Whitehorse, Yukon
Wednesday, April 20, 1994 - 1:30 p.m.
Page Number 2201
Speaker:
I will now call the House to order. We will proceed at this time with silent Prayers.
Prayers
DAILY ROUTINE
Speaker:
We will proceed at this time with the Order Paper.
Introduction of Visitors.
Are there any Returns or Documents for tabling?
TABLING RETURNS AND DOCUMENTS
Hon. Mr. Brewster:
I would like to table the second year report issued for the Aishihik recovery program.
Hon. Mr. Fisher:
I have for tabling the Motor Transport Board annual report.
Speaker:
Are there any Reports of Committees?
Petitions.
PETITIONS
Petition No. 7 - received
Clerk:
I have had the honour to review a petition, being Petition No. 7 of the first session of the Twenty-Eighth Legislative Assembly, as presented by the Hon. Member for Mount Lorne on April 19, 1994. This petition meets the requirements as to form of the Standing Orders of the Yukon Legislative Assembly.
Speaker:
Petition No. 7 accordingly is deemed to have been read and received.
Are there any Bills to be introduced?
Are there any Notices of Motion for the Production of Papers?
Are there any Notices of Motion?
Are there any Statements by Ministers?
This then brings us to the Question Period.
QUESTION PERIOD
Question re: Energy Corporation, CYI participation in
Mr. Penikett:
A year ago, the Minister of Yukon Electrical promised the House that the assets of the Yukon Energy Corporation would not be privatized, but we soon learned that the Minister was secretly planning a sell-out of the Yukon Energy Corporation. Now we learn to our astonishment that one of the people hired to broker this sell-out is none other than the Minister's old chum, former law partner and former leadership campaign chairman. Can the Minister tell the House exactly why it was necessary to hire another Vancouver Tory lawyer, rather than engaging the services of one of the government's own well-qualified advisors?
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
The Hon. Leader of the Official Opposition should try and refrain from having such argumentative content in his preambles because it is very difficult to answer briefly, as is my normal custom.
I must say initially that I did not, at any time, in the House, or otherwise, promise to never privatize some, or all, of the assets of the Yukon Energy Corporation; that is a misconstruction of what was said here. I talked about the current intent with regard to the assets, and that we might look at some form of rationalization, which, of course, was something that had been attempted by the previous administration. They attempted this with Yukon Electrical Company, the hated enemy of the socialist hordes, apparently, in the territory.
The question about our hiring someone to do some work on a small contract with respect to potential privatization, is a question that deserves an answer, and I am prepared to give that answer if I am not taking too long. That was the question asked.
The question is an interesting question. Mr. Boylan was hired by the Executive Council Office to carry out a small contract to do some preliminary work to find out what some of the issues would be, should we proceed with some negotiations with CYI regarding partial ownership of the corporation.
Mr. Boylan has been a member of the bar for some 20-odd years. He is fully qualified and has a background in the Yukon. He spent all of his time on issues pertaining to solicitor work, in particular corporation law, corporate takeovers and has worked with tax experts and other people in that area.
Speaker:
Order please. Would the Member please conclude his answer.
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
Mr. Boylan was available to work as and when required at a cost far lower than we would pay to another lawyer with Mr. Boylan's experience.
Mr. Boylan is proceeding with a contract to look at some initial issues that are very important to us.
The other issue has to do with -
Speaker:
Order. Would the Member please conclude his answer.
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
I certainly will accede to your ruling, Mr. Speaker. I was simply trying to present some facts for the edification of the people opposite who asked the question. The Members opposite seem to want to have it both ways. On the one hand they want to scream and whine about not getting their questions answered, and when I try to answer their questions they think they go on too long.
Speaker:
Order.
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
Perhaps it is information overload.
Speaker:
Order. Before we proceed with the next question, I would like to draw the Member's attention to the guidebook, and this goes for both sides of the House. Yesterday there were several long questions.
"A brief preamble will be allowed in the case of the main question and a one-sentence preamble will be allowed in the case of each supplementary question. A repeat of a question that a Member did not hear does not constitute a supplementary."
Then, in guide item 9, "a reply to a question should be as brief as possible, relevant to the question asked, and should not provoke debate." So, I would appreciate your cooperation.
Mr. Penikett:
The record will show that the Minister did tell me a year ago that he was not planning to sell the assets of the Yukon Energy Corporation. The record will also show that it became evident that he was dealing on that matter without advising this House, before we accidentally discovered it here. The Minister did not answer the question of why he hired his former law partner and old friend to carry out this transaction.
The Minister met on January 26 with First Nation leaders and, according to reports from people who attended that meeting, I understand that he told the First Nations that if he could not make a deal with them, he would not be negotiating with anybody else. Can he then confirm that he has now shifted his position once again, that he proposes to bring representatives of the Yukon Electrical Company directly to the table to bargain with First Nations? Is that true?
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
I have a question for the poser of the question. Is this "20 questions" or something? Which question does he want me to answer?
If he insists on getting up with a shotgun approach, I am going
Page Number 2202
to be in a position where it would take me hours to even attempt to answer what he purports to be one question. Have I spoken in terms of bringing anyone to the table to deal with CYI? No, I have not proposed that at all.
Mr. Penikett:
The Minister opposite does not seem to understand or be sensitive at all to appropriate public concerns about what is going on here, given his close family ties to Yukon Electrical and its parent company, Alberta Power, and now the retaining of his old law partner and political ally, on the taxpayers' payroll, in a bid to sell off valuable public assets, where one of the potential beneficiaries is, of course, Alberta Power.
I want to ask the Minister this: given the serious concerns out there in the street about appearances of conflict of interest, will the Minister please tell this House who is going to be protecting the Yukon public interest in these backroom dealings?
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
I have answered this until I am blue in the face. The methodology of the side opposite is rather interesting - creating these boogeymen in the minds of the public when there is absolutely, at this time, no Cabinet mandate to negotiate. There are exploratory talks with CYI to see if they are interested in proceeding to try to acquire an interest of up to 30 percent in the assets of Yukon Energy Corporation. At this stage, depending on the position taken by CYI, we would go back to Cabinet with a package that will deal with some initial exploratory discussions with CYI and the federal government. That is where we are.
If we get beyond the first hurdles, then we would also - and we have spoken about it - discuss selling up to about 20 percent of the shares to Yukon people. That is the extent of what is being explored. It is only being explored, because I do not have a mandate from Cabinet to actually go beyond that.
Question re: Energy Corporation, CYI participation in
Mr. Penikett:
The Yukon people have not been involved in these discussions at all and yet we know the Minister has had private conversations with Yukon Electrical. He has hired his old law partner, a Vancouver lawyer, and he has had private meetings with First Nations.
Since, at a recent meeting of the Association of Yukon Communities, the Government Leader seemed to be interested in putting some distance between himself and the Minister responsible for the Yukon Energy Corporation on this question, could the Government Leader inform this House exactly what the position of the Yukon Party is with respect to the privatization of the Yukon Energy Corporation and the transfer of control of this valuable public property to outside interests?
Hon. Mr. Ostashek:
The Member responsible for the Yukon Energy Corporation has already answered that question for the Leader of the Official Opposition. Nobody has talked about giving up control of the corporation. The Member opposite is not listening very well to what the Minister responsible for the Yukon Energy Corporation has said.
As the Minister responsible for the Yukon Energy Corporation has said, he does not even have the mandate to explore that, at this point. We are in very preliminary discussions with CYI to see if they are interested in buying 30 percent of the Yukon Energy Corporation.
Mr. Penikett:
The Yukon Party and that government opposite has no mandate to integrate the management of Yukon Electrical and Yukon Energy Corporation, but the Minister opposite is already doing it. They have no mandate whatsoever.
Let me ask the Government Leader this: the Government Leader promised to the Association of Yukon Communities that the Minister responsible for Yukon Electrical would meet with municipal representatives to discuss privatization of the Yukon Energy assets, but this has not happened in spite of written requests from AYC in January and, I understand, in March.
I want to know if the Government Leader has replied to these letters; has he responded to these requests; is there going to be a meeting and who will attend?
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
I have responded to a letter from the Association of Yukon Communities that I would meet with them. Currently, they are trying to set up arrangements with the president of the Association of Yukon Communities to have such a meeting. Such a meeting, of course, would not signify any intention by the Yukon Party or Cabinet or this government to sell a whole bunch of assets to the Russians, but I am sure that if we have such a meeting it will be confronted with something as absurd as that, from the Member opposite, because really the kinds of accusations being levied by him are absolutely ridiculous.
Mr. Penikett:
Since the Minister of energy does not want to deign to answer any questions in this House and chooses to treat every question asked of him as an accusation, and every request for information as an insult, could the Government Leader tell us, given the concerns about conflict of interest and fears about insider trading and dealings with old family businesses in the Yukon, why did the Government of Yukon hire a Vancouver lawyer, a former campaign manager of the Minister of energy to perform work on the privatization of Yukon Electrical?
Is the Government Leader not concerned about appearances of conflict of interest, or about concerns that a very important transaction dealing with the most valuable property is being carried out in secret and in private?
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
I will answer this question. It is interesting to see the histrionics on that side. I recall being on that side of the House asking question after question of the then Government Leader who passed the question on to his Ministers.
The question contained certain false premises - one being that Mr. Boylan was my campaign manager. He was never, at any time, a campaign manager of mine. That statement is false.
I am rather surprised at that suggestion that somehow or other the fact that somebody did practice law with me in the early 1970s, about 20 years ago, somehow or other disqualifies him from being an extremely competent lawyer and senior member of the bar. That is a rather absurd suggestion, but it seems to be the suggestion that is being thrown out by the Leader of the Official Opposition.
This government hired a person who was in a position to act at the government's beck and call to do preliminary work that required a certain amount of expertise, for a very reasonable amount of money.
Question re: Energy Corporation, CYI participation in
Mr. Cable:
I have questions for the Minister responsible for the Yukon Energy Corporation on the contract to Mr. Boylan. It is not clear from the interchange we just heard why Mr. Boylan has been hired, whether it is for his legal skills, his preliminary negotiating skills, or the preparation of an option paper.
Would the Minister tell us what is in the contract with Mr. Boylan? Why has he been hired? What is he supposed to do, and what is the product the Minister expects?
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
My understanding of the contract is that it relates to his having exploratory talks with First Nations, discussing the issues with existing consultants and lawyers who have done, and continue to do, work for the Yukon Energy Corporation and the Yukon Development Corporation, and to make a full report to Cabinet, which we expect fairly soon, with regard to his findings on the issues and the position of the CYI and First Nations regarding whether or not they are willing to move ahead, and discuss putting together a joint proposal with which to go to the federal government.
Mr. Cable:
It is not clear why a Vancouver lawyer would be
Page Number 2203
hired to do those sorts of things, when there are people here in town, and in the Economic Development department, who could do all those things.
Is the Minister prepared to table the contract between, I assume, the Government of the Yukon and Mr. Boylan?
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
Yes, we are prepared to table the contract. What is required is someone who has the kind of background that Mr. Boylan has to discuss issues, such as forms of corporations that might be involved, limited partnerships, tax consequences with tax experts, and a whole host of issues that a person with his qualifications is eminently qualified to work and report on. He also has the background to work with the kind of experts we utilize, and would be utilizing.
The amount he is being paid is somewhat less than what legal aid lawyers charge for performing legal aid in the Yukon Territory on a daily basis.
Mr. Cable:
Presumably, at the end of the road of the short-term contract, there will be some written product. Is the Minister prepared, if the House is sitting, to table that written product, and, if it is not sitting, to make it available to the public as soon as it is received?
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
No, of course not. This is a Cabinet document that will be utilized to determine whether or not Cabinet is going to move ahead with regard to its ongoing discussions with the CYI and First Nations.
Question re: Energy Corporation, CYI participation in
Mr. Penikett:
I have to pursue this with the Government Leader, if the other leader will permit us to.
The Minister for Yukon Electrical says there is no mandate to negotiate privatization, yet he is busy hiring lawyers to study the corporate models, look at limited partnerships, hold discussions with other lawyers, meet with the companies involved and First Nations - all of which looks like negotiations.
Can the Government Leader explain to us why there seems to be negotiations going on without a mandate having been delivered by Cabinet? Can he explain that?
Hon. Mr. Ostashek:
I thought the Minister made that quite clear. The mandate he has from Cabinet is to explore the possibilities of CYI buying up to 30 percent of the Energy Corporation.
Mr. Penikett:
This did not begin with CYI wishing to buy up the corporation. It began with Yukon Electrical originally proposing to merge the two corporations, which is exactly what the Minister himself is magically, suddenly proposing.
Can I ask the Government Leader this: if the government is not intending to privatize the Yukon Energy Corporation, why is it going to all this expense and effort to look at all these detailed questions? Can he tell me that?
Hon. Mr. Ostashek:
I believe I can remember the debate in this House about one year ago about the high costs of energy in the Yukon and why is this government not doing something to try to control them? That is what we are doing. We are exploring ways in which, with the participation of CYI, we can lever some money from the federal government for the outstanding loans of the corporation, in order to give the ratepayers of the Yukon a break. That is what we are doing.
Mr. Penikett:
I would like the Government Leader to show me a single instance, anywhere in the world, where privatizing a public utility has meant lower power rates for citizens. It does not. What happens is that there are lower wages for the workers and a complete inability of the government to provide any rebates on power because there are no longer any profits and a few very rich people.
Is the Government Leader going to stand there and tell us seriously that what triggered this investigation and purchase of lawyers was the interests of the Council for Yukon Indians? Is he going to tell us that when we already know there were prior discussions between the Minister and Yukon Electrical?
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
The Leader of the Official Opposition is the person who carried on talks about privatization and tried to privatize with Yukon Electrical Company. That took place and almost succeeded.
The Leader of the Official Opposition talks about mandate. He wasted some $16 million of ratepayers' money on the Watson Lake sawmill. Where was his mandate to do that? He did not have a mandate. This is something that he came up with at the beginning of his mandate to govern but it was never part of an election.
Here is a person who gives us the socialist dogma about how private is terrible and public is wonderful, and we are expected to believe that. Why is Saskatchewan pursuing privatization? Why is the NWT pursuing privatization? Why is every single government down south pursuing privatization? Let me tell him why. It is because some of the premiers down there, like his colleague Bob Rae, bankrupted the province, and the bankers came in and told him to raise the money and fire a bunch of workers, whether he liked it or not. They bankrupted the province. We are not in that position. We are steering a careful course here and we are trying to raise some money to lower the cost to the ratepayers. We are taking any profits that we make and putting them back into the corporation, unlike the socialist hero across the way.
Question re: Energy Corporation, CYI participation in
Mrs. Firth:
I have a question for the Government Leader regarding the appointment of Mr. Terry Boylan. I would like to ask the Government Leader why he did not approach any of the local law firms to do this work. Was there absolutely no other person in the Yukon who could have done this job?
Hon. Mr. Ostashek:
I am sure there probably were other people but several of the law firms in the Yukon that we considered were in conflict. Some of them worked for the Energy Corporation, some of them worked for the Yukon Utilities Board, and this individual came to us at a very reasonable price, for a very short contract.
Mrs. Firth:
I have not spoken to any law firm that was approached, whether they were on the basis of being in a conflict or not, so I would like the Government Leader to bring back to this House a list of all the law firms that were approached and which ones were perceived to be in conflict. If he could provide that for us in the House tomorrow, I would appreciate that. Will he bring that information to the House tomorrow?
Hon. Mr. Ostashek:
No, I will not. These were Cabinet discussions. One does not need to approach a law firm in order to know who is working for us or who is working for the Yukon Utilities Board.
Mrs. Firth:
I have a message for this group of people across the floor of the House. Wake up, boys. This is not a poker game with a bunch of back-slapping, beer-drinking boys sitting around deciding who is and who is not going to work in the Yukon. When I phoned and made inquiries, do you know what I was told? I was told, "yes, it is payback time; it is payback time". That is what I heard. That is how much input was given to other community citizens, other Yukoners.
I want to know from the Government Leader when he made this big decision - he and his buddies - and why he did not make this information public. Why did not the Minister responsible for the Energy Corporation make this information public? They make announcements about every little piece of grass they plant, sod they turn, baby that is born. Why did they not make an announcement about this? Why did they keep this from Yukoners?
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Hon. Mr. Ostashek:
I do not know what the Member is getting so upset about. The contract was sole-sourced, and it is well within the parameters and guidelines set out for sole-sourcing contracts.
Some Hon. Member:
(Inaudible)
Speaker:
Order.
Question re: Privatization of government services
Ms. Moorcroft:
I have a question for the Government Leader who has said repeatedly in the House that large-scale privatization was not one of the ways this government would deal with its fiscal responsibilities. In fact, last November 16, Mr. Speaker, in his former incarnation as Minister of Government Services, assured the Opposition that his government was not even considering contracting out - specifically, the janitorial staff. Can the Government Leader tell me why his government is now planning to contract out the custodial work in the Education building?
Hon. Mr. Ostashek:
I think the Member has erred. I was never the Minister of Government Services.
I do not know that that is happening.
Ms. Moorcroft:
They are taking Cabinet secrecy a little bit too far in this instance.
This spring, the government let a contract for the provision of specialized investigative services within the social services, that is to say "welfare cops", despite concerns of confidentiality. Why is the government privatizing social services, and how many more public sector jobs are in jeopardy of privatization in that department?
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
There has been a contract advertised and let for a six-month term, renewable at the option of the government, to hire a fraud investigator. That is a position we do not have in the government, so there is nobody being replaced or fired by this action, so I am a little bit surprised by the accusation contained in the question.
Ms. Moorcroft:
The Ministers just do not seem to know what they are doing. The Government Leader has also said that his government does not plan to privatize highway maintenance. Where are the studies his government did on the privatization of highway maintenance, and what is the current position of the government on whether they will contract out highway maintenance?
Hon. Mr. Fisher:
I notice that Ms. Moorcroft had asked that question in a written form on the Order Paper. I am unaware of any studies being done, but when I saw the written question this morning, I asked the department to provide the information, which I will provide to the House in due course.
Question re: Privatization of government services
Mr. Penikett:
This is quite a day. The Minister has said an astonishing thing. A few days ago I was in Ross River at a meeting where he and the Government Leader and the Minister of Justice were all in attendance, and where he told the public meeting that he, I assume meaning the department, had studied the option of privatizing highway maintenance and had rejected it. I recall that the Members opposite promised not to do this during the election campaign, but the Minister clearly said that they had looked at the costs and had looked at the options and the reason they were not pursuing it was because of problems with the union.
Could the Minister explain the contradiction between the statement he made just now and the one he made in Ross River?
Hon. Mr. Fisher:
I do not think there is any contradiction at all. The Member opposite has said that we had studied it. I never said that in Ross River. I said we had looked at the possibility of privatization and had essentially rejected it.
Mr. Penikett:
I would be astonished to know exactly how the Minister defines the difference between "looked at" and "studied". In fact, I was so astonished by what he said at the time, I actually wrote down word for word what he said and I am going to go back and check my records.
The Minister implied when he looked at it that they had actually looked at dollars and cents and looked at numbers, looked at costs, looked at personnel implications, which implies that there is a document involved. Can the Minister tell me what documents were involved in their looking at this and will he table them?
Hon. Mr. Fisher:
If there were any documents, I would be more than pleased to table them. If the department has, at some time in the past, studied the privatization of the highways, I will certainly table that document, but I am certainly not aware of any documents the department has.
Mr. Penikett:
Mindful of the fact that the Members opposite include people who promised never to privatize highway maintenance, and mindful of the fact that the Minister told the public meeting in Ross River that they had looked at it, even though he has now told us there are no documents - and he told this meeting that the union was the problem - raises fascinating questions about the Yukon Party policy-making process.
Can the Minister tell us exactly how he and his Cabinet colleagues and the department look at a major question like this and reach the conclusion that he announced in Ross River?
Hon. Mr. Fisher:
In my term of office, nothing has ever gone to Cabinet on privatization of highways. I have thought about it myself. I have talked to various people about it, but never have we done a study nor have I taken anything to Cabinet on privatization of highways maintenance.
Question re: Watson Lake safe home, budget cuts
Ms. Commodore:
My question is for the Minister of Health and Social Services.
The Minister has acted on the advice of his department officials and severely cut the budget of the Watson Lake safe home by $31,000. The Minister has stated that it is unnecessary to have the home open 24 hours a day. Could the Minister tell us if he, personally, had any discussions with staff and board members of the home prior to agreeing with the government to cut the budget of the Watson Lake safe home?
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
No, I have not had personal discussions with the board or staff of the home in question, but I have relied upon recommendations made by my department about the necessary requisite funding for the levels of services that we would be utilizing from that facility.
Let me say that it is really unfortunate that such a huge building was constructed in the first place at such a huge cost, which is expensive to run - a building that I understand has as many beds as the brand-new facility in Whitehorse.
Ms. Commodore:
The home for battered women is an essential service in the same manner as fire fighting, policing and hospital services. Could the Minister tell us how he can claim to support his government's policy of zero tolerance of violence against women, and yet drastically cut funding of this essential service for women in crisis?
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
The principle of zero tolerance is one that we adhere to, as does our staff; they take this very seriously.
We are looking at necessary funding for such a facility to provide the kinds of services that are needed in a community.
With respect, the analogy to fire fighting really does not wash. For example, we have a situation in Carcross, where I live, where we do not have qualified firemen sleeping in a room above or beside the fire engines day in and day out, 24 hours a day. We have volunteers. We find ways of meeting the needs in a reasonable
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fashion. Those are the kinds of trade-offs that are necessary in managing a government effectively and efficiently.
Ms. Commodore:
The Minister's government has budgeted $1 million for a new liquor store in Watson Lake, and at the same time the safe home has cutback its community outreach program in an attempt to meet its budget.
How can the Minister justify his support to spend $1 million on a new liquor store and agree to a $31,000 cutback to the safe home for women in the same community?
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
First of all, it is a red herring. It is a different department. In our department, we are trying to use -
Some Hon. Member:
(Inaudible)
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
Apparently, the Member for Faro does not like hearing answers, not that he listens, even when his mouth is shut. However, he could at least try shutting his mouth and listening. It might prove edifying to him.
The interesting thing about the liquor store in Watson Lake is that it is the Member who is asking the question who actually put that project on the five-year plan of the then government.
Question re: PACE program
Ms. Commodore:
At the same time, we were not cutting funding.
I have a question for the Minister responsible for Justice.
The Minister has already announced cuts to programming that is vital to Yukoners. He said yesterday, in this House, that requests had gone out to departments and the RCMP to meet certain budget targets. Can he tell us if any discussions by him, or his department officials, with the RCMP resulted in the decision to eliminate the highly effective PACE program in the schools?
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
I am really glad the former Minister asked that question. There have been a lot of misconceptions bandied about in the media, and elsewhere.
The PACE program has not been cut back. The RCMP is looking at the delivery of the program in a manner that is more consistent with our high priority placed on crime prevention and community policing. We have taken steps to move the police into the community so they can play a valuable role in crime prevention.
We have the store front in the Qwanlin shopping mall. That is one example. We are looking at zone policing. We are looking at more foot patrols. It seems to us that it is really important to have quite a few more than one member go to the schools, meet the kids, and talk to them about the kinds of issues that are discussed under the ambit of the PACE program.
We want to see not just one member trusted, appreciated and known by kids in Whitehorse and the Yukon. We want more and more police to take that kind of interactive role with kids and with the community. That is the direction in which we are going.
The changes to the way in which PACE is being delivered is entirely consistent with the new emphasis on crime prevention.
Ms. Commodore:
The Minister can stand there and talk all he wants, trying to convince people that he is not eliminating a program. The government pays 70 percent of the RCMP budget, which amounted to more than $10 million last year. The Minister has to take some responsibility for the decisions that are made. It appears that he is not.
Has the Minister had discussions with those individuals in the schools who support this program before agreeing to the complete elimination of the PACE program?
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
I would recommend to the Member that she have her writers write her several alternate questions in case the question that leads to the supplementary question is not exactly what was expected by the researcher.
I just said that I would be happy to take full responsibility for not cutting PACE. We have not cut PACE. I am pleased to take full responsibility for not cutting PACE. I do not know what else I can say.
Ms. Commodore:
He certainly has to convince people out there who are concerned about it. There has been information in the news that the program is being cut. There has been information in the news saying that they are not going to cut it, but just reduce it. Day after day, there is someone lobbying on behalf of those people who take advantage of the program to keep it in the schools.
I would like to ask the Minister if he would make a commitment today that the whole PACE program, in its entirety, as it has been delivered in the schools, will remain as it is?
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
The funding for PACE is not being cut. The way it is being delivered is being changed in a manner that is consistent with our priorities of crime prevention and having the police more active and interactive with children in the school and the public at large. It is consistent with a whole variety of things we are doing. The budget will be tabled tomorrow. We intend to have a full briefing for the media and public with respect to crime prevention generally, in the very near future.
I answered the question the first time around. This is the third time. I hope that the Member has heard the answer this time.
Speaker:
The time for Question Period has now elapsed.
We will proceed with Orders of the Day
ORDERS OF THE DAY
OPPOSITION PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
MOTIONS OTHER THAN GOVERNMENT MOTIONS
Motion No. 61
Clerk:
Motion No. 61, standing in the name of Mr. Cable.
Speaker:
It has been moved by the Member for Riverside
THAT it is the opinion of this House that a Special Committee of this Legislature should be appointed:
(a) To consult broadly, analyze and to make recommendations regarding modernization and restructuring of Yukon's social security system; and
(b) To examine and make recommendations on the role of non-governmental organizations in the delivery of social programs.
Mr. Cable:
I rise today to address, in a Yukon context, a matter that is assuming great importance for Yukoners, as well as all Canadians, and that is the challenge of preserving our social safety network.
We can all take pride in the system of social security provided in this territory and across the country. As a society, we recognize and accept our responsibility to care for the less advantaged, to extend a hand to those in genuine need. However, economic realities are forcing us to re-examine how these services are delivered, to whom they are delivered, and at what cost. These are complex issues. Our social security systems have evolved over a period of decades, but there is a growing feeling among many people that these systems are no longer in step with the economy of the 1990s, in the economy of the 21st century - an economy characterized by global competition and rapid technological change. Complex government programs like social security cannot be approached on an ad hoc basis. The modernization of those programs cannot be approached on an ad hoc basis, particularly with the pressures that are bearing on the system. They require careful thought and planning and delivery.
Many matters relating to social security fall within the mandate
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of the federal government. However, there are also elements of the system over which we have some control. These include such programs as health care, social assistance, services for the handicapped, the physically and mentally challenged, legal aid, child welfare, addiction services and others. The provision of these services at both the federal and territorial level is costly. As such, we have a responsibility to ensure that these programs operate as effectively and efficiently as possible. Given our current economic climate, one characterized by declining resources, we also have a responsibility to deliver these programs as best we can, with what could likely be less money.
Our social security network, at both the federal and territorial level, is eroding, and this erosion is reaching crisis proportions. It would be a mistake to conclude that this situation is only a function of cost. It results from a number of factors. More people are in need in the Yukon and across the country, so the demand for services is greater, and, just as importantly, those who contribute to the system - the taxpayers - are no longer confident that the system is operating effectively and delivering the most to the most needy.
We have to acknowledge these facts and the need to modernize and restructure the delivery of these programs, not simply to save money but to ensure their survival.
At the federal level, this work is being done by a standing committee of the House of Commons, and many provincial governments have initiated comprehensive reviews of their responsibilities in this area.
It is my suggestion that the Yukon must be part of this process, but our approach must be long term, reasoned and carefully planned, not a collection of ad hoc thoughts in the minds of one or two people.
The Yukon government has recognized that there is a degree of public dissatisfaction with the delivery of these programs in the Yukon. I believe public dissatisfaction with the delivery of social services generally stems from a perception that the system is being abused, that it is ineffective and inefficient and results in an unfair level of taxation on those who pay for it. At the same time, however, I have not yet met a Yukoner who would not gladly lend a hand to someone who was genuinely in need of help.
This dissatisfaction, and the resulting loss of confidence in the system, and the financial challenges of the 1990s, require that we respond, and that we respond in a considered fashion. Our response cannot be ad hoc; it must be systematic and comprehensive. It is not enough to launch an expensive investigation into welfare fraud and to cut legal aid, to cut community policing, or to cut funding for non-governmental organizations who assist with the delivery of these programs. This approach, rather than being positive, creates fear, polarizes and divides the community, and results in questionable financial savings.
All Yukoners must be a part of this important debate. The critics of the delivery system, the proponents of the status quo, and those with innovative and constructive ideas can all contribute, and should be invited to do so.
What is needed is a comprehensive review that brings people together to exchange ideas and develop recommendations for modernizing and restructuring the social security system.
These recommendations could be provided as appropriate, either to the federal or territorial governments. The approach outlined in this motion will allow the opportunity for such a comprehensive review. It would provide for broad participation and legitimize a review process. It would permit the time that is required for a reasoned and comprehensive review. It would permit the calling of witnesses, if necessary. It would permit the analysis of the problem, based on the advice of people who spend their time thinking about these problems.
For years we have received messages from both inside and outside government of overlaps and inefficiencies. A review of the sort I am proposing, carried out by a special committee of this Assembly, is timely, not only as a result of financial considerations, but also because it would meet ever increasing demands for a more coordinated approach to this issue.
If this motion is supported, the result would be to strike a special committee of this Legislature mandated to seek the views of Yukoners on this important and complex issue.
I would say that it would be incorrect for the government to assume that it has a mandate to unilaterally reform or restructure social programs in the territory.
The Yukon Party election platform, the plan upon which some Members of this government were elected, did not contemplate the reform of social programs, as such. Similarly, it would be a gross misjudgment to assume that such a mandate arrived when the government only achieved 35.89 percent of the popular vote.
I would like to encourage the government to adopt more consultative practices, especially in areas as important as social programs, and to involve Members of this Assembly in the exercise.
I draw Members' attention to the December 14, 1992, Speech from the Throne, in which the Commissioner said, "My government is also committed to listening to Yukoners when designing or reforming social programs." The government can show that it meant what it said by supporting this motion today.
The government's approach to this issue thus far could hardly be described as consultative. It is not enough to ask public servants to canvass a territory in an attempt to legitimize the government's agenda, collecting wish lists. The challenges we face require much more than that, and they require more than a four-page document that miraculously was made public yesterday, dated February 1994.
Social assistance reform, on the back page of this three and one-half page document, has 36 lines, including the headings, and this is what we are going to march forth into the 21st century with, in the area of social assistance reform.
What I am saying to the government is that these issues are much too complex to be given a once over, not-even-broad brush, with a funny little letter on the first page and three pages of a little bit of meat following the letter. We need broad consultation, as well as careful thought and analysis. We require the presentation of options so the people in the street can understand the options and can discuss the options and can choose the options, so that they can give the government their priorities, after some consideration. This is needed not only to preserve valuable programs generally but also to ensure that we are able to respond effectively, especially in times like the present, when many people find themselves forced to seek assistance.
I ask all Members to support this motion today.
Hon. Mr. Phillips:
I am pleased to be able to respond to the motion today.
When the Member for Riverside stood in this House last Monday and read his motion on the record, I have to say that I was a bit surprised. As a Member of Cabinet, we have been dealing with this issue - social assistance and social security reform - for the past several months and it is one that, as the Minister of Education, I have been discussing with the federal government over the last year.
I am also surprised because of the fact that this government this last year advertised and carried out a whole series of public meetings in every community in the territory. Over 280 Yukoners showed up at the meetings and made their representations in one form or another to the Government of the Yukon on social assistance
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reform. I have to wonder where the Member for Riverside was when all of this took place. I am not sure whether that Member took the opportunity when the meetings were in Whitehorse or in other communities to have himself or other Liberals participate in those meetings, and if they did not I would be disappointed.
A great deal of different information has been sent out over the last year or so, encouraging the input of Yukoners. In October 1993, the Department of Health and Social Services visited every community. That is when the almost 300 people showed up and made their representations known. It seems to me that the action the Member for Riverside is recommending today has already been done and the work is now proceeding on a restructuring based on some of those consultations. It appears that maybe the Member for Riverside is somewhat confused about social reform consultation.
Both the territorial and federal governments are discussing the idea of reforms. I wonder if our Liberal Member should have directed his motion more toward the federal Liberal government. From what I am hearing from other ministers across the country, it is the federal Liberals who are moving quickly on reforms without adequate consultation with the provinces or the territories. Just last week, Mr. Axworthy had to cancel a hastily called meeting in Ottawa to discuss some social assistance reforms because the Quebec minister, and many other ministers, felt they did not know enough about the content of the meeting and what was expected of people at the meeting. He is moving hastily on that.
Perhaps this motion requiring some kind of consultative process that would go across the country should be more directed to the federal Liberal government. The changes they make to their social assistance reforms will have a dramatic effect on all provinces and territories.
I could support the Member, if the Member for Riverside would amend his motion to urge his Liberal counterpart in Ottawa to consult more with the provinces and territories before they proceed. I know that all territories and provinces, right now, are in a bit of a panic to find out exactly what is happening at the federal level.
From the educational standpoint, we are being consulted by way of letters we are receiving from the federal government, when they announce their programs and what the contents of those programs are; for instance, the youth service corps and the youth internship program. There has not been a great deal of input from the provinces and territories. At the last meeting I attended in February, Quebec made the point that the youth services corps is actually up and running in Quebec already, that to start another youth services corps in this country would be a duplication of services, and that perhaps the federal government should sit down with the Quebec government to discuss that duplication of services.
In today's time of fiscal restraint for all governments across this country, we have to do whatever we can to try to avoid the duplication of services.
Let me get back to the idea at hand, that we should establish another committee, at great expense, to travel around the territory and hear what we have just heard in the consultations that took place less than six months ago. I am sure we will hear from the Minister of Health and Social Services what the cost of those consultations were. Having done some consultations ourselves in the Department of Education, I imagine it would be rather costly to do.
How valuable does the Liberal Member opposite think it would be to go back and again ask similar questions of the same people and get the same responses? Would the Yukon taxpayer feel that was a wise expenditure of our dollars? I do not think so. From having travelled around to a lot of communities already, I think people would be somewhat confused if we arrived, less than six months after consultations took place in their community, to say we wanted to hear their views and thoughts on social assistance reform. Those same people would ask why we did not listen the first time.
We were just there six months ago, so why are we here again? What kind of a government are we running here if we forget we were there just six months ago? It seems that the Liberal Member has forgotten that we were there just six months ago and did consult the people. This is a reasonable request if we had not done that; however, we have just gone through that process and had input from people. They were well-advertised meetings and a lot of people made presentations to us. We have listened to some of them.
I know the Liberal Member is fond of establishing committees. He is a great one to set up committees on almost everything; however, I am not sure if that is the route to go. We have several committees established now. Almost every time he rises to his feet, he suggests setting up another one. I do not know how we would all have the time to sit on all the committees he has been recommending. I think it would be a bit difficult for Members to fulfill that role.
I can remember last year when some Members on the other side, and perhaps even the Liberal Member, were criticizing us for too much consultation. We had too many committees going around the territory at the same time, as he and some of the others on that side said. However, last fall, when we were criticized, the Department of Health and Social Services was one of those committees. That was the committee that was going around at the time, the same one we were criticized for, where Yukoners told us what their priorities were for dealing with alcohol and drug abuse and health and social assistance. The government is now moving to act on some of those recommendations.
I think we would be re-inventing the wheel if we decided to form another committee and go around the territory, less than six months later, asking the very same questions of the very same people.
As well as this consultation that occurred, other consultations have taken place over the past few months from which we are drawing information for the social assistance reform. Under the Women's Directorate, we held a territory-wide survey of women's concerns and priorities. We held a focus group discussion among mothers on social assistance. They spoke about the difficulties they are having trying to get off social assistance and the disincentives to work. I have to tell the Liberal Member that that was an extensive study. Many Yukon women were questioned. It was probably one of the most extensive studies ever carried out regarding the concerns of Yukon women - what are the disincentives to work and how do they get off social assistance? They gave us recommendations. I do not know how much more thorough we could get, as MLAs, just going around the territory.
We are using the information from the public consultations and from the focus group's study to draw on recommendations for social assistance reform.
When we talked to Yukon women, we discussed all kinds of things; we talked about the inflexibility of current training programs; we discussed such issues as child care, child support and safety issues. If the Member does not have a copy of that report, I would be more than happy to make a copy available to him. It was released publicly. It lays out many, many recommendations from Yukon women on ways to help them to better cope with their lives. That will be the information we draw from in social assistance reform.
We have also been an active participant in the interparliamentary
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committee, headed up by Health and Social Services, which is reviewing all aspects of the programming over the past year. The director participated on two subcommittees: welfare services and the parents-of-preschoolers policy committee. The directorate has represented the issues identified by Yukon women throughout the process of social assistance reform. So, we have an absolute wealth of information in that survey, as I said to the Member, that survey was carried out by Yukon women. We would probably gain much more information from that survey, because the women of the Yukon really opened up to the interviewers, and the people realized that it was a very important survey, and they really told it as it is. I think they would be a little more reluctant to say some of the things they said in that survey to a group of MLAs sitting at the front of a public room. I think this was a little better forum, and Yukon women had an opportunity to express themselves, and express themselves very well, on ways that they think their lives could be improved with social assistance reform.
As well, the Women's Directorate sits on a social security reform committee initiated by Mr. Axworthy. The directorate sits on the interdepartmental committee headed by Health and Social Services within our government, and this committee will provide input into the federal process, which is steam-rolling ahead at a very rapid speed. Actually, as I said to the Member before, we are quite concerned that we are moving rather rapidly on social assistance reform, and many of the provinces and territories are not quite equipped to deal with that, so I think the motion in front of us, in my view, would be much more readily directed at the federal government to consult more with provinces and territories as opposed to us consulting more with the people of the Yukon.
I think extensive consultation has gone on over the past several years, with the women's survey and with the recent trips around the territory by the Department of Health and Social Services. The Member for Riverside has been fiscally responsible and reasonable in the House, so I think that Member would be the last one to have us go out, and like I said earlier, re-invent the wheel, when we already have the information at hand.
To agree to this motion today would be re-inventing the wheel, and it would be duplication, and it would also be a costly exercise because we would have to have at least three to four Members on the committee and adjourn the House at some time during the year in order to find time to do this. I know that we were here most of the winter and that we will probably be here most of the spring and summer, so it might be difficult to fit this into our schedule.
Having said that, I think that we would probably be criticized by some people in the public, and especially the communities - most of the people who made representations were from the communities - for not listening the first time, and going out and wasting taxpayers' dollars. I think that we all have to be conscious of that in these times of fiscal restraint.
For the reasons that I have mentioned, I am going to have some difficulty in supporting this motion. When the Member rose to his feet, he said that the last thing that we want to do is approach changes to social programs on an ad hoc basis. I could not agree more and I believe that the people would think that if we toured the territory a second time doing the same thing that we did only few months ago, that we were approaching the issue on an ad hoc basis and that we did not have our act together at all.
The people in the public and the communities are not stupid people. They would remember being there three, four, five months ago and saying the very same thing that we are going to be asking them to say in a few months if we accept this motion.
For those reasons, I will not be supporting this motion, and I would urge all Members of the House to allow common sense to prevail and realize that we have done much of the ground work, we have consulted with the people of the Yukon and that it is now time to get on with the job of social assistance reform. We have all of the information at our fingertips and recommendations from various groups about how to improve the system. It is now time to get on with it and improve the system by means of future consultations with various groups as we go along, stage by stage.
I urge Members to vote against the motion presented by the Liberal Member.
Ms. Commodore:
It would have been beneficial to people on this side of the House to hear what the Minister responsible for social services had to say. I suppose he will get his turn. According to the list we had, he was -
Point of Order
Speaker:
The Minister of Health and Social Services, on a point of order.
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
If the Member wants me to go ahead of her and proceed with a speech, I am quite prepared to do that.
Mr. Penikett:
Lest my colleague's previous intervention of a couple of sentences be deemed to be her speech, I would hope that the Speaker could treat her intervention as a point of order, as was the Minister's.
Speaker's Ruling
Speaker:
I will permit the Minister of Health and Social Services to speak and I will not count the words of the Member for Whitehorse Centre at this point.
Motion No. 61 - continued
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
I thank Mr. Speaker for his indulgence, and the Members opposite, and apologize for not being in my place when it was my turn. I thought that the mover of the motion had a lot more to say than he actually said, and so I was not in the Chambers in time to stand in my place and give my modest views on this issue.
I was somewhat surprised by this motion coming now, as it did, because of the history of the social assistance reform and social program reform, as it has been ongoing and has accelerated since we took office and I was made Minister of the Department of Health and Social Services. This seems to be an attempt, for whatever reason, to jump in at the last possible moment, or perhaps even after it is too late to jump in. I think that in order to explain this I will go through exactly what has been happening and what has occurred and where we are now in regard to reform of the social assistance programs in the Yukon.
I took the motion itself to be directed at social assistance reform. I can broaden that, however, if necessary, to talk about health programs, as well. A lot of preliminary work and implementation work has been ongoing for a considerable period of time in that area as well.
When I was appointed as Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, I gave the department my three initial main priorities, which were to examine very carefully the social assistance programs, have them analyzed and make changes as necessary to make them as efficient and effective as possible. The second priority was to do a thorough review of programs involved in the health side, and again to try and get control of those programs, a handle on them, and to implement necessary changes as soon as was possible. The third initial priority that I, as Minister, brought to the job was to develop an alcohol and drug strategy for government - something that was long overdue - and implement that as soon as possible.
Shortly after I took office, I was advised that there had been an interdepartmental committee struck to look at the social assistance programs and to try to rationalize them and get a handle on what was happening and why. The basic reason for this was that, despite
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the government's claims of high employment and low unemployment, despite record budgets, despite the fact that the two large mines in the Yukon were operating, social assistance, as paid by this government - which, of course, does not include status Indian people - had been increasing in cost at a very alarming rate. In fact, the impression of government officials was that it seemed to be totally out of control.
The payments went from something of about $3 million a year about three or four years ago up to in excess of $9 million for the year ending 1992-93, and we budgeted for a similar percentage increase for the year just passed. We actually budgeted for $12 million, I think, to be spent on social programs.
One of the reasons we did this was because we wanted to give the department a budget it could come within and we wanted to be able to free up some people to work hard on examining issues of reform and what was wrong with the system.
The interdepartmental committee was instructed to view its work as a top priority of this Minister, as well as of Cabinet. They accelerated the work they were doing, and moved as quickly as they could to develop a report on social assistance by January 1993. This is an extremely comprehensive look at, and analysis of, social assistance in the Yukon. It is an excellent piece of work that was done by top officials from a number of different departments.
Going to the record, Hansard, on May 4, 1993, during debate on the 1992-93 supplementaries, I spoke at some length about the priorities I had placed on the department, and about the work that was being done. If one looks at page 792, at the discussion on general debate in Committee of the Whole, I indicated that we intended to commence a consultation process - at that time, I said through the summer and fall - on initiatives regarding the three areas that I am discussing.
The record also shows that, on May 20, 1993, I tabled the report on social assistance, together with the companion reader's guide, in these Chambers. At that time, I gave a ministerial statement on social assistance. In that statement, I discussed the fact that we had developed a new mission statement for the social assistance program, which stated that the purpose of the program was to provide adequate assistance to meet the basic needs of those in need, to help people achieve self-sufficiency and to provide responsive and caring services while respecting the dignity of individuals.
In that statement, I also stated that we were in the process of final negotiations toward signing a SAR(S) agreement with the Government of Canada. This agreement would initially require us to spend an additional $200,000 under the SAR(S) agreement, to be matched by the federal government, and to be spent by the fiscal year just ended, 1993-94. As well, we entered into an agreement with the federal government with regard to loans made to individuals by this government under the social assistance program for people who were waiting for unemployment insurance payments, whereby when the first payments were made by the federal government, we would be paid back by the federal government for the bridging loans that we had made to individual people. I also spoke about an agreement with other jurisdictions that would provide for cooperation in trying to ensure that social assistance recipients are not double dipping by being paid in more than one jurisdiction.
Those three initiatives, together with the mission statement, were announced at that time. We were just completing the finishing touches on what is known as LISA, which is the computer programming based on the system in Alberta. This has allowed the department to get a much better handle on its records and information retrieval on clients, and that sort of thing. The actual deployment or startup of LISA resulted in extra available time for the overworked social workers in the department by giving them a chance to do work other than clerical or quasi-clerical work. They could do more work with clients and have more of a chance to look at such things as abuse, and so on. So, that is on the record.
On May 27, 1993, during debate of the operation and maintenance budget for the department for 1993-94, we had a discussion regarding reform of social assistance and health and what we were doing with the alcohol and drug strategy.
Again, the consultation was raised during that debate, for example, on page 1108 of Hansard. We also advised that, in addition to the three initiatives mentioned in our ministerial statement of May 20, we had begun implementation on a number of other areas - and a lot of this implementation has taken place - aside from continuing the negotiations and, ultimately, signing the SAR(S) agreement, and implementing the agreement on UI, which required a certain amount of tinkering.
Unfortunately, the federal government at first gave us lump sum payments for the actual amount owing to the social assistance borrower. This was not a really good way of handling the agreement and the program, so it has been modified to accommodate the individual or family that has borrowed money as interim financing - bridge financing - awaiting the first batch of UI payments. That has taken some time to settle, and there has been a lot of implementation work on SAR(S) itself. I will get to that a little bit later, because we gave a further ministerial statement in the fall.
Some of the other areas where ongoing work was carried on over the summer and fall, even before the consultation commenced, involved developing individual self-sufficiency plans with clients, holding information workshops, looking at the feasibility of hiring, on contract, a fraud investigator - and this has ultimately been implemented, just a few weeks ago, and I will have more on that later - and increasing the use of loans and advances to people who are temporarily in need, but who ought to be able to pay money back to the government, being only temporarily short of funds.
We also work with the RCMP on fraud issues. There were some 24 cases that were already under investigation by the RCMP and we needed to have discussions with them in order that social workers would know how to go about looking at issues of fraud, reporting on them and the minimum groundwork that ought to be done to facilitate the RCMP taking on a file.
We looked at in-house policies related to placer miners, miners, indigent burials, persons in treatment, wood purchase, furniture, dental policies, and things like that, some of which were being abused rather soundly by some clients.
We looked at an overview of caseloads. We developed an in-house client newsletter that has been going out to social assistance recipients, and we have undertaken a re-write of the policy manual for the social assistance program.
The actual consultation that took place started in the fall. There was a handout developed and meetings were scheduled throughout the Yukon. Letters were written to a whole host of organizations, mostly non-government organizations. There were more than 60 letters inviting groups to attend the public consultation meetings, or to have a private meeting with an assistant deputy minister or a deputy minister. Those letters were sent to the Child Development Centre, Foster Parent Association, Skookum Jim Friendship Centre, Yukon Advisory Council on Indian Child Welfare, Yukon Family Services Association, Second Opinion Society, Kaushee's, Dawson Shelter Society, Health and Hope for Families Society, Challenge Community Vocational Alternatives, Crossroads, Hospice Yukon Society, Learning Disabilities Association of Yukon, Teegatha'a Oh Zheh, Whitehorse Transit, Yukon Association for Community Living, Yukon Council on Aging, Yukon Special Olympics Association, Whitehorse Hospital
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Corporation, Health and Welfare Canada, Yukon Medical Association, Yukon Registered Nurses Association, Yukon Chamber of Commerce, Association of Yukon Communities, Health and Stroke Foundation, Cancer Society, Whitehorse Parents for Parents, The Victoria Faulkner Women's Centre, Yukon Child Care Association, Yukon Child Care Board, Canadian Physiotherapy Association, Yukon Arthritis Society, Alcoholics Anonymous, all 14 First Nations, First Nation Health and Social Commission, all churches in Whitehorse and in the communities, all RCMP detachments in Whitehorse and the communities, all YTG departments and corporations.
There was fairly heavy advertising regarding the public meetings. I know it was advertised on the radio, it was advertised in newspapers, and notices were posted in the communities in the normal fashion when one has public meetings in those communities, and the list goes on. The community consultation schedule involved 15 public meetings: Beaver Creek, October 4 at the community hall; Burwash Landing, October 5 at the band hall; Haines Junction, October 6 at the mezzanine; Carmacks, October 6 at the Carmacks community hall; Carcross, October 6 at the Carcross community hall; Dawson City, October 12 at the land claims conference room in the Tr'on Dek Hall; in Faro, October 13 at the Legion; Ross River, October 14; Mayo, October 14 in the board room of the YTG building there; October 15 at the Selkirk First Nation band hall; October 21 at Watson Lake at the Johnson Elementary School gymnasium; October 18 in Teslin in the meeting room at the public library; October 19 at the Council for Yukon Indians building at 11 Nisutlin Drive in Whitehorse; Whitehorse, October 27 at the Town Hall in the Gold Rush Inn, and in Old Crow on October 28.
I personally attended about three of the public meetings - at Carcross, at Teslin and at Watson Lake. I should say that, in order to have all these meetings within that period of time, we had three groups of three officials each - one in each group with expertise in social assistance, one with an expertise on the health side and one in each group with expertise on the alcohol and drug strategy, which had been tabled in this House more than a year ago and received wide circulation and the enthusiastic support of most of the principals or players throughout the Yukon.
I am trying to restrict my remarks, although, because of the wide umbrella given to the motion by the mover - because he seems to have been talking about all social programs, and I thought it was initially just about social assistance - I am not going to get into too much detail about the health reform, but that was part of the consultation, as was the alcohol and drug strategy.
Briefly, with regard to the health reform, it was announced as one of the priorities. One of the first things we did was to enter into an agreement to form the joint management committee with the Yukon Medical Association. We have been working with them in regular meetings on issues of health reform. There has been a lot of work done, which led into the community consultation we just spoke about. That was another issue that was consulted on, and which would fall within the ambit of social services, given the broad definition by the mover of the motion.
In addition to the public meetings, a lot of work was done with First Nations and the key players on the alcohol and drug strategy, many of whom I read out from the list of people who received letters.
About 280 members of the public, from all Yukon communities, attended the public meetings, and about three-quarters of those people were rural residents.
In addition to the public meetings, we had private meetings with the following organizations in rural communities: Old Crow NNADAP, an inter-agency committee; Dawson Recreation Board; Carmacks First Nation; Ross River Dene Council; Watson Lake inter-agency group; and the Liard First Nation, as well as members from the Kaska Council.
There was the Beaver Creek NNADAP and White River First Nation, the Haines Junction Health Centre, the Champagne/Aishihik First Nation, the St. Elias Community School and, of course, government workers, social service and health workers in each of the communities.
The following groups made presentations at public meetings, participated in private meetings or sent in written submissions: Crossroads Treatment Centre, Skookum Jim Friendship Centre, Whitehorse Parents for Parents, the Canadian Physiotherapy Association, the Yukon Arthritis Association, social assistance appeal committees, the Second Opinion Society, the Yukon Association for Community Living and the joint management committee, made up of YMA members and officials. There were written submissions received from individuals, as well.
Yesterday, we released the document, What You Said, which summarizes a lot of the issues that were brought forward by members of the public, what was said about setting priorities for alcohol and drug abuse, health care and social assistance. I am sure that Members have copies of that document. In that document, it states that departmental representatives spent a total of six weeks on the road talking and listening to people.
On November 25, in this House, I made a ministerial statement about SAR(S) - social assistance recipients. At that time, I announced that we had signed the agreement with the federal government and that we were implementing various programming under that agreement, including Headstart, which resulted in the placement of 30 social assistance clients into jobs with some funding from that program. We also discussed the training being done by CEIC with New Opportunities. We will be seeing an increase in the SAR(S) agreement funding in the upcoming year. I cannot divulge the amount at this time. It is very successful. There are a lot of ideas and it is consistent with what we want to do in terms of retraining people and encouraging them to get back into the mainstream workforce and develop their potential, whatever it may be, to the best of their ability.
It is very consistent with priorities expressed already by the federal government regarding its much-touted and widely-feared social assistance reform - widely feared because of the intention to cut back rather savagely the transfer payments from Ottawa to the provinces and territories, widely feared because of the devastating impact already on some regions of Canada, resulting from the unilateral cuts to the unemployment insurance program, and widely feared because, particularly in jurisdictions such as this, we are extremely vulnerable to unilateral cutbacks, given that most of the money this government spends comes from the federal government by way of formula financing money, or Canada assistance program money, or other forms of transfer payments, including established program financing.
I want also to speak about the issue of engaging a fraud investigator, because we have come under some criticism. We feel that some of the criticism is somewhat misguided but, nonetheless, there have been some fears raised. The fact is that there have been a lot of cases reported to the RCMP - and these cases are under investigation - for fraud by social assistance clients. Just recently, there was a guilty plea in court, and some of these cases are getting to the trial stage.
Upon advertising the contract in the newspapers, a rather interesting thing started to happen. That is that, almost daily, people would come to the social assistance office saying that, by the way, they had forgotten to report something, they made a mistake when they were applying for social assistance, and they would really like to clear up these mistakes and pay back money they might have received, because they had not realized at the time
Page Number 2211
that they were making these mistakes. This occurred almost every day, and certainly was further evidence that there was a fair amount of abuse of the social assistance program.
We intend to give people a period of time, an amnesty period, to come and report situations where they have fraudulently taken money from the government, on the understanding that they would only be required to pay back the money that they obtained through fraudulent means and that there would not be any further action taken with regard to investigation for fraud. It will be interesting to see the results from that exercise.
The individual who was awarded the contract will be working with the department for six months on several things: partly, on the interface between social services workers and the RCMP so that they understand the issues related to the elements of fraud and the kinds of things that would have to be established in order to take it to the RCMP and have a file opened. They will be working with this person with regard to reviewing regulations to see where they lead to abuse, due to being vaguely written and because they were probably drafted without understanding of the kinds of ripoffs that can occur.
It is not the intention of this government to implement some kind of police force or a person who is going to go out peeking through windows. We think we need the kind of background that this individual has for a short period of time for a number of reasons, not the least of which is to discuss how some of the regulations and programs should be designed to minimize the potential for fraud in the future.
Some of the fraud is kind of interesting and it gets around very quickly about how you can rip off the government.
One concern that we have and something that we are going to address is that there was no cap on how much could be spent on utilities by a family or individual renting premises. Lo and behold, it should not have surprised anyone that there were some buildings being rented by social assistance recipients that had all kinds of extension cords leading out of the house for use by others.
Of course, there was no policy in effect in previous years that would catch this. There is a policy now and there will be a cap placed on how much is available for utilities to families under the new policy.
I think that this step was simply a prudent one. It is a short-term position; at least that is the way we see it at present. I think that it is very important that we get a handle on the program and try to ensure that the program is not being ripped off, because we want to see that money goes to the people that deserve the money and need it. Social assistance really is the basic safety net for people in the Yukon, and it is important that that safety net always be there, and that some of the steps we take improve the safety net for those people who truly need it.
We also had frank discussions with the Health and Social Services Council and they have had a subcommittee go over a lot of the issues, in some detail, with our department. So, we have had their comments on the issues, both on the social assistance side and the health programming side. There is more work to be done and we look forward to their participation. This is one of the first meaningful tasks they have really been given by government since being appointed, they feel, and while we may not always agree with their advice, they have made a lot of good points and made extremely valuable contributions to our thinking on certain issues.
Some of the issues that are being dealt with by Cabinet and which I will be in a position to make a ministerial statement on, I hope, within the next month, are policy decisions regarding transient and hardship appeals, special needs, recoveries, parental leave policy, hostel or shelter for transients, welfare services, rate review, capping utilities, special needs, medical payments, income definitions, transitional benefits, earning exemptions - the whole area of disincentives for people getting back into the workforce - asset exemption, disabled, maintenance orders, and other housekeeping amendments to programs we now have.
One of the things I lost was the chance to speak at some length. I had forgotten that, because I was second to speak, I only had 45 minutes. That is unfortunate.
Speaker:
The Member has one minute to conclude his remark.
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
Let me say that, in addition to this, we are dealing with all of the new initiatives from the federal government, that the implementation we are looking at and the changes that are just about to be completed with our program are necessary, consistent with everything that has been said and done by the provinces, and is being stated by the federal government, and that even when we implement these changes they will be interim measures because a lot of other changes are going to come because of what the federal government is doing, and we are heavily into that process.
Let me say that, given all the discussion about consultation, for over a year, all the work being done, the implementation that has been done, I am surprised by this motion. It is almost as though someone comes along now and says he would like the job of architect and project manager of the new federal building on Fourth Avenue; it is already built, of course.
With regard to the NGO issue, let me say that we are reviewing the treatment of NGOs. I have a lot to say on that subject. We disagree with the motion. This has been an area that has been neglected and that we have been working on strenuously. We feel that by this winter, far in advance of next spring's budget trials and tribulations, we will have a comprehensive policy in place regarding NGOs, the main principles of which we are acting, in essence, at this time.
Speaker:
Order. Would the Member please conclude his remarks.
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
Thank you for this opportunity, and I, along with other Members on this side, will be voting against this motion.
Ms. Commodore:
The document that was released yesterday, as the Member for Riverside mentioned, mysteriously appeared after it had been in publication since February. I suppose the document was supposed to give us some gratification that this government was up to date on the issues in regard to social services and the programs, and social justice and everything else.
One would look at it and wonder what they were trying to tell us. I read through it, and it did not take very long, because it is only four pages long. If one took the section on page 4 and the small section on page 3, one would probably only have three pages. But I guess they had to even it out on one sheet of paper. I sat here and I tried very, very hard to listen to what the Minister was saying, and he talked about all of the things his department officials had done. I would have liked him to tell us what he has done, because he mentioned a lot of initiatives that had taken place in regard to where the department is going from here. At this time, he and his other colleagues on that side of the House feel that Yukoners no longer have to be heard.
I would disagree with that. I would disagree with it because many things have happened since the consultation they had on this subject. Meetings are still happening. We are still hearing from people in the public who are dissatisfied with some of the actions that this government has taken.
I really believe that they do not want to hear from the public any more. They have made some drastic decisions that are going to be affecting many Yukoners. They will be affecting them because of the cutbacks that have been announced after the consultation. I
Page Number 2212
do not know whether or not there is anything in here that said we should cut essential services to those individuals out there who need it. If it said that somewhere here, I did not see it. They keep talking about being fiscally responsible. I agree that any government should. However, they are carrying things a bit too far.
About one month ago, I had the opportunity to attend a meeting that was organized by a church coalition, or whatever it was to be called at that time. I went there because I was interested in hearing what people there had to say. So did some of my colleagues. I looked around and thought I might see the Minister of Health and Social Services or the Minister of Education or someone from that caucus there. They were not. I heard comments from people who were there that they were surprised. This was a diverse group of individuals. There were church officials, people who are on social assistance, single parents, educators, government officials - probably on behalf of the Minister, because he does not appear to have personal discussions with them. I thought to myself -
Some Hon. Member:
(Inaudible)
Ms. Commodore:
I was very polite, as I have been taught to be, and listened to the Minister speak for his allotted time. I felt I controlled myself very well. He can continue to - what is the word? - heckle me - I forgot the word "heckle" for one moment, even though I at times did it myself - as he is doing, and that is fine, but I just thought that I would mention it.
I attended the meeting out of interest. I have always been concerned about social issues and the plight of people who are not as fortunate as the Ministers across the House. I was very surprised at a lot of the discussions that took place at that time and the number of people in the community who were interested in finding out what people had to say.
I disagree with the Minister that everything that was said is already known by their people who were out in the communities consulting. There were people at the meeting that night who had some very constructive things to say.
I do not believe this government should stop listening just because they feel they have done their thing. I do not know that they heard from 280 people. According to this small document they have given to us, 200 people participated. I do not know whether 280 people spoke to them, or made representation to them, or if that was the total amount of people who attended meetings. The Member for Faro said there were about 60 people at the meeting in his riding. I do not know how many people spoke up.
I could safely say, in looking at this document, a high school student could have attended that meeting, taken notes, and come up with a more thorough paper than this one. I believe that. It is like everything else they have put out. It does not really tell you much. They say they are going to use it as a guide, but it says we are not going to be listening to all the concerns, because we cannot do everything for all the people. They will pick and choose, as they have already done.
The Minister has bragged about his ministerial statements. He has said over and over again, during his 40-minute speech, that he announced this and that in a ministerial statement, and this is what they are going to do and he is announcing it in the House today because he has a commitment.
However, the public knows, as I do, that ministerial statements from that side of the House do not carry much weight. That is evident in the announcements he made in regard to the alcohol and drug strategy and all the great things they were going to do. I cannot recall the date. One of the great things included building a much-needed detox centre. We all know the state the detox centre is in right now. We all know it is inadequate to meet the needs of those people who need that service.
The Minister then turns around and says he is sorry, but he has changed his mind. He could not even answer, in this House, what other programs were going to be available to the people who needed them. He did not know, because his department had not told him what to do in regard to that.
The alcohol and drug strategy may be his in writing, and he may have something to say about what they have done but, according to what we have heard in the House, and to the message the public is getting, those kinds of announcements and decisions that have been made really do not carry much weight.
I listened to the first Cabinet Minister, the Minister of Education, stand and speak. He mentioned that he was not going to support this, because all these great things had been done. He mentioned the survey that was done by the Women's Directorate.
Once again, for the record, I want to say that was a survey approved by the NDP when they were in government, or it would never have been done. They would never have had that information.
I do think that the government would have had the foresight to look at something so constructive as looking at the concerns of women of the Yukon. It was something that was already started, but did bring back valuable information.
The government can talk about their consultation, the things that they have done, and say that they had 280 people in attendance at these meetings and now they know what they want to do and to heck with anyone else who may want to make any kind of representation to them.
The Minister of Education has already said that if we struck this committee we would have to go out there and ask the same old questions. How does the Minister know that the same old questions are going to be asked, because many drastic events have occurred since the consultation and many people are beginning to suffer the consequences of the actions from those Members on that side of the House. Their actions take us back to the dinosaur age and everybody knows that. As a matter of fact, the offices upstairs are now being referred to as Jurassic Park and it is appropriate.
When I talk about going back to the Dark Ages, it is evident that the people in the communities have something to say about some of the decisions that have been made.
Many things have taken place. We have asked questions in the House and the Minister gets up on his high horse, in his pompous manner, and talks about the kinds of constructive things that they have done, but they are not constructive.
I think that the public has a lot more to say than what was said at the consultations that took place by bureaucrats. I think that a committee such as the one proposed, consisting of people who have the power to make changes in this House, would be more effective because we would be there to hear from the people.
I am surprised that decisions are made based on information or advice coming from the departments when they have not even sat down to hear what the real problems are. For instance, the Minister today said that he had not had any discussions with the staff at the Watson Lake safe home nor the board, so the Minister did not really know what the problems were.
The Minister told his department to start cutting costs and they cut costs where they felt it was going to be very beneficial, but at the expense of the people for whom the program was there.
Only last weekend, because people know that I care about the young people in this government's care, I requested that they have a meeting with me. I met with parents and children at my home on Saturday, because they had some great concerns about the problems that they had faced while they were in the care of this government. The Minister is very well aware of this, because I continued to bring up the subject in the last session, and I will do it again, because people will feel that they have somewhere to go.
Page Number 2213
The bureaucracy is not listening to them any more, and they probably never have.
That kind of representation is ongoing to each and every one of us on this side of the House. I guess it is not surprising to us to sit here and listen to Members on that side of the House disagreeing with setting up such a committee because they do not want to hear what people have to say any more, and that is evident to the people out there.
I would also like the Minister, if he gets the chance to speak again, to let me know about the figures in his document here regarding the 280 people. It makes a bit of difference whether or not there were 280 people sitting in a series of 15 meetings and whether they even had a chance to make their concerns known, because I do not know that. Could he give me a list of the 280 people who made personal representation to him, either through questions on the floor or representations at a meeting, or through writing to him? If the fact is that they had 15 meetings and 280 people in total showed up, that is not a very good representation of Yukoners, so I question that as well.
I question the ability to make decisions based on their four-page document here. They say, before one even starts looking at it, that they are not going to listen to all of them, just some of them, and that some demands may never be met. I think Yukoners already know that.
Consultations are very valuable. The motion presented by the Member for Riverside today carries a lot of weight in that people who are prepared to go before a committee such as this will know that the people who really care, or think they care, would hear what they have to say. They have taken it upon themselves to consult on game quotas. I have noticed in the past that any time there were discussions about animals the side over there gets livid. They rambled on about, "Let us have enough animals so we can kill them." To them, game quotas are very important, and they speak more passionately about saving the animals than they do children.
That has been evident for as long as I have been in this House. They made a big issue because a friend came along and said, "Hey, John, let us have some gambling video terminals in the Yukon." Right away, a high-powered committee started going out and getting paid per diems to hear what individuals had to say. To them, it was important that hotel-owner friends have these video terminals in their hotels. Those kinds of things were important to them, but we are talking about much more important issues: the lives of Yukoners. We are talking about the plight of Yukoners.
The Minister can stand in his place in this House and talk about the problems that people on social assistance face. He talks, in a joking manner, about electrical extension cords being hooked up to other houses, but he does not know what it is like to live on social assistance. A lot of those people do things to survive, because they have a very difficult time living on the kind of money that they get from his department. They do a lot of things, because to live from day to day is a very difficult thing for them in that situation. They cannot imagine what it is like to have groceries that will last from the one day when they get their social assistance to the end of the month. That is not possible.
There are actions to survive by those individuals, but it is not just confined to them. They are many other things outside of this House that the Members on the other side of the House are not familiar with because they have no idea. For them to personally sit down and listen to what these people have to say may give them some insight into the plight of the people who are in need of some kind of assistance.
I know that their priority right now is the budget and make-believe deficit, among other things. However, it is at what price? It is at the price of those individuals out there. That is pretty darn scary.
I talk to people daily. I talk to people about a number of things. One of the things becoming very clear to individuals in my riding - because I tend to talk to them more than other people, but I have all sorts of people coming to me to talk about the many different things that they face - is that there are a lot of people out there who want to make changes. They want to be a part of the changes that are taking place. That was evident. I did not get to the last meeting on April 13 because I had a riding association meeting that night, but the same people who would like to provide a lot of input into social changes were there. I believe that they will be having ongoing meetings, and it is unfortunate that this government is not prepared to even go to a meeting or to listen to what they have to say.
I think that the motion on the floor is a healthy motion. It would provide this government with a lot of information that it thinks it already knows, but it does not, and that is evident because of the things it is doing. I think it will be more evident when the budget is tabled in the House tomorrow, because we will know who is going to suffer and who is going to be happy.
I also think a committee such as this has to have some guidelines, and I would therefore propose an amendment.
Amendment proposed
I move
THAT Motion No. 61 be amended by adding the following paragraph:
"(c) The mandate of the committee will be to conduct its business in the context of the following principles put forth by the Ecumenical Coalition of Economic Justice:
"(1) Human Dignity: The right of all people to be treated with justice, love and respect;
"(2) Economic equity: The right of all people to adequate access to the resources necessary for a full life, including adequate income security provisions;
"(3) Mutual responsibility: The obligation of the community to care for all its people, ensuring that basic needs are met;
"(4) Social Justice: The right of all people regardless of race, religion, class, gender, ability, or sexual orientation, to full participation in the life and decision making of the community;
"(5) Ecological Sustainability: The obligation of the community to practice responsible stewardship of the earth and its environment, so that the creation might be preserved for generations to come; and
"(6) Fiscal Fairness: The responsibility of all to contribute fairly for the well being of all."
Speaker:
It has been moved by the Hon. Member for Whitehorse Centre
THAT Motion No. 61 be amended by adding the following new paragraph:
"(c) The mandate of the committee will be to conduct its business in the context of the following principles put forth by the Ecumenical Coalition for Economic Justice:
"1. Human Dignity: The right of all people to be treated with justice, love and respect;
"2. Economic Equity: The right of all people to adequate access to the resources necessary for a full life, including adequate income security provisions;
"3. Mutual Responsibility: The obligation of the community to care for all its people, ensuring that basic needs are met;
"4. Social Justice: The right of all people, regardless of race, religion, class, gender, ability, or sexual orientation, to full participation in the life and decision-making of the community;
"5. Ecological Sustainability: The obligation of the community to practice responsible stewardship of the earth and its
Page Number 2214
environment, so that the creation might be preserved for generations to come; and
"6. Fiscal Fairness: The responsibility of all to contribute fairly for the well-being of all."
Ms. Commodore:
This amendment was introduced to include some sort of guidelines for a committee such as this to follow. The guidelines were drawn up by a number of individuals who felt there had to be some mutual care and understanding in decisions that were made. These kinds of rules do that.
The committee that could be struck as a result of this motion would have guidelines to follow. These guidelines are very simple. They are the kind of guidelines that every single person should be able to look at and agree to. There are some people who feel that is not possible, and there are some people who, as they did with our human rights legislation, oppose some of the things in here.
An effective government has to have some kind of guidelines. We cannot look at cuts. We have to look at those individuals as human beings and their needs. A committee struck from this Legislature, consisting of Ministers and Opposition Members, would be there to hear what individuals have to say and for them to feel confident that their concerns are being heard.
It appears to be the case that, when bureaucrats go out and consult, they do not have that confidence. To have a committee with these guidelines would give them more assurance that their needs would be met.
Mr. Cable:
I would like to speak in support of the amendment. When we have two Ministers of the government stand up and say that this four-page document is a serious policy document I know that we are in trouble.
We may as well encourage the groups in town that are taking some initiative in this area to know that the Members of the Opposition, anyway, are on side with the way they are approaching the situation.
I will be supporting the amendment.
Hon. Mr. Phelps:
Let me say, first of all, I am somewhat disappointed when, for purely political reasons, the esteemed Member on the side opposite, the Leader of the territorial Liberal Party, stands up and suggests that a summary of some views given at public meetings is a policy document. The document does not say it is a policy document; it is not a policy document; it summarizes what was said by many people at those meetings. Therefore, I am sure it was simply a situation of the hon. Member misspeaking himself and that he now realizes it is not a policy document.
With regard to the amendment, I am going to speak at some length in support of the amendment, because these are principles that we believe in on this side of the House, and they are principles that certainly guided our actions with regard to the very thorough consultations that we entered into. They are principles, I am pleased to say, with which Members of the Department of Health and Social Services approach their job and responsibilities. These are the kinds of principles that are welcomed by caring people, and the people who work for the department are, by and large, extremely sincere in the performance of their duties. They are really and truly deeply concerned about issues such as human dignity, economic equity, mutual responsibility, social justice, the ecology and sustainability of the ecology, and fiscal fairness, as well as fairness of all kinds in their dealings with the clients for whom they work.
I am disappointed, therefore, when I hear, in the context of the speech that supports these principles, the suggestion that somehow or other they are not caring, that they are not dedicated, that somehow they do not pay attention to people and what they have to say at important public meetings such as the ones undertaken throughout the territory. The Minister mentioned that she went to the meeting sponsored by some of the Ministers a few weeks ago. I certainly would have gone but I was in Ottawa attending the conference of federal, provincial and territorial justice ministers. Otherwise I certainly would have gone.
As I mentioned in my rather brief opening remarks, we corresponded with all of the ministers in the territory, invited their input and invited consultation with them. I am willing any time to sit down with ministers in the Yukon, and often do. I often have them in my office discussing concerns such as those we are debating in this House this day. My office doors are open and I am more than pleased to meet on these issues because I do not want anyone to say that I do not take these issues very seriously. We have differences in philosophy, I am sure, but I think the more fundamental differences between us, at least - and I thought only some opposite but perhaps all opposite - have to do with economic issues than with issues about social programs. Certainly, I have very, very fundamental differences on economic issues with Members opposite; it is something I am quite comfortable with and quite pleased to debate any time in this House.
Principles such as these are extremely important to bear in mind, particularly when we get into the fray that is going to be taking place between the federal ministers responsible for social assistance and UI reform and reform of transfer payments to the junior jurisdictions.
We are responsible for fighting for social programs in our jurisdictions on behalf of residents of every political stripe, every race, every creed and every sexual orientation in the territory. We, I am afraid, are going to be having some profound differences with the new Liberal federal government in Ottawa because of their intention to move ahead and slash social programs in order to apparently try and reduce their deficit.
I understand the need for them to make the government more efficient, and we could provide a really good model of fiscal responsibility and social caring in moving in that direction. However, we are going to be expressing severe concerns - and we expect this to happen - when there are unilateral cutbacks that will not be sensitive to the needs of individuals in this territory.
These principles are, therefore, very important ones, and we will be supporting them, as I say. However, we will not be able to support the amended motion. They are principles that we will take with us in our endeavours to provide the best possible negotiation posture in Ottawa when we meet with our counterparts from the provinces and the federal government.
I might just talk a bit about that process and how important those principles are to it, because I am not sure exactly how much information the Hon. Member for Riverside had when he was preparing this motion. I suspect he perhaps was not aware of what was happening at the federal level any more than he was at the territorial level. Liberal Minister Axworthy actually announced a strategy for social security reform on January 31. A joint federal/provincial/territorial meeting of ministers responsible for labour and social services was held in mid-February to discuss reform agenda priorities, processes and concerns. There are three components that influence social security reform, as envisaged and implemented by the federal government. There is a ministerial task force - a 14-member group - of personal advisors to the federal Minister. That is underway. There is also a standing committee on human resources and development, which is a parliamentary hearing process that is going to receive input from the public.
They are moving very quickly with this, and it is going to be a very curtailed process. There is also funding available for interest
Page Number 2215
groups to prepare submissions to that standing committee.
Then, there is the intergovernmental process, which includes ministers of labour and social services. The junior ministers from the provinces and territories feel very strongly that we must be an integral part of that process. We were supposed to have a meeting, and had arranged pairing to attend the federal/provincial/territorial meetings in Ottawa that were set for April 18, the day that we started this session, but it was cancelled at the last minute - cancelled, I gather, for political reasons - but there were some real concerns being expressed from some of the provincial ministers outside of Quebec, deeply held concerns that there were going to be a lot of unilateral actions taken without them having input, as promised.
The draft papers that were released to our officials prior to their meeting, in preparation for the April 18 meeting that was cancelled, contained very little of substance, and there is just a feeling that there is a secret agenda that the federal government has.
From here, there are going to be further officials' meetings. I just heard that they are trying to set one up in mid-June. I look forward to receiving more details on that proposed meeting.
The fact that there have been public statements and a lot said about cuts to social programs underpins our concern regarding our budget and underpins our stating the need to ensure that we are not in a deficit position and, in fact, that we are in a healthy financial position.
We know that cuts are coming and we feel that taking appropriate action, now, is short-term pain for long-term gain. We do not want to be in a situation similar to Ontario, spending unwisely and foolishly, or forced by the bankers to make harsh decisions that go against our philosophy. The decisions made in Ontario would certainly flaunt the principles being proposed in this most worthy motion.
I would like to make another point in regard to the principles. These principles also guide us in the development of comprehensive policies regarding non-government organizations, and that is part of the motion that is being amended. These amendments will have impact on section (b) under the motion to be amended, which talks about examining and making recommendations about the role of non-governmental organizations in the delivery of social programs.
We understand in 1992 there was some movement afoot in government, and I believe that this was mentioned by the Leader of the Official Opposition during budget debate last winter, to try and come to grips with non-governmental organizations, but nothing really moved ahead on it. The interdepartmental committee went nowhere with the initiative.
Since I have been Minister, we have been coming to grips with the non-governmental organizations and moving in a direction that is consistent with certain principles that are important principles in our minds - namely, that any of our non-governmental organizations, certainly in this department, will be funded for services that we deem are needed in the territory. We are the ones who will make that decision just as the government makes decisions about whatever programs are made available to the public. That is the responsibility of government, not of non-governmental organizations.
Secondly, we must look at situations where we feel non-governmental organizations can provide the service more efficiently or effectively than can government, and that the services be provided according to fairly strict standards set by government. Again, that is our responsibility.
When we made those comments, we did at first get a rather hostile reaction from some of the non-governmental organizations who felt that the money should be given to them and they would determine what they would do with it, if anything. I am pleased to say that the initial attitude has changed rather dramatically with all of the non-governmental agencies that we deal with.
In developing the policy, which we will have in place by next winter, we will be looking at these principles, as well as principles that deal with more particular issues regarding how we determine who should provide the service, when the service should be provided, and looking at standardizing certain contracts with NGOs. We also have to look at implications of funding - we have discussed this in the House before - with respect to the implications on federal financing for First Nations and the implications on whether or not it would provide certain kinds of financing, and it might provide the opportunity for the federal government to offload its responsibility on to the territorial government.
In developing funding agreements with non-governmental organizations, there is the whole land claims negotiation and self-government area that has to be looked at by experts to ensure that what we do is not going to have some kind of dangerous precedental impact on the land claim negotiation process and the future negotiations leading to the implementation of self-government according to the agreements and law that will be in place, once the federal government gets a move on and passes legislation in the federal arena.
The motion to amend is a good one. I am glad to see the Member here, and I am pleased to commend her for this and to support the motion. I did not want to take my place until I had, as a contra to her comments about myself not being present at the meeting in Whitehorse regarding social reform, to say that I was somewhat disappointed and surprised that neither she, nor any of her caucus Members took the opportunity to get involved in the thorough consultation process that took place last fall. Given her very strong desire to attend these meetings, I was surprised that the same desire did not grab hold of her in terms of the meetings held in Whitehorse and throughout the territory regarding these very important subjects.
I am sure, however, that she has, as I had, good reason for not being able to attend. Perhaps she was in Ottawa at some kind of a ministers' conference at those times, and perhaps her colleagues were as well. I understand the very busy schedule people have and do not want to make too much of a point about this, but I felt I could not let the matter go without some comment, given that she had seen fit to raise the issue in this Legislature.
I am very pleased to support the amendments. We will not be supporting the main motion or the motion as amended, unfortunately, because the amendments do not do away with our fundamental concerns, although they certainly do make a very flawed and bad motion a heck of a lot better.
Mr. Penikett:
This has been a thoroughly fascinating dissertation from a Member, the Minister indeed, supporting an amendment to a motion that they do not support.
I was always taught that when one multiplied a negative by a positive, the result is negative - which is of course, when we get to the bottom line here, that the Members opposite may like the amendment but they are not going to vote for the motion, so why did he even bother speaking to the amendment?
It is doubly fascinating that the Members opposite should want to speak to the amendment, which is inspired by the work of the Council of Canadian Churches, which are - at least, the mainstream churches - fundamentally and absolutely opposed to the approach being taken by the government opposite, as well as most provincial governments and the approach being taken by the federal government in approaching the problems of human needs simply through their fiscal spectacles.
I want to return to that point but I want to deal seriously, as we ought to, with the original proposal by the Liberal Member and
Page Number 2216
the amendment to it proposed by my colleague, the Member for Whitehorse Centre.
The Liberal Member began his intervention in the debate by pointing out the obvious: that the social safety net is eroding and people are falling through the cracks. We are beginning to see in this country the phenomenon that has been evident for some years now in the United States, where people are sleeping in shop doorways and wandering, homeless, on the streets. We are seeing an increase in family violence. We are seeing evidence of social decay, and we are seeing the abdication of responsibility for these problems by governments everywhere in the country.
At the same time, there is a second concern - and the first may be a function of the second - by Canadians for, as the Liberal Leader said, efficient economic services. It is interesting that we come to a debate like the one we are having today from the knowledge that there is public dissatisfaction both with the services that are being provided and the costs of those services. There are complaints from clients and taxpayers, both, though obviously for sometimes, but not always, different reasons.
The Liberal Leader chastised the Tories opposite for their ad hoc approach and their socially divisive approach. I must say that I share his comments, including those on the February document that was published in April, which, as he says, contains 36 lines that he is suggesting indicate a march toward the 21st century. My concern, actually, is that they indicate a crawl backwards to the 19th century.
I am actually concerned because the Member for Faro attended the meeting in that town, where something like 60 people attended. This is a very large percentage of the total number of people who are claimed to have participated in the public review. They said things very differently than are reported in the summary. Their views do not seem to be represented in the document, according to my colleague.
The Minister of Education talked about the 282 individuals who attended the meetings and suggested that somehow if MLAs - the Liberal Leader and others of us here - had wanted input into this process, we should have attended those meetings. There is nothing wrong with attending those meetings, but that is not the place where MLAs have input into public policy. It is not the main forum. The place where we do that is here. The way we do it is through instruments such as were proposed by the Liberal Leader.
I want to return to the amendment before us. What the Minister of Education did not seem to understand when he was making his speech about how exhaustive this process had been, which involved the attendance of 282 individuals out of a population of 30,000 or so - suggesting that was the be-all and end-all of consultation about social policy - it was fairly disturbing. What he did not seem to understand was that while this government, which has taken a fairly simple-minded cutback approach, has been going about its business, other groups in this community, including the churches, have been meeting in a parallel time frame to talk about alternate, more compassionate and more intelligent approaches to the ones being taken by neo-Liberal governments.
We will not have occasion to get into all the various possibilities about addressing the huge social needs that are out there - the family dysfunction and the unraveling of community, which has, I think, been very much manufactured by a right-wing agenda - but I do want to say that cutbacks are not the only approach.
It is true that every government is having to deal with a financial crisis, but not every government is proceeding in the same way. Many governments, faced with the problem of rising social service costs, have been looking at alternatives, by way of training, jobs, and so forth. However, given the level of unemployment in the Yukon and the lack of any interest in direct job creation by the government, especially for the poor, we are not seeing any evidence of those kinds of more progressive alternatives that are being carried out elsewhere in the western world.
One of the things that the church language in the amendment does very well is make clear the links between the different dimensions of public policy. It is, if you like, a holistic approach that links questions of human dignity with questions of economics, with questions of responsibility, social justice, ecological sustainability, and fiscal fairness. That is highly desirable when we are approaching these difficult questions, because I believe that a narrow-minded, cost-cutting, approach in the end not only produces considerable human pain, but may be penny-wise, pound-foolish.
I want to make that case in a serious way, by entirely using information coming from the present Government of the Yukon. It is my view that the cost-cutting, right-wing, cutback approach at the local level is just the same kind of behaviour as the federal government has just been criticized for, in terms of off-loading. It is not off-loading from a federal to a territorial level, or even from the territorial-provincial level to the municipal level, but it is off-loading on to families and individuals who may not be able to carry the burden. Something in the rhetoric we have heard from Members opposite recently suggests that, somehow, even families that cannot afford to should be assuming the burden for other people.
It is the kind of approach that U.S. Senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in a brilliant essay recently pointed out what was happening in his home state of New York, whereby, at the turn of the century, there were tens of thousands of people who were in mental institutions at great cost to society. It became fashionable a couple of decades ago to de-institutionalize mental patients, a process that many of us believed was the right one and supported it.
Moynihan pointed out that if you did that without providing any community level supports, if you sent mentally ill people out into the streets without any guarantee that there was the support of family or community to help them not only recover, but manage, these people would fall through the cracks.
Senator Moynihan pointed out that the situation in New York state is that the population in mental institutes is a tiny fraction of what it was at the turn of the century, simply as a result of redefining those people. They are now no longer mentally ill; they are simply called "homeless". They have no right to claim a high degree of highly sophisticated medical treatment, or even a high level of care; they are simply people who occasionally receive a gift of food or some temporary shelter.
I think that there is a real danger of seeing something akin to that approach in the behaviour of many of our provincial governments.
I want to refer to one document only, published by the Government of Yukon that involves work by the Executive Council Office and the Department of Health and Social Services. It is, I confess, a project that was begun during the NDP administration, but it was completed during the term of the current government and was published very recently. It is entitled the Yukon Health Promotion Research Program, Part IV: An Accounting of Health, What the Numbers Say.
It is an extremely interesting document, because I think that any fair-minded analysis of its findings would suggest that the present government's approach to social policy is dead wrong.
I seem to recall that the Minister of Health said something about being from Missouri on the usefulness of this study and I accused him of once again kowtowing to outside interests when he was making that statement, but I said it lightheartedly, as he knew. I do not know whether he has had a chance to read the documents
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so I will refer today only to the summary document, not the full one, because this information is all contained in the fat document. The summary here will be adequate for today's debate.
One of the things this document does, it seems to me, as the church's language suggests, is make clear the links between the economic policy, social policy and health policy.
Today, I just want to talk about the link between health policy and social policy, and not get into questions of economics, about which I am sure I will disagree with the Minister of Justice.
This document reiterates some of the definitions of health that have been under discussion in this House previously. It points out, in its findings about Yukoners' attitudes to health, that "Some see health in social terms, both in quantity and quality of the relationships with family, friends and co-workers. Others are concerned with psychological or mental aspects of health, where good health is considered a mental attitude and/or an emotional state, which determines health and wellbeing. Others view health as a primarily physical quality where health seems to correspond to physical attributes such as strength, energy and vitality. Finally, others view health spiritually, as a function of the relationship to something or someone larger than themselves that creates harmony and balance."
Many of the people who were talked to in this project, of course, saw some combination of these attributes contributing to their idea of health.
The most important finding of the research conducted by the territorial government is that the self-rated health of Yukoners is strongly correlated with income. That may not be a surprising statement but I want to pursue for a few minutes the number of occasions where that truth is reaffirmed throughout this document, and then discuss briefly the implications of that truth for public policy.
What it means is that the lower your income, the lower your health standard. It means that, the lower your income, the lower your health status is going to be and, as this report discovers, probably the higher health costs are going to be produced for the territory.
In the section on quality of life in this book it says, "As in the case of self-related health, income and quality of life are positively related. The greater the level of income, generally speaking, the more likely a person is to report an excellent, or very good, quality of life."
Under the section on mental and emotional health, it says again, "Relative emotional happiness also appears to be related to