Mr. Chairperson (Marcel Laurendeau): Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This section of the Committee of Supply will be considering the Estimates for Executive Council.
Does the honourable the First Minister (Mr. Filmon) have an opening statement?
Hon. Gary Filmon (Premier): Mr. Chairperson, I do have some introductory comments on issues in Executive Council Estimates.
The 1998-99 total for the department is $3,280,700, an increase of 3.1 percent over the Adjusted Vote for 1997-98. The number of staff years remains unchanged at 44. The amount of the increase in the appropriation for Executive Council for 1998-99 is $97,600, most of which represents changes in salaries and employee benefits attributable to the general salary increase and reduced workweek adjustments.
I am pleased to point out that the total also includes a $25,000 increase in the amount requested for the International Development Program of the Manitoba Council for International Cooperation. During last year's review of Executive Council's Estimates, the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Doer) was particularly complimentary about Manitoba's international development initiatives and has indicated, I believe, that he and his colleagues would have no difficulty endorsing an increase in the overall amount provided for the many projects around the world which are receiving support from the people of Manitoba through the Manitoba Council for International Co-operation.
Mr. Chairperson, I am pleased to say that the $25,000 or 5.6 percent increase in international assistance brings the total vote for that item to $475,000, the highest level ever, and slightly above the previous high levels at the beginning of the decade. I believe that the citizens of our province can be justly proud of the very fine work which is being done with these funds.
Manitoba's international assistance projects are grouped into three broad categories: relief and rehabilitation; development projects; and what are called theme projects. Appropriately, the theme for the last two years has been peace building and reconciliation.
A list of some of the projects which are underway or which have recently been completed gives a sense of their scope--blankets for malnourished children in Sudan, flood relief in Ecuador, along with a hygiene project, irrigation and sustainable farming in Zambia, AIDS education in Nigeria, literacy in India, training and employment in Nicaragua and Uruguay, community health in Haiti and a wide range of other projects in Africa, South America, the Caribbean and Asia.
As members are aware, Manitoba's financial support complements and backs up outside support from various independent agencies to make all these initiatives possible. Earlier this year, one of the projects supported by our matching grant program, a support project for a network of women's groups involving 3,000 women from the most disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods in Benin, was chosen by a papal committee in the name of His Holiness as one of the best international development projects worldwide. It was one of only two projects chosen from the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development & Peace which was our sponsoring and implementing partner in this program. This is a notable achievement by this organization, and we are pleased that the contributions of the people of Manitoba are being put to such good use.
I have had a chance to visit some of our province's international projects during trade missions over the years and have never failed to be impressed and proud and especially proud of the respect and admiration in the host countries for the expertise and commitment of the many individuals and groups in Manitoba who are involved in relief and development work. Many of our fellow citizens do not know how well known Manitoba is worldwide in the relief and development fields and how much our assistance has meant, especially in the Third World.
Manitoba has received a great deal of support in our times of difficulty and natural disasters, but Manitobans are active year-round every year in more than returning that support and generosity. These Manitobans are every bit as important as ambassadors for our province as the public servants who are participating in various government projects around the world and the private and public sector members of the trade and investment missions which have been so helpful in making Manitoba's name even better known in major markets around the globe.
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Manitoba is involved in a number of governance projects around the world with sponsorship from the federal government and various international organizations such as the World Bank. These projects are designed to help officials in new democracies establish the programs and practices they need to meet their new responsibilities.
In the past, the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Doer) and I have agreed on the importance of these initiatives and particularly on the merits of Canada's efforts to support the new government of South Africa and its provinces. The members opposite will share our pride, I know, in the fact that our co-operation agreement with the North West province of South Africa continues to serve as the model for other provinces' agreements. In the last year, for instance, there have been several two-way exchanges, and these are expected to continue for at least another two years. In November, seven of Manitoba's directors of finance and administration visited North West to assist them in improving their management and budgeting practices, and I am told their assistance was very timely and helpful. We expect another group of officials from North West to visit Manitoba in the spring.
As members know, this program is financed largely through Canada's International Development Research Centre while Manitoba covers our staff's wages and time for the exchanges. All exchanges are organized in line with priorities set by our North West partners. In some ways, this is the ultimate example of co-operation: a federal-provincial partnership in Canada working alongside a federal-provincial partnership in South Africa. There are, no doubt, some lessons to be drawn from this success.
Another good example of partnership and co-operation is the Team Canada approach to trade and investment promotion. The last Team Canada mission in January of this year was particularly successful for our province. A record number of business delegates participated from Manitoba, and next year's Pan American Games were among the major themes of the mission and the presentations we made to business and government leaders in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Chile. Every Team Canada mission so far has enabled Manitoba to build on existing relationships and to expand them. Often Manitoba is already one of the most well-known Canadian jurisdictions in the nations we have visited, thanks to previous Manitoba missions, and we have been able to build on that head start.
As members may know, the federal government continues to be interested in pursuing other federal-provincial co-operative trade missions. The Team Canada concept has helped our country build new bridges and open new doors in very important markets. Some of its novelty may have worn off in our country, but from outside our borders it is seen as an extremely effective instrument for giving Canada profile and access which other larger nations wish they could duplicate.
As I said, the Team Canada missions have also been among the better examples of a successful federal-provincial-territorial partnership approach to dealing with national key priorities, but it is only one example. Two others which I have cited many times are the National Infrastructure Program and the National Child Benefit. In all three cases, the planning and implementation of these initiatives has been done jointly and co-operatively with the federal government, and the results have been consistently positive.
The federal government has been able to provide leadership, but it has also made most key decisions in a spirit of collaboration. Even when the initiatives were conceived by the provinces, and that is true in all three examples I mention, the federal government has received the bulk of the credit and has exercised its leadership by consensus building. Now, though, the federal government has failed to renew the National Infrastructure Program. It has shown little inclination to follow up provinces and territories proposals for a national highways program, and in Mr. Martin's February budget it effectively ignored an unprecedented and unanimous call by the premiers and territorial leaders to begin restoring essential core funding for health care. Instead the federal government chose to act unilaterally and missed a very important opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to a new approach to its relationship with provincial governments.
Instead we saw evidence of old-style federal thinking and unilateral decision making, a major disappointment for those of us who have seen how much progress can be achieved through co-operation and how the opposite approach, unilateral decisions made in Ottawa, can lead to costly delays and needless duplication. Canadians want co-operation and know that their services will improve when it is the watch word for the relations among governments.
Our government and I believe those of most of the provinces and territories will continue to emphasize the benefits of partnership, not only for programs and services but also for the unity of Canada. Some commentators are saying that the federal government must act alone and deal directly with Canadians through new social and other programs in order to assert its legitimacy and increase its credibility, especially in the province of Quebec. I believe that is a highly debatable proposition, especially outside Quebec, and especially when virtually all provincial and territorial governments remain fully prepared to ensure that the Government of Canada gets the credit it deserves for program support.
The National Child Benefit remains the best recent example where the partnership concept in joint federal, provincial and territorial leadership have produced a new national program with great potential and with substantial credit and visibility for the Government of Canada. An equally important initiative and possibly even more important is under negotiation now, the proposed framework agreement for social policy. That work was initiated formally at the First Ministers' meeting in December and a June, July deadline has been set for its completion.
My colleague the Minister of Family Services (Mrs. Mitchelson) is representing our province in the negotiations. It is our hope that the federal, provincial and territorial governments can develop a new master agreement which will guide the development and implementation of social programming over the long term. We believe such an agreement must confirm the spirit of partnership and respect for jurisdiction which is the basis for our federation, in line with the Calgary unity framework. The agreement should also set out provisions for joint resolution of intergovernmental disputes and, at a minimum, some solid guiding principles and commitments concerning federal financial support for national social programs including health care into the new millennium. The work on the framework agreement will be a most important test of the federal government's commitment to the partnership principle and to a co-operative approach for setting and meeting essential national priorities.
I believe it would be extremely unfortunate if the federal government were to turn its back on this opportunity. Now with our fiscal houses much more in order, governments all have the chance to work together to direct our resources and scarce tax dollars towards the most important needs facing Canada. That is how we can get the most done and avoid the kinds of costly and wasteful confrontations of the past.
Again, we will continue to stress the need for partnership and the fact that it has proved time and again to be the best way of making our Canadian federation work better.
Before concluding, I want to touch briefly on our government's efforts to help renew and revitalize the public service. I know members opposite share our interest in this goal as Manitoba and other Canadian governments deal with changing demographics, and particularly the aging and retirement of our workforce, including many of our senior managers.
One very successful initiative is our new Management Internship Program which is entering its third year and beginning its third intake of highly qualified young people. Those in the first year of the program are now finding permanent positions in the civil service. They have already made valuable contributions to the departments with which they have worked, and their talents will ensure that they will provide important leadership for our province over the course of their careers.
I also want to commend the efforts of my colleagues and our existing civil service, which I continue to believe is unequalled in Canada. I want to express my appreciation as well to the members of Treasury Board and their staff for the many hours of work which went into the preparation of this year's Estimates.
Finally I want to thank our own staff in Executive Council. Their dedication, commitment and professionalism continue to be a great support to my cabinet colleagues and to me in my duties as Premier. I believe the people of Manitoba are being well served by their efforts.
Mr. Chair, I look forward to the comments and questions of members opposite.
Mr. Chairperson: We thank the First Minister for those comments. Does the Leader of the official opposition have an opening comment?
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Mr. Gary Doer (Leader of the Opposition): Yes, I do. Just a brief statement today. I look forward to the debate on the Premier's Estimates and the matters, of course, that would be under the responsibility of the Premier as the head of government.
Many items we have asked in the past and many items we will ask today and potentially this week will deal with matters that are of his responsibility as they deal with his job as the chair of cabinet and the head of government here in the province of Manitoba. We certainly support the idea of an enhancement to funding to the International Development Fund in the Premier's Estimates. It is a very positive proposal. I think it is very important for Manitoba to continue to work on community economic development projects across the world based on need.
I think the oldest saying that we all have learned is you give a person a fish and they eat for a day, you teach him how to fish and they eat for life. Obviously that is the genesis of many of the community groups that are involved in these community economic development projects. I have had a chance to visit--not around the world these projects but rather around the corner when they have their displays here in the Legislature. I have always been impressed with the volunteers and staff of these organizations that put so much into making our world a safer place to live and a better place to live for our citizens of the world.
I note that the government is continuing its partnership with South Africa. I would say to the Premier that oftentimes when delegations of people from South Africa visit here, they are often spending a lot of time with organizations that may be tied to the kind of national and governmental formal structures. There is still a large community of volunteers in the anti-apartheid movement here in Manitoba that worked hard over the last 20 years that want to meet with the people from South Africa and conversely many people from Mandela's party that are in the state governments that would like to meet with the activists that have been working around the world, some of them that reside here in Manitoba. So I would encourage that kind of contact as well because there certainly is an international community in Manitoba that has spoken out and fought for the rights of people in South Africa to have votes and economic opportunity in their country, and any work that can be provided by this government to the North West province is certainly worthy of support by certainly our side in terms of Manitoba's initiatives.
We have a number of concerns about people that also live in fairly deprived conditions here in Manitoba as well, and we will be continuing to raise the issues of our own communities that are less than Canadian in terms of its standards of water, sewer, health, our First Nations communities, some of which are remote and some of which suffer from great numbers of infrastructure and health disadvantages and economic and educational disadvantages, and of course those are also concerns that we would have, as would the Premier (Mr. Filmon).
We have a number of questions of the government on its role in dealing with the federal government. We would support the government's position that the first priority of the federal budget should have been to reinstate some of the cuts that were made in medicare. We, of course, have raised since the time we were in government in the early '80s the issue of federal cutbacks. We warned about the slippery slope of federal cutbacks in the mid '80s. I believe that the former Minister of Finance, the Finance critic, Mr. Ransom joined with Mr. Schroeder in the early '80s to warn the Mulroney government about the cutbacks, and of course the odd invitation was made to the Premier to join us against the Mulroney government's initiatives on cutting back in health and post-secondary education. Regrettably those cuts continued, and some of the predictions that were made 10 or 11 years ago about the amount of money that the federal government would be paying into medicare and the danger it would represent to a two-tier health care system regrettably are coming true. We would certainly support that the first priority for the federal government should not be programs that have red colouring on it or blue colouring on it in terms of its announcement, or dare I say, some day federally orange colouring, but rather make sense for people in their own communities in terms of health care and post-secondary education. I hope that there is some success.
It is kind of ironic that the Premier of Quebec, who wants to break away from the country, is now the one negotiating with the federal government on the millennium project in terms of its application. But certainly, I think, we are really out of touch with the Canadian public when we have one set of programs being announced from Ottawa that do not make sense in terms of federal-provincial co-operation on the major priorities for people in our own communities. Health care, certainly, is a major concern. However, we do believe that the government has had choices through this period of time, and we are certainly willing to debate that and discuss that with the government as we proceed through these Estimates and other Estimates that are concurrent to these Estimates today.
We are concerned about the social framework. We think we missed a major opportunity again that was a major opportunity in Canada to look at some major ways of having a national floor for people on, dare I say, looking at bold new programs like minimum income programs when you look at Workers Compensation, when you look at social assistance, when you look at Unemployment Insurance or now Employment Insurance, when you look at the social assistance to the provinces. When you look at all the myriad of programs, it seems to me that we continue to have four or five different jurisdictions and five or six different standards and ten different programs, and the more and more the federal government withdraws from their support on social programs, the less and less we have an opportunity to have a national floor, a national program administered with provincial co-operation, which would be our view of how we should proceed into the 21st Century, rather than have, as I say, separate franchises with decreasing amount of money from the federal government.
I understand that committee is being chaired on the federal side by Anne McLellan, and I am not sure who else is on that from the federal side, but we will look forward to the assessment of the Premier (Mr. Filmon) on that. I know he has the Minister of Family Services (Mrs. Mitchelson) involved. I certainly know the different provinces have different representatives on that committee. Andrew from British Columbia I know is on it, and I believe Mr. Wiens from Saskatchewan is on that committee. I wish it well, but I hope it is not just another committee to consult about what we are going to do, and then at the end of the day the federal government keeps retreating for both its rural responsibilities and basically withdraws from what I consider it to be their responsibility, and that is a floor across Canada for people. I think we should be spending less money on administering these programs and more money on the national floor for people on the social side. It may mean some co-operation, as I say, from other programs that are provincially administered today.
In health care we have a number of questions specifically to the Premier (Mr. Filmon) between the co-ordination between one minister and the other. We have numbers of questions on federal, provincial and municipal infrastructure programs. Where are all the programs at, what does it mean for the people? Are we going to see another program shortly or are we going to see a program just announced before, dare I say it cynically, the next federal election campaign. It seems to me that these tripartite programs make sense on an ongoing basis. I remember we were trying to work with the former federal minister responsible for these programs, Mr. De Cotret when he said no to it, and I was glad that the federal Liberals promised it, but I think the logic of doing it, the logic of having a federal-provincial program, municipal program is inescapable, and we have a number of questions about that.
We support the provincial government's position on a gas tax rebate from the federal government to the provinces to deal with the road situation. The double whammy on transportation here in this province of pooling of the Crow rate changes is too much already for our roads; the weights that are on those roads are creating significant damage to our infrastructure. We need help from the federal government who, as I say, has withdrawn from their responsibilities under rail transportation and has put nothing, literally nothing in place as a transition strategy or a long-term strategy.
We have a number of questions about the continuing erosion of population growth through emigration, and we will be raising that under the federal-provincial section of these Estimates. Education: we have a number of questions about the involvement of the minister's advisory committee in the decision making of the government and the tax burden on property taxpayers that has developed particularly after a period of time that the Premier (Mr. Filmon) has obtained a majority. We have seen a massive erosion, we think, of support for public education and its impact on the taxpayer here in Manitoba.
We have a number of questions and concerns about the flood of '97, but also the former floods in western Manitoba in previous years. I believe '95 we had flooding on the west, and we will have questions about flooding situations in Manitoba. I was surprised we did not have a statement today about any current potential flooding challenges that we would have. Obviously, we wish the people in eastern Canada or central Canada, for that matter, well as these rivers swell in Quebec and in parts of eastern Ontario and New Brunswick. We certainly trust that those citizens that are going through some of the trauma that Manitoba's citizens went through are adequately protected and have adequate federal-provincial programs to allow them to get back on their feet.
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We have questions on Child Benefit and a number of other federal-provincial issues, the Pan Am Games, we want updates on that issue in terms of these Estimates with the Premier (Mr. Filmon), and a number of other matters that we feel are important. These are just some of the questions that we will be raising along with others. The member for the Interlake (Mr. Clif Evans) has a couple of questions specific to his constituency, but those are some of the issues we want to raise today and give you an alert to your staff that we will be in turn raising them as we proceed with these Estimates.
Mr. Chairperson: We thank the Leader of the official opposition for those remarks. I would like to remind members of the committee that debate on the minister's salary, item 1.(a), is deferred until all other items in the Estimates of this department are passed.
At this time we invite the minister's staff to take their places in the Chamber.
Mr. Filmon: While the staff are coming in, if I could just ask for clarification, if the Leader of the Opposition prefers to do as we have in the past and that is not go line by line but just continue to ask his questions, to have the exchange of information and then at the end put all of the lines to the votes.
Mr. Doer: Yes, that would be our preference as well.
Mr. Chairperson: Okay, then we will just pass it after we are done the questioning. We will just wait for the staff.
Is the First Minister prepared to introduce his staff members present at the committee today?
Mr. Filmon: Yes. If I may begin with the Clerk of the Executive Council, Mr. Donald Leitch; as well as Mrs. Karen Hill, who is director of finance administration; my chief of staff, Mr. Taras Sokolyk; and the cabinet secretary for intergovernmental relations, Mr. James Eldridge.
Mr. Chairperson: The item before the committee is item 1.(b) Administration and Finance, Executive Support (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits, but with the understanding of the committee, we will be open-ending the questions.
Mr. Doer: We have asked this question before about the salaries of all the staff. You have been able to table that. We have the copies of the Orders-in-Council but not all of them include specific salaries.
Mr. Filmon: I will provide the listing of salaries. I do not have the Orders-in-Council.
Mr. Doer: I have those.
Mr. Filmon: Oh, you do. Okay.
Mr. Doer: I try to keep track of them.
Mr. Filmon: All right then, this is a listing of salaries for the people who are in Executive Council.
Mr. Doer: Can the Premier indicate which staff under his responsibility are in the regular civil service pension, which staff have a separate agreement and which staff have an agreement on pensions beyond the civil service contribution level of 7 percent from the employers' contribution share?
Mr. Filmon: The only person who has a pension agreement that is beyond any normal contribution limits is the Clerk of the Executive Council whose contributions are the same as it has been for I believe the last five years or more, which was a $13,500 contribution made on his behalf to a pension, an RRSP pension fund by the government.
Mr. Doer: Has any other staff since our last set of Estimates been approved at cabinet to have--I believe it was Mr. Benson, Mr. Leitch and some others that had the special pension payment. Are there any other staff that have been approved since our last Estimates on the higher rate than the--as I say, it looks like three different pension plans in the Premier's office, one is the special rate, the higher rate; the second one is a registered retirement savings plan in contract at seven and seven, which is similar to the MLAs, and the third one would be within The Civil Service Act. Is there anybody else that has been approved at Order-in-Council level to be on a similar level in the pensions?
Mr. Filmon: No, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Doer: In light of the fact that MLAs have gone through a public review on their pensions and it was deemed by the public, and I think successfully, to get rid of preferential pensions and go to something that is closer to the private sector, something that started in Saskatchewan, something that has continued on, was initiated in 1995 here in Manitoba, has there been any thought, given the public's views on our elected officials' pensions, that the pension plans for other senior civil servants would be changed consistent with what has happened to those of us who are accountable to the public directly as elected representatives?
Mr. Filmon: The Civil Service Commission does a review across Canada periodically to see how we stack up against others in the country. We are generally at or below the middle range of the types of levels of pension coverage, and certainly we would be at or below the middle range in salary levels with most of the provincial governments in Canada and certainly well below the federal government, so we have no reason to undertake a major review at this point since we do not seem to be out of step with the norm.
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Mr. Doer: And of course we were not out of step with the norm before on our preferential pension plan here in the Legislature, but it did not mean to say that we would carry it on indefinitely. The public's view was that the pension funds for MLAs and for cabinet ministers and those of us who were in other positions, elected positions, were wrong to have a pension fund that was so generous in light of the private sector pension plans, and so the logic of our staying on with what the federal government did was not what determined how we would change things. I would cite an example for the Premier.
I recall reading a minority report signed by Jules Benson on judges' salaries, which the majority report was signed by Mr. Green, I believe, and I thought it was kind of curious that he was writing this long minority report about preferential pensions when he was clearly in a position of having preferential pensions himself. Now, I do not know, perhaps it is useful that sometimes not everybody understands--in these arbitration cases there are these separate processes that go back to the Legislature--what is actually going on, but I thought it was rather ironic that somebody who himself was getting a pension plan that was beyond the level which the Premier was getting, who is underpaid relative to other premiers, and the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Enns) was getting, who is probably underpaid and underworked compared to--or overworked, of course, compared to other ministers of Agriculture--I thought it was rather ironic that he was writing this minority report on behalf of the government, and yet he was arguing one way in the minority report and was actually himself getting a preferential treatment.
I have no difficulty. I had a report that the former Minister of Finance tabled on CEO compensation. I even stuck my neck out when there was a critical point of a CEO for a Crown corporation, the MPIC, getting a salary. I actually supported it, which is not necessarily politically popular, but I would rather have the salaries up front rather than the benefits being preferential.
Does the Premier not think it is difficult for the chair of Treasury Board to argue in a so-called independent process in a minority report one way and be clearly in the opposite situation himself?
Mr. Filmon: I think that all of us have to abide by a test of reasonableness as opposed to a test of what makes good politics. I know that the Leader of the Opposition and particularly his colleague from Thompson, who is mumbling from his seat, may try and make allegations that they think will get them great political credit about people's compensation.
The one thing I do know about the individual that the member opposite has cited, and I might say that he is not on this list of Executive Council and he is not one of the employees of Executive Council. So we are essentially off my Estimates here, but I will respond to him by just simply saying that we are in a competitive environment, and there are special arrangements made to compensate people whom we expect to come to work for government, who have the talents and skills that we need. Even with and looking at the entire package for the individual that the member opposite has cited, his entire compensation package is still less than two-thirds of that which he was being paid here in Manitoba as a practicing chartered accountant, so you have to compare it to what a person's earning capability is or else you are not going to be able to get good people to come and work for government.
We made that same determination obviously in hiring, for instance, in the past, deputy ministers with specific skills. I know that the government, of which the member was a part in hiring a doctor for a specific role, would have to pay that doctor in some cases what he was capable of getting, even though it may well be beyond the range that the government provided for, and so contracts were entered into on a secondment basis to provide for some of the funding to come from the university in some cases, or some of it to come from other sources. People were paid well in excess of what the range would be in the normal compensation.
In this particular case, the total compensation package for the individual to whom the member refers is not out of line with somebody with the responsibility of being secretary of Treasury Board. I guess the best evidence of that is the fact that it is less than two-thirds of what he was earning in the private sector as a practicing chartered accountant.
Mr. Doer: I would note that the hiring of Mr. Benson was in a press release issued by the Premier. I would assume that the hiring and firing of the secretary of Treasury Board is the responsibility of the Premier. The recommendation to hire that individual rests with the Premier, and that is why I think it is completely within the jurisdiction of the Premier's Estimates.
I just keep raising this issue because, as the salaries go up in the provincial public service, and they are, particularly at the senior levels, I think that we should practise what we preach with the senior public service the same way we practise what we preach with ourselves. I just believe that the argument--I have always believed with the former government and when I had a brief tenure looking at these salaries and got a report written, which I think that some of the--and gave it--the former member for Morris was the former Minister of Finance. I always believed that the so-called benefits should be consistent with the rest of the public service and the salaries should be equal to comparable salaries in the public service to compete, and I still have not changed my mind on that. I believe that some of the perks that were available for Crowns in the past and senior public employees in the past in our government were wrong, and I said so in the report that we tabled and a report that was somewhat implemented by the former minister responsible for Crown investments.
I do think that there is a problem. Eventually there will be a problem with somebody representing the government saying one thing about one other group of professionals who will argue the same way, that we are two-thirds the salary that we could have got in the private sector, all these other arguments that you hear. You always hear these arguments, I could have got more in the private sector. There are lots of members of this Chamber who took pay decreases. Some people maybe did not, but there are lots of people over time who have taken decreases in salary. [interjection] What is that?
An Honourable Member: The member for Thompson (Mr. Ashton) certainly did not take a decrease.
Mr. Steve Ashton (Thompson): Oh, you want to bet? I was working underground at Inco and made more money than I did here.
Mr. Doer: Well, you are still continuing on Question Period here.
Well, I just think there are some people in this Chamber that have taken pay cuts, and some people have taken comparable pay from where they were before, and sure, there will be some people that got a pay increase. I am just saying that it is really hard to send a representative out to argue against another group of people that is arguing the federal government and other provinces and then arguing against the pension plan if that person has a more generous pension plan than the people they are arguing against. I think you have a lot of gall signing a minority report when you are not practising what you are preaching yourself, and some day your representative is going to get caught at it. I just give you that advice.
Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. I hate to interrupt the member when he is in full flight, but could I ask members to refrain from having discussions across the way. It makes it difficult for me to hear the honourable member when he is putting forward his questions.
Mr. Doer: So I have given my view and I disagree with the Premier, and we will continue to disagree on the generous pension plans that some individuals have obtained from the Premier and cabinet, and we will just continue to disagree with the government.
In terms of the Health department, the Premier was quoted as saying last year the Treasury Board and he had believed that $10 million would be saved in the privatization initiative of home care. Has the Premier revised his view on the privatization of home care? Does he now believe he was wrong in the House and wrong in the public to say we would be saving $10 million with the privatization initiative that he obviously approved and was proceeded with in the '96-97 and '98 year?
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It is a fairly important item, Mr. Chair, and I would ask the Premier to state what is the present situation with the privatization of home care and what is the present analysis of the so-called savings the Premier alleged over the last couple of years.
Mr. Filmon: I would recommend that for more detail on this, the Leader of the Opposition do speak to the Minister of Health (Mr. Praznik) in his Estimates, which are going on concurrently right now. What I will say is that the $10-million figure was the estimate that was provided to me by staff in the Department of Health.
Mr. Edward Helwer, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair
I have not seen any review of the trial that has been conducted with respect to privatizing some elements of home care within certain quadrants in the city of Winnipeg. That analysis is being prepared, and based on that analysis final determination as to our course of action will eventually be made.
Mr. Doer: Yes, the Department of Health provided the information, but the Treasury Board also reviewed the information and proceeded with a recommendation. In fact, we tabled the Treasury Board document. Did the Treasury Board review the assessments of the Department of Health and conclude that the $10 million could be saved, proceeding to a private profit home care system in the four quadrants of Winnipeg as initially proposed by Treasury Board?
Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, I have not been on Treasury Board since 1993, so I could not answer that question.
Mr. Doer: Well, does the Treasury Board still report to cabinet?
Mr. Filmon: The only thing that happens to cabinet is that there is the minutes of Treasury Board come to cabinet as part of a normal process, Mr. Acting Chairman.
Mr. Doer: The government and the Premier (Mr. Filmon), who likes to be accurate on his numbers, went around for two years saying we are saving $10 million with proceeding to the privatization of home care. I would assume that the Premier did not just--we think that they just grab the ideological proposal out of thin air because it was obviously contrary to their own advisory committee. It was contrary to even Connie Curran, whose other recommendations they have implemented. It was contrary to most other recommendations that had been made to government, as I say from their own appointed advisory committee, from Dr. Shapiro and others, so where did the Premier get the $10 million from, and it could not have survived in the Department of Health, I would think, without the Treasury Board providing the overview of whether the numbers were accurate and proceeding with the recommendation that we tabled in this House to proceed with the privatization of all four quadrants. Surely Treasury Board, which reports to the Premier (Mr. Filmon), to cabinet, would have reviewed these numbers.
Mr. Filmon: Like every committee of cabinet, Treasury Board does report by virtue of the Chair, sitting as a member of cabinet, and the minutes being approved on a regular basis. I will say that the information was provided to me, as it would have been to Treasury Board by the Department of Health, and I would assume, since the member opposite has said that he has seen the copy of the Treasury Board approval, that the Treasury Board did think it was a valid number. I assumed it to be a valid number, which is why I used it in public responses, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Doer: In December of 1997, the new Minister of Health (Mr. Praznik), the third Minister of Health under this Premier (Mr. Filmon), said that there are no savings in the privatization of home care. The Premier has said he has not seen any review of home care yet. How would the Minister of Health know something that the Premier did not know about the so-called savings of money in the home care privatization initiative?
Mr. Filmon: I am sure, Mr. Chairman, that the minister would be privy to work in progress, information that was not yet formally assembled for presentation to Treasury Board or cabinet. I have certainly not seen anything of that nature. The member opposite makes some sort of issue of the fact that I have had three ministers of Health during a 10-year period in office. I do not know what the comment is related to. I know that during the Pawley years in office, time when he was sitting on this side of the House as a member of cabinet, that there were at least two Ministers of Health, Mr. Desjardins, and Mr. Parasiuk, so I do not know what the relationship is to having three ministers of Health in 10 years.
Mr. Doer: Well, the relationship is only the one was going gung ho to privatize and the other one is going gung ho to stop it, and I want to know what the numbers were, and I want to know what process is taking place, so I would ask the Premier (Mr. Filmon), is the Minister of Health (Mr. Praznik) saying that they are going to stop the privatization in the city of Winnipeg? Is he saying that without cabinet approval, or did he have approval of the Premier?
Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, this matter has not been brought to Treasury Board to my knowledge or to cabinet. The only thing that I heard the minister say was that the evaluation was taking place and he had the impression that there were not savings to be made, but I have not seen any document that details that.
Mr. Doer: So is the Premier saying there is no final decision on the privatization of home care in the city of Winnipeg?
Mr. Chairperson in the Chair
Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chair, the member would have to ask the Minister of Health for that, and I do repeat that he is sitting in another room undergoing his Estimates review, and this is an appropriate question for him.
Mr. Doer: Well, you are the head of government and I am assuming that you ultimately make the final decision about to proceed with privatization of the telephone system, with privatization of home care. If the government is going to reverse its position on home care, I assume that you make the decision, that the Minister of Health would recommend to cabinet, and you chair cabinet, is that not correct that you will make the ultimate decision?
Mr. Filmon: I am surprised that the member opposite who has been in government does not know that the process is that some decisions are made by cabinet and many, many, many decisions are made on the basis of delegation of authority to ministers and departments.
Mr. Doer: So if the Minister of Health wanted to privatize all of home care tomorrow, he could do so without your approval?
Mr. Filmon: We are playing games here, but I will play the game with the member because he obviously does not have anything better to do, Mr. Chairman. The fact of the matter is that significant public issues generally are discussed, and I would consider this to be a significant public issue, but I have told him I do not know at what stage in the process it is, so he cannot try to put words in my mouth by saying it is or it is not being privatized or it is or it is not being cancelled. I have told him it is a process that was talked about when the decision was made to put out certain elements of home care for bids in certain quadrants of the city of Winnipeg. It was said that we will put it out, we will evaluate it based on the results that we have, and based on that evaluation, we will make a decision as to what we do in the next step. That is exactly the process that is taking place, and I have not seen the evaluation and I have not seen a recommendation, and I cannot give him any more information until I do.
Mr. Doer: Well, thank you very much, then, the Minister of Health's statements in December 1997 do not carry the approval of the Premier and the cabinet. He is just speaking, so to speak. Controversy comes up, he takes a position, Mr. Chair, and this is what we are trying to determine, because we know the Premier approved the original plan, and we know that he also stated it would save $10 million. In December of 1997, the Minister of Health then said the experiment did not work and we were not saving any money, and therefore we are not proceeding to maintain this private contract.
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We are not trying to play a game; home care is not a game to us. The proceeding to sell off assets and staff contrary to the wishes of the public, contrary to the wishes of the patients, contrary to the wishes of the Manitoba seniors organization, contrary to the advice of the Manitoba advisory committee, this is not a game to us, these are real flesh and blood decisions that affect real people. So we want to know where it is at. We want to know whether the department and the Minister of Health is just off making a glib statement somewhere, and we think we see the Minister of Health doing that from time to time. In fact, I could cite chapter and verse. We want to know whether it is a real decision or whether he is just flapping his gums, so to speak, because he is asked a question by a reporter. I want to know where it is. We have asked this in Question Period before. We want to know what is the state of play.
The Premier is saying there is no final decision made on the privatization of home care here in the city of Winnipeg, and that is contrary to the public statements made by his Minister of Health in December of 1997. So I would assume that the Premier obviously has the authority to make the statement and that the Minister of Health does not have the authority to make the statement. I think I have already got my answer, that he, you know, sees a microphone, makes a statement, and that it does not necessarily reflect the decision of cabinet. I also know well enough--and the Premier says being in government--that you are supposed to get approval for what you say on major policy issues before you say it, from the person who is running the government. People that tend not to do that over a long period of time tend to get themselves in a little trouble.
Mr. Filmon: May I just say, Mr. Chairman, that the member is playing games in the way he is trying to twist words. He put on the record two items which I believe to be false, saying that we sold off assets and we sold off people in the home care area. Both of those statements are false. It is game-playing on his part. He has been told by me and by the Minister of Health that the final evaluation is not in; it is in the process of being done, so he need not put words in the mouth of the Minister of Health either about that. He also should not imply that somehow ministers who make determinations in government or make statements in government are always in a position where they are subject to censure by their Premier.
His former leader, the former Premier, used to say that he had absolutely no control over cabinet, that all he was was one vote in cabinet, something that I thought was a shocking statement, but that was the statement he made. So he should not go and try and portray these kinds of things as being heavy-handed. He knows the process, that certain decisions come to cabinet, certain policies come to cabinet, other things are devolved authority to ministers and to departments, and it has been that way in the past, it remains that way today, and for the definitive answer to his question, the only person he can go to for it is sitting in another committee room right this very minute prepared to answer it I am sure.
Mr. Doer: We believe the buck stops here on these issues, and that is where we will ask the question. Is the Premier saying that no home care equipment has been sold off by his government since he became Premier?
Mr. Filmon: I cannot answer that question because I am not sure what he is referring to. I am sure the Minister of Health (Mr. Praznik) could give him a better answer.
Mr. Doer: Well, the Premier just finished saying I made a false statement. I think the Premier should do his homework before he makes statements like that because he just then said he did not know. How could he say I made a false statement if he does not know? You know, he has had a bad day. I do not know why he has had a bad day, but why he could say that--will the Premier then undertake to take as notice the fact that his government has in fact sold off home care equipment, privatized home care equipment, and will he come back to the House and confirm that and apologize for his statement about my making a false statement?
Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, I have had a great day. We were out at the bear pit with the Manitoba Association of Urban Municipalities, and I thought had a good two-way dialogue with representatives of municipal governments in the province. There was half the cabinet and myself there for what I thought was a very stimulating session. We were out at Bristol for the announcement of 225 additional jobs out there and the expansion taking place in our aerospace industry with a thousand additional service jobs attached to that. This has been a terrific day.
Mr. Chairman, the member is not specific, as always. He just sort of floats around the edges with a combination of half-truths and misinformation that generally he thinks makes it look very, very slick on his part. I am not interested in playing those games. If he wants specific information tell us what equipment he is referring to, and I will verify whether his allegations are accurate or not on behalf of the Minister of Health (Mr. Praznik), who is the person who should be answering those questions.
Mr. Doer: I will just verify that the Premier made a false statement, and I will bring back the information to show him that. He should be careful about making personal allegations like that before he has his facts.
Mr. Filmon: Did we sell any employees?
Mr. Doer: Beg your pardon.
Mr. Filmon: You said we sold employees. Did we sell employees?
Mr. Chairperson: Order, please.
Mr. Doer: If a person goes from a public job to a private job--
Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. Could I ask honourable members to wait their turn, and if they want to ask a question wait till they are recognized so we can get it on Hansard, please.
The honourable Leader of the official opposition, to conclude his question.
Mr. Doer: Yes, I have concluded my questions on home care. The Premier has said changes have not been approved by cabinet, and we accept that as the present state of play contrary to the Minister of Health's (Mr. Praznik) public statement.
Can the Premier indicate the present situation with the Winnipeg Health Authority? The former Minister of Health signed, under the Premier's obvious approval, an agreement with the faith-based institutions. It was in the period of time that the government was bringing through all kinds of controversial legislation, the sale of MTS contrary to their election promise. Obviously, they were feeling some pressure from the faith-based institutions, and they signed a memorandum of agreement in October of 1996. It had very specific responsibilities for the government and very specific responsibilities and authorities for the faith-based institutions.
Over the last six months, we have been debating a new Minister of Health who said that he could not live with the responsibility signed off by the former Minister of Health in the area of who is the employing authority. It seems to me in listening to faith-based institutions that they feel that the government, the present Minister of Health was reneging on an agreement that the former Minister of Health signed off.
Can the Premier please indicate whether they will be honouring the agreement of October 1996 or will they be attempting to change that? The date of WHA coming into play was April 1, 1998, which is already close to a week old, and on Wednesday it is a week since the new program was supposed to begin its responsibilities.
Mr. Filmon: I listened to the chair and the CEO of the Winnipeg Hospital Authority give various interviews this past week. I personally met with some of these individuals, along with the Minister of Health, along with representatives of various boards, and I know that matters are under discussion. The meeting that I attended certainly was a cordial one, and there was an agreement on all parts to try and pursue an amicable resolution to the differences that have been aired publicly on this issue. This was certainly over the past 10 days, and so I could not tell the member specifically where things stand. Again, I think the Minister of Health could probably give him the most recent update on that.
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Mr. Doer: Will the Premier be instructing the Minister of Health to moderate his position that he has taken in the House--the Premier has heard him in the House--a position that the WHA must have all the hiring-firing authority, which is contrary to the document signed by his previous Minister of Health? Will the Premier be instructing his Minister of Health to honour the spirit and the wording of the previous agreement as a starting point to negotiate the new direction of the WHA, or will it be the reversal that was articulated in this House by the Minister of Health that will be the prevailing direction that the Premier provides to his Minister of Health?
In other words, is he telling his Minister of Health to live by the spirit of the agreement that was signed, which is contrary to what he was saying in this House, or has the Premier ordered the Minister of Health or suggested to the Minister of Health that he step down a bit from his position articulated in the House in the last three weeks?
Mr. Filmon: My hope, and I know it is shared by the Minister of Health, is that we can find an amicable resolution and a reasonable resolution to the differences that appear to exist between some of the faith-based institutions and the WHA and Manitoba Health. I believe that there are a number of areas that can be looked at. It is a complicated issue. The member opposite knows that it, to a large extent, involves attempting to work through a minefield of employee relations, that involve different bargaining units, that involve many different employing authorities, and a need to co-ordinate program delivery for the betterment of those who need the health care services provided in our hospital system.
So, under those circumstances, all of us hopefully want to have this matter resolved to the best advantage of all those who rely on our health care delivery system in Winnipeg. I just believe that we have not found or have not explored all of the possible ways that we will see that come to an amicable resolution. Although, from my discussions within the last 10 days, listening to some board members, it seemed to me that we were not far off a resolution. I just say that I remain optimistic. I am sure that the minister will show the required flexibility to have an amicable resolution to the differences.
Mr. Doer: Can the Premier explain why the Order-in-Council dealing with the special supplementary funding to Health was not available to the public until two days after the budget, notwithstanding the fact that it was passed or signed by government weeks before that, and all the other Orders-in-Council that were signed at the time were released publicly save this one?
Mr. Filmon: My understanding is that the Minister of Finance (Mr. Stefanson) explained all of this in the House, that the Order-in-Council was passed and was held for a matter of days until the Minister of Finance could announce the additional funding in conjunction with release of the quarterly financial statement. That took place, and it then became available, but the Orders-in-Council are then sent out, mailed out weekly. It was not until the next mailing of Orders-in-Council that it got mailed out, so it certainly was not any deliberate action. It was just a normal process of how the paper flow works.
Mr. Doer: The Minister of Finance stated on March 10 that he did not withhold the Order-in-Council; somebody else did. I want to know who did it and why.
Mr. Filmon: The minister is correct, I am informed. He did not hold it. It was held for his announcement with the release of the third quarter financial statements. At that time it was publicly announced the additional money having been allocated to health care, and then it became available. It was just a matter of days, and it is the normal requirement that those Orders-in-Council not be released until the ministerial announcement which did take place, and it is done by the paperwork section of Executive Council. But there was certainly nothing deliberate or sinister in the process. It was a normal process of being held until he had an opportunity with the release of the third quarter financial statement to be able to announce it and highlight it. Then it flowed from there. It was just a matter of days.
Mr. Doer: The third quarter statement was released Friday, a week before the budget. I want to know then why on Monday, which would have been March 2, why was that Order-in-Council not released and why was it held till March 9?
Mr. Filmon: I am informed that when the Minister of Finance announced it publicly on the Friday, from that point forward it was available in the Orders-in-Council office for inspection by anybody. It then did not get put into the mail until after it was bundled with the Orders-in-Council from the Wednesday cabinet meeting, which would have been the 4th probably of March and probably received in the Leader of the Opposition's office then in the mail on the 9th, but had he or any of his staff gone to ask for it, subject to the Minister of Finance's announcement on Friday, they would have been able to access it.
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Mr. Doer: Our staff access Orders-in-Council on a regular routine basis and this Order-in-Council was not available on Monday the 2nd. It was not available until after the budget on the 9th. It was interesting in terms of the dates of what was announced, and I think we believe it was withheld. We believe that the government wanted to get a $100-million headline out on their budget day for new funding for health care. We know that in a fiscal year if you increase the amount of money you spend in the given fiscal year it should give you added benefits and added services within the fiscal year under which it is being added to, therefore it does not mean $100 million in extra or new money in terms of the base for the '98-99 budget. It means that the money that was allocated in the '97-98 budget, the money that was allocated during the year in supplementary spending authority, and therefore the difference was under $5 million in terms of what will be real money over what was spent or approved to be spent both in terms of the budget and also the Supplementary Estimates.
Many other health care people out here are saying that we have a crisis already at the existing level of funding by the provincial government, that the cuts that have been initiated by this Premier through essentially two Ministers of Health but partially due to the first Minister of Health in '92-93, put on hold after the by-elections in '93, '94, '95 and then accelerated after June of 1995 have in fact presented a real crisis in health care across Manitoba.
We have many programs that have been paid for by taxpayers that are closed down because of lack of staff, a lack of authority to run various technologies, run various equipment, run various programs. We have a situation where people are very, very worried about their health care, and they tell us they no longer blame the former Minister of Health or the previous Minister of Health or the existing Minister of Health.
The one common denominator is the member for Tuxedo, the Premier of the province. It is quite different than what we used to hear about: oh, it is the former member from Pembina and he is responsible, and therefore he is the one to blame, and everything will be fine now that they have changed the minister. People are no longer telling us that. This is from the public right across the province. Does the Premier feel that the, quote, new money in the budget is going to adequately deal with the present crisis in health care, and the situation which I find unacceptable of patients in the hallways, elective surgery being cancelled and cancelled again, citizens having to go to Grafton, North Dakota, for some of their diagnostic tests if they have the means, and situations I am sure he is hearing about that are unacceptable in terms of the standards under which Manitobans would expect in terms of health care services?
Mr. Filmon: Firstly I want to assure the member opposite that we do not ever assume we can pull anything over the eyes of the opposition. If so, why would the Minister of Finance (Mr. Stefanson) have released that third quarter statement and put that information on the record? It triggered the response that the member opposite gave on budget day. He had that information. It was made public to him, so if we had wanted to hide anything we would have delayed the release of the third quarter financial statement to deny him that information, but nobody was attempting to withhold information.
With respect to the areas that he has identified as areas of critical need, those are precisely the areas that we identified as a government and a cabinet some months ago, and additional funding was lined up to be put in place to address those. In some cases the funding was able to be utilized. In other cases, because of an inability to move programs effectively with the system of seven different acute care hospitals and nine different hospital institutions in the city of Winnipeg, those kinds of transfers either of program dollars or of people were not able to be effectively done.
We are disappointed, for instance, that we were not able to get the waiting list down as rapidly as we would like to in areas of hip and knee surgery, the orthopedic side of things, despite the fact that we put funding in place for Grace Hospital to accelerate the numbers of people they took. It was not able to be done, because doctors were not willing to move their patients over to that institution for the operations. They were content to remain waiting on other institutions for the available time for operations.
Many of those allocations that have been made will reduce waiting lists. I am confident of that for diagnostic purposes, for surgical treatment, for all those things, more money will reduce that. Many of the dollars that were allocated will require a considerable length of time in terms of staffing up beds for people to provide additional medical beds and other things to take some of the pressure off our emergency and intensive care units. Those are things, again, that from the time that dollars are allocated till the effect is felt in the system, we would like to believe would be a matter of just a few weeks. It certainly is evident that it takes months for that impact to be felt. The one thing we can be confident about is that the money is allocated in this year's budget and is allocated for the entire year of the budget so that the expenditure can take place.
I do not think the member opposite could make the case. I certainly could not make the case that by putting money in at the end of a budget year that you are going to have an instant impact, in five days you are going to get that money flowing through the system. But we have to, because of the budgeting system, recognize that you cannot transfer it out of an existing allocation that might be underexpended. So your only hope of making the impact is by adding some money to the area to try and get more money being spent in these other critical areas. That is what we had to do.
In the end, I would think that comparing dollars spent last year versus dollars spent this year, we will be very close to that hundred million-dollar mark, despite what the member opposite wants to say, because the money this year is in for the entire budget year and will give an opportunity, I believe, for physicians, surgeons to do their work and people to get their diagnostic treatment and more bed allocation, more bed space allocation, other things to be done within the system. At the end of the day--we can have this debate next year--I am confident that the dollars allocated will result in many of the issues that he has identified being able to be better addressed in this coming year.
Mr. Doer: The government promised a considerable amount of capital in March of 1995. The federal budget with the health care cuts over the two years was delivered at the end of February 1995. The Minister of Health at the time, the former Minister of Health, said that these capital announcements would proceed in spite of--in fact he said it twice--in spite of the federal government reductions. The Premier also stated when he made his infrastructure announcement, most of which was for capital for Health, that these decisions would proceed in spite of the federal government cuts. Then the government put these decisions or these commitments on hold for three years.
Does the Premier feel that he misled the people of Manitoba when he made his promise, and does he feel that he directly has had a major influence on the families and neighbours and friends of people who are suffering with lack of privacy, with lack of decency in our hallways and in our health care system as a result of his manipulation, if you will, of public commitments that he made before an election campaign which he cancelled directly after one?
Mr. Filmon: No, Mr. Chairman, I do not feel I have misled anybody. I feel that the member opposite and his colleagues continue to attempt to mislead the public when they speak of cancelling, because in fact when we made the commitments we made it for the coming term of government and a term of government is up to five years. Our government had to delay in the first years of our mandate some of the construction, but as he can see, that construction is proceeding now very dramatically, and we have more money being invested in health care construction than we have had for a long time.
Most of the commitments that we made, if not all of them, are going to be addressed, and the ones that are not going to be addressed are going to be ones that because of further investigation and recommendations by regional health authorities, may have had to be reconsidered as maybe not the most appropriate investments to make now that we look at things on a regional basis. That is only reasonable I think for us to examine each and every one of those decisions, but certainly the big ones that I know of, some of the reconstruction at Health Sciences Centre, the Cancer Research and Treatment Foundation, the Boundary Trails, Brandon and so many of the personal care homes that we have announced and the conversions of hospitals, those are all proceeding, and I believe that at the end of a five-year term as we look back we will see that we have kept our word and we have done what we said we were going to do as we campaigned in the last election campaign.
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Mr. Doer: So the Premier feels he bears no responsibility of freezing those capital decisions that he made in March of 1995, that the freezing of these decisions has had no impact on line-ups in health care systems across Manitoba over the last three years, that he bears no responsibility for that reversal of position that these capital projects would proceed and he has frozen those decisions for three years. Has this not had a major impact on the waiting lists across this province, and does he not bear some responsibility for the situation?
Mr. Filmon: We have not frozen these things for three years. The pause in the health care construction budget ended more than a year ago when we made the announcement and commitment to the Cancer Research and Treatment Foundation. We have since made other commitments as he knows and, as I said, the commitment to all of those projects did not have a schedule saying that they would be done in '95, '96, '97. It said it would be done in the next term of government. That is precisely what we are engaged in with a very major capital expenditure program that will construct the facilities in accordance with the commitment we made to the public.
Mr. Doer: The Minister of Health (Mr. Praznik) has said over and over and over again that if there were more personal care home beds available there would be less line-ups in hospitals and more appropriate use of beds. So who is telling the people the truth? The Minister of Health, who is saying that this government has not proceeded with enough personal care home beds over the last number of years and because of that we have major line-ups in our acute care hospitals. He is saying that. The Premier is saying a three-year freeze is actually a pause and it has had no impact on the line-ups. I dare say that if, zap, you are frozen for three years in terms of hospital beds with an aging population, this is going to have a major impact on patient care services here in Manitoba. Why will the Premier not take the responsibility of saying one thing in March of 1995 and saying another thing in May of 1995 and it having a major impact on families and communities here in Manitoba?
Mr. Filmon: It is an interesting position the member opposite takes. He referred to a study that was released in I believe it was 1989 or '90 that said that Manitoba was short over 500 personal care beds at that time, a situation which we obviously inherited from his government, because that is the situation that prevailed. I believe the study was released in 1990. So we were behind 500 beds at that time. We have added, in the space of 10 years that we have been in government, close to 1,000 personal care beds, and we are still behind some 500 beds. What that says is that we have had a deficiency of personal care beds that goes back all the way through his time in office, and we are finally in a position where financially we can catch up on some of these deficiencies that have been left for us, despite having been reduced $240 million a year in transfers from Ottawa.
Mr. Doer: The Premier did not answer my question about his three-year freeze.
Mr. Filmon: I did answer your question.
Mr. Doer: No, you did not.
Mr. Filmon: We were 500 behind when we took office and we continue to be 500 behind.
Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. Could I ask honourable members to put their comments through the Chair. It will help the decorum. If we start getting carried away, I know where we are headed.
The honourable Leader of the official opposition, to put forward his question.
Mr. Doer: He is having such a bad day, I cannot believe it.
Mr. Filmon: You are having a bad day?
Mr. Doer: No, I said you are. I hope you get a good night's sleep tonight.
Mr. Chairperson: Through the chair.
Mr. Doer: Yes, the report that the Premier refers to, has the Premier read it?
Mr. Filmon: I have not read it recently. Obviously, it was released in 1990, but I know I have seen references to it since then.
Mr. Doer: I think the Premier should read it before he comments on it because he will find that it is a prediction of how many beds we will need over a period of time. He may find the reading of it-- [interjection]
Well, you closed, and contrary to the--I mean, we have a Minister of Health (Mr. Praznik) and his government running around saying, if the opposition party, if the member for Kildonan (Mr. Chomiak) can find any beds, he would gladly open those beds tomorrow. Of course, he said, if you can find any beds, I, Mr. Praznik, will open them immediately. I will wave my magic health care wand and sprinkle a little dust all over them, and they will immediately open up, and I challenge the NDP health care critic to find those beds.
Well, I do not know what planet the Minister of Health (Mr. Praznik) was on when he made the statement, but we knew that part of the eighth floor at St. Boniface Hospital has been closed down by this Premier prior to the opening up of any personal care beds that were needed. We know that there were sections in Misericordia closed down. We know there were sections in Seven Oaks Hospital that were closed down. We know that beds were closed down all over the province.
I have been in Swan River and gone to the pediatrics section of Swan River Hospital, 22 beds are closed down, and the little children that are in that hospital are congregated in two adult beds in the acute care portion of the hospital. I have seen the little babies in that room, four of them in a room, stuffed into this room by this Premier through his action in Swan River with people down the hall that are in terminal situations.
So, unlike the Minister of Health with his glib comments, Mr. Chair, we know that you have closed down beds. Now, not only did we find beds all over the system, the media went out. One of the media members, I believe CKY, went to Seven Oaks Hospital. All you have to do is ask the janitors. Maybe the Minister of Health can spend less time with his own press clippings and talk to the janitors in the hospitals. They can tell you what is happening with every bed. They can tell you the 800 or 900 beds that are closed down by his government in this city. They can walk you right across the river and show you where beds are closed down.
So, when the Premier says, we did not close down beds, he is being as out of touch as his own Minister of Health. You did close down beds. If this Premier wants to have a tour of the health care facilities of this city and places like Swan River, I could show you where the closed beds are. Obviously, his Minister of Health with his statement, show me the beds and I will open them, is out of touch with what is going on. It sounds like the Premier is equally out of touch. He walks around with his comments, his Orwellian comments like we had a pause. It was a three-year freeze. It had a major impact on patient care services all across this province.
He also reversed some of the requirements of how capital projects will start. He did not announce in the election campaign this so-called contribution program which had been met by places like Oakbank. I mean, the tumbleweeds are blowing by the sign out at Oakbank that the former Minister of Health, Mr. McCrae, and the former Minister of Telephones, Mr. Findlay, put up. They put up with great fanfare in March of 1995, they put up future home extension here in Oakbank. Well, the tumbleweeds are blown by that sign for three straight years after the Kiwanis Club, I believe it was the Kiwanis Club, raised the money that they were told would have to be raised. So you did not tell the people that you were going to freeze things for three years. You tried to say it was the federal government's fault for a while, but the dates are off. February of 1995 was the federal government's budget; March of 1995 was your own budget; March of 1995 was your own election promise. Those election promises are blowing the same way as these tumbleweeds are out at Oakbank.
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So why does the Premier not admit today that he did close down acute care hospital beds, and can he tell us how many acute care beds he closed down?
Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chair, of course our discussions earlier were on personal care home beds and now he has turned to acute care beds, and those are statistical numbers that he will obviously want to ask the Minister of Health (Mr. Praznik) about.
Mr. Doer: Well, I can tell you what the statistics mean to people. I have been in some senior citizens' homes recently, at town hall meetings all across the province, and the people say to me, we have paid for those beds with our taxes over the last number of years. We have paid for the staff to be trained to operate those beds. How can we pay for beds that are lying empty in facilities at the same time our friends, our family members are lying in hallways? It does not make any sense to people who have paid their taxes to have supported beds being constructed in hospitals and to have those beds closed down before there is any other transition plan and any other beds to meet the needs of the medical patients.
So it comes back to the broken promise of the Premier of three years ago when he promised personal care beds and froze it. Does he not agree with the logic of people, the common sense of people outside of this building, that say why should we pay for a bed and have it lying empty while our husbands are lying in the hallways day after day after day? Does the Premier think that makes sense for the people, and does he think it makes sense in terms of taxpayers' dollars being spent for what they are intended to be, and that is to have people in beds in rooms, not in hallways through our various facilities?
Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, of course I do not want to get into all of the political rhetoric with the Leader of the Opposition. He is welcome to make those speeches next door with the Minister of Health (Mr. Praznik). I do know that I have plenty of clippings that I can recite to him, if he just wants to get into a political free-for-all here, of all the bed closures that took place under Minister Larry Desjardins or under Minister Parasiuk under the NDP. He knows that the health care system is changing and he knows that it is--well, in fact, if you read the headlines from 1987, that was far worse in terms of the chaos under the NDP than it is today.
Reality is that the system is changing because there is a huge change in the way in which we deliver health care today. All across Canada--you know, even 10 years ago you used to do two-thirds of your surgery on an inpatient basis. Today it is two-thirds on an outpatient basis. When we took office, you did not even have any CAT scans anywhere other than in Winnipeg. You did not have them as you do today in Brandon. You did not have dialysis anywhere outside of Winnipeg. They could not get it in Brandon or Thompson or Dauphin or Morden or Ashern or any of these places that we are putting dialysis into. You could not get a mammograph outside of Winnipeg. Now we not only have it in several different locations within--in fact, it was only at one place in Winnipeg--now you get it in several different places, you get it in either rural communities. You have two rural travelling mobile units that are going to be going out from now on.
All these things are huge improvements being made, and of course all of these are designed to allow people--you have now three times as much money being spent on home care as it was 10 years ago, and that means that people are living longer and healthier and in better circumstances in their home and the system has to change.
It is absolutely unbelievable that the NDP believe that you can just simply get stuck in reverse and want to keep everything going the way it was before in the face of all this new technology, in the face of all this new and better approach to medicine of being able to keep people living healthier in their communities, with better supports in their communities, support services to seniors, all these things, and all they want to do is the way they did it before in 1987, which was a disaster and which everybody said was.
I will bring back my clippings for tomorrow if he wants me to read how bad it was under the NDP. I think it is absolutely foolish that he can go and try and make the case here that all of a sudden it is just because we are making changes that all these things are bad. The fact is that the system does need change. Everybody who works in the system acknowledges it. Only the NDP do not believe it.
Mr. Doer: Well, I welcome the Premier to bring his clippings back. Maybe he could bring his clippings back being critical of taking 100 beds across the whole system and converting all of those beds, not closing them, converting from inpatient beds to outpatient beds. This Premier, as Leader of the Opposition, the beds were not even being closed down. The beds were being converted to outsurgery through '87-88, reducing the waiting lists dramatically in most health care facilities, and the Premier's election promise in '88 was, I will not close any more beds down.
So you bring those clippings, because you were, Mr. Chairperson, the person who proceeded to make a ridiculous promise. We were converting beds, not closing beds--there is a difference between the two--from inpatient to outpatient surgery, 100 beds that I can show you, the beds and what hospitals they were and of course the Premier's promise in '88, and you bring that clipping along. I will not close--read my lips--I will not close any acute care beds down. So you bring all the clippings, including your own, and we can take a look at them.
We certainly have always initiated change in health care. The original medicare program which was fought against by Tories was, of course, initiated by the NDP. Home care was initiated by the NDP, nonprofit home care. In fact, the last couple of years, what change have we seen? We have seen the government initiate the Connie Curran report saying they are not going to do it, then initiate it in terms of staffing. We cannot hire any staff back in Manitoba. We have seen the government spend a year of our energy to close down every emergency ward in the city of Winnipeg, save one, and close down other emergency wards across the province.
So we wasted a year on something that came out of San Francisco, I heard, in terms of closing down the emergency wards. Thank goodness Christmas was there, because then we had to open it up. In 1996-97 we spent over two years, and we still have not got it concluded, with the government proceeding to privatize home care. Now that is not going forward. That is going backwards. That is going back to a period of time that was prior to a universal health care system, and it is going back to the original concept developed by Ed Schreyer, a program that was the first and best in North America.
So you bring your clippings along, bring your own words along, your own read my lips I will not close any acute care beds, because when we were converting beds to outsurgery, in fact, one little, small, 15-bed ward in each hospital, Concordia and Brandon and all these places, were converted to outsurgery beds--the Premier (Mr. Filmon) was running around as Leader of the Opposition, the sky is falling, the sky is falling, and it was really just a sensible move of conversion into the outsurgery.
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Let the Premier not invent something that he criticized in terms of outsurgery and day surgery. You know, when this government has brought in useful and helpful programs, we have actually applauded them in health care and some of the initiatives in mental health. We have made some statements that have been quite positive, but when you start going backwards and backwards and backwards to a two-tier health care system where some people who have the means can go to North Dakota to get their diagnostic tests, I think the bells should be going off.
I think this Premier (Mr. Filmon) is out of touch. I think this Premier has become absolutely out of touch with what is going on in average communities and average families, and I really believe that over a period of time that is what happens to you when you get out of touch. You only want to believe what you are told, but I would suggest to the Premier that he is out of touch on health care. He is radically out of touch on health care, and to try to reinvent himself as the creator of outsurgery and day surgery when he was, in fact, critical of it, I find rather curious.
But moving into 1998 and 1999--I am sure the Premier and I can go back to 1987 and 1988. It will not mean anything to the public. The public are interested in what is going to happen in 1998. They are interested in what is going to happen to their own families that need health care services. The people that are getting cancelled in elective surgery are worried about their health care system next day, next week, next month, and that is what they are worried about. They are not worried about the Premier and I playing duelling clippings like some kind of out-of-touch political automatons in terms of pointing fingers at each other.
So I would like to know from the Premier what is the state of play of the so-called lab centralization proposal?
Mr. Filmon: Mr. Chairman, again, I do want to correct the record. The member opposite says that the Conservatives opposed medicare. In fact, hospital insurance was brought into Manitoba by a Conservative government in 1959, and medicare was brought into Manitoba by a Conservative government in 1969. Just as well for the record, home care was started by the VON in Manitoba in the late '60s. My colleague the member for St. Vital (Mrs. Render) was one of the administrators of that program in its fledgling state. So the member can try and take what political credit he can. It may show a lack of anything else he can take credit for, but he should at least keep the record straight.
His question was with respect to lab services. He will have to ask that question of the Minister of Health (Mr. Praznik). He would have that right at his fingertips.
Mr. Doer: There are many people who feel that the government was starting at the wrong end of the lab challenge, that proceeding with, again, the hospital lab services as opposed to the privately owned labs was a backwards way of going and to proceed with just one centralization without the other, the savings would not be there.
There was an announcement of the government that they were proceeding with looking at two firms. Has there been any policy decision by cabinet on lab services in the city of Winnipeg? Have the surgeons of Winnipeg been consulted on the implications of any decision making on surgery in our hospitals?
Mr. Filmon: There has been no cabinet decision, Mr. Chairman, and the question about surgeons in consultation should be asked of the Minister of Health (Mr. Praznik).
Mr. Doer: Can the Premier indicate the status report on the social framework agreement with the federal-provincial government?
Mr. Filmon: As I indicated in my opening statement, it is a matter that is under negotiation and discussion now. The Minister of Family Services (Mrs. Mitchelson) is our lead minister for those discussions. She has the resource support of the Cabinet Secretary for Intergovernmental Relations, Mr. Eldridge. She has, I think, on occasion, one occasion at least, taken the Minister of Finance (Mr. Stefanson) with her because of the specifics of financial issues that were on the table, and they are still working towards a deadline that was set by premiers in December, a deadline of June/July for attempting to come up with some agreement.
Mr. Doer: Can the Premier indicate what is on the table, what Manitoba has proposed for this agreement? What is our position going in to these discussions, and is there consensus from the western provinces?
Mr. Filmon: Basically, the position that we take, and I would say to you that it is a unanimous position--in fact, it is one that is supported by every premier of every political stripe--and that is that the federal government has to in the future involve the provinces to a much greater extent in the discussion of all social programs across Canada. We agree that the federal government can and should ensure national standards prevail, but we also believe that, as we are developing new programs, we have to be able to take into account the fact that they may come into--well, firstly, that they will be coming into areas of sole provincial--sorry, this is for programs that are in areas of sole provincial jurisdiction under the Constitution. So, where the federal government is intending to come into those areas, and given that their support for health is now down on a cash basis to about 15 cents on the dollar and, even including the tax point transfers of the late '70s, is still under a third of the cost, the provinces should have a much greater role in the development of these programs. The provinces must be consulted as to how they are going to be implemented, because if, just as a for instance, the federal government--the unanimous position again of premiers of all political stripes is that the federal government should not go into new programs until it has restored its funding to the existing programs.
I am sure the member is as surprised, shocked, and outraged as I am at the position that the federal government is taking, which is that their withdrawal of almost $7 billion from transfers to the provinces, which amounts to $240 million a year to Manitoba, has had no impact, no negative impact on the health system, and further that both the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister are quoted as saying that hospitals are not underfunded, that they are doing just fine. These are just outrageous statements that I cannot believe that they would make, but we are suggesting that they have to put the money back into those areas that we know have critical needs, get the waiting lists down, make sure that we have sufficient beds to look after people in critical care need, and all of those kinds of things. Those are areas of operations that have to be addressed by having more federal money in it but, if they are going to look at new areas, then we certainly want to be a part of that.
The objectives for negotiation of a framework agreement on our social union are as follows: firstly, a set of principles for social policy that include things such as mobility and monitoring social policy outcomes; collaborative approaches to the use of the federal spending power; thirdly, appropriate dispute settlement mechanisms between governments so that it is not a unilateral decision of the federal government as to whether or not they want to impose a penalty or a sanction against the government, that these things should be based on a proper dispute settlement mechanism that involves both the provinces and the federal government; also, clarifying ground rules for intergovernmental co-operation and identifying processes for clarifying roles and responsibility within various social policy sectors. That is what the framework of discussion is.
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That is Manitoba's position. We are obviously very interested in maintaining a strong federal presence in these areas that involves being able to set national standards, but we also want to recognize that when the federal government is only contributing 15 percent on a cash transfer basis and less than a third on a total funding basis, those who are responsible for delivery and are best able to tell the stories directly to the federal ministers, who are not in direct contact on a delivery basis with these services, that we count for something in this whole mix.
That is, as I said earlier, the unanimous position, not only of all governments and premiers but, regardless of political stripe, there is no difference in our position to the federal government on this particular matter.
Mr. Doer: Does that mean that the principles under the Canada Health Act are on the table?
Mr. Filmon: Absolutely not.
Mr. Doer: Can the Premier indicate how much money the federal government is withdrawing from Manitoba on the basis of private health care in Manitoba?
Mr. Filmon: I am sure that the Minister of Health (Mr. Praznik) might have that answer at his fingertips. I will have to take that as notice and bring back the information.
Mr. Doer: As I recall, a health report recently indicated that Manitoba had one of the largest increases--the largest amount of money withdrawn by the federal government to a province was in Alberta. Manitoba was not obviously the highest in terms of private health care, but its increase was one of the highest in terms of provinces.
Can the Premier also indicate the amount of money the federal government has assessed to Manitoba and what the progression of that has been? Has it been going up or is it going down in terms of the private health care system?
Mr. Filmon: I would say that, firstly, our philosophy and our approach to this has not been different than that which was taken by the New Democrats when they were in office. There were areas of, for instance, I think it was cataract surgery in which a tray fee was charged and that continued to exist under our administration.
There were some areas that may have even involved dental surgery, and that was an ongoing thing in which a facility fee was charged. The biggest area of change has been in, and I am operating from memory and I could stand to be corrected, but it is in the Pan Am clinic where certain procedures of surgery were being done. The member opposite I know is a very good friend of the doctor in charge of that clinic and knows that this really is not, in most people's judgment, an abuse of the medicare system but an example of just how medicine is changing and how certain procedures that could only be done in hospitals are now being done in clinics. The question becomes whether or not doctors can charge separate fees for the ability to do this probably faster, more efficiently, and maybe to the greater benefit of the patient.
These things are all still under discussion. Of course, the problem with this is that it is a one-way dialogue. The federal government takes the money, and then says you go prove your case; prove to us that we are wrong. It is a frustrating thing for all governments, and we would like to get away from this kind of top-down, pound-on-the-head approach that the federal bureaucracy can take on this. That is why we want to have something in place where we can sit at a table and make a joint decision as to whether or not this is in the best interests of the public and the patients.
That is the area I think in which there has been some growth, because it has been a relatively new activity involved in that particular clinic, but I will try and find as much detail. I really would urge the member to get that information from the Minister of Health (Mr. Praznik) rather than forcing me to go through hoops and channels to come here and bring information that is sitting with the staff and the Minister of Health in the adjacent committee room right now.
Mr. Doer: I understand that it may be available in one department, but it is a matter of federal-provincial affairs, in my view. Given the dispute was between province and the federal government on its application, I certainly want to see what they are doing and how that is proceeding. Is this matter on the table then with the federal-provincial committee on social framework?
Mr. Filmon: It is not specifically on the table. It is not our objective to somehow take away any powers from the feds, but I believe that when we contemplate a dispute settlement mechanism, it is contemplated to take care of this kind of thing where both sides can sit down, make their case and have a joint decision as opposed to a top-down federal government order being issued in most cases even by the bureaucracy as opposed to even policymakers. So that is the kind of thing that, yes, we would like to get at in this process.
Mr. Doer: Last May the Prime Minister, as Leader of the Liberal Party, promised to introduce a national home care program in Canada. Can the Premier indicate where that is at in terms of the federal-provincial affairs in this? Obviously home care is delivered by the provinces. Can the Premier indicate where that is at?
Mr. Filmon: Well, not that we would ever turn down federal money coming into areas of provincial delivery of services, and home care is one of those areas that is why we are no longer on a 50-50 basis. It is a part of medicare that was not contemplated when medicare was set up. It was basically hospitals and drugs and doctors. Hospitals and doctors basically was the formula. So as a result of that, the real growth has taken place in community-based services that are more appropriate to the care of our citizens. Certainly things like home care become a huge area of costs, over $120 million in Manitoba this coming year.
Those kinds of things are areas that it would be nice for the federal government to contribute some funds to, provided that it did not absolve them of responsibility to put appropriate funding into the acute care side. So as a result of that, all of the ministers of Health I understand, certainly all the premiers, had a unanimous message for the federal government, and that was if you are contemplating putting more money into health care, firstly, it would require a great deal of work and a great deal of bureaucracy to try and put together a common program for home care.
As the member opposite probably knows, Manitoba is regarded as having the best home care system in the country. If you look at the various provinces, there are some pretty poor imitations of what we do in existence, and that would probably mean that either the national standards would be brought up to the Manitoba level or they might be somewhere below the Manitoba level, and it would not necessarily be in our best interest to have all of this happen when at the same time we are being underfunded in the acute care side.
But that is aside from the fact that every single premier said if you have money to spend now, put it into the acute care system firstly, and then if you have money left over, let us sit down and talk about a new Home Care program, but do not put the cart before the horse. It did not matter whether it was a New Democrat or a Liberal, many of them spoke out as strongly as anybody to the Prime Minister and to Mr. Rock to say put the money into the acute care system now, if you have it, and then talk to us about getting involved in home care or Pharmacare or any other new program afterwards, if you still have money left over.
Their response was take it or leave it. If you do not want money, we are not putting any more money into the acute care system. That is not an acceptable response, and I think that the public pressure should and will grow on them to address their responsibilities in the acute care side.
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Mr. Doer: The Premier has partially answered the question on a national Pharmacare program. Is the Pharmacare program again announced last May in the federal election--it is no wonder the public gets cynical about election promises--you know, announced in the federal election, is that promise--where is that in terms of the federal government's announcement?
It looks to me as if they went backwards in the generic drugs issue. It looks like the Minister of Health lost a major battle on the generic drug side of it which is, of course, a loss to Manitoba on the industrial side. It is a cost to us on the health care side, and to compound all of these issues, they promised a Pharmacare program, and we do not see anything on the horizon after we heard it announced last year.
Can the Premier indicate the state of play of a) the generic drug issue; b) the situation with the so-called national Pharmacare program?
Mr. Filmon: I certainly agree and our government agrees with the position that the Leader of the Opposition and his colleagues take with respect to the national generic drug issue.
The federal government completely stepped back from that, and, in fact, we have met with people from the generic drug industry who show us the promises and commitments that the Liberals made in running for office back in 1993, and they have completely rejected and reneged on those promises. Mr. Rock obviously did lose in his battle with his cabinet colleagues. We know that this has been a detriment to the generic drug industry who wanted and were poised to invest further in Manitoba and are not doing it today as a result of the federal government's going back on their promises and their commitments in that area.
Similarly with respect to the Pharmacare issue overall, it is really in the same league as home care. We have taken the position with the federal government that the reinvestment in the acute care system is the No. 1 priority, and then we will sit down and talk about home care or Pharmacare with them and welcome their dollars and participation in that area but only after they restore their funding to the acute care side.
Mr. Doer: Yes, and I have got a couple of questions, and then we have an issue in Riverton that I know the Premier has been involved in that the member for Interlake (Mr. Clif Evans) wanted to get on the table. I do not expect us to go too long tomorrow, but we do have some questions that may be more convenient to ask today in case the staff have to get information.
The whole issue of the Millennium Fund, what has been the provincial government's position on that, and has there been any attempt to move some of that money into the post-secondary education program generally, which has been again starved by the federal government, rather than have it into a separate program?
Mr. Filmon: You may recall that the premiers responded rather aggressively to the unexpected federal announcement of the Millennium Fund, because at the annual Premiers' Conference in New Brunswick this summer we set as one of our top priorities dealing with the student debt issue and the costs of post-secondary education. Health care was No. 1; this was No. 2. We got no response from the federal government. Typically, the way it works is that they are sent our communiques with our resolutions, and then eventually we have an opportunity to discuss them.
We got no response, but about five weeks later we got, out of the blue, an announcement by the Prime Minister that he was going to have this Millennium Fund. Premiers all took issue with that, saying: when we were urging a co-operative provincial-federal approach to this, why would you not at least have had the courtesy to let us know that you were going to consider this kind of thing and we might have had some ideas that would have improved the focus of the particular approach that you are going to take to making post-secondary education more affordable in the country?
At the time, Liberal Premier McKenna was the chair, and I know he very aggressively made that comment to the Prime Minister, as did every provincial premier. The Prime Minister was somewhat apologetic and somewhat, I think, embarrassed at the fact that this had happened, and it seemed as though they were not even listening or paying any attention to what was coming out the Premiers' Conference. Since then, there has been some discussion about it. It was discussed in December, and we again reiterated that what we do in attempting to make post-secondary education more affordable for our students should be done on a complementary basis where somehow we agree that maybe we will each allocate funds to debt forgiveness or to bursaries or to interest reduction or any number of approaches that could be looked at, that they would be better done jointly.
There was a tacit agreement to that. In the end, the federal government in its budget announced certain initiatives, and we had to try and fit in our initiatives with their initiatives to be complementary rather than overlapping. It has not worked as well as it should have because the federal government has taken very much of a unilateral approach to this. We are still under discussion. As you probably know, the Premier of Quebec has taken umbrage at the intrusion into an area of provincial jurisdiction; that is the leading edge of his argument.
Having said that, we are not looking at it just from a matter of constitutional clarity or sanctity. What we are looking at is how do we best serve the needs of post-secondary students in the country, and we would certainly serve their needs better if we were able to complement each other by our initiatives in a federal-provincial manner. The matter is still under discussion, and I would say to the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Doer) that we will continue to look for more federal co-operation and more input to it, but it appears as though they want this to be one of their legacies, and we are not likely to get any results out of the federal government on the Millennium Scholarship Fund as it is.
Mr. Doer: We will hold our Riverton question until tomorrow. Thank you, the Premier, for that answer. I also want to ask a question on the federal-provincial infrastructure program. What is the present situation with the federal-provincial governments on municipal governments on infrastructure? Is it dead for a long time or a short time, or what is the status of it? Is it under negotiations, and can the Premier advise us on that?
Mr. Filmon: In recent years I have been designated as the lead speaker on the infrastructure issue, both from the National Highways Program perspective and from a federal-provincial-municipal tri-level infrastructure program. We believe very strongly that it is in everybody's interest to have a national infrastructure program.
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We believe it from a variety of perspectives, No. 1, being that every study that is done, whether it is by the national infrastructure council or the heavy construction association of Canada, says that we have a deficit. The member opposite in his earlier remarks made reference to the fact that the removal of the Crow rate has resulted in a tremendous offload of traffic off the railways onto the road systems in our province and throughout the West, one that I think will only grow. So we have got that infrastructure deficit to deal with. It is unfair and unreasonable to expect that it should be dealt with by only either the provincial government or the two junior levels of government, especially unfair when you deal with the issue of the fact that they collect something close to $200 million a year in fuel taxes off our highways and put not one nickel back in. A terribly unfair situation.
On the other side of attempting to convince them as to why it should be an easy decision for them, I brought to the attention of both Mr. Martin and the Prime Minister the fact that economic studies show that the federal government gets $1 back in taxes for every dollar they put into the infrastructure program because somebody else is putting in two other dollars and so they are getting it back 100 percent basically in tax revenue. So it seems very difficult to understand their reluctance to go into another round.
I will say that I was optimistic prior to last year's federal election campaign. The Prime Minister had privately told me that he favoured an extension of the program, and all that happened was that we got a short one-year extension. Obviously that has not met the needs that we have or that any other province has. I know that it says in the communique that we issued after the annual Premiers' Conference, the premiers agreed that provincial and territorial ministers of Finance and Transportation should review and report to premiers on guidelines, particularly with reference to future funding mechanisms, fiscal capacity, regional disparity concerns, the guidelines that we wanted them to develop on a new infrastructure program. I think the difficulty with it is that the Finance minister, Mr. Martin, is probably the greatest opponent of this in the federal cabinet, and yet we were asking Finance Ministers and Transportation Ministers to come up with an approach to this and he has been very adamant that he wants nothing to do with another infrastructure program. So it appears as though that is going to be a tough sell, but I can assure the member opposite, as I did the MAUM representatives this morning at their annual meeting, that I will be raising it again at the upcoming Western Premiers' Conference and the upcoming annual Premiers' Conference.
Mr. Doer: Can the Premier indicate the status of the municipal/provincial/federal gas proposals and what is the state of the original announcement that was made by the government? Can the Premier indicate the status report on that original announcement and how that is proceeding in the Interlake and the Parklands region in terms of gas for those communities?
Mr. Filmon: Our initial commitments to this came out of the first trilevel infrastructure program, and we chose it as a strategic priority for Manitoba. I might say that a number of other provinces have looked at us and said that they would like to do the same thing for their province, and New Brunswick and Nova Scotia are two that have talked to me about it saying that it is a great idea and they are looking at it for their provinces.
However, because there is no formal program or commitment in place, it happened to be a priority that we chose that allowed us to put some money in, and that has given us a jump on other provinces in terms of getting natural gas distribution into underserviced areas. So some of those of course have been constructed with I think very positive results, and there are other areas that are looking at expansion. The Gladstone area is doing it on a co-operative basis. The Interlake area is looking at it either on a co-operative basis or with Centra, and there of course the federal government unilaterally announced that they had funding coming from the WGTA offset funds, and we were invited to match those funds.
Similarly, I think there are some WGTA offset funds going in down around Hanover area, and again we have made commitments to match those funds. Similarly, there were some funds made available, probably from the WGTA offset for Swan River after the original project collapsed and the money was no longer available through our infrastructure program because it had been reallocated.
We are still working with all of these proposals. Our bottom line is it should be an equal sharing and matching funds federal and provincial on these areas plus whatever other funding is available. In some cases, because of the viability or the near viability, Centra Gas is expected to put in more, and in other cases they put in less depending in how the feasibility study works. Local municipalities put in money. Up in Swan River they have asked for funds from Louisiana-Pacific as an additional party to try to bridge the gap between what is available in funds from the federal and provincial governments.
All we are saying, though, is that we are trying to obviously minimize the costs to government to get this done, but we do not want the feds to be off the hook in terms of being able to access their funds. They have to match our funds at the very least. Whatever we are prepared to put in, they have to be prepared to fund, or else the project will not go forward. Local areas are having all their own debates and discussions, and the member probably knows that some municipalities have turned down the ability to access funds and service their areas. Others have decided that it is worth the investment. Our impression is that it has proven to be a worthwhile investment in the areas that have chosen to go for it, but at this point the federal government seems to be very much involved on an ad hoc basis. It has been difficult to pin them down to any long-term commitments to this program.
Mr. Doer: Can the Premier (Mr. Filmon) indicate where the Swan River infrastructure money was reallocated to? What project?
Mr. Filmon: It would not have been specific. There was $60 million available in the first tranche, and $60 million was ultimately used up. When Swan River indicated they could not be a part of the first tranche, they were left out of it. Then the feds came up with some money from I believe it was a WGTA offset, and we have allocated money out of REDI, which remains in place subject to the other funds being put together to complete the total package cost. I might say that the package has now changed because they missed the first window. They were going to source their supply out of Saskatchewan; they now have to source their supply, I believe, from south of there in Manitoba and at a greater cost than they originally were projecting. So that is what has delayed it and caused a reallocation, and the money that we now have on the table is greater than our original commitment for that particular reason.
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Mr. Chairperson: The hour being 5 p.m., committee rise.
Call in the Speaker. It is time for private members' hour.