilli: Is the Residential Tenancies Branch privy to information on the breakdown to property owners?

Mr. Ernst: For applications for rent increases, yes, as are the tenants. They are invited to come in and look at it. If a landlord puts in an application for a 3 percent increase in rent, the tenants are all notified. Information is available at the Residential Tenancies Branch. Tenants are invited to come in and peruse the information. Tenants are included in all the hearing processes that are associated with it, and they are entitled to ask questions, I believe, as well, with respect to those proposals.

Let me tell you just in general terms. I have been minister of this department for two and a half years or so, and I can tell you all the landlords I talked to think it is slanted in favour of the tenant, and all the tenants think it is slanted in favour of the landlord. So maybe we are doing something right in that neither of them are happy, and we are probably doing what we are supposed to be doing in terms of trying to be fair in the overall scheme of things, but anybody who does not get what they want thinks it is unfair. I should not say "anybody," but the "many" think it is unfair if they do not have it go their way, so to speak.

Ms. Cerilli: I am going to come back to this kind of issue in a moment.

I just want to finish up in dealing with cable, the loss of cable service, before we go on to some of these other issues in terms of resident tenancies rights and fairness, and the kind of things that the minister is alluding to.

I just want to ask the minister, when the cable companies first made it known that they were going to withdraw the bulk service and they wanted to discontinue all these agreements with property owners, how did the department and the minister respond? Were there any discussions with the cable companies to discourage them from doing this, to consider the pending confusion that would result? How was the case made to them?

Mr. Ernst: Again, there were several other issues associated with this occurring just at the same time, negative-option marketing being one of them. I did not meet with them, but staff met with the CRTC staff to determine their role in this whole process and did not get very far but had the contact nonetheless.

I met with the senior staff along with representatives of Shaw and Videon. We got reasonable co-operation with Videon. We did not get any co-operation at all from Shaw. I met with the local manager and the vice-president from Calgary of Shaw and the local president and general manager of Videon here in Winnipeg.

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Ms. Cerilli: Was there an appeal made to maintain this as a service? I understand there are some apartment blocks that have not chosen to withdraw the service. There are some that are actually then paying for it as still included in the rent at a higher rate. Was there an appeal made for the cable companies to reconsider, and then was there any attempt to have apartment blocks consider continuing to include it in the rent?

Mr. Ernst: We asked them to continue the bulk-rate service to the landlord and the landlord, in turn, would pass that through to the tenant until the end of the tenancy agreement period. In other words, if your lease expired July 1, we asked the cable company to continue, in conjunction with the landlord, the reduced cost to the landlord for bulk service until the end of the tenancy agreement, at which time it would be withdrawn. The service would be withdrawn when the tenant signed a new tenancy agreement, and then rent would be adjusted accordingly and so on.

In some cases that happened, and in other cases it did not happen. Some landlords may choose not to withdraw the service and are simply eating the additional cost. Some are eating part of it and passing part of it along. There are a number of different scenarios.

Ms. Cerilli: Would the minister agree that this has, from a tenant's perspective, amounted to a rent increase, a way around having an increase more than the guideline in the tenant's rent, given that the purchase of cable service after the withdrawal of service from the rent agreement is more than it was accounted for in the rent reduction?

Mr. Ernst: No, I do not agree. A landlord is no better off one way or another. If the bulk service rate to the landlord was $10 a month and the cost of purchasing individual line service is $16 a month and the landlord is reducing his rent by $10 a month, he is no better off. So the landlord is not getting any additional money.

Who is better off is the cable company. They are the ones who are benefiting from the increased costs because they are now not providing service. What they did is--I should tell you this from my own experience in a former life--where cable companies volunteered most magnanimously where landlords owned the wiring in the building, they came out and said, we will handle all your wiring for you in the future. You turn ownership over to us and we will maintain it for you.

Well, there is no maintenance to speak of in those kinds of things, but what it did, it prevented landlords from doing two things: one, installing a satellite, which could have provided separate service, different service to its tenants, because if the cable company owned the wiring, then they could control that. The second one is that if they can control the wiring in the building, of course, then they have the opportunity to put individual lined service into each unit.

If the landlord owned it, he could control what happened, but if the cable company owned the wiring, and I suppose there were lots of landlords who simply said, why should I worry about an additional expense, give it to them. I do not know the legalities of that but I suspect if you signed them away it becomes the property of another party and you would have to buy it back if they would sell it.

The bad guys in this scenario are the cable companies, not the landlords.

Ms. Cerilli: Yes, in dealing with this, I guess I would agree with the minister, but the minister is also responsible through this department dealing with CRTC as well as dealing with the residential tenancy side of it. So I think that there is, I guess, a double onus on the minister in dealing with this.

Mr. Ernst: We do not take any jurisdiction over CRTC.

Ms. Cerilli: No, I realize that you do not have jurisdiction over CRTC, but when I was reading the list of legislation that you are responsible for, I recall that it is a Consumer and Corporate Affairs issue, that you would have more authority over this wearing that hat as well as wearing the responsibility for Residential Tenancies.

Mr. Ernst: Well, the fact of the matter is though that under any, there are all kinds of exclusions or other jurisdictions associated with particular areas of jurisdiction. I mean, the CRTC controls cable television. It is a consumer issue, but we do not control it.

(Mrs. Shirley Render, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)

There are other types of exclusions too. We do not have ultimate control over everything. You know, there are areas where you have control and areas where somebody else has control, and there are areas that fall between the cracks where nobody has control so to speak or where they refuse to exercise their control or interpret it differently one way to another.

Ms. Cerilli: We are seeing more deregulation in a way in this area, and we are going to continue to see that.

My concern though, at this point, is if we can see the same approach used in other services that are provided to tenants, if we can see this happening with other utilities, for example, and if then we can have tenants being forced to pay increasing costs which will then be outside of their lease agreement, if that is something that could happen.

Mr. Ernst: Certainly. The costs, of course--for instance, if a landlord, who presently is providing hydro on a single meter to all the people in the building as part of the rent, chooses to rewire the building and put in individual meters for each unit and charge the tenant therefor, they are entitled to do that. They make application, withdraw the service. We would affix a value to the hydro that is being provided and reduce the rent accordingly, and then the actual cost of hydro would be billed directly by the utility to the tenant.

You know, in commercial lease terms you are looking at not exactly what is called a triple-net lease where the landlord for his investment in the building is provided a certain amount of rent. All of the costs of running the building are passed through to the tenant on a prorated basis, so now there is no guessing, whether he guesses too low or guesses too high in terms of setting his rent, there is no guessing anymore under a triple-net lease which happens quite often commercially. Taxes, every cost of operating from utilities to snow clearing to common advertising to all kinds of things are all passed on a prorated basis directly through to the tenant, and the landlord simply gets the return that he expects on his investment.

Ultimately, that may happen. I do not know whether that will happen in a residential basis or not, but it might. It is conceivable at some point down the road that might become common practice, but every time it happens, of course, we have to affix a value to the withdrawn service and have the rent reduced accordingly.

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Ms. Cerilli: It is an example, from the tenant's perspective again as well, where you can have very large companies ganging up on the little guy. Tenants, I think, feel very powerless. I am wondering if there is a trend towards, particularly with utilities, having individual metering done in Manitoba.

Mr. Ernst: The tenant is paying in any event, whether he is paying--at least the tenant knows when he gets a bill directly from the hydro he is paying the exact amount that he used, so to speak, as opposed to having a guesstimate included in the overall rent where it is provided as an included service.

Practices in buildings that are constructed from time to time and so on vary depending upon the time that they were built. During the early 1970s there was a push on by Manitoba Hydro to encourage electric heating, so when a number of apartment buildings were built in that period of time they were encouraged to put in all-inclusive, one-metre type of situations. Where a building is not heated by electricity but heated by gas, very often the electricity is metered individually for those units. It is all over the place. It depends really on when the building was built and what the current practice was at the time.

Ms. Cerilli: Just to conclude that thought, I guess from a sustainability point of view you do not want to be encouraging bulk rate reductions for use either. That is what I am getting at, if there is a reduced rate, if there is a higher consumption and if we are going to be moving away from that into individual metering. On one hand it could be meaning increases for tenants, as it did with the cable issue where there was a reduced rate for the bulk use. On things like hydro or water consumption we do not want to be encouraging that anyway. We do not want to be encouraging cheaper rates for the more you use.

Mr. Ernst: Let me tell you that the government is not encouraging anything. This legislation was set up as a court, if you would, for landlords and tenants to have their problems resolved under certain guidelines and ways of operation and policies and so on. We are not going out and encouraging anybody to do anything, but we have to respond when actions occur in the private sector with landlords or tenants or whatever. We are not encouraging anybody to do anything. We cannot handle what we have now.

Ms. Cerilli: I am just continuing to think on this issue of bulk use. There has to be a way, I think, of protecting particularly low-income tenants who could be then facing increased costs for utilities without truly increasing their consumption of that utility. That is what I am concerned about, if we are going to see a trend in having, maybe it be more simple for the billing from the landlord's point of view, but we are going to see an increase in charges for tenants. That is my concern with raising these

Mr. Ernst: There are no trends that we are aware of.

Ms. Cerilli: Just for the information of the committee, as the Housing critic for our party I will be focusing on issues relating to the Residential Tenancies Branch, but I also will have some questions relating to the Real Estate Board and some questions, as well, eventually on the Securities Commission as relating to the Real Estate Board.

But right now I want to go to the issue I was raising in Question Period today which was to do with the Residential Tenancies Branch's ability to enforce work repair orders on tenant properties or leased properties.

I am concerned that there is not an automatic referral of city health inspector work orders to the Residential Tenancies Branch, and I wanted to ask the minister if that is something that we could look forward to having in place in Manitoba.

Mr. Ernst: As I indicated to the member earlier, it is the City of Winnipeg's mandate and responsibility to enforce minimum standards with respect to their buildings. They have a minimum standards by-law; an occupancy by-law; health by-law; fire upgrading by-law and probably a host of others that I have not mentioned.

We have met with them on more than one occasion to talk about these issues and so on. They know that we have certain powers under The Residential Tenancies Act to enforce some of these things, but it is their choice. They are the authority with respect to these issues, and if they think they need enforcement, then they will contact us. We can return rents and carry out repairs or do a number of things. We have fairly broad powers under The Residential Tenancies Act in order to do that.

I guess it depends on the eye of the beholder and how long and what are the circumstances surrounding each individual circumstance. I do not know.

Ms. Cerilli: I started bringing some circumstances forward because I am quite concerned that the minister has said there are only two or three properties that have been taken over by the government in terms of collecting rents--maybe I can clarify that. The minister says there are only two or three where they have actually taken over the management. Maybe there are more where they have taken over collecting the rent, if the minister wants to clarify that.

Mr. Ernst: As I said earlier, we have a wide variety of powers under this act. We have in only one case ever actually taken over direct management to the property, and that was a case in Thompson at Cree Road properties.

We have one currently on Young Street that has been the subject of some discussion of recent time, where in fact we are taking the majority if not all of the rent in order to satisfy a variety of outstanding bills and to meet repair requests and so on.

Most of the time where a repair problem comes up, we will take only sufficient rent to correct the problem. Once the problem is corrected, then life goes on. If it occurs again, we will do it again. But we have an ability to take portions of rent or all of the rent or anything in between, up to and including a court-ordered receivership situation where we would apply to the court to take control of the property. Most of the time, in most of the cases, we are able to deal with those issues by simply taking some of the rent sufficient to cover repairs that have been undertaken for one reason or another.

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Ms. Cerilli: Getting back to the larger issue though of having the powers of the act from the provincial government govern the city, could the minister compare for me the powers that the city has to enforce their inspection work orders as opposed to the provincial regulatory powers?

Mr. Ernst: I should point out to the member that the city, as I said earlier, has certain mandates and legislative authorities and powers under their by-laws and so on, to regulate and to carry out inspections and enforcement of their regulations. By and large, they have large inspection staffs both in health and in building occupancy. They have dedicated a counsel within the city Law Department to prosecute a number of these issues and so on.

Wherever a tenant complains to us that repair activity is not being done that needs to be done, we investigate, but we do not have either a mandate nor the staff to go out and inspect every property for compliance.

As I said, the function of the Residential Tenancies Branch is primarily that of a court to try and deal with the complaints and problems that come to it as a result of landlord-tenant relationships. The enforcement of minimum occupancy, health and safety standards rests with the City of Winnipeg. If they want to use us they will use us, if they do not they do not. That is their strategy, not ours.

(Mr. Deputy Chairperson in the Chair)

We have certain powers that enable us to do things that they do not. If they want us to take $200 of rental income in order to patch a hole in a wall we can do that, but they have first of all to identify that there is a problem and secondly issue an order or whatever against it. Whenever a tenant complains to us we check with them to see if there is an order against it so we can deal with it.

That is the basis upon which the residential tenancies legislation was put into place.

Ms. Cerilli: Perhaps the minister could go through then the process that is used with the Residential Tenancies Branch when they do their own inspections and you find that there has been a complaint and you find that there is an unsafe situation and you issue a work repair order. What is the ensuing procedure, including all the options for the landlord?

Mr. Ernst: Essentially it works like this. A tenant will phone Residential Tenancies and lay a complaint. We will send out an inspector to look at the problem and determine if first of all it is reasonable and secondly to determine if it is urgent or semiurgent or a longer-term kind of problem. Regardless of the case, we discuss it with the landlord immediately and then indicate an appropriate time for compliance, if it is urgent, if it is immediate, and so on.

That is appealable by both the landlord and the tenant. That appeal period is 14 days. Once that has been concluded, then we will issue an order and, if necessary, redirect the rent to pay for it.

Ms. Cerilli: So the decision to redirect the rent is supposed to occur automatically if there is no appeal after the 14 days by the landlord and the work order is not done in the prescribed amount of time?

Mr. Ernst: We try to be reasonable in this whole process. For instance, if the job has been started but not yet completed, if parts have been ordered and not yet received because of a longer period of time required to obtain them, you know, we try to use common sense in this whole process, but there may be a period of grace granted. If the landlord is demonstrating good faith and attempting to fix the problem but is held up by one reason or another that is quite legitimate, then we are prepared to be reasonable too, but if they are dogging it, then it happens right away.

Ms. Cerilli: I guess it is safe to say that I am going to hear about the cases where the landlord is dogging it, and those are the ones that I am going to hear about, but I can tell you I have heard of cases where, after the 14-day appeal, there is an agreement that the landlord is going to do repairs by a certain date. When that day is approached, they will apply for an increase in the time duration that they have to do the work and that will continue on sometimes for a period of years, is what seems to happen.

I wonder what the considerations are for that kind of an extension in the time available to comply with the work orders because, then, what will happen, I think, in cases as well is, they can appeal it again after there has been an extension. Then it is another way it seems for the tenant to be in a position where they have to again go through the whole appeal process. I know of situations where this has been dragged out for many months.

I would like the minister to confirm if in fact what happens is, once the date for the deadline for the repairs to have been completed is approaching, the landlord can apply for an extension of the deadline for that work order.

Mr. Ernst: If you have a certain circumstance that appears unreasonable to you, please bring it to the attention directly of myself or staff of the Residential Tenancies Branch. We will investigate and determine what exactly happened as opposed to what somebody might think happened.

Ms. Cerilli: Well, my question, though, was the policy and the criteria for giving an extension. The minister has said, if they have begun the repairs and it has not been completed. My concern is that often there will be a delay because then there has to be an inspector that goes out again and the tenant is left waiting. Once there has been an application for an extension of the work order, that seems to buy a little bit more time for the landlord, and we have this dragging on where repairs are not done.

What I would like is some confirmation on the policy and the criteria for applications to have the deadline for the work order extended.

Mr. Ernst: I think I explained that already. I said also at the same time we try and use common sense. There may be a circumstance from time to time that occurs where subterfuge is being applied by one party or another. Human beings are also involved in this process all the way through so judgments may not always be as accurate as they should be. Nonetheless, I think if you have a particular problem that ought to be dealt with bring it to our attention and we will certainly address it.

Ms. Cerilli: Part of the problem in this process is that it continues to be complaint driven on behalf of the tenants. I am wondering if when the landlords apply for an appeal within the 14 days, is there a fee and what is that fee?

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Mr. Ernst: I believe the fee is $15 for general matters and $50 for orders of possession.

Ms. Cerilli: So that is the fee that the landlord pays because my second question was going to be the fee that the tenant has to pay if they want to appeal, let us say, the deadline for completing the work order.

Mr. Ernst: Only certain items have a fee attached to them so that, for instance, issues related to repairs have no fee attached for either party.

Ms. Cerilli: So that means that the landlord can appeal it within the 14 days and there is no fee?

Mr. Ernst: That is correct. That is right, and so can the tenant.

Ms. Cerilli: Oftentimes that will occur on the 14th day of the 14- day period. We get into confusion if it is a work day or a weekend and some tenants have been confused by that. But how long, once the appeal has been applied for, is there a decision made with respect to the work order?

Mr. Ernst: The Residential Tenancies Commission dealing with appeals generally operates somewhere between 30 and 40 days for matters that are not urgent, and for matters that are urgent, they reserve a portion of their time, because they are scheduling these things for some considerable period in advance, two, three, four weeks, so they reserve a portion of their time in there for matters of an urgent nature. They will be dealt with as quickly as hours, depending upon their level of urgency, so anywhere from a few hours to a day depending again upon the circumstances. But they have been quite good in terms of dealing with issues that are very emergent.

Ms. Cerilli: So on the issues that the branch deems nonurgent, then, it can be 30 to 40 days where the tenant is waiting for a decision, simply on the appeal, where they will continue to have to live with the nonrepaired state.

Mr. Ernst: Well, it depends again what a nonrepaired state is. If there are two screws missing from a door, they might have to live that long with the two screws missing until eventually it comes up. If there is no heat in the premises, that is going to be dealt with immediately, or no water, the plumbing fixture does not work or those kinds of things that are urgent and require attention will be dealt with on an emergent basis.

It may be a decision that the tenant wants the ceiling painted in the bedroom, and it does have a coat of paint. It is not as fresh as it once was but that might take a period of time. Those are pretty extreme cases on both sides. Hopefully, common sense will apply in the whole issue related to when these things get dealt with and when they are ultimately resolved.

Ms. Cerilli: I would like some examples then--I do not know if this is listed in the annual report--some examples of urgent repairs that were done and the time that it took to do them and then compare to that some examples of nonurgent repairs and the time that it took to do those.

Mr. Ernst: We will undertake to get you those, but it will not be today and likely not tomorrow.

Ms. Cerilli: How many inspectors are with the Residential Tenancies Commission that are doing the follow-up on the complaints?

Mr. Ernst: Can I inquire, is this related to repairs only or other issues?

Ms. Cerilli: We will start off specifically with repairs.

Mr. Ernst: Mr. Chairman, we have two staff in Winnipeg dedicated to that, one in Brandon, one in Thompson, who do that on a shared basis. They are not totally dedicated to that. That is part of their duties in those other places.

Ms. Cerilli: How many rental properties do you think there are in the province of Manitoba?

Mr. Ernst: I do not know how many properties there are. There are 135,000 residential tenancies. Mr. Chairperson, 750 of those will occur in the Courts of St. James, 500-and-some-odd occur in Whellams Lane. We get about 500 requests a year for service related to repairs. Those are dealt with by the staff.

Ms. Cerilli: Some pretty busy staff, I would think.

I guess that the other question I wanted to ask was the amount of time that it would take to follow up on the repair orders. It seems that there is going to be a lot of room here for repairs to go unmade from the time that a complaint is first launched, and this is just if it is done by the Residential Tenancies Branch itself. When those two staff in Winnipeg can get around in a month or two months time, I think what we can see is we have a system where tenants can be waiting an awful long time to have an inspection done. That is not even considering the additional wait if it is being done by a city health inspector and the problems that they seem to be having with their enforcement.

Mr. Ernst: Generally speaking, in many instances we do not even have to inspect. A tenant calls us, tells us there is a problem. We phone the landlord. The landlord fixes it, and that is the end of it. Very often we do not even have to inspect. We phone the tenant back: Is it fixed? Yes, everything is fine, no problem.

I would guess that somewhere in the high 90 percent of all of the rental units in the province of Manitoba we do not have any problem. The landlords operate the buildings. The tenants respect them, and they live in a reasonably happy existence.

What you are going to get in these circumstances is those areas where there are either continuing or isolated problems, depending upon what the circumstances are, and that tends to focus our attention collectively a lot more than the hundreds of thousands of units out there, or thousands of units out there that operate quite satisfactorily for both landlord and tenant.

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Ms. Cerilli: We can get at some of those issues in a moment, but I just want to the minister to know that I am aware of a group in the downtown Winnipeg area that has brought to the attention of the city, and perhaps the branch as well, 45 properties just in the area where the Legislature borders on here. It is a large problem, I would say, in certain areas of the city. For those people who are forced to look for reasonably priced accommodation, it is a very serious problem.

In my own constituency I get complaints on an ongoing basis. It can be things like leaking roofs and improperly maintained windows, unsafe doors that do not open and lock properly. There is a lot of wiggle room here I think too with the fact that I hope there are criteria. I have asked to see criteria for determining if something is urgent, and I hope that I can get that. I want to go back to the initial question that I had with trying to look at what is happening in the city of Winnipeg where there may not even be the involvement of the Residential Tenancies Branch from the outset, where we are relying on the city health inspectors.

What I hear is that they are often quick to respond but it seems that there is nothing resulting from the inspection. I would urge the minister to undertake discussions with the City of Winnipeg to see an automatic referral of those city health inspection work orders to the Residential Tenancies Branch. I am wondering if he is agreeable to that.

Mr. Ernst: I thank the member for her advice and I will certainly give that consideration.

Ms. Cerilli: Further to that I want to ask the minister, other than the two inspectors that actually go out on repair requests, how many staff are there in the division that are doing the phone calling to the landlords when there is a complaint? Is that additional people? How many additional people?

Mr. Ernst: There are seven front-line intake staff that receive complaints and try to resolve them on an emergent or quick basis. They are the ones who would receive the complaint, check the tenant, check the landlord, and then if there is further follow-up or inspection required, pass it on to the inspector.

Ms. Cerilli: How many backlog inspections are waiting currently?

Mr. Ernst: We do not have a number for the member at the present time.

Ms. Cerilli: I am sorry, I did not hear the minister's answer.

Mr. Ernst: We do not have a number with respect to that. We will have to check.

Ms. Cerilli: I would appreciate that. Further to my urging the minister to consider consultation and discussions with the City of Winnipeg so that there is a better enforcement and using the powers of the province throughout the city on all work orders, I am wondering if the minister could explain what the city has said, if this has been discussed. What is their reason for not automatically referring all the city health inspectors' work orders to the provincial government?

Mr. Ernst: The city is of the view that they wish to try and obtain compliance with their orders and that they do not want to use a sledge hammer to kill a fly, to use that circumstance. If they can get compliance with their order, and in many cases--I do not know for sure, but I am guessing that they do get compliance in an awful lot of cases--then that is in the best interests of the city taxpayer, I guess, as well as the provincial one. But they do not come to us until they feel they cannot get compliance.

Ms. Cerilli: And I wonder how long that takes.

Mr. Ernst: I have not the foggiest idea.

Ms. Cerilli: I am going to get into one specific case here, and maybe you will not be able to answer this right now, but you can pass me the information later. Have there ever been any provincial inspectors out to 117 Harriet?

Mr. Ernst: We will have to look into that.

Ms. Cerilli: How about the issue of third-party complaints? Is it allowable for a nontenant to call the department and ask for an inspection? I will explain why that is important, and I am going to get into two other issues in this area that are posing a real problem for low-income Manitobans, particularly if they are on social allowance.

We have a situation where a tenant is living in an apartment. There are unsafe situations, it is substandard, and they are hesitant to make a complaint, because then if they do and they end up having to move, they are not going to get a good reference to be able to find a new apartment. A lot of people would be best served if they could have a third party call in the complaint. Is that something that is available to citizens?

Mr. Ernst: I should point out, Mr. Chairman, that we do need to know first-hand information. We need to be able to question circumstances and other things surrounding those particular issues. I can tell the member that no landlord would ever get an eviction or anything of that nature because someone went to the Residential Tenancies Branch to deal with an issue. What happens, we deal with 10,000 or more complaints a year in the Residential Tenancies Branch. So there would be an awful lot of tenants out on the street if that were to occur. There are also other protective measures for tenants that if they do lodge a complaint and they are harassed or any other action taken by a landlord, it is not permitted and will not be tolerated.

Ms. Cerilli: So is it available or open for a friend or relative to call on behalf of a tenant to request an inspection?

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Mr. Ernst: To lodge a complaint with the branch on behalf of someone and there is legitimacy to it and we are able to determine that from discussions with the person, then I am sure that would occur, particularly in the case of the elderly where they are confused, they do not understand that kind of thing so the son or daughter, uncle or brother or somebody phones and says there is a problem with my mother's apartment, can you go down there and deal with it. I am sure that is a reasonable circumstance.

Similarly, if someone is not necessarily conversant, particularly in English, then if someone phones on their behalf for that circumstance also we would deal with that. But we need to be able to ascertain the information necessary to give credence to a complaint, and if we are able to ascertain that information then the complaint would be accepted.

Ms. Cerilli: How about if it is a residents' group. There are a number of resident organizations that are concerned that it may be there are a few properties in that neighbourhood where they know that there are unsafe structures. The one that I was referring to earlier would fall into that category. Could tenants or residents or homeowners in the neighbourhood act on behalf of their community and ensure that there are going to be inspections done and work orders followed up?

Mr. Ernst: The answer, Mr. Chairman, is technically yes; the director can act on his own initiative. At the same time we are not on any fishing trips. We are not out to assist one party to harass another, or to act on speculative ideas because someone thinks something might be wrong with the building, that it is structurally unsound or unsafe. Given reasonable evidence, the director can act.

Ms. Cerilli: I just want to clarify how much time we have left.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please. I would like to suggest that this section of the Committee of Supply temporarily interrupt its proceeding, so that Madam Speaker may resume the Chair to permit the House to determine whether there is an agreement to amend the previously agreed-to sitting hours for tomorrow morning. [agreed]