MR. CHAIRMAN: I would like to call the committee to order.
The honourable member for Dartmouth North.
MR. JERRY PYE: Mr. Chairman, it's early and I'm just getting my books and everything organized here. The Legislature moves fast sometimes, even when we don't want it to, and it moves slow when we think it should move fast.
Mr. Chairman, you will be aware that when I left off from the Community Services estimates yesterday, we were talking about client service delivery initiatives. I posed a question to the minister before the time had elapsed and the minister didn't get a chance to respond to the question that I put forward to him. We do know that the Department of Community Services has an RFP for the delivery of information technology within the department. We also know that that client service delivery initiative is out there and it will soon be coming forward because the minister has indicated that it will be coming forward, providing there are requests for proposals and once those requests have been reviewed, the successful consulting firm selected.
We talked about the kind of structure that this is going to put in place, but my question to the minister yesterday was, you know, how will accessing confidentiality for the clients be improved if a private sector partner is involved in one or more of the call centres that may have to be established with respect to this information technology that the minister is bringing forward? I can only visualize what it might be like and so I'm wondering if, in fact, the safeguards are built in there and if the Minister of Community Services can tell us, how are those safeguards going to be protected so confidential information regarding client services will not leak out through some method?
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MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable Minister of Community Services.
HON. PETER CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, I'm glad to have an opportunity to carry on the discussion with the honourable member about the client service delivery initiative. As we finished yesterday we were talking about how the RFP was going to go forward, how people were going to be selected, but the question that we're dealing with now is the security and information confidentiality and that, of course, is a major part of the department's mandate and operations. Whether there is a new system or an old system, it is a very important part and the honourable member knows that and he's very aware of the extent that we have to go to maintain that confidentiality.
What I can say to the honourable member is that we have known for a period of time that there were a couple of issues: first the issues around how we were going to control information as it flows right now and the second part, how we were going to deal with information as we move into a new policy initiative. Over the last six months we have been working on an information management policy to deal with that particular area, to deal with how you ensure the security, how you ensure that that information is retained only within the people who are authorized to have it; that information, if it's going to be put on databases and so on, how that is controlled.
[9:15 a.m.]
So that has been a major initiative that we've been working on and that's all being contained in the policy development, the information development policy that we have been working on. That policy, when it's completed, prior to any time when any changes will be made, will be made available to all the department. It will become department policy and people will have to be aware on how they do that.
We've researched this across Canada, and other jurisdictions are obviously looking at the same situation. They have the same need for security and confidentiality and so they're looking at it, too. Yes, we are perhaps one of the few provinces, one of the leading provinces on this, but other provinces are looking at it, but I guess the short answer to the question for the honourable member is that our information policy research management is looking at that. That will be in place, the standards and the policy will be in place. Everybody will know it. Anybody who is working with consultants will know it. All of our department will know it before we go forward so that we can be assured that we do have that security and our clients can be assured that we have that security also.
MR. PYE: Mr. Chairman, the minister has assured me that his information security policy committee will be looking at this with respect to security. He also gave me the impression that this is somewhat of a new venture because it is not consistent across the country and across Canada because he did indicate that other jurisdictions are looking at Nova Scotia and how Nova Scotia might implement such a client service delivery initiative.
If that is the case, can the minister tell me if, in fact, there have been some models - mind you, I know what the minister has said - but are there some models out there that the minister has taken some direction from with respect to setting up this model within the Department of Community Services of Nova Scotia?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, we have looked at other models. We have looked at others but, of course, as you look at different jurisdictions, other areas, some are called Family and Children's Services, some are called Municipal Affairs and Community Services, some are Community Services and Health. The models across the country in different jurisdictions are different than what we have. We have housing here. So you look at some of those models and when we meet at our national conventions, you have an opportunity to talk with people and see what models they are using, but I guess from our perspective, we are looking at developing something that is available to our needs. Some of the models that are closest to what our needs are happen to be ones in Australia or England and some of the western provinces.
So we have looked at those, but ultimately when we have that RFP that we have out and if we are successful in finding somebody who wants to proceed on with that, we will be saying to them, look at some of those things, but we want to develop our own home model. We know that because we have housing included, because we have a different structure for Children's Aid Societies, because we have a different structure for other partners that we have, we have to have information available for those. So we have to develop our own model and we have to ensure that the information is secure and confidential. The phrase that the honourable member was seeking that I did say to him was an information management policy, that's the phrase that I used and, just for clarification, I know that's what you meant, but just so we're talking about the same thing, that's the phrase that I did use.
Our real issue here has been whether we put in a new system or not. Our issue was still to balance the public's right to know and our ability to respond in terms of FOIPOP information if it comes along, but we still have to ensure that we can provide that information, but our main mandate and as it is mandated to us in legislation, we have to provide confidentiality and that security. That has to be our main goal. So while we look at other jurisdictions, we know it has to be a homegrown design at the end of the day.
MR. PYE: Mr. Chairman, I believe last fall the minister was talking about this being a reasonable expenditure and that there appeared to be a reasonable profit to the consulting firm who would be the successful applicant for the proposal that his department is requesting. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that you said that it would be somewhere around $20 million a year for four to six years. Now, $20 million a year out of the Department of Community Services for four to six years is a tremendous amount of money and, obviously, if the government is anticipating saving those kinds of dollars annually, what kind of an effect is that going to have and where are those dollars coming from? Not just simply for the minister to get up and say that's a result of savings, but are people,
caseworkers or counsellors, or whatever the case may be, are they going to be losing their employment as a result of this initiative?
Somewhere that $20 million has to flow, and that's a tremendous number of dollars, Mr. Chairman, I would say to you and this Legislature, that could very well be spun around into the Department of Community Services. So I'm wondering, just exactly how does he envisage these kinds of savings over four to six years? If we take the $20 million over four years, that's $80 million; if we take it over six years, that's about $120 million. There's no magic to those numbers.
MR. CHRISTIE: The honourable member is quite correct. We had talked, and I guess in terms of the initiative, the initiative looks at finding somebody who can develop systems for us. For those people as they look at developing, they obviously aren't going to do it unless there's the possibility of getting some money. I think as we look at the overall department, our department of course, this year our estimates are $646 million. As the honourable member knows, a large portion of that is staff, and we've talked about staff increases, the increases in salaries. What we've also indicated is there are a lot of components here in terms of space requirements, in terms of data management requirements, in terms of initiatives to provide information and to provide resources to people who need it. We look at the information of balancing caseloads and we talked yesterday about the need to look at case load balance so that Children's Aid Societies in this province maintained a caseload level which was deemed to be reasonable.
So in all of that, as people are starting to look at that and we're starting to look and if we are successful in finding somebody, we are looking at the fact that we see the range of $20 million a year for the next four or five years. I think one of the things that we have to keep in mind, as I indicated yesterday, one of the challenges and one of the responses that we've had from our caseworkers and people in the department is that they spend a lot of time in data management and the management of getting the files up or updating the files and doing these other things.
I say to the honourable member, he mentioned about a 1-800 number and one of the objects of this exercise is so that people, for example, looking at housing and what programs are available from housing, can go on the Web site, can call into a 1-800 number and get that information and be able to come on and see if they qualify for certain areas and if they are able to do it at that front end, then they have a lot of their questions answered. They've had a lot of the information dealt with prior to the time when they come to the caseworkers. There will never be a time in this business of Community Services that you do not need caseworkers. Caseworkers have to interrelate with the people. We feel that is a challenge and we feel it's our responsibility to ensure that caseworkers are having as much time as they can to spend with the clients.
For example, we now do all the intake on separate programs; some are done on this program and some are done on that program. I'm sure the honourable member has had people who have experienced the frustration of having to fill in extra forms, getting extra data, providing extra information. That's clearly one of the things that we see this initiative doing. Those all amount to savings, as you're looking at saving time and people not having to fill in extra forms, to correlate forms and put these together.
So, with clients wanting access to all of our services, whether it happens to be income assistance, housing, child care, licensing for child care, all of those things, either you have somebody that's on the phone or sitting there to deal with them. You also have the option where people can do it and look at the services on the Internet or on the telephone and do a lot of those services. As we think of this, I view it as similar to the ability to register through Access Nova Scotia now. You can go get the information, you can register and that means that you're able to provide that information through a variety of ways.
One of the goals and objectives is, we want to concentrate staff on the resources to helping people and not being data managers. That's one of the clear objectives of this and in doing that, there are obviously savings. When we talk about $20 million per year of a $646 million budget, I think what we're saying is that we want to be efficient and use the dollars as wisely as possible.
MR. PYE: I guess in a roundabout way the Minister of Community Services has told me yes, despite what we were led to believe that, in fact, this initiative will be the replacement of people, particularly intake workers. If you know the number of intake workers that are in the Department of Community Services and you can centralize all this operation, what's going to happen is that there is one source in which you enter; that source in which you will get the information that you want on children's services, what you want on housing, what you want on income assistance and so on. All that will come from a central source and you will be able to tap into this one number; therefore you may not get an individual intake worker and there may be three or four intake workers, there may be five or six - I'm not sure of the number of intake workers within the Department of Community Services - but I can assure you that there are probably at least four intake workers for sure that are within that department.
I would say to you that this might be another avenue and I would want the minister to give me some assurances that there will be no employment losses as a result of this client service delivery initiative and there will be no way in which individuals who make application for income assistance will be denied because of the rigid application forms and someone at the other end who doesn't fully understand some of the things that may be needed by the personal touch and extraction of the personal information. If you're going to fine-tune it to the level in which I envisage it to be, there will just simply be a standard form with questions that will process an applicant seeking income assistance. So I'm wondering if the minister can clear my foggy mind of just exactly how this thing is going to function.
MR. CHRISTIE: I think there were two or three questions that the member had there. He was talking about intake workers and the functions they fill, whether they be in housing or in children's aid areas or in the area of income assistance. As we look forward on this project, as we look at what we were going to do or we look as part of our business plan we look for this year and we look out on the future, to me the question isn't whether people are going to be displaced this year, the question is what will people be doing in the future. We can look and say, are we going to need more people in the future to do those services because the demand for services is growing. We talked about that yesterday, the number of children that are increasing, we've talked about the daycare expansion, we've talked about the early childhood development initiatives and we've talked about a number of those initiatives. So as we look and we say are we going to have to keep expanding our data management services, well, it would appear the answer is yes, unless we attempt to do something.
[9:30 a.m.]
So I think your question was, are people going to be replaced and will there be less people? What we're talking about is how people are going to be better utilized. I hope I'm making the point to the honourable member that what we envisage in the department is that caseworkers and intake workers and all of those types of people who are working now to maintain the present system, that there's certainly going to have to be people there but their functions could change. As opposed to being zeroed in and spending all their time or a lot of their time entering data on data management, we would envisage that those people will be able to become more oriented towards the clients and would be working with clients to provide those services and better services that we want.
I guess at the end of the time, through the design, the question will be, is less staff going to be needed? Well, probably as we start through the design, as we look at the period of over four years, the demand for what this department is going to do is changing each year. I don't need to tell the honourable member that because he's very aware that the demands for income assistance go up and down. The demand for children's services go up and down and we have to balance those resources to meet those needs.
So if the question is will people be doing something different, there is probably a good chance they will be as we balance the design, as we have data management there so people aren't spending all their time on that, they're able to be in the field more, so chances are people will be doing different things. But over the period of four years if the question is will the total complement of the department go down, chances are no, the complement won't go down. Will the complement need to increase by 200 or 300 to input data? That's what we're tying to manage now so we are not just people having to file papers and do data management. We are able to provide those services and we are streamlining the data management side of things.
MR. PYE: Mr. Chairman, I did pose a couple of questions there, actually three questions to the minister, and the minister did not respond to the last question. I can understand because I should be fine-tuning those questions a bit more so that there is an opportunity for him to catch on to all the questions. The question that I did ask was around clients seeking income assistance. I did ask the minister if in fact this method or this new initiative, does the minister see this as a deterrent from individuals being able to tap into income assistance, particularly when they need it because of probably the kind of programming that will be set forward? I can only envisage that if in fact the department is going to be streamlined that there will be a standard application form that the client might have to complete before the client is then assessed for income assistance. I'm wondering, can the minister go through that part of it for me, please?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, I will come back to the honourable member's last question, I think the question is do we see any deterioration of people's access or people's ability to interlock with the department for assistance. I hope what we're saying is this is part of what we envisage will improve that, and as we work our way through, one of the obvious goals is to be able to provide better service in that area. Not only better service, but we have to be able to ensure that in two or three years, as our caseloads might grow in one area, that we are able to provide that service, and that's the fundamental tenet of this initiative, that we are able to provide that information.
Now we are always going to be in a situation where people have to provide information. Those are part of our regulations, as people come to us for services, we have to gather their information because as we all know there is certain criteria in a lot of our programs that you have to meet or be available to do. But we view this as seeing staff working more meaningfully; we view it as staff working more meaningfully and that means they are able to spend more time with the clients in whatever area and we view that as being an improvement in the service to clients, an improvement in access, an improvement in information and, indeed, an improvement in time turnarounds. That's the objective of this whole exercise.
MR. PYE: Mr. Chairman, I've covered that area of client service initiative reasonably well. I want to move on now and I know that other members have already asked some questions around child care with respect to child care services, early childhood development and daycare spaces and so on. Last year when I spoke to the Minister of Community Services during estimates, the Minister of Community Services said we now have over 2,500 spaces across the province, including 95 subsidized spaces that are attached to children, not the centre. Those are the portable spaces. I do know there was some question around how many daycare spaces are going to be available this year. I do believe that the minister had indicated that there would be 50 additional daycare spaces this year. He did not indicate that there were going to be additional portable spaces or if in fact that was a combination of daycare spaces as well as the portable spaces.
This is consistent each and every year, Mr. Minister. In fact what happens is that these 50 daycare spaces had been allocated, I believe, under the Liberal Minister of Community Services, Francene Cosman, as well as yourself, when you came on, yet there is a significant need in parts of this province for daycare spaces. So you're actually not meeting the demand. I believe back in 1993, and your department would know the report better than I, but there was an indication that there was a real need for some 5,000 daycare spaces in the Province of Nova Scotia and that they were going to address that over a period of time. I believe that they had set a goal of 10 years to reach that. I guess my question to the Minister of Community Services is, what child care spaces are now available? Is the government meeting the demands of the child care spaces that are required out there? If the government isn't meeting the demand of the required daycare spaces, why are we just simply allocating 50 daycare spaces? As well, can you tell me if they're an accumulation of portable plus daycare spaces?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, the honourable member is correct. I did indicate that we would be adding 50 new spaces this year. In discussions with the honourable member for Halifax Needham, we were speaking of this yesterday and I indicated there would be 50 new spaces. Your other question was where are they going to be allocated and are they going to be portable. As I indicated yesterday, essentially since I have been involved in Community Services, we asked the Nova Scotia Round Table on Child Care to assist us on that and get the report as to where spaces are, as the honourable member knows, and to look at the need for portable spaces. Presently, there certainly is a lot of demand for spaces and now there are, in the province, about 8,000 full-time daycare spaces and about 3,500 part-time spaces.
The honourable member is quite correct. There is a demand for more subsidized spaces and more spaces. As we looked at the initiatives this year and as we looked at the opportunities through Early Childhood Development Services - and the honourable member will know that he has had an opportunity to look at the Beech report and some of the reports that were attached around that - the direction that we took was to work on early childhood development in terms of stabilizing salaries, in terms of looking at grants for newer locations because we had to ensure, as part of our mandate, that there were spaces available in all parts of the province.
The other part of your question is, is there a demand for more subsidized spaces? The answer is yes, there is a demand for more spaces as there is a demand for more housing areas. So we're balancing that in trying to ensure there are spaces in the area, trying to stabilize the daycare salary issue. We're trying to make sure there are grants for non-profit and, as the member knows, our grants toward development are for non-profit daycare centres so we have those spaces so that in future, as we get into more subsidized spaces, the spaces are available and in the areas that they're needed.
MR. PYE: Mr. Chairman, the minister didn't tell me if in fact - I guess he did tell me, that the spaces that would be allocated this year are 50 spaces. He didn't tell me if in fact some of those spaces would be spaces that were portable. I would assume that some of those are going to be portable spaces out of the 50 daycare spaces that are available. I just want to say that this is important because the minister has an initiative within the Department of Community Services from welfare-to-work initiative. There are a number of single parents, namely single women, who require child care services.
I'm pleased to hear the minister say that there is a larger need than the 50 spaces that the minister is allocating, but I'm not pleased that we're not keeping pace with the demands out there in order to make things move much quicker and to give individuals the opportunity for child care spaces, particularly in the constituency I represent. I know there are other constituencies whose demands are much greater than mine. I know there is a tremendous waiting list for subsidized daycare spaces in communities particularly around the metropolitan area. The minister is going to have to address that and address it rather quickly.
The other issue is with respect to the enhancement of benefits for those people who are employed within the child care industry. I shouldn't say industry, but employed within the child care services is a more appropriate term. I know the minister had worked very hard last Fall. He has given assurances that there would be salary enhancements both in the private sector and the not-for-profit sector; he would bring up that salary standard and it would gradually be phased in. I know the minister has indicated that there would be money set aside for benefits, as well as to those individuals employed within the child care services. So I guess the minister also is aware that any new child care spaces that become available will become available in not-for-profit agencies, I do believe.
I do believe that he may have had some correspondence with those in the private sector with respect to this very issue, how that initiative is going to unfold, how it is going to take place and if they're going to get sufficient warning on this particular model that the government, I think, has somewhat set in stone. So I guess, Mr. Chairman, through you to the minister, can the minister enlighten me as to how that process is progressing now and if money has been allocated for salary enhancements this year, as well as benefits for those people employed in child care services, that's early childhood intervention, development, you know, the whole picture of child care services?
[9:45 a.m.]
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, as we look at two or three of those points, and the honourable member indicated that a number of people going back to work needed to find daycare spaces. I think that is clearly the reason, as part of our back-to-work initiative, we indicated we were going to provide more money for daycare and we did. As we brought the Income Assistance Act forward last year, we provided up to $400 for daycare. That is exactly
the point that I was making earlier: if you're going to have that, you have to have the spaces for people to go.
Now the other part of your question was, as we look through the early childhood development programs and we look at the development of those programs, what's happened up to this point in time? Well, as we did indicate last year, we were going to do grants to daycare operators - that was full-time daycare operations, both private sector and non-profit sector. The purpose of that was to enable them to give salary enhancements; they had to do that, to provide salary enhancements. So what we did last year, once that was approved, those monies went out to the daycare centres and we got money out. They're in the process now of sending us back their plans for this year; as part of the process they have to show us how that money is going to be used in terms of salaries and benefits and they have to be able to meet our test. They're in the process now of coming back to us and providing us the information for the grants and so on for this fiscal year.
As I said, we did send the money out to them last November, so they have that money and now they're in the process of going through the grants to get for year two of the early childhood development plan and they're sending us information now.
The other part of your question was, are we still committed to grants only for non-profit, and the answer is yes. That is the standard that we set as part of our program to the ECD. I know the honourable member is very clear and understands this well that as part of our undertaking with the federal government and the other provinces, not only do we have to be able to report to the public of Nova Scotia what we're doing in that program, but we have to report nationally, we have to report to the federal government. So as we make this ECD a multi-year program, through the next four years we will be working on all those areas with the federal government to meet those federal-provincial requirements.
Your question was, have I had discussions with the profit sector of child care, yes I have; I meet with them twice a year. I meet with the non-profit child care sector twice a year and we talk about the initiatives. We talk about where we're going and they tell us how the current status of the business is. They tell us their goals, objectives and their problems and we tell them where we're going. So I do have an opportunity to meet with them. At the present time what we've indicated to them is for our grant program to go forward to develop non-profit sectors in the areas, where there isn't sufficient daycare now to provide the needs. We all know the needs because we can look at it.
The other thing I just want to say to the honourable member is, part of this initiative is an information initiative. This year, we will be undertaking to provide information for across all the province so people can contact us to see what daycares are in the region. If somebody happens to move to a new region, if somebody has to be coming in from out across the provinces, they can contact us and ask what daycares are there, what daycares are licensed, what are the opportunities here, what areas are under development, and talk about
portable spaces and subsidized spaces. So we view this as part of the information to help the daycares so people can get the information and that information is exchanged and people have access to the information all across the province as to where daycares are and where they can go.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The member for Dartmouth North's time has expired. There was 36 minutes allocated to the NDP caucus this morning. The time actually was over at 9:47 a.m., but we let the minister respond. I will now go to the Liberal caucus.
The honourable member for Glace Bay.
MR. DAVID WILSON: Mr. Chairman, I am not certain at this time exactly with who, but I will be sharing some of my time with some of my fellow colleagues later on.
Mr. Minister, good morning. I would like to start on the subject of Masonview Homes, if we could. Mr. Minister, as you're probably well aware right now, it was about a day after you gave somewhat of a reprieve to women's shelters and transition shelters across this province that you also gave a reprieve to Masonview Homes, which I'm sure, as you know and everyone will know, that's a group home for deaf and mentally ill adults.
At one point, Masonview Homes said that they would be closing their five facilities, which would force 15 residents out, because they could not longer get funding and the support required for 24-hour supervision. But now the discharge notices have been rescinded. Mr. Minister, first of all, I commend you for reversing that decision and, indeed, rescinding those notices and giving them the funding necessary to carry on. As a matter of fact, as I understand it, you have given them more funding than what they requested. So if I may ask you if you could give us an overview as to how that situation came about. How did we get to the point where residents of Masonview Homes were about to be forced out of their facilities and all of a sudden there was a turnaround where you found more funding than actually was requested and it leaves us at the stage today where these residents are going to stay there? Could you explain to us, please, exactly the series of events that led up to that?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, as the honourable member knows, we have this small options home, we have a variety of those throughout the province, and people deliver services. This situation, in terms of having discussions as to what services we want and what rates are available is not uncommon. I don't mean to imply, and I don't think the honourable member is suggesting, that this is unique and that this particular facility is different than any others providing services to people across the country. The question was what was the process that led up to this. Well, we reassess all of the individuals and that is constantly on the go, and individual needs change and we have to recognize that those needs change.
We also have to recognize that we are in the process of taking larger facilities, such as the Halifax County Rehab Centre, the Scotia ARC, and those facilities, and we are moving people back into the community. For example, over the last period of time Bayside, down in Shelburne, has been developed and those things, but in the process over the last number of months, specifically to Meadowview, those discussions have been going on. We met last November. Staff has met with them; they met in February; and they met in March. The discussions were proceeding as to what the department needed, what the department saw as the reassessment of people and how that was going to proceed.
We provide funding support for the clients based on the needs assessment and the specialized staff that they would need, and that level of care and funding perhaps doesn't always match the operator's view and, as I indicated, it's not unique across this province in terms of Meadowview. If the operators choose to stay in business or choose not to stay in business, that is their decision, not our decision. They provide the service for us, they're partners with us, but in terms of whether they are going to stay in business, that is entirely up to them. From our perspective we look to see what their needs are, what we see as specialized staff that is needed, and provide per diems based on those. A lot of these, of course, have come back from the municipal days when the municipalities looked after them and moved through so the province is funding these, and there have been a number of discussions at various levels of government. Now that we're responsible for them, as we have the discussions with them, we talk about, as I say, the specialized need and the staff who's there and we arrive at conclusions.
With this one we arrived at a conclusion, as we do with all of the units across the province. So I do want to suggest to the honourable member this one is not unique, that we have discussions with all of the people providing these services, but at the end of the day it's the operator's choice as to what they want to do, and this operator is certainly eligible and able to make business decisions. If they choose to close it down, that is entirely within their purview. If that happens, then we have to find other service providers to provide service for that. In this case it was our intention, we wanted to continue on with this operator, we were having discussions and we wanted to ensure, and indeed our mandate is to ensure that the safety and the care of the residents is the primary concern. That's what was happening through the discussions and, as we've had before and as we will again, we arrived at a successful conclusion with the operator.
MR. WILSON: Mr. Minister, I think we will disagree on a few points here. One, unfortunately you put those residents through a very horrible situation to begin with. You were the one who was willing to kick them out on the street. You were the one who was willing to take residents who were living in that particular situation - and very happy to be there - you were the one who was willing to take very vulnerable people and tell them that they would have to move to another part of this province, or force them to move to another part of this province. So one would be very easily led to the conclusion that although you may have corrected the situation, you created the situation yourself.
I would suggest, Mr. Minister, that you, as the Minister of Community Services, more so than a lot of your Cabinet colleagues, have a responsibility - and a major responsibility - to take care of the people who are the most vulnerable people in our society because they come under your direction. They come under your hand in a lot of cases - and I'm talking about people who are disabled mentally or physically; I'm talking about the poor, the people who live in poverty; I'm talking about women; and I'm talking about children. Those are the people you deal with, Mr. Minister, those are the people you have to have compassion for in this province. This is a perfect example of the lack of compassion that you had in that case. I'm glad you finally found it, but at first blush you will see that you did not have it.
It took an emergency meeting that was held in Dartmouth and my colleague, the member for Dartmouth East, and I attended that meeting, but it took that meeting of residents and clients to finally bring this to a head and then, all of a sudden, the discharge notices were rescinded. I'm wondering, Mr. Minister, you know, although they were relieved, it was a difficult process for the residents at Masonview and their staff, and especially for their families, and we know that it may not be the last struggle that they will have. I'm wondering if one of the things that may have avoided this - and that a lot of local agencies have been pushing for - is the recommendations of the Kendrick report.
Now, as we all know, Dr. Kendrick was a consultant specializing in mental health and disability and he filed a 195-page report on group and small options homes last year. He made seven recommendations, as I'm sure you're aware, Mr. Minister, so I would like to know how many times - I have a few questions with regard to the Kendrick report - you have met with the Community Action Coalition to implement the Kendrick report, let's say in the last four months?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, I'm just trying to think, in the last four months I don't think I met with the action committee. I know that we had met with that committee, I believe it was last summer, with the Department of Health and Community Services, that we met with them. I know we had a meeting at Community Services and my guess would be it was probably last October, but in the last four months I have not met with them.
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MR. WILSON: Mr. Chairman, I will ask the minister then if he has any plans in the immediate future to meet with the Community Action Coalition?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, I think in the last discussions we had with them, the question was that we had discussed and not only with them but the question with other people who are involved in the small options homes, people who are involved in ARCs, the question was where is the Kendrick report and what are some of those implementations that are going to be moved on and started with. What we've indicated to them is that we have
several issues that we are looking at. I mentioned earlier about the closure of some of the larger facilities and people getting housed in that.
I mentioned also about looking at some of the options and the standards with some of the other facilities, but I guess the basic question that we have been discussing with them is when are the Kendrick report initiatives and recommendations going to be implemented and what we've said to that group and what we have said to other interested groups is that the Kendrick report first and foremost was a report the department authorized. We wanted to do two things. We were asking the question, are we moving in the right direction? Back several years ago Nova Scotia, the same as across North America, started to bring people back to the community from large facilities. So the question that we posed to Dr. Kendrick and what the report was speaking to was, are we going in the right direction? The answer was yes we are, we're moving in that right direction.
His other recommendation was there had to be a range of services and options for people, and one of his major recommendations was that it was going to take a prolonged period of time - and he used the phrase "over 10 years" - to be able to ensure that the services you are bringing to this sector, that they're stabilized so you're not moving from one option today to another option the next day.
I do just want to go back to the honourable member's discussion on Meadowview. The honourable member suggested that we had issued the orders to close the place down and that we withdrew them. I do want the honourable member to be clear that we did not send out those notices to leave. The problem of that is with the operator and only the operator can do that. From our perspective our job is to provide services for people and not to put residents in situations that cause them upset, and that's what we attempt to do. That's why we show increases in our community options this year, because we know there will be newer people who need to come into those services.
So I think I just wanted to go back on that point, but in terms of the Kendrick report, the Kendrick report is a valuable tool to us. The other reports that Health has on mental services are valuable tools to us, and with these recommendations we are starting to put into progress, we are reducing larger facilities as the report indicates. We are supporting people in smaller settings and we are working on support services for individuals to live in the communities, and those are all part of the Kendrick report and parts that we've started. So yes, we're moving forward; no, it's not going as quickly as the coalition would like to see; and yes, we will be having more meetings with the coalition as we develop our future plans.
MR. WILSON: Mr. Chairman, let me clarify and clear up the Masonview dispute here first of all. The fact of the matter is, Mr. Minister, your department is responsible for the assessment of those individuals. So if that assessment is dragged out or if that assessment has to be done again - which it was in this case - then your department is ultimately responsible and we will leave that subject there.
Now let me get back to the Kendrick report. I'm sure that Dr. Kendrick didn't ask you to take the Kendrick report and leave it on a shelf for 10 years until you implement any of the recommendations; I don't think that's what he meant by a 10-year time frame. So let me ask you what your plans are over the next year with regard to recommendations and, if I may, could you give us some specific targets perhaps on a number of recommendations you would like to implement, let's say this year? You know, would you like to implement one or two or 10 - or none - of the recommendations of the Kendrick report this year, Mr. Minister?
MR. CHRISTIE: In terms of the Kendrick report, in this year it's our hope that we will achieve several of those recommendations. One of the recommendations that was made, and as I indicated earlier, was removing people from larger facilities, and in discussion with the honourable member for Dartmouth-Cole Harbour yesterday we indicated that it is our intention this year to finalize the phase-out of the Halifax County Rehab Centre. That's clearly one of the objectives Dr. Kendrick suggested, that you move from larger facilities into smaller facilities.
We have developed over the last year different options for youth and children in terms of the Shelburne area. We've indicated that we are converting the Dayspring centre into a day program for youth. That is part of the option menu that Dr. Kendrick mentioned, that there should be a range of services. So those two we are working on and we will work on completing those this year.
With Health this year we will be looking at the long-term care side of things. We hope to complete that this year. We hope to complete the other recommendation of being able to provide and redefine the in-home supports for people in Community Services and in the Department of Health. So those are four or five major initiatives that we hope to achieve this year.
MR. WILSON: One of the recommendations of the Kendrick report that indeed would have cost very little in terms of resources was to develop specific regulations and policy to ensure strong service user and family participation rights. I would like to ask the minister, has he started to do that?
MR. CHRISTIE: His question is the recommendation around the blue ribbon panel and bringing people in to look at where the programs are going, to look at the long range and to develop community-based input. I take it that is his question. We have indicated to the various groups that have talked to us, we see that as a viable option, but what we've also indicated to them is before a group can start looking at how things are going to develop, how things are going to go, that there have to be the resources in place, there have to be some fundamental decisions of where we move with long-term care and there has to be the availability to say that the funds are there to move in that direction.
We have continued to develop the community-based system of services and over this next year we will be closing those facilities, as I mentioned. We will be opening small options homes in Queens, Shelburne, Barrington and Westville, and more small options homes in the metro area. As we continue to do that and as the sector gets larger in terms of people who want to be involved, we are going to look at how we are going to develop these areas. Indeed, that's one of the things that I anticipate in the near future, as we meet with Health we will be looking at how we will bring that structure in place. It's not simply just a community service issue, it's a broader government issue. We have to be able to provide the resources and provide some sense of direction to give to those people as they set out to meet the challenges.
MR. WILSON: Let me ask the minister then, in his own words, how would he grade exactly where you are right now with the Kendrick report? Would you give yourself a glowing review in terms of implementing the recommendations of the Kendrick report? Are you happy with where things are now, or do you think perhaps that they could be moving just a little quicker in terms of actually implementing the recommendations of that report?
MR. CHRISTIE: I guess in terms of where we are with the Kendrick report - would we give it a glowing report? I think at the end of the day I will leave that to you and the public to make that decision. How are we moving along, are we moving along with things? Well, I guess, as I indicated, we are moving along with a number of initiatives and I don't say I'm surprised that it's going to take a while to implement some of those things, because there are a lot of social impacts and a lot of situations involved here. From my perspective I think we are dealing with a number of those things. We are dealing with some of the basic infrastructure items that have to be dealt with first and we're starting to deal with those as we move along. I guess I would say, from my perspective, I'm pleased with the way things are moving. I know that we have to find more options for people who need those services, but I think as we continue to do that, I'm fairly pleased with the way things are moving in terms of the Kendrick report.
MR. WILSON: The minister already made reference to one of the other recommendations of the Kendrick report - to reconsider and review a decision to move home care for disabled people to the Department of Health. I think you made a little reference to that anyway. I want to know, has there been any consideration to actually implementing that recommendation? How much consideration has been given in talks and how much consultation or talks have been held with the Department of Health regarding that recommendation?
MR. CHRISTIE: Referring to the discussion we had with the honourable member in terms of the health care and services that we need to provide, as the honourable member knows, health care is certainly with the Department of Health, the recommendation of the Kendrick report spoke to that, plus a number of areas where Health and Community Services had to resolve a number of issues. Where is it now? We're still in the process of working
with Health to get that resolved. That was one of the issues I referred to as one of the areas where the coalition said they wanted to have further discussions with us. But the history of that process is that in-home support was moved from the municipalities to Health in 1995. Dr. Kendrick looked at it and said that should be revisited, where that's located and how it's delivered, along with a variety of other services that were raised in his report. The status of that now is that we are still working with Health and still determining how that's going to move forward.
MR. WILSON: The minister has indicated - and I want to go back just a little bit there - that he would certainly be meeting with, he has future plans to meet with the Community Action Coalition. Perhaps you could just give us, in detail, what role do you see the Community Action Coalition playing, when are you planning to meet with them again, and what part will they play in the whole process here?
MR. CHRISTIE: The specific answer to your question is yes, we will be meeting with the coalition. There is, as the honourable member knows, a large group of community-based people who are interested in this topic. There are operators, there are people who are involved in small options homes, there are groups who provide these services across the province. Back some months ago, down in the New Glasgow area, we had a chance to meet with some of the providers and they wanted to become part of the discussion as to where the Kendrick report was going, the implementations. We undertook to meet with some of those groups, so the answer to your question is yes, we will be meeting with the coalition. We view them as people who have grassroots information and knowledge on the topic, but we will be meeting with a variety of others - community-based people too, service providers, the people who provide the training in our community colleges - to provide people for this. We will be meeting with a broad range of people as we move forward on this.
MR. WILSON: I will change topics now I think, although they are directly related. The rate of poverty has increased significantly throughout this province over the last five years. I would like to know, Mr. Minister, what is your department doing to address the issue of poverty in Nova Scotia?
MR. CHRISTIE: Your question is the rate of poverty and how poverty has been a national agenda item for the last number of years. As I had the opportunity to discuss with the honourable member for Dartmouth North yesterday, we were talking about the National Child Benefit and the Nova Scotia Child Benefit. I think one of the major things that we looked at and one of the major things, incentives and initiatives, that we have moved to do is several things. First, when we announced last year the platform levelling of the National Child Benefit and the Nova Scotia Child Benefit, when we mentioned the fact that we were going to pass on all of the increases in that back to the people who are with children under a certain income band, the objective and goal of that was to ensure that all people who were under low income were receiving the child benefit.
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Prior to that time there had been the issue of whether people on assistance were getting as much money, whether people on low-income bands were getting enough money - our objective was to do a balancing of that so that all that money was going back to those
families on low income. When we look at the incentives of going back to work, we indicated yesterday that we are helping people by keeping them on Pharmacare for one year. As they go back to work we are providing back-to-work initiatives, and we are providing additional daycare. All of those items are speaking to the fact that families need to have resources to help them over short periods of time or longer periods of time, and those are some of the initiatives that we've been taking.
If your question is, is there more to be done, there certainly is. That's a national issue that we all understand and that's the issue that we will be bringing to the Social Services Ministers' meeting when we meet again, how can we continue to meet those demands. I think, as the honourable member knows, one of the things that this province has - and we discussed this earlier - is the challenge of having the highest disability rate in the country. We have to bring that to the national scene. We have to be able to speak to the needs of people with disabilities, because a lot of the people with disabilities fall under that low income also. We have to be able to provide more services to them.
We have moved in the area of stabilizing the child benefit and the Nova Scotia Child Benefit to all income families, we have moved on the initiatives of providing incentives and providing assistance for people to go back to work, and we do recognize that all communities and all governments have a role to play in helping to reduce poverty. We have made some initiatives, we have more to make, and we will continue to work with our federal and provincial counterparts to continue to make progress in that area.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Before we move on to the member for Glace Bay, I would just like to remind the members that they should recognize that there is a need for decorum. If they have conversations that are of interest to themselves, take it outside the Chamber, because budget estimates are significantly important and it's important to not only have the questions put forward, but also to hear the responses to those questions.
MR. WILSON: Mr. Chairman, I'm sure the minister will agree that one of the areas that family poverty would have an impact on is the youth of our communities. Unfortunately, many children in this province are forced to go to school hungry, so I'm sure you agree that we have to ensure that programs go beyond the classroom. We know that students, for instance, will be more productive when they've eaten and are healthy individuals. So if I could, I ask the minister what specific measures is your government taking to eliminate child poverty throughout Nova Scotia?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, the honourable member is certainly quite correct. When you look at child poverty, not just child poverty, you look at the whole question of poverty, you are looking at issues surrounding education, housing, food, shelter, all of those issues. Those all become important issues, and people need to have all of those before they can help their families in any way possible.
What I was indicating earlier is some of the initiatives that we have taken on a national basis, and provincially, in terms of providing families with low income the ability to meet the challenges that they have. Part of the question the honourable member raised was if you have people going to learn, then they have to have safe and affordable housing, they have to have the income. As we were discussing yesterday, the affordable housing program is targeted to address and to try to meet just those goals. Specifically, as we look at people on assistance and we provide monies for them to help them go back to school, as we look at the benefits for people under the child benefit, as we look at the ability for them to carry Pharmacare to help them so that if children need medications or drugs, that those are there for people to help them get back to work.
As I did indicate yesterday to one of the honourable members, one of the areas that we look at is for people who perhaps have challenges with medications and those medications, when you build it into their budget, exceed their income level, that's when the department comes along and says we will provide support in the Pharmacare area. Indeed, as I indicated yesterday, that's an area that is growing quite rapidly, because a lot of times people will find that they have money to provide a lot of things, but all of a sudden they're hit by medical needs for their children or themselves, so the department is providing that supplement between their income requirements and their budget.
Those are a few of the areas that we are working on in child poverty. I do not dispute the fact that it's a national issue; I do not dispute the fact that there has to be more done. It's something that not just governments need to do, it's a community thing, it's a government thing, and it's a national thing that we have to keep working on to help alleviate the problem.
MR. WILSON: Mr. Chairman, just before I turn the remainder of the time over to my colleague, the member for Cape Breton The Lakes, I have just one last question. Does your government, Mr. Minister, provide funding for breakfast and lunch programs at any schools throughout this province and, if so, what schools?
MR. CHRISTIE: No, we provide a variety of grants to organizations; we provide grants to the Boys & Girls Clubs; and we provide grants to other areas, but we do not specifically provide grants for breakfast programs. Some of the people we provide grants for will provide those, but we provide grants for a variety of services they provide, but breakfast programs are not specifically designated as one.
MR. WILSON: Mr. Chairman, how much time is remaining?
MR. CHAIRMAN: There is approximately 31 minutes left.
MR. WILSON: Mr. Chairman, for the remainder I would like to turn the rest of the time over to my colleague, the member for Cape Breton The Lakes.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Cape Breton The Lakes.
MR. BRIAN BOUDREAU: Mr. Chairman, yesterday at the beginning of my questioning as housing critic, and today most of my questions will be in regard to housing. I asked yesterday if you, in fact, requested more money for maintenance programs for your department, from the Finance Minister, and you weren't really clear. You indicated that you went to the minister for more money and, later on when I questioned you, you indicated it was for the federal homeless programs. I would like to ask you, very directly, today, sir, if I may, did you, in fact, request more money for maintenance programs for your department?
MR. CHRISTIE: The question is did we ask for more money from the Minister of Finance for housing or did we ask for more money specifically for maintenance. We asked for maintenance, the same figure as last year. Last year we had $12.462 million and that's the figure for this year. The additional monies we asked for, I referred to yesterday, was for the Affordable Housing Program, so that we could become partners in that program.
MR. BOUDREAU: Mr. Minister, I would have to ask you why you didn't ask for more maintenance money. You said yesterday you were aware of the numerous units you had throughout the province, and you indicated that you were aware of many of the units that were in dire need of repair. I would like to ask you very clearly, yes or no, why didn't you? A very short answer, if I may, why did you not request - being aware of the maintenance difficulties in your department - more maintenance money from this minister?
MR. CHRISTIE: We provided the same amount of maintenance; we provided the same amount as last year. We don't know what emergencies will arise; there were emergencies last year. If those emergencies don't appear, we will have more money this year for maintenance of our standard program. We provided for the amount of money that we felt we could absorb and handle this year to provide for those emergencies, provide for those facilities that we have that require attention, and that we undertake to do this year.
MR. BOUDREAU: Mr. Minister, that's a clear indication that you are out of touch with Nova Scotians. Really, yesterday in reply to my questions you indicated very clearly that you were aware that many of these units were in dire need of repair. I brought to your attention the fact that several seniors' housing units on the Northside in particular, in CBRM - and they are both located in Cape Breton North - seniors waited over a year, sir, for you and your department to repair loose roofs, in particular. Only one of those units is repaired today. The other unit continues to have a leaky roof, and there is mould growing everywhere in this unit. Of course, we all know how health-knowledgeable your minister is over there,
promoting better health habits. How do you propose our seniors can remain healthy living in units that are full of mould?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, the question from the honourable member is, how do we expect people to live in our facilities if the facilities need additional work. The question also is, a lot of areas will be requesting elevators and as the honourable member knows there are a lot of areas around that have requested elevators.
As I indicated, we look at those areas of emergency, we have to do those emergencies. We do look towards the Affordable Housing Program. If the honourable member says, well, why don't you put money into developing the houses that you have, or why don't you make decisions to put less or more money into the programs, programs for people to stay in their homes, that's the balancing act that we have to come up with. People want to stay in their homes and, as we know, 70 per cent of Nova Scotians own their own home. Those people need assistance, those people need to be able to stay in their own home longer. That's where they are healthier.
We have indications from the Senior Citizens' Secretariat that people staying in their own homes are healthier, so we have to put additional money into RRAP programs so they can stay in their home and be healthy and stay in their community. At the same time, we have 12,000 units across the province, 6,000 of those are seniors' housing units that we have keep repaired. We have water issues. You will recall last year that a number of those had issues surrounding water. We have to provide water for those.
Those are some of the emergencies that come up, those are the things that we meet, and in terms of leaky roofs, in terms of other issues, we meet those as best we can and we meet those challenges because the member is right, people need to have healthy facilities. We meet those as we can, while we're meeting the emergencies in other areas too.
MR. BOUDREAU: Mr. Minister, that's a lot of babble. I think most Nova Scotians recognize that you're doing nothing to repair the units that you're responsible to maintain in this province. I would remind you that you're speaking about federal programs that are cost-shared. You're using federal funding, sir, to do the maintenance of seniors' homes, individual homes. I would like to ask you, since it's very clear that you and your government don't intend to do any repairs to these units, will you provide the buckets for the seniors so they can collect the drips when it rains?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, I'm going to presume the honourable member is trying to be facetious. I don't think he thinks that repairing seniors' facilities is a joke and something we need to take lightly. The answer to his question is, yes, there is some federal money in here; yes, the federal government transferred the responsibility for these programs to the provinces five years ago. That is very clear. They did that all across the country; they transferred these federal programs to the provinces and they said to the provinces, we want
you people to be involved. Yes, we agreed to do that; we agreed that we would become involved in these issues; and yes, there's a variety of issues surrounding that whether it's rural and Native housing, whether it's seniors' housing, whether it's others.
I will remind the honourable member that's the federal program that we were talking about that wanted to start and get more money into affordable housing. They were the government that said they wanted to have more units built up. We were debating with them the fact that we needed to have more money for existing housing, that we wanted the program to be more than 25 per cent for existing housing and go on. That is part of the government initiative and we're happy to work with them on it.
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Yes, we meet those challenges, we meet the challenges on a variety of issues and that's what we will continue to do as we work our way through the program of repairing the houses that have the greatest need, the ones that are on our critical list, and the lists that are developed by our regions.
MR. BOUDREAU: I'm not making a joke, Mr. Minister. I represent an area in Cape Breton, and in industrial Cape Breton right now seniors are having a very difficult time buying buckets, sir. I don't know if you've bought buckets before, but they're $3 or $4 each, and the last call I had from a senior on King Street - and that is a unit that you repaired, I will give you credit for that, after approximately 14 months waiting for you to repair it, you finally did get around to repairing it last year - but that one senior had four buckets. I don't know if you bought any buckets lately, Mr. Minister, but anybody on a fixed income simply cannot afford it.
They can't afford this. They can't afford the extra health care costs. You're the government that is promoting health awareness yet you allow mould to grow in public housing units in this province. It's unacceptable to the people in Nova Scotia, sir. Sooner or later you will get that message somehow. Perhaps you will get it from Nova Scotians. If you don't want to hear the Opposition members, that's fine, but Nova Scotians will deliver the message sooner or later.
I would like to ask you, sir, how many people on staff in your department do you have in the maintenance department to do the maintenance on these units?
MR. GRAHAM STEELE: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order. I would draw to the Chair's attention the fact that the House has lost quorum.
MR. CHAIRMAN: That has been agreed upon by all Party members that the quorum today would be relaxed in honour of the awards taking place recognizing the service of Nova Scotians. There has been an agreement by all Party House Leaders, not calling quorum.
MR. STEELE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In that case I withdraw that point of order.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, member.
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, the question I recall was how many people do we have in maintenance. As the honourable member knows, Housing Services works with the housing authorities across the region to provide a lot of the housing services. A lot of the departments of the housing authorities do a lot of contracting out of those services. The number of people within the department the housing authorities have for maintenance, I don't have that here. I will table that for the member. A lot of those initiatives are done through contracting out services as they are deemed required so that they can get specialists for the kind of work that they need.
MR. BOUDREAU: Has Housing Services undergone any kind of staff reduction?
MR. CHRISTIE: No.
MR. BOUDREAU: Mr. Chairman, last year, I know in Cape Breton, the maintenance individuals didn't even have paint, they had no windows, they had nothing, no materials to carry out their duties. Will you ensure Nova Scotians that the materials that are required to carry out this maintenance will be provided to your maintenance personnel?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, as I indicated before, we have repair lists that are developed by the housing authorities, those are developed with the department to develop the areas that need things the most. We will be providing materials for those areas, we will be providing the repairs, and we will be moving on those. Whether we achieve all of them that the honourable member is talking about this year, I don't know. That will remain on how many challenges come up. It will depend on how many emergency situations arise. We will be providing the materials and the labour to start down our list to get those fixed all across the province with all of the housing authorities. As I indicated before, we have to deal with emergencies. If roofs blow off, if water problems occur, if windows break out or whatever the situation is, we have to deal with those and we will continue to deal with it. So, yes, we are providing the materials for those areas that are on our maintenance list and we will continue to do so.
MR. BOUDREAU: Mr. Chairman, I think it's pretty obvious that the minister certainly has a lot of federal money there that he's handing out. I would like to ask the minister, has the business plan for the homelessness program that the federal government just announced been completed?
MR. CHRISTIE: I think your question is about our business plan for homelessness. I think the honourable member knows that the federal government, when they came and announced the homelessness project, they announced people in the province - not the
provincial government - to help with that project. The initiative they had was for that group to find partners in the community to start to work on that program. They also indicated that that program was going to be targeted at the larger cities and they designated Halifax as being one of the targets. The honourable member remembers that the group they appointed had discussions around whether it should be Halifax, or if Sydney should be included. The honourable member knows that we made undertakings with the minister, Claudette Bradshaw, to indicate that Sydney should be included on the homelessness list.
We never asked, honourable member, for the province to develop a business plan. The federal government announced the plan to work along with people and develop with partners, private partnerships. We were never asked to develop a business plan. The other side of the question, on the Affordable Housing Program that they announced, is one that we've been asked to be a signatory on. We were asked to be a signatory on the Affordable Housing Program along with all of the other provinces. We have people in town from CMHC next week to try to complete that. The issues that we have in terms of that program, when the federal government announced it, they indicated across the country they wanted only 25 per cent to go into existing stock and the remainder into new units.
From an Atlantic Provinces perspective, we've been saying to them, no, we want to have more content in the existing housing stock because we have a large group of people staying in their homes that need repairs. So we want to be able to put those in repairs. Once we have the signatory with the CMHC sign-off, then we will know what business plan to develop; whether they've agreed to their 25 per cent content or they've agreed to our content. Once we have finished that - hopefully next week - then we will be developing our business plan.
MR. BOUDREAU: Mr. Chairman, again, the reply from the minister is kind of confusing. At first he said he wasn't required to create a business plan, but at the end when he sat down he said, after all this babble he went through - anyway, Mr. Minister, every time you stand up you say the federal government this, the federal government that. When are you, sir, going to show any leadership for the people in Nova Scotia in your own department? When are you going to provide the leadership that's necessary to create your own programs, instead of following on the shirt-tails of the federal government?
MR. CHRISTIE: Let's clear up one thing. That honourable member said that I said we had one program and then I said we didn't. What I said is that we didn't have a business program for the homelessness initiative. Then I said we are going to develop a business plan for the affordable housing initiative. There are two clear different initiatives that I was talking about. When are we going to show some leadership and put it back in here? That's what we're doing now. If you look at our income support, we're showing initiatives to go back to work when we show initiatives to go back for daycares, when we show initiatives for people for subsidization because of employment support; those are initiatives that we're showing, that we continue to show.
Yes, we work with the federal government, along with every province in here, and why wouldn't we. Why wouldn't we get involved in national programs so that we can provide standards across the country. As the federal government has indicated, that is an initiative that they wanted to undertake in terms of housing and we're happy to join with them. So when you say why don't we come to the table with money, I told you the other day that we put $4.7 million up for the Affordable Housing Program; that's coming to the table with programs and those are the things that we're doing.
MR. BOUDREAU: Mr. Chairman, it is kind of shocking for me as a newer member of the House - two years ago, these guys had all the answers. They were going to lead Nova Scotia to prosperity. All we hear from this minister is he's riding the shirt-tails of the federal government, spending their money on programs. Mr. Minister, is your department ever going to create your own program?
MR. CHRISTIE: I am going to presume the question is are we creating our own program in housing. Let's presume that's the question. I indicated to you, in terms of our department, we have a number of new programs that we're creating. Are we going to create a new program in housing, in terms of housing initiatives? We have a variety of programs that we support. We don't see the need, if we look at people and the demands for the RRAP program and the other program. When we're asked to come to the table to put more money into rural and Native housing programs, those are programs that we are going to initiate. Those programs are partly initiated by the federal government and partially initiated by the province. We have a number of initiatives that we are looking at.
I will say to you again, I don't argue the fact that in terms of the national agenda that the federal government's programs are programs that we want to bring in here and we want to implement. Yes, we have to put more money in those. Yes, we have to show initiatives in terms of those. Why would we say let's exclude ourselves and cut ourselves out from the national programs. Why would we do that when the federal government and the other provinces are leading and showing that they want those programs. So we want to continue to bring those in and we will continue to support those programs. If those programs don't come along, those programs aren't there, then we as a government are going to have to continue to support them.
You indicated that the federal government is involved in everything. Well I will continue to remind you that the federal government said a few years ago, we want the housing units to come to the province. Now we as a province could have said no, we're not going to take them over. We could have said that. We could have said, no, we're not going to take over these programs and just dropped them all and said if the federal government isn't going to be in them, we're going to get out of them. They came and said we want you to run them. The consequence of that is we have to put more money in them, but we viewed those as good programs. The community saw those as good programs, so we as a government said fine, we will come into those programs and we will continue to do them. We are still in those
programs and people are saying that those programs are worthwhile because they keep applying for them in great numbers.
MR. BOUDREAU: Mr. Chairman, the minister forgot to say that he also gets the money from the federal government. Anyway, I would like to ask you, Mr. Minister, how many public housing units you visited last year as the minister of your department; how many public units did you visit?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, I'm just trying to think of the number. My guess would be about 12 different facilities. I know I was down to two or three on the Eastern Shore. I was down to a number in the Bridgewater area. I was in Yarmouth at some of the areas. I was in Amherst in some of the areas, and I was in some of the areas through Inverness when I was visiting with the minister up there. My guess would be it's 15, maybe 20, of the different housing units.
MR. BOUDREAU: Strange, but it sounds like you visited Tory areas, Mr. Minister. I don't recall you being in any units in the Sydney area, really. In any event, the vast majority of the units obviously were in Tory-held ridings. So, again, and I questioned the minister yesterday, I asked the minister yesterday to confirm to this House to make an undertaking to the members of this House, all members, that you will look right across the board fairly, on units throughout Nova Scotia regardless of who represents them. Will you do that, Mr. Minister?
MR. CHRISTIE: I will remind the honourable member that Lunenburg West, as I indicated, is not a Tory riding. I did indicate to the honourable member the reason I haven't visited your area is you haven't invited me down to visit those units and I'm happy to do that. The honourable member for Lunenburg West invited me to come down and I did. I indicated to you yesterday that as we look at the list of items, as we look at the items where the priorities are set, those are set by the housing authority. You can go and check with the housing authority in your area to determine the items that they have on your list. Those are the lists we follow. If you're suggesting that the housing authority's development is based on the political colour of the riding, I would have to argue with you on that one because they develop the list based on their needs assessment and the repairs and that's the way we will proceed. I said to you yesterday that's the way we will go and I repeat that again to you today.
[10:45 a.m.]
MR. BOUDREAU: Mr. Chairman, I can assure the honourable minister he will be receiving a written invitation from me personally before the day's end. I thought for sure that my good colleague, the member for Cape Breton North, over there would have asked him prior to this, but apparently he indicated he hasn't been invited to Sydney. I didn't know you had to invite ministers to go visit public housing because I have several, Mr. Minister, you will be interested in seeing, believe me. I can assure you that the seniors living in those units
are going to want to speak to you, sir, especially the units where I'm going to take you because there are many units down there that are in dire need of repair, and your government, your department and you, sir, fail to recognize the real need Nova Scotians require when it comes to maintenance and construction of public housing in this province. Your government and your department under your leadership has no plans . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. The time has elapsed for the Liberal caucus.
The honourable member for Dartmouth North.
MR. JERRY PYE: Mr. Chairman, I want to say that I listened intently to some comments from the Minister of Community Services around the issue of the Michael Kendrick report and the Community Action Coalition to implement those reports and some questions that, in fact, the minister had been asked by the member for Glace Bay. I don't want to dwell on this issue for a long period of time simply because there may be some duplication, and that's not the intent. The intent is to get to the crux of the real issue.
We recognize that in fact there was a whole serious need to address the issues of individuals with respect to community supports, those individuals with intellectual disabilities, those individuals with mental disabilities, those individuals with physical disabilities, et cetera. The minister was very much aware that as a result of a murder some years ago with respect to the Sheppard murder, there was a report on community-based options. The minister recognizes that that report was also reviewed by the Kendrick report and that Dr. Kendrick's report that brought recommendations back to the Minister of Community Services cost some $51,000.
There were a number of major recommendations, but I want to dwell on the most important recommendation and that was a recommendation that will get this off the ground in my opinion. I do know that the minister has said that he wants everyone involved: he wants the service providers, he has been talking to the service providers; he has been talking to advocacy agencies; and he has been across the province talking to those who also administer programs that are complementary too. The minister has talked all around that issue, but my concern is when will the minister recognize that the single most important function of this report is to establish what was considered a blue ribbon committee made up of stakeholders which, in fact, could give direction to the Department of Community Services on how best to proceed with Kendrick's report?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, I think, as I indicated to the honourable member for Glace Bay, we certainly recognize that as one of the lead components of Dr. Kendrick's report. What I also indicated to him, and I say to you again, is that as that committee comes in place and that group becomes available as to the makeup of that group, we have to be able to indicate to that group that there are resources available. We have to be able to indicate the areas that the government is able to support and the directions that the government is looking
at going in long-term care in the terms of the small options homes. That group indeed will play a large part in terms of the menus and the honourable member is certainly aware of Dr. Kendrick's discussion about the need to provide a range of menu items for people needing those services and they will play a large role in that.
I take the point in terms of the coalition, as the honourable member mentioned, a lot of the service providers and the Coalition for Community Living, a lot of the people in long-term care have a lot of vision of where they want to go. They have a lot of vision of what range of services we need to provide, but we believe that before that committee gets up and set, we have to be able to provide the resources so that they know that we have the resources to be able to implement some of the things that they're going for. That's where we are. As we move forward on that, when will that committee be in place, we will be working with the Department of Health as best we can, with the other departments involved and particularly with the Department of Health to be able to start to look at the long-term care structure, to be able to look at how that can develop, and then we will bring in that committee.
Indeed, I have had a number of people write to me and indicate they would like to serve on that committee. My guess is that we probably have some 10 or 15 people who have indicated that they would like to be involved in that committee and, once again, we've indicated to them that we will advise them as soon as we're looking at bringing that committee on, what the committee's mandate will be and when they will be starting to function. So, yes, that's a major important part of it. Yes, we need to get on with that, but we need to do some work in terms of providing resources and structural direction from the government.
MR. PYE: Mr. Chairman, the minister did meet with the coalition, I believe it was back in June, and he did make a commitment I believe to meet with them in the Fall of that year as well, and that was 2001. I don't know if he kept that commitment or not. It's my understanding that that commitment may not have been kept and I'm not sure, the minister will let us know.
There are a number of concerns in the communities and I think that Dr. Kendrick indicated that the department was in disarray when it came to - and he never used this word but I will use this word, somewhat dysfunctional - addressing this particular issue within the department. There was a strong forceful move - and these are my terms, not Dr. Kendrick's terms - within the department not to proceed on this issue and this is the reason why it seems to be somewhat lagging.
I will tell you, Mr. Minister, that there are actions taken by the department that may be in direct conflict with some of the recommendations of Dr. Kendrick's report and, if not, it was a matter if this blue ribbon panel committee were in place, it would offer direction to the minister on how to proceed. I know that my colleague, the member for Halifax Needham, had talked about Sunrise Manor and the transition from the Cole Harbour Rehab Centre to
Sunrise Manor of a number of individuals who, in fact, are mental health consumers. That was done without any consultation with anyone within the community with respect to the kind of effect that that might have. I think therein lies the concern that the department is moving on without any consultation among these different agencies and if, in fact, that blue ribbon committee were in place, Mr. Minister, you would have had the opportunity to put that as a directive to the blue ribbon committee on how best to achieve the result.
Also, it is my understanding, and you may be wrong, but I'm wondering if there are plans to build a 30-unit institution for persons with intellectual disabilities, that's another question. The other question I will ask you is, do you have money set aside, because there will be an administrative cost in setting up a blue ribbon committee if, in fact, your department is going to do that. Do you have money set aside in this budget to start the action of a blue ribbon committee?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, the honourable member asked a number of questions. Let me start with the first question - did we meet with the coalition? The answer is yes. I met with them, I believe it was last Spring. We had an opportunity to meet with them with the Department of Health prior to that and in the meeting in the Fall, department people met with them.
Your comment in terms of Sunrise Manor - I had a discussion yesterday with the honourable members for Dartmouth-Cole Harbour and Halifax Needham regarding that. I indicated our consultation on that was with people on the Board of Directors of the Halifax County Regional Rehabilitation Centre. I think the honourable member recalls the department had provided the opportunity for members of his group to come to the department to talk about some of the initiatives.
The honourable member raises the initiative of the 30 unit ARC that was going to be built. As I indicated yesterday, the plan was that we were going to have that facility on the same property as the Halifax County Rehab centre and the intent that HRM was going to provide the land and we would build the facility. As I indicated yesterday, HRM chose not to follow that route so in the course of events, the Board of Directors of the Halifax County Rehab had indicated they wanted to remain involved. They were a group that had been working with these people for a substantial number of years and they wanted to be involved with them and so they formed a group called Quest, a non-profit association that we've been dealing with. They've been very directly involved with the discussions of Sunrise Manor and the people moving to Sunrise Manor. That group has been looking at a group home and they have acquired a small options home in the Lawrencetown area that they're opening. They're looking at acquiring two more. What I'm suggesting to you here is, there has been consultation with that group of people. They have been involved with us on that.
The other group that has been extremely important in all of this are the families of the people that are in Halifax County - where people are going to be located and the plan of where they're going now and where they will be. We've been looking at this, moving the 11 residents out. We had been meeting with the families, but the families have also indicated that the Board of Directors of the Halifax County Rehab, still staying involved is something that they view as a good option. So they see them as people that we should be consulting with and indeed we have.
I think your other point was in terms of the small building we're going to be building and moving out. We have 11 people moving out into a residential area and we view that as being consistent with the Kendrick report because one of the things - and I was just chatting to the member for Glace Bay on this - he had suggested is that we have to have a range of options that people might choose this kind of facility, might choose that kind of facility, might choose to stay home half the time. We view that as one of the mix of the range of facilities that Dr. Kendrick has been talking about. Indeed, that view has been supported by the directors of the Halifax County Rehab Centre as they support us and work with us in moving these people to a new location.
MR. PYE: Just quickly, Mr. Chairman, the minister didn't respond as to whether there was money set aside to bring about the implementation of the blue ribbon committee.
[11:00 a.m.]
MR. CHRISTIE: We have monies, Mr. Chairman. We build monies into our budget each year for consultation, be it the blue ribbon committee, be it the other groups that we meet with. We have to build money in for consultations that we're having with Children's Aid Societies. Money is in our budget to have those consultations, to have those deliberations, so that money is there as the blue ribbon committee comes along and other committees of the Children's Aid Society come along. Yes, we build those monies in for consultation and for community involvement.
MR. PYE: The minister's quite right - he builds the money in for consultation, there's no question. He didn't answer the question though, Mr. Chairman, with respect to whether there was money specifically set aside for the implementation of the blue ribbon committee. The other question I have for the minister - and I do believe that the Minister of Health may have talked about this just briefly in the late debate last night - one of the seven recommendations was that the Department of Community Services and the Department of Health should resolve their creation of a single community system to serve persons with mental disorders within the two years. I'm wondering are those consultations going on now? What is the time frame to see these departments working in unison to address the issue?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, that is a question that the departments have been working on. When do I see it happening? We will continue to work on that. One of the areas of greatest challenge to us is to combine those. As the honourable member recalls back last Fall when we were talking about mental health initiatives and initiatives for children with mental illness, we identified that as an area that we had to work on, that we had to get rid of the walls on that, that the departments had to start operating together. We see that as a major initiative and we will be working on that with all possible haste so we can achieve those objectives and the goals that people were talking about last night in the late debate.
MR. PYE: I know that the minister this week - much the same as myself - received the Psychiatric Facilities Review Board's report for April 1, 2001 to March 31, 2002. The minister is very much aware that they were quite concerned that there was no evidence as a result of the Kendrick report of creation of a single community system nor even any knowledge of establishment of a working party within the Department of Community Services itself around this whole issue. It was quite critical of the government's inability to move, particularly the Department of Community Services and the Department of Health around mental health issues. I'm wondering if the minister can respond to that report?
MR. CHRISTIE: Yes, as the honourable member indicated, the report came out this week. That report indicates that more work needs to be done in those areas and I think in some of the areas of children's mental health, those are the areas that we have been working with. We still have the major initiatives that we have to resolve in terms of the age barriers and where people go at certain times. I don't dispute the fact that we, as a government, have to do a better job for that segment and get the departments co-aligned together.
I think one of the areas that we talked about yesterday was the introduction of a secure treatment facility that's coming onstream this year. It will play a small part in some of those areas. It will help with providing some further options within the range of children's services - whether they're day programs we're switching to at Dayspring, whether they're secure care - those are options that are provided. There need to be a lot more options. There needs to be more cohesion with the Department of Health and I certainly don't dispute that. When will we have that achieved? We will be working on making that one of our major objectives. As we indicated in our business plan this year, one of our major objectives this year was to come together with Health to resolve a number of those issues and we will be working on it as diligently as we can.
MR. PYE: Time is going by very fast, Mr. Chairman, and one doesn't realize how quickly time goes by. I don't have much time remaining in my allocated time, and I want to make sure that I've covered a number of bases, so I'm going to go rather quickly into other areas.
The area with respect to persons with disabilities. The minister is aware, and I believe he can correct me if I'm wrong, that the HRDC agreement with respect to the EAPD Program - I should say that's an acronym for Employment Assistance for Persons with Disabilities - that program, I believe it ends next year, and I'm wondering where that fits in with respect to the provincial government's assistance to persons with disabilities, and is there a new design or a new agreement coming forward to carry that forward after the expiration of that period of time?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, yes, we did have the opportunity the other day to talk about the numbers of people in the EAPD Program and the programs that were going on there. I did also indicate to the honourable member the other day that at the federal forum, we, as a province, had indicated one of the areas that we saw as being a national agenda item was disability. We talked the other day about having the largest disabled population percentage in the country, something that we had to speak of. We had talked about bringing that to the national agenda and, indeed, we will keep doing that.
Yes, the first round of the EAPD has a sunset clause on it, but in terms of any discussions we've had at the national level, there has never really been any intent that that program was going to stop. There are still, obviously, discussions with the federal government as to how that's going to carry on and what the provinces will do. No doubt, as I indicated at our meeting of Social Services Ministers at the end of May, obviously that will be a major topic on the agenda.
In terms of the discussions at the national level, yes, the program timeline will be coming to an end, but I don't sense any national trend that that is closing down and that that will be stopping. There will, perhaps, be further discussions as to how it goes forward, but I don't have a sense that that program is coming to an end.
MR. PYE: Mr. Chairman, I guess there is somewhat of a backlog, and I'm wondering if the minister can tell me if there's a backlog for individuals with disabilities seeking assistance through the EAPD Program and is there a way to address this particular concern within the department? I guess I will leave it at that for now.
MR. CHRISTIE: I am reminded, thinking in terms of the programs that we had talked about, and as I did indicate to the honourable member the other day, we're getting involved with three pilot programs with the federal government in terms of disabled people to try to provide additional supports, provide those things that they need for children and adults, and in terms of the care they need. It's a test program across the country; it's a program leaning towards what the real challenges of people with disabilities are and what their needs are. We're quite pleased to have been selected as a province to lead with that.
The other question you had in terms of the EAPD Program, yes, there are people still waiting. The number of lists that we had involved was more substantial a year ago. There were a number of people able to come on it, but there is still a waiting list at this point in time.
MR. PYE: Mr. Chairman, I'm going to try to rush through these rather quickly, because, as I said earlier, time is of the essence here. I met with some people in some advocacy groups within the disabled community, and the advocacy groups within the disabled community are quite concerned with respect to barrier-free access. They want to know if the Minister of Community Services has talked to the minister responsible for the building codes and to make sure that there are consistent compliance with the building codes around making sure that not only public facilities are accessible but private facilities and institutions are accessible to persons with disabilities as well. I guess I'm wondering, through you to the Minister of Community Services, how forceful is the department with respect to making these issues a priority within the department?
MR. CHRISTIE: We have had an opportunity to meet with the department on a number of occasions, the Department of Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations. Generally we have met with people from the disabled community, Lauchie Rutt is usually there, people from the People First group are generally there, and the discussion has centered around a number of areas. The honourable member is certainly aware of the transportation projects that are going on across the province in three different areas. We meet and we discuss those.
The last time we were meeting with that group and Service Nova Scotia was around the program grants for community buildings and making buildings more accessible for the disabled. The question that Service Nova Scotia was asking was, is that program serving the needs of Nova Scotia, is it meeting a number of the needs? As we had that meeting, it was indicated that that program still had a lot of support throughout the disabled community and indeed our area.
Yes, we do meet with them on a number of areas, certainly in terms of housing as we look at the facilities that are being constructed and as we look under the programs for the affordable housing and the homeless initiatives, we look at those. As far as our input is concerned, we know we have to move so that more and more of them are accessible.
In terms of the building codes and in terms of bylaw enforcement that the Department of Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations has, those have been involved in the discussions we've had, but mainly our discussions have focused on the transportation areas, those programs and initiatives, and the initiatives towards the facilities of public buildings. We clearly, in terms of housing, are looking for designs as we move forward that are barrier-free designs and renovations.
As the honourable member will remember, this year Housing Services picks out particular areas and designs that are done, and they have awards to people for most innovation and other areas. One of the design areas this year that the honourable member will be aware of was for a barrier-free design. The department's Housing Services Division is promoting those areas as we look toward barrier-free designs and renovations that are designed for the disabled groups.
MR. PYE: Mr. Chairman, the minister is very much aware that even government involvement, sometimes, tends to overlook the seriousness with respect to making their facilities barrier-free. I want to tell the minister that his government was involved in the home on Gerrish Street for homeless individuals. That, in itself, leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to barrier-free accessibility for persons with disabilities. That's just one example of the most recent. The disabled community recognizes that, and I don't know how much influence his department can have; subdivisions and developments of subdivisions and so on go on without much thought given to making them barrier-free or accessible to persons with disabilities. I know the minister might just want to briefly comment about that.
I also want to talk to the minister about the government's hiring practices with respect to persons with disabilities. The government knows that it procures contracts with private sector individuals as well, and I'm wondering how far the government has moved with respect to hiring practices and encouraging those who do business with government to hire persons with disabilities, as well as the government itself, what kind of a track record?
[11:15 a.m.]
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, the question surrounding the hiring practices with the department, obviously hiring goes through the Public Service Commission. As the honourable member knows, those fair hiring practices are involved there. We certainly follow all those rules and regulations as it goes through them. We indeed have opportunities and areas where people with disabilities become involved in the program. As I indicated, our thrust is through the Public Service Commission and the fair-hiring practices that they employ. That is the same as we do too, as our employment is regulated through there and our people are hired through there.
MR. PYE: Okay then, just briefly, through you, Mr. Chairman, to the minister, can he tell me out of the number of individuals who have been hired by the province within the last year or two years, how many persons with disabilities have actually been hired and what is that ratio?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, no, I don't have that data, but we will request that from the Public Service Commission and we will certainly be happy to table that information for the honourable member.
MR. PYE: Mr. Chairman, I want to go into housing now. The minister is very much aware that the public housing stock, for the most part, was built some 25 to 30 years ago. The housing stock has aged, it's unhealthy, and it's in need of repair. There is a community action group on homelessness that has talked about much of this issue around public housing and around the public housing stock. I know the minister has had consultation with them. There are some representatives that liaise between the federal government and the provincial government on the issue of housing. I do know, as well, back, I believe, in 1998, the provincial government had a report, and don't quote me on that if I'm not correct in stating the actual report, but it was towards a new direction in housing in Nova Scotia. It may have been a report or something to that nature. The minister has had that in his possession for a couple of years and there are several recommendations with respect to how to develop housing in the Province of Nova Scotia.
We recognize that, yes, in 1993, the federal government decided to opt out of the housing business and ask the provincial governments to take over, I would say, the maintenance of the existing housing stock that was in the domain of the federal government. Some of that was in fact seniors' housing, public housing and co-op housing. There was a bag of money that came down and it comes down every year from the federal government to the minister to administer to those housing stocks, particularly around co-op housing. Many of the co-op housing groups have gone into receivership. They are now in the hands of private individuals, yet that money continues to flow into the purse of the minister.
I'm wondering if the minister can tell me, I know that the minister has already said that, in fact, they've got this $4 million initiative to be able to tap into the federal government's housing strategy of some $18 million over a period of time, but $4 million seems rather insignificant for the seriousness of the housing crisis that I see in Nova Scotia. There are long waiting lists. The housing stock is old. It was built at times when there were large families and many of that housing stock needs to be redesigned, redeveloped. There are people out there in the community who are waiting for housing because, as the minister is very much aware, shelter is a determinant of health as well and that's been recognized nationally across the country, that if one doesn't have decent shelter, then one is likely to inherit a number of difficulties that may lead them to end up in hospitals with particular ailments. So I'm wondering, can the minister tell us briefly just exactly what direction housing is going?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, I think there were a number of questions and issues that you raised here and one was in terms of projects that were in difficulty. I know the honourable member and I have had discussions about some of the co-ops in his area and we had some discussion, but the honourable member made note of a number that were in receivership. I just want to clarify that impression so people don't leave thinking that there are a number in receivership. There are a number in difficulty that the department is working with and the department is working with them in terms of helping them restructure. I think I've had the discussion with the honourable member before about the National Association
of Housing Cooperatives that has been in this area, and talking to us on a variety of those areas. Indeed, I think the honourable knows that one of the co-ops in the southern part of the province had some issues and had to have a major restructuring and that one's being worked on and a number of others are being worked on, too. So, yes, that's part of the ongoing initiative to stabilize it.
The other part, as I mentioned, in terms of the federal program you raised, in terms of the affordability one, and as we met as housing ministers in Quebec City, the federal government had indicated that if provinces wanted to be part of that, obviously part of that program was going to be a 50/50 sharing and that people had to show that they were going to participate and they had to be able to indicate that they had the money available and that they weren't just going to tie up federal money saying, yes, we think we can and we might be able to. They had to be able to indicate that they were going to do it. That is the reason that we put the $4.7 million up. That is the portion that the federal government has indicated to us in this fiscal year that is available for matched dollars. That program, as you mentioned, is the $18 million.
The other part of your question was will that be enough. Well, the answer is no. If we were in Prince Edward Island, who is getting only about $7 million, they would tell you it's not enough. All of the provinces will say that it's not enough, but recognizing the fact, as you indicated, that housing stock is old and that we have to start to develop that, we feel that program is a good step forward. So we have undertaken that program with the federal government to try to move forward to maintain the housing stock.
The debate point, as I indicated earlier to the member for Glace Bay, that we're having is the amount of monies that should go to existing stock against stock that is currently to be built. The federal government program indicates they want to stay at 25 per cent existing stock and we suggested to them it should be higher, in the 50 per cent range. We hope we will clear that up when officials meet with CMHC officials at the end of next week. We hope we will get that cleared up. We will get the program designed so that we can start talking with groups around the province that want to get into development of housing areas in the regions so that we can start to provide some of those homes. I did meet with the committee and I said to them what I'm saying to the honourable member now and they encouraged us to keep going in that direction, that the demand is high. This might not meet the demand, but we have to start somewhere and start moving forward.
MR. PYE: Mr. Chairman, therein lies a concern, I guess, whether you and the federal government are going to be able to mutually agree with respect to the percentage of the money and how it's going to be spent under the National Housing Framework Agreement. I can see the federal government says 25 per cent ought to go into renovations and repair of the existing stock and the remaining 75 per cent ought to go into new housing. There comes a time when bad money is just being thrown into existing housing stock. You know that a high percentage of Nova Scotians, particularly in rural communities, own their own homes
and so on and their own homes have deteriorated because of their inability and because of their incomes to keep that up. However, having said that, there is a real need for social affordable housing and the real need is that the government hasn't recognized that for the last few years.
Can the minister tell me if in fact part of the $4 million that he is negotiating and putting in that bag with the federal government is in land acquisition as well, or is that in real dollars that is going forward, or is that an accumulation of dollars plus land acquisition that is going to go forward? Can the minister also tell me when in fact new social housing developments have been developed, or affordable housing developments have been developed on lands that were owned by the provincial government and/or sold to private developers to develop lands?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, I am going back to the first part of your question and that question had to do with the number of units, and certainly that is a challenge. I will say to the honourable member that the information that we started to debate, the 25 per cent of existing housing stock repair, whether it should be 50 per cent with the federal government, was based on our 1996 assessment needs of 27,500 occupied homeowners in Nova Scotia are in need of major repair. If that is the case, probably a lot of that hasn't changed. That's why we kept saying to the federal government - as did a lot of the Atlantic Provinces - that we wanted to put a larger portion of the money into home repair of existing stock.
Your other question was is the money that we put in real dollars. The answer is yes, $4.7 million was put in last year's figures because the agreement was being developed last November and we had to put that money in last year. So that money has gone into the corporation to be there to work with the federal government and the program. Are we going to have opportunities to put in money in kind such as land? Yes, we hope so. We hope that some of the proposals that come forward from people who live in certain areas will allow the Housing Services Division of the Department of Community Services to put land in lieu of cash as part of those projects. That way we view it as levering more units in terms of dollars, but putting in land instead. One of the areas that is being discussed is the option of the provincial government doing some loan guarantees or a variety of others to try to stimulate the areas of the program.
Now I guess your other question was when was the last time that land was sold. I believe in the Sackville area the land was sold - I'm going to guess October of last year was the last time lots were sold. (Interruption)
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. I would ask you to direct your questions through the Chairman.
MR. CHRISTIE: So in terms of the program, I think the other part of the question was is this money going to be towards affordable housing. Well, in terms of the discussion at the national level, affordable housing is defined by CMHC as units which are under $500 a month. The initiatives we've talked about are how do you stimulate somebody to build housing units in an area that, if they're going to achieve rents of $500 a month for 10 years, what is going to cause them to do that if there's no return on their investment? That's why from a federal-provincial level, when we first started talking a minimum of 12,500 units from the federal government, matched by the province, people said, well, that's still not enough to drive the incentives for people in the Halifax area, or other areas where costs are high and rents are high, to get the return investment. Consequently, the program was bumped. So it's 25,000 federal government and 25,000 provincial to offset that. We believe that is enough incentive from the federal level and the provincial level to allow people to build in areas where there is high demand, where perhaps rents are higher, to provide the affordable housing, but that would be over a 10-year period.
[11:30 a.m.]
Now, do we see the private sector doing this? Yes, we hope the private sector wants to come in. Do we see some municipalities doing it? Certainly. A lot of the municipalities across the province - and I think at our conferences the honourable member will remember the Canadian union of municipalities coming and saying they wanted to be players. They wanted to be involved in doing some of this homeless initiative. Yes, I've had a chance to talk with Peter Kelly and people from HRM who want to be involved. So there will be a variety of programs. Indeed, one of the initiatives we are looking at is that the children's services of Cape Breton have requested that the housing services sell a lot to them so they can acquire a lot for that type of purpose. It's not directly involved with affordability, but it's another use that is going to be for public use for the province. So we're moving in that direction. Your question was is the money there. Yes, it's actual dollars that are there. Will we be able to lever along with lands? We certainly hope so.
MR. PYE: Mr. Chairman, I guess the minister has had consultation with a number of other levels of government across the province. But the minister has to be aware that low- income persons are spending some 50 per cent to 60 per cent of their income into housing at the present time and that's just simply, simply unacceptable. The private sector hasn't been able to address the need for housing on the government's acquisition of lands to the private sector for development as well. So I think that we ought to give a very serious look at this and talk with the Community Action on Homelessness on a direction on how the government is going to address housing in this province.
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, I think in terms of discussing this whole broad issue as we've been talking about here, and the needs and how we're going to proceed, I think the honourable member is aware that the Housing Services Division did have a conference - I believe it was back in early November - where they brought people in from all across the
community. I know Mr. O'Hara was there. There were builders there. The purpose of that initiative was to try to have a general discussion as to what the different sectors and people were involved in the need for homelessness, people who were going to supply facilities in terms of buildings, people who were going to look at a variety of issues so they could come together and they could talk about the issues and get some direction where it was going.
The conference was a great success. They had a chance to get into smaller groups and exchange ideas. We have viewed that as a basis, a starting point, as to developing future directions as we move forward. There is no question that there are challenges with the homeless. There are enormous challenges. There are affordable housing challenges. There is a great need for that. As I indicated earlier, we have to start somewhere and we certainly are going to be consulting people as we move forward and we hope to have a broad spectrum of the problems of society of Nova Scotia involved in a lot of projects as we go forward.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The time has expired for the NDP caucus, as agreed. I am going to recognize the honourable member for Cape Breton The Lakes, as agreed. Time will be 12:18, 45 minutes in turn and then we will carry on with the Estimates of the Department of Finance at approximately 12:18 p.m., 12:20 p.m.
The honourable member for Cape Breton The Lakes.
MR. BRIAN BOUDREAU: Mr. Chairman, I know the minister will be glad to see that I'm back. In fact, if I may, before we start I would like to table the letter that I indicated that I would write to the minister requesting him to come to the CBRM. I will table this letter for the benefit of all Nova Scotians to ensure that they are aware that the minister has been invited by me to come down to CBRM and visit those units and see what you expect people to live in, Mr. Minister, first-hand. I intend to make sure that you're very well-briefed on the issue first-hand, because you will see what people in the CBRM are living in. I know you don't have to go the CBRM. You can just go to Dartmouth if you wanted to because there are many units over there in dire need, as well. Really, Nova Scotians don't believe your government has any plans to deal with these issues.
I would like to ask you a question with regard to the disabled. What plan do you have for the units that we have people with disabilities living in? What plan do you have to upgrade these facilities?
MR. CHRISTIE: I think your question is, is there a specific plan for people with disabilities to take the units they're living in and renovate them. If that was your question, as I indicated earlier, we've had requests from a number of areas where people who have needs want to put elevators in. Over the last number of years, as we can, elevators are going in for people who have disabilities, and in those areas where disabilities are, or there is a large portion of aged persons, we have those elevators there. Those programs developed so we can provide those services for those people. In terms of making units available and
converting units over for people with disabilities, obviously as new units are built or units are done, the doors are widened and other services are done, but there is no specific program that says we're going to develop a large area for people with disabilities and that's going to be in a specific area.
Also, through Housing Services, we assist organizations with facilities for the disabled and help make them a barrier-free access. We provide monies for them to do that and as you look at one of the grant programs there, that is targeted for people with disabilities and there are targeted programs for seniors to help them specifically, because they have special needs. Those are some of the programs. I think if your question was, in the housing units that we have, is there a specific program for people, the answer is no. We provide upgrades to units as best we can to meet the needs of the people who are there.
MR. BOUDREAU: How much money do you intend to spend out of your budget in regard to dealing with the issues that affect people with disabilities who live in the public units?
MR. CHRISTIE: As I just indicated, the monies that we have for repairs are for all of the units, people with disabilities would be included, people who are aged would be included. We don't specifically say this amount of money is going to go just for people with disabilities, we go to the units, we go to the areas that the housing authorities have indicated have the greatest demand and we develop those. Obviously those lists of areas are where people with disabilities are, and they will have repairs, but we don't specify and say this amount is targeted for these numbers of people. We do it by building and by area that's needed the most based on the priority list developed by the housing authorities.
MR. BOUDREAU: How many units do you have in the province, Mr. Minister, that are not, for instance, handicap accessible?
MR. CHRISTIE: I don't have that data, but I will be happy to request that from the department and provide it for you.
MR. BOUDREAU: That answer sort of surprises me because as the minister of housing I would suggest that's an important figure that you should want to know. I'm really surprised that as the minister of housing you're not paying more attention to the housing needs that Nova Scotians require. Could you please explain what type of management changes you undertook in the department this year?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, let me think, I don't think the member is asking me did we change deputies, which we did this year. There was an assistant deputy minister who was there who went to the Sydney tar ponds project and the present assistant deputy minister moved from operational support. I guess in terms of administrative changes, our regional director stayed the same, the numbers of people we have in terms of Family and Children's
Services stayed the same. What management changes did we make? In terms of the housing division, the director of housing came in last year, it wasn't a change within this year, he has been there for a year. I don't think that we have made any management changes in the last year that I can think of. If there's something specific the honourable member is alluding to, I will attempt to answer it. In terms of changing administration and procedures and processes this year, we haven't changed any.
MR. BOUDREAU: The minister's obviously very well versed in dragging the puck. It's the first time I ever witnessed a minister thinking on his feet if that, in fact, is what he was doing, thinking on his feet. Could I ask what changes you have for rural Native housing.
MR. CHRISTIE: No changes in rural and Native housing.
MR. BOUDREAU: Does the budget remain the same?
MR. CHRISTIE: Yes.
MR. BOUDREAU: Do you have a figure on how much legal fees will cost your department this year?
MR. CHRISTIE: No, we don't have a cost. Generally legal fees are handled through the Department of Justice, so we would refer issues to the Department of Justice. We don't have lawyers on staff and we don't budget for that. The Department of Justice takes care of all government work.
MR. BOUDREAU: So, your department does not contract out directly to lawyers. Is that correct?
MR. CHRISTIE: Our department doesn't contract out for lawyers. The Children's Aid Society, a partner that operates for us, does contract out for lawyers. Our work goes through the Department of Justice.
MR. BOUDREAU: Could you tell us how many housing starts existed in the province last year in rural Nova Scotia?
MR. CHRISTIE: Your question is how many private sector housing units started in rural Nova Scotia, rural Nova Scotia being defined as something that is outside the major centres, is that your question?
MR. BOUDREAU: Yes it is.
MR. CHRISTIE: We will get that information, break it down, show you what the housing starts are within the cities, within the rural areas, and within the metropolitan areas and provide that information for you.
MR. BOUDREAU: Did you replace or build any new public housing units last year or do you have any plans to do so this year?
MR. CHRISTIE: We have plans to build some this year. We've talked about the Affordable Housing Program. We've talked about the homeless housing program. I indicated to the honourable member for Dartmouth North that we were looking at areas with the Children's Aid Society that need new facilities, so there was a number that was planned to be built this year. The number under those various programs will be determined when, as I indicated to you before, we submit our business plan on that and along with the private sector, our other partners, the province and the federal government, we agree on the business plan and then we will move forward on it.
MR. BOUDREAU: What areas do you plan on building new units?
MR. CHRISTIE: In those areas where people bring us proposals in. As I indicated to the member for Dartmouth North, we've had discussions with HRM, we've had discussions with people from the homelessness area, we've had discussions with the Native council. The Native council has talked to us about wanting to build some new units and be part of the Affordable Housing Program. So it's where those people have come to us to partner with us where they see the units being done is where we will build those units. That will be part of our business plan we submit when it's finalized.
MR. BOUDREAU: How much do you have put aside in your budget for this purpose?
MR. CHRISTIE: We put $4.7 million into the corporation last February; that was when we had agreed with the federal government that the plan was ready to go ahead. They asked all the provinces, have you had money to put up for this? We put the $4.7 million, which was the maximum amount we could do with matching dollars from the federal government under the Affordable Housing Program, we put that in the corporation last year.
MR. BOUDREAU: Did you spend any of it last year?
MR. CHRISTIE: No, we did not. The agreement isn't done yet.
[11:45 a.m.]
MR. BOUDREAU: Why not?
MR. CHRISTIE: Because the agreement wasn't completed. I indicated we had hoped to complete that in the next few weeks.
MR. BOUDREAU: Is the federal government putting in matching dollars, or is it a greater amount of money?
MR. CHRISTIE: That's matching dollars between the federal government and the province.
MR. BOUDREAU: When do you anticipate your business plan will be ready to present to the federal government?
MR. CHRISTIE: I expect once the agreement is done, within the next two weeks, the business will be ready to go within two weeks after that. Our anticipation is that by mid-May we should have that program and the business plan all completed so that we are then able to start to talk to the partners as to where people are going to build houses and how they're going to be developed.
MR. BOUDREAU: Mr. Minister, where did you get this $4.7 million to put into the program from your government?
MR. CHRISTIE: Out of general revenues.
MR. BOUDREAU: So this didn't have any effect whatsoever on the operation of your department, is that correct?
MR. CHRISTIE: Last year, if you look at our expenditures for the Housing Services Division, under the area, social housing subsidy programs, we exceeded our budget of $6.8 million and we spent $11.7 million. That is where we took it out of current revenues. We expended it through last year's budget. As I indicated, we put it in the corporation so that we are able to - from the corporation, with the matching federal dollars and other partners dollars - through the corporation, build those units and we're able to execute the business plan with our partners as they bring along.
MR. BOUDREAU: Mr. Chairman, could I ask the minister, how many people does he have who deliver these programs throughout the province?
MR. CHRISTIE: In the Housing Services Division there are 88 people. There are other people who work in the housing authorities, but in the department, your question is how many deliver these programs, the answer is 88.
MR. BOUDREAU: How can you balance out how much time these people who deliver the programs deliver federal programs and provincial programs?
MR. CHRISTIE: All of these people deliver our programs. As we put forward our business plan, we've indicated our business plan, we've submitted to the government along with the budget, and those 88 people are there to execute the business plan and the planned documents of the Housing Services Division of the Department of Community Services.
MR. BOUDREAU: Who delivers the federal programs, Mr. Minister?
MR. CHRISTIE: Those same 88 people. The federal funds are sent to the Housing Services Division through Community Services and the same people deliver those programs. When a program goes forward and has matching dollars it is up to the province to come to agreement with the partners who are going to be involved. At that point in time, the federal dollars come down and are administered through the same 88 people.
MR. BOUDREAU: Who pays for the management of these programs? Who actually funds the salaries?
MR. CHRISTIE: The Province of Nova Scotia.
MR. BOUDREAU: Could the minister indicate how many programs, in total, are being delivered by his department?
MR. CHRISTIE: There are six programs being delivered by Housing Services: programs for seniors; programs for disabled; the repair programs; the programs in terms of the co-op housing; the shell housing program; and the residential rehab, the RRAP program.
MR. BOUDREAU: Could you tell us how much RRAP money you spent last year, please?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, we just have the combined figure on repair programs. If the honourable member would like a breakdown, we're certainly happy to get that breakdown to show the different program areas: how much was RRAP, how much was the shell program, the Rural and Native Housing Program; we will get that broken down by the department and table it for the honourable member.
MR. BOUDREAU: Did you receive the maximum federal RRAP money last year?
MR. CHRISTIE: Yes.
MR. BOUDREAU: Isn't the federal portion dictated by the amount you put forth in these programs?
MR. CHRISTIE: Yes, all federal funds that come here, once they were sent to the province, have conditions that the province has to meet and we meet those every year.
MR. BOUDREAU: Do you submit the totals to the federal government?
MR. CHRISTIE: Yes, we respond to the federal government. We submit yearly reports. Most often as we draw down on specific projects, as I mentioned, those projects, the federal government knows, we do wrap-up summaries. All of the programs we have, whether it's in early childhood development, housing or child welfare areas, we have to provide accountability reports to the federal government, which is a natural part of doing business. So the answer is yes we do.
MR. BOUDREAU: Mr. Chairman, the information I have is that there is much more RRAP money available from the federal government, but your government refuses to recognize the need in the province. They put in the exact amount of money, they match the dollars that you put forth. I guess I want to ask you, Mr. Minister, why can't you obtain more money from the Minister of Finance for your programs?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, as we indicated, we have a variety of initiatives that we have to meet. We have met the challenge of getting additional monies to be able to come into the Affordable Housing Program. We clearly have budget areas that we have to meet, but we have met the challenge with the other provinces and with the federal government - of meeting the affordable housing. There is more money in the corporation to meet those programs. Indeed, I will pass your comments on to the federal housing minister that you have informed me there is more RRAP money, and just clarify that point with him because I'm not aware of that.
MR. BOUDREAU: That doesn't surprise me, Mr. Minister. You're not aware of a lot of issues in regard to housing in this province. That's quite obvious from the replies to your questions. That's no surprise. Not a bit of surprise. Isn't it true also that you could obtain more money from the federal government, for instance, in the homeless program? Your government and your ministers chose to put $4.7 million - but, in fact, if you had decided to put $6 million in, the federal government would have responded with $6 million, is that true?
MR. CHRISTIE: No, that's not true. The federal government said they would provide a certain amount to each province. The allocation to us is over five years. The maximum amount available under that program was $4.7 million, and that's why we matched it. I'm presuming that the honourable member said there's more money available under the homeless program. I will repeat to him what I said before. The homeless program has been set up by the federal government to bypass the provincial government. They have set up initiatives with people in each area to deliver services in Halifax to bypass this area. They have appointed a group of people that they asked to partner with individuals. They do not want the provincial government to be the deliverer of those programs, they want non-profit organizations. Some of the areas where they've gone have been with Adsum House, Phoenix
House and with others in those areas, and they've provided the opportunity to those people to become involved in doing that.
That program, we weren't invited to the table on that. We have been on affordable housing, and we have matched the maximum amount of money we can get next year.
MR. BOUDREAU: Could you tell me, Mr. Minister, how much money was put into RRAP programs in 1999?
MR. CHRISTIE: We will get that and forward it on to the member.
MR. BOUDREAU: Is it the same amount as this year, or is higher or lower, Mr. Minister?
MR. CHRISTIE: As the honourable member knows, housing came over to Community Services in 2000, so we don't have those on our backup estimate sheet, but we will get that information and provide it. My guess would be that it would be slightly higher now, but we will provide that information to you.
MR. BOUDREAU: Mr. Minister, you have staff people with you, and they're very much aware. The members of my caucus have a great deal of confidence in that staff. The answers from you could be more clear. I think you're making your staff look a little negative here, and that's perhaps a little unfair. Again, are you putting less money in the RRAP Programs today than you were in 1999 when your government took over housing in this province?
MR. CHRISTIE: No, there's no less money going in.
MR. BOUDREAU: Is that a no, Mr. Chairman?
MR. CHRISTIE: The question was is less money going in, and the answer is no, there's not less money, it has consistently been the same.
MR. BOUDREAU: I would have to question why it isn't more. We hear it from your own government, you have to increase your fees, the government needs more operating money. Mr. Minister, it costs more money to maintain these units. It's a bad reflection on your ability to go to the Finance Minister to ensure that the people in this province who require housing, their needs are met. You're failing to do that. You recognize here yourself, from questions from either caucus, you're aware of the units that are in repair, you even give the number, all the facts, however, you refuse or - I wouldn't suggest it's neglect, Mr. Minister, for some reason or other you're not having much luck with the Finance Minister, and I want to know why. Nova Scotians really want you to recognize their needs in regard
to housing in this province. Why will you not obtain more money from that Finance Minister so that Nova Scotians can enjoy these programs that the federal government put forth?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, I will repeat again to the honourable member, when he asked if we get the maximum amount under the Affordable Housing Program, the answer was, it's a $4.7 million program and we are supplementing that $4.7 million; that is money that we put in the corporation so we can maximize that program. In terms of looking at the repairs and the maintenance programs that we have, we look to maximize those; we do. We do live within a budget, because within our department we have demands for children's aid services, we have demands for increased social workers, we have demands for subsidized daycare spaces. The challenge we have is to match all those demands, and that's what we're doing.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Cape Breton West, you have approximately 19 minutes.
MR. RUSSELL MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, I would like to draw to the attention of the minister the issue with regard to the global agreements on housing. Would the minister be kind enough to apprise members of the committee as to what the status is with regard to any existing or contemplated agreements?
MR. CHRISTIE: Perhaps I could ask the honourable member just to clarify the question. I think I heard him refer to some agreements, but I didn't quite catch the full request.
MR. MACKINNON: The reference being the global agreements, the agreements between the federal government and the clusters of the various provinces. In this case, it would be the Atlantic Provinces.
MR. CHRISTIE: As I have been talking with the honourable member for Cape Breton the Lakes, there are a number of agreements. We've talked about the agreements that we have with the RRAP programs, the seniors' program; we've talked about the agreements that we have in terms of the initiative of the federal government on the homelessness initiative. We do not have an agreement with the federal government on that program. That program, they have looked at a delivery model that doesn't include the provinces; they are looking for private partners to deliver that.
The agreement on the Affordable Housing Program, I would anticipate having the agreement finalized in the next month. The CMHC people are in town next week to meet with the four Atlantic Provinces and the officials to finalize that agreement. The state of those other agreements is they are finalized, those have been going on. There are some initiatives that we have been having on the Native and rural housing initiatives that a number of provinces have been working on, particularly the western provinces, with the federal
government; we've been attempting to conclude those. There are still some agreements to be finalized there. There's an agreement on the affordable housing to be finalized, but the other agreements are complete and ongoing.
[12:00 noon]
MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, perhaps for some edification, clarification and simplicity, would the minister be kind enough to give an undertaking, just in kind of a snapshot form, of what agreements are in place, what's the status, when were they initiated, when are they going to be completed, what ones are contemplated, when do we expect them to be completed? Perhaps, if it is possible for those that haven't been completed, I would understand if we can't ascertain what percentage the province would be contributing because, obviously, they would be on a cost-shared basis. Perhaps, give the percentage breakdown in the municipal, provincial and federal. I'm not sure if the municipal contributes anymore, I don't think they do. The minister is indicating no, so that would confirm my thoughts on that.
I guess I'm trying to determine to what extent the federal government is trying to pull back on its contributions to the housing issue here in Nova Scotia and to shift that responsibility, because I recall several years back, and this would have been in the early to mid-1990s when the federal government was looking at pulling out of the housing industry altogether, for lack of a better phrase, and that would have put considerable pressure on the province. I think that was part and parcel of the rationale for the government then, and to a certain extent today, merging with other departments because there really wasn't enough there to justify full departmental status. We went with the Housing Commission, then we went up to a Department of Housing, and then the Department of Housing and Consumer Affairs, and now we have it meshed in with the Department of Community Services. It would obviously lead one to believe that the primary constituent would be those who require social assistance or some type of public support.
Several years ago - I believe it may have been last year but I think it may have been in the 1999 budgetary process - I raised the issue with the minister, the scenario that I had contemplated, that some type of policy or process that could be initiated that would encourage people in public housing to eventually take ownership through some type of a credit system, whether that be on a point system for long-term good maintenance and repair and a whole lot of different things. Obviously, there's the financial impact factor, in terms of the educational factor, different opportunities where someone would, through some type of a training or retraining program, actually develop a market skill so they could go out and actually seek some worthwhile employment.
As we know, and whether we like to admit it or not, in many cases you're far better off staying home on social assistance than going out and joining the working poor. It's a very discouraging situation when you're forced to look at that scenario and some people like to admit to that and some people don't. I've seen cases of it and it's very demoralizing and
dehumanizing. It's very degrading for people who are forced to be in a very difficult situation like that and I have full empathy for them. So has the minister given any thought to following up on that proposal that I had put forward, I believe it was two years ago, and ways to help encourage people to move away from a very unfortunate situation that they find themselves in, in many cases, through no fault of their own?
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, yes, I do recall having that discussion with the honourable member. I do, I think, as I make my comments, we will undertake to get that list for you of programs and show the sharing. We indicated that there is no municipal sharing on these major programs, realizing that in some of the housing units that some of those units, there is still some 12 per cent municipal contribution in some of those areas. You will recall, in the discussion of equalization last year, that was one of the issues. There was Justice and housing and where that might move.
In terms of the programs dealing with homelessness and affordability, we don't anticipate any municipal contributions. It's a straight, matching dollar for dollar, federal-provincial. If the municipalities want to come in on that, they certainly can. Some of the larger cities around the country have indicated they want to put in some land, do things in kind. That certainly can be part of it. But it's the program as we envisage. If we have, in terms of the federal-provincial here, we have $9.4 million and the municipalities want to come in. It is not going to be part of that $9.4 million. It would be in addition to. So that's clearly matching dollar for dollar on those programs.
The other part of your question was looking at units and people buying them and that certainly is something that I have thought about over the last number of years. One of the things that the people who do not agree with that initiative that we had talked about is the co-operative housing people. As I indicated to the member for Dartmouth North, we've had meetings with the Canadian Co-operative Association. Their position is they are opposed to moving into areas where people take over their houses, that we should move in the direction of more co-op housing and instead of people purchasing those houses or purchasing them through credit, it would become more of a co-operative venture. The thrust of that is that they have home ownership through a group, through the co-operative, that rents can be stabilized and that they learn to manage all of those things through the board of directors of the co-op.
So the first area you would look at, for example, is to achieve some of what you just said. It is through the area of the co-op housing because the co-op housing people, in a number of cases, are in a semi-detached unit. They're in a unit of their own and it's more conducive to them becoming a straight owner in that. But, indeed, as we've had that discussion, the Co-operative Housing Federation has strongly opposed that. They have indicated that instead of going in that direction, we should be looking at more co-op housing and we should be providing ownership and people having expertise in that direction. So the answer to your question is, yes, I remember having the discussion and we have thought about
it and those are some of the discussion areas we have had about it. So we haven't got in place a program to start to do that yet.
I guess, on the other side of the coin, we haven't looked and said, all right, let's move in the area of moving everything towards co-op housing. We've stayed in that area and as I indicated to the member, a lot of our time has been working with stabilizing those co-op associations because of a variety of problems they've had, to help them get stabilized so they can become productive and they can execute the objectives of their association. So that's the long way of saying that there are a number of issues there. Yes, that's something that I think we should still consider, but we don't have an established program for it yet.
MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, I thank the minister for his response. I think we have to be a little careful here though. The general principle of co-op housing, I think, would be universal in the province, but the application would be unique, depending upon what setting you're in. If you're in an urban setting, the general application of co-op housing, for example here in metro, would be much different than it would be in industrial Cape Breton or in some of the rural communities, obviously because of the social structure and the population dynamics and a whole lot of other things. So I think my plea would be to the minister to look at it in a twofold approach. I think it would, particularly in my area, I believe, address many of the borderline case problems that we have in terms of encouraging an individual or a family to be able to take that leap of faith into the marketplace where all the pressures around them at present are making it such that it's very difficult to do that because, first and foremost, their number one priority is to be able to feed their family.
I don't want to go back and rehash the issue of how little money is being spent on children for nutrition on a daily basis when you compare to what any member of this House of Assembly or the average Nova Scotian is able to contribute towards nourishment, i.e., financial contribution, their groceries on a weekly basis, compared to someone on social assistance. It's like night and day. (Interruption) Exactly.
I believe if the minister were to look at that and perhaps encourage the federal government, if need be, because I know the federal government was looking at that general concept at one time. It was very successful. I understand it was a considered measure in Ontario back in the late 1980s. I had the occasion to visit that jurisdiction and study that approach. Although you will see a lot of it today, you get into these reverse mortgage annuity programs, obviously we're seeing the opportunities from the private sector moving in and it looks pretty good on the outside, particularly for seniors or whatever, but in the final analysis, when they're losing 60 per cent of their real asset base, it's not so good.
I do believe that this is a very workable opportunity, even if it's only for a select group out of your entire population, your entire constituency. In the social assistance family, I think you would find that that would realize a greater opportunity on an individual basis, a family basis, and greater participation in the marketplace. The social benefits are just
numerous. I could go on for just an hour on that alone. But not only that, you would realize additional dollars in your budget to be able to do other things.
That having been said, I wanted to - and I know my time is limited - with the housing office in Sydney, if you could be kind enough to give an undertaking to give me a number on what the backlog is for these emergency housing repairs and that sort of stuff and how many are you able, let's say it's 5,000 or whatever - it's usually up in the thousands - and you're only able to accommodate maybe 10 per cent or 15 per cent. If you can give me the numbers for this year and last year and perhaps what your projection is for the next year so I will be able to assess whether we're going ahead or behind, and maybe as a constructive Opposition we could assist in lobbying the federal government. That's ultimately the bottom line, to help people. It would be very easy for me to chastize you for a lot of the things that we think you should have done but you didn't. Would the minister be kind enough to give an undertaking on that?
[12:15 p.m.]
MR. CHRISTIE: Mr. Chairman, first off, to your last point, we will give that undertaking. We had undertaken to get the member for Glace Bay some information on the backlog, so we will expand that to not only look at the waiting lists in the housing authority in your area, but the programs in that area - what programs have been completed through the RAP programs, the senior housing program in the last two years, what dollars have been expended and what we see coming in this year. I indicated to the member for Cape Breton The Lakes that we would get him a list of the areas of the housing authorities that we were going to provide repair programs to and part of our program initiatives for this year. So we will undertake to provide that to you.
I just want to come back to your issue of people acquiring their housing. I'm sure when you had the opportunity to deliberate on this issue in government, you asked yourself why would you be in a position where people want to stay in co-op when given the opportunity, they could acquire that unit. That's been one of the things I've found quite unique in the discussions with them that there is a group of people - and the member for Dartmouth North and I have had this discussion that there is a group of people - that feels more comfortable in the co-op areas as opposed to be coming out on their own. That's a concept that I'm not familiar with and it's one that I was quite surprised when I had the discussions with the Co-operative Housing Federation people and their suggestion and their initiatives to move more people into the co-op housing.
I think there are a number of areas and we all know areas where there are housing units that people choose not to live in because of the location. The location has passed its prime, it's not close to the shopping centre, it's not on the bus route; whatever has caused it, we have a number of units where people don't care to go. And you say to yourself, in those areas wouldn't it be realistic to say to people, if somebody chooses to go there, then why
don't we sell those units to them so that we don't have those on our books. We're not trying to force people to go where they don't want to go so that we can concentrate on the areas of the greatest demand and where people want to go.
I certainly take your point. We need to follow up on that, but we will follow up and have those discussions with people.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, minister. One quick question from the member for Cape Breton The Lakes and then the time will have expired.
MR. BOUDREAU: The minister indicated before, upon a request, that he would visit the CBRM. I did table a letter that I submitted to him shortly after he made that comment, but I don't recall that the minister indicated that he does accept my invitation and that he would undertake to arrange such a trip as soon as the House rises from this session.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Fine. Time has expired, as agreed by both the Liberal and NDP caucuses. Minister, I would ask if you would like to answer that question and pass along your closing comments, please.
MR. CHRISTIE: Thank you very much. Yes, I did receive an invitation from the honourable member. We will arrange a time that we will be down there and I look forward to having an opportunity with the member to visit some areas of his riding. I do want to be clear, I do believe, if I'm not mistaken, that Talbot House is in your riding and I had an opportunity to be there towards the end of February and had an opportunity to visit. So this won't be my first visit to your riding, but it will be my first official visit that you've invited me to so we will look forward to doing that.
I would like to take the opportunity to make some comments on closing. I would like to say I have enjoyed having the opportunity to debate with the honourable members in terms of some of the issues that we have. We have taken a number of the initiatives that have been raised and we have undertaken to provide information on those and to come back. I do want to thank staff that have joined me here for their indulgence and for their help in this initiative. We will consider a lot of those issues that were brought to us. Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Shall Resolution E2 stand?
Resolution E2 is stood.
The honourable Acting Government House Leader.
MR. TIMOTHY OLIVE: Mr. Chairman, I would like to call for the estimates of the Department of Finance and perhaps we could take a two-minute break for everybody to get ready. (Interruptions) No?
MR. CHAIRMAN: I will call for the estimates of the Department of Finance.
Resolution E7 - Resolved, that a sum not exceeding $13,329,000 be granted to the Lieutenant Governor to defray expenses in respect of the Department of Finance, pursuant to the Estimate and the business plans of the Nova Scotia Government Fund Limited and the Nova Scotia Power Finance Corporation be approved.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable Minister of Finance.
HON. NEIL LEBLANC: It is a pleasure to get up to do my estimates. Usually the Department of Finance does their estimates in the Red Room. I was hoping to do it in the blue room, however this floor has a green floor and I don't think it's going to turn blue during my speech so we will have to say it's in the main Chamber.
I just want to talk about a few things before we go into it. There are quite a few things going on in regard to the Department of Finance, many initiatives, and I just wanted to touch on some of them. It might take a few minutes; if I could have the indulgence of the members, I think it would be good to do it.
I just want to give a short description of the Department of Finance. It's made up of six divisions, plus the debt-servicing charges that the province carries. We have a funded staff level of 193 FTEs, which are full-time equivalents. Our budget for this year is $13.329 million in net program expenditures and a little over $1 billion in debt-servicing costs. I should point out to the members of the committee that the $1 billion in servicing costs is the gross debt.
I will just take a slight break and introduce the staff that are accompanying me today in the House. We have others in the gallery and they will come and go as the need may arise. On my left is the deputy minister of the department, Mr. Bill Hogg. He brings a lot of guidance to the department. He didn't have grey hair before he started with me, but look what happened after that. On my right is the Executive Director of Fiscal and Economic Policy, Elizabeth Cody, who also has considerable experience and we're very fortunate in the department that we have such excellent staff, and I don't often get a chance to say that.
I was saying before I made the introductions that we do have a little over $1 billion that we spend in interest costs in this province. We usually speak about net debt-servicing costs and those are the gross costs less the earnings from the sinking funds. Sinking funds are funds that we put in place to ensure that when the debentures that we as a province owe are due, that we have the cash to pay them on the scheduled date. To not do that, Mr. Chairman, would have some effects on the credit worthiness of the province. So the net service costs of the province are $865 million and that's a decrease of about $44 million from the estimate of last year. That is good news.
I should point out that is due to two different things. One is something the department is doing which is extremely good, which is that we have been lowering our debt that is held in foreign currencies. I should point out that the previous administration, when they came to power in 1993, the percentages were around 72 per cent. When we assumed office in August of 1999, the percentage had gone down to 51 per cent. We worked very hard to reduce this number and I'm pleased to say that we're at 29 per cent, or so, as we speak. As we move forward, it is guaranteed that we will be below 20 per cent by the Fall of 2004. The reason for that is that some of our debt which is going to be coming due, will be refinanced in Canadian dollars.
We have in our provincial Statute an obligation for the province to do that and there's a reason. It basically lowers the risk on the province to currency fluctuations and we haven't done very well against the U.S. dollar. I know that people are very much aware of that and because of that, that has cost the Province of Nova Scotia considerably. We have made a conscious decision that we will lower our dependency on foreign debt, so we are repatriating the debt into Canadian funds.
The other thing that's happened is that interest rates are the lowest that they've been in about 40 years. We've been able to take some advantage of that and I say some because there is an issue that people should be aware of in that most of our debt is held over in longer terms; it isn't just current debt, it isn't just due in three months, it is due over a number of years. A lot of them could be 10- or 15- or even 30-year debentures and the reason for that is that the province can't allow itself to be in a position that all its debt could be called at one time. Because of that, we borrow in longer terms.
Mr. Chairman, I talked about the costs of the department and I mentioned that our program expenditures are $13.3 million this year. If you were just to try to do a simple comparison, you may have the impression that our costs are going up. I want to point out for the members opposite, before they perhaps ask me the question, that the explanation for that in our department is we had recoveries in the past which we have moved out of our department into the restructuring fund. The reasons for those recoveries, I will give a little bit of a description, and we call them unallocated recoveries. These are representative of the recoveries of miscellaneous amounts relating to prior years such as unclaimed amounts or even cheques which are cancelled or which are never cashed.
Last year, the amount that we had allocated was about $1.4 million. This year, the allocation is somewhat less, but I should point out that it was moved out of the Department of Finance. If those recoveries would have stayed in my department rather than being moved over, our budget from year to year would have actually been lower. I should point that out. I think it's important that in our Department of Finance, as much as possible, we lead the way. We've been asking other departments to live within their means and I think our Department of Finance should be no exception.
Another adjustment I would like to point out is that we have had changes in the Corporate Services Units. For those of you who aren't aware of that, that is the centre which provides support not only to one department, most of them provide it to three or four or even more departments. There are three different sections, usually, to a CSU and that, of course, is the IT segment; we have the financial side of it, the financial support, the accounting and all the support staff that can do that; and the last part is human resources.
So in this year, the IT component has moved to Natural Resources and the financial component has been expanded to provide support for Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations. This is due to an internal reorganization within government and the efficiencies that we felt were in the best interest of the government. But that will change some of the comparative figures, I should point out. The net impact of the CSU transfers has been a reduction in the department of $545,000 overall because the ones that are going out and the ones that are coming in, it relates to a reduction and also a reduction of six FTEs. So, overall, the numbers for the departments and employees, or FTEs, have increased by 2.6 from the previous year.
Mr. Chairman, another section of our department is the pension division and that has experienced the largest increase and that is 4.6 full-time equivalents. This has been done to support the Sysco pension fund which we, as a Department of Finance, have absorbed and the reason, of course, for that is that Sysco is being phased out and we have to account for the pensions that we're paying the employees that were there. That was usually done on-site. That has been incorporated within the expertise of our department. But there was also an increase in activity in the other pension funds. So the total FTE account in Pension Services is 26.3 and all these positions are paid by the pension funds that they administer.
I should point out, also, in regard to pension funds, that the number of inquiries are increasing. The age of the Civil Service is increasing. Of course, the two people next to me are still staying as young as ever, but we have a few other ones in government - Michael Rainer, for one, who I won't mention by name, is moving closer and closer to retirement. He is probably asking for a printout every day, but I'm not sure. But, as an example, we are getting more requests and that's logical if you look at the history.
I should also point out that as a central agency, our department provides services to all government departments and agencies. We provide support in the areas of payroll and pension services, government accounting, internal audit, in which we have the lead. We also have investment management, economic impact analysis and statistical support, as well as taxation policy development and coordination. One of the central roles the department plays is in the coordination of the budget process with our colleagues in the Treasury and Policy Board, and all the departments, of course, and agencies in government.
I can assure you that, as minister, the development of a budget involves a large number of individuals from all across the government and since I have a public forum, I would like to thank the many men and women who worked tirelessly and put many hours into the budget process. A lot of them took a lot of time from their families to bring this together and I would like to basically thank all of them on behalf of the people of Nova Scotia for being so generous of their time.
[12:30 p.m.]
On the matter of the budget preparation, I want to clarify a matter to the members of the House concerning the anticipated revenues of the Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation. The amount of the net revenues was not transposed properly from the Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation's business plan to the estimates, resulting in revenues of $1 million less than if the proper amount had been used. The matter was noted by my colleague in the House, the NDP Finance Critic, and also by the Gaming Corporation. But I want to thank the honourable member for his interest in the matter and I think all of us want to have the estimates as clear as possible and if we're going to have a debate, let's have a debate with all the information on the table.
I want to point out that this is a relatively small amount. Although $1 million is a lot to you and I, in comparison to the total revenues of the province, which are $5.3 billion, it is not a material change and as such, there was no intention to revise the estimates. But I want to be upfront and say that. I think it's important that I do that.
I want to talk about another issue, the projects the Department of Finance is working on, and it's in conjunction with the Department of Education. I think that it deserves particular mention. That is the rollout of the mySAP.com to the school boards. We've worked very hard to bring accountability to our third-party agencies and we've worked hard with school boards to bring about changes to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, but also to try to have better coordination about the reporting methodology in conjunction with the one from the province. So I would like to say that this project is a multi-phase project, and the first phase went live on April 1st and saw all the school boards using the same financial software. Over the year, the financial package will be rolled out to individual schools.
Mr. Chairman, the next phase of the project is HRnet pay module. The proposal is to have all school boards using the same payroll and human resources management package and this really will allow for greater efficiencies amongst school boards. But also in reporting, I think for the provincial government, it will also make consolidation and information-gathering much simpler. I should also say there are also anticipated phases of the plant maintenance module and the student administration model. These are things that we're working very closely with the Department of Education on and I want to thank them for their co-operation.
The benefit of the project is that it will allow for more comparability between schools, but also better reporting of the financial position by the school boards, leading to improved accountability. We believe that it's very important that we get information on a timely basis and this, of course, not only applies to school boards but also to hospital boards. I should point out that we've done considerable work in the Department of Health and within our government to try to have much more timely information coming forward from DHAs, district health authorities.
I will point out in my experience, both as a backbencher in Opposition and as a Minister of Finance in government, that one of the great weaknesses of the regional health boards was the lack of proper financial accounting and reporting on a timely basis. By the time the people knew what was going on, you were pretty well three or four months after the fact, if you were lucky, and if we're going to try to be able to live within our means, you cannot allow yourself to have information coming out that late, because the fact of the matter is that they are one of major program deliverers of government and also one of the ones that handles a considerable amount of our program delivery in terms of dollars.
Mr. Chairman, I mentioned before that the department is made up of six different divisions. I would like to take a few moments to just give committee members a brief overview of the work that is done by the staff. The Fiscal and Economic Policy Division, which I said is headed up by Liz Cody, is responsible for the development of a corporate income tax strategy and a process for ongoing evaluation of the provincial tax rebates, credits and expenditures. It's also responsible for performing economic moduling and forecasting of the provincial revenues. So they play a very strategic part in preparing for the budget. I should point out that we're very proud of the moduling that they're doing and actually the one that we're doing with the changes that we've had to the income tax module, which is called TONI, which is tax on net income, which every province in Canada has put in place, we are doing some excellent work on that.
Actually, the federal government has been having discussions with our staff to try to assess our moduling methodology to see whether or not there may be something they would consider. Obviously we are having some success and for that, I have to thank the staff for having some leadership. We have two options, we can either give them raises or we can say nice things about them. I'm saying nice things about them, so there we go.
The central function that staff in this division perform is representing the province in the negotiations with the federal government and other provincial governments, an issue of tax policies and tax payments. It's this division that represents Nova Scotia at the table when discussions are occurring regarding equalization and CHST programs. Mr. Chairman, they will be also taking part in the meeting next Thursday and Friday. There will be a federal-provincial meeting in Newfoundland that's been called by Mr. Martin, and obviously they will be helping us in representing Nova Scotia's position there.
I should point out, Mr. Chairman, that they were instrumental in providing analysis for my remarks at the Senate Standing Committee on National Finance regarding the equalization program. I am pleased to say that as a result of the presentation, the recommendations of the Senate standing committee regarding equalization were virtually identical to the remarks contained in my presentation. For the edification of the members that are present, I'm going to table a copy of the presentation that I did make to the federal government. I had tabled it before, but I think it's important because there are many things here which will impact the future of Nova Scotia and how we will be treated by the federal government. But I'm just going to take a couple of minutes to speak on this and then I will table that.
A couple of issues that I wanted to take on that, Mr. Chairman, I could talk on this issue for a long time. I'm going to try to do the highlights because I know some of the members want to ask some questions and I'm not trying to use all today's time, but it's important that we do that. We talked about a few issues that when we made our presentation, there has been some attempt by Ottawa to say that maybe there is a need to revise the equalization program, that they should use a different type of formula, more like a macro formula than a micro. Well, what's the difference?
The situation is that the micro formula that they're using now takes into consideration special circumstances that are in certain parts of the country. Because of that, provinces such as, I will say, Nova Scotia or P.E.I. or our other sister provinces like New Brunswick and Newfoundland, received some consideration that helps us in regard to the equalization that we received. There is some new thinking in the Department of Finance in Ottawa. Some of their civil servants are moving on and new people are coming in and their thought is that maybe we should be moving to a more micro type of formula.
I have some serious concerns with that because we feel that that would be detrimental to Nova Scotia. The other issue is that if you look at the history of moving to more of a micro approach, the other thing that happened is that Ottawa is trying to move more and more into a per capita type of funding. Now what does that mean? It means that it's based on your population and every time they did that, it has basically hurt provinces such as Nova Scotia.
I just want to point out that the Premier, when we're talking about how we're receiving funds under CHST, is saying that it should not be just based on population. There should be some consideration given for the seriousness of illnesses in provinces. It shouldn't just be based on the number of bodies that are located there. Perhaps another issue that could be considered is the age of your population. All that information is at the fingertips of the federal government. We all know that the older you are, the higher the probability that you will need medical services.
Of course, the ability for Nova Scotia or for any province, Mr. Chairman, whether it's Newfoundland or Manitoba, to deliver those services should receive some consideration for those factors. As of now, it doesn't. So we're very pleased that the federal government agreed with our presentation and they said, basically, the change should not happen.
So what else did we talk about? We made a presentation at that time on the ceiling that has been imposed by the federal government on the amount of payments paid out under equalization. So what that means in laymen's terms, Mr. Chairman, is that there is a maximum threshold. If the total amount of payments paid to all the provinces exceeds a certain amount, then they will not go above the bar that they have set. Last year, what this meant was that we in Nova Scotia received $20 million less than we should have because there was a cap. There was a ceiling on equalization.
I should point out that my colleague from P.E.I., Pat Mella, whenever she talks about this issue, she is one of the most passionate people I've ever heard. I've heard the speech many times, but it's never given with less conviction every time she says it, which is that you cannot have a part of the Constitution, a part of Canada, that says that we should be trying to deal with areas evenly and say that when you reach a certain amount, the amount stops. I think there is a fundamental flaw with that. So the Senate also agreed with that.
Mr. Chairman, the other thing is that we also talked about the third recommendation from the Senate. It said that the government should maintain the four provisions in the equalization program, the same presentation that we made, included in my comments.
There are about 10 recommendations and I don't want to do them all. I will do some of the ones which I have highlighted.
Another issue that came about was changing the way the equalization was paid. In the past, it was based on a formula that was based on the 10 provinces of Canada. Equalization is to try to gauge different economies of the provinces and what happens is it is supposed to bring everybody at least closer to the average of the 10 provinces together. There was a change some time ago that took only five provinces into the calculation. By doing that, they also took out the Province of Alberta, which is, of course, one of our wealthier provinces. By doing that, what they've done is they lowered the amount that Ottawa would have to pay to the provinces. So we've been pushing for a long time that the 10-province standard should be reinstated.
I should say, Mr. Chairman, that the Senate Committee made the same recommendation. You could say, well, the Senate Committee is doing these things - and I've got a couple more that I want to talk about - but the issue is that the Senate Committee held these hearings because Mr. Martin encouraged them to do it. So what does that mean? Does it mean that Mr. Martin is going to change? I was asked that question today by the press.
Well, look, you've asked for this before. Why would he change? Why would he remove the cap and why would he go to the 10-province standard? Well, I'm hopeful.
I don't know what Mr. Martin is thinking, but the fact of the matter is that Mr. Martin asked the Senate to look at this. We all know that the Senate is dominated by the Liberal Party. So I'm hopeful that there is a plan, there is a scheme in Mr. Martin's heart and that his intention is to modify the equalization program to deal with some of these issues, but only time will be able to tell us if that is exactly what's going to happen. I'm not trying to throw political intrigue into the discussion, I have to point out those facts because I was surprised to see the concurrence of the committee with the recommendations that we put forward and I think that was very important.
There is another one here that I think is important. There was one here, recommendation seven. It says: The government changed the generic solution so as to increase the share of a province's entitlement that is protected when its non-renewable natural resource revenues increase. Mr. Chairman, that is an important one that is being mentioned here, but it also goes on to recommendation number eight: The government should undertake an evaluation of the equalization provisions of the Atlantic accords to determine if they have met the intent for which they were designed.
Now, that was the one that we were perhaps the most excited about. This relates to the Campaign for Fairness, which our Premier has been working on so adamantly over the last two years. They're saying that there should be an evaluation of the Atlantic accords. Those Atlantic accords were signed not only with the Province of Nova Scotia, they were also signed with the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. What it said - and the Premier can say it a lot more eloquently than I can - is that Nova Scotia should be the primary beneficiary from the offshore activities in Nova Scotia. There's been a lot of debate on this issue. If you look at the royalties that are being paid, if you look at the corporate income taxes that are being paid, if you look at the provincial income taxes that are being paid with regard to activities in the offshore, when you do the moduling, 19 per cent of the revenues come to Nova Scotia and 81 per cent go to Ottawa.
Now I don't think anyone can sit here today and say that they think that we're the primary beneficiary. These are resources that will be depleted in time. They will not keep churning out more natural gas and more oil. Once they are depleted, they will be depleted. We have a debt in this province of $11.6 billion at the end of this fiscal year that we're just entering into. This is an opportunity for us to be able, if we do it properly, to receive reasonable revenues that we can put ourselves, I guess in a sense, on some more stable footing. Will we be an Alberta? The answer is no. However, I think we can come more to the middle of the pack, rather than being dead last in the amount of debt that we owe versus our GDP. That is not something that I look on with fondness. Those are things which concern me. I will leave it at that. If the members opposite have more questions in regard to that, I am more than prepared to go into it.
Mr. Chairman, the other thing I want to do is continue with the Fiscal and Economic and Policy Division. They also prepare the key assumptions section of the budget. We have an update to provincial growth figures since this key forecast assumption was made. At budget time, there was only one private sector forecast that was available. We normally take an average of what is there.
I should point out that since September 11th, there has been a lot of controversy, a lot of trying to get a proper gauge of what the economy is doing and how much growth there will be. The situation is that we have projected growth of 1.9 per cent. I should point out that the forecasts that we received subsequent to the budget, because there was only one prepared as we went into it, have actually been higher than the private forecaster that was there before.
[12:45 p.m.]
I don't have those numbers in front of me, but I'm sure - here they are. We had the TD Bank that came in with projections of 2.3 per cent growth, this is for Nova Scotia; we had the Bank of Montreal and Nesbitt Burns coming out with projections of 2.7 per cent, for 2002; RBC Dominion Financial coming out with 2.7 per cent; Scotiabank, which was one we had used in our - that was the one that was available before, was 2 per cent; and the Conference Board of Canada's projections are at 2.6 per cent.
These are all higher than our GDP forecast of 1.9 per cent for the year 2002. Mr. Chairman, I hope they're low. I hope that we experience a lot more than that. I think everyone in this House hopes that our province does even better than what's projected. But I think it's important to know that. Different days, I get people saying I'm over-optimistic or the department is over-optimistic in its projections, and the day after they're telling me that we're too low. I think the fact of the matter is that we're probably somewhat conservative in a sense. Time will tell. The bottom line is that we shouldn't be overly optimistic in the preparation of our assumptions.
The other thing I should point out is that all these assumptions are included in our Budget Address, in the back. There have been major changes in how we prepare our budget. A lot of that has come from the fact that we've moved to a much more open and transparent accounting methodology. The other thing that comes in, Mr. Chairman, even in the changes we have in our debt investment management, that section especially has always been encouraging of the department to put more and more information out there so that people understand the full magnitude of where we are. We're prepared to be judged by the information that we put forward, we can substantiate it, and we're also making projections about the valuation of the Canadian dollar versus the U.S. dollar, the assumptions that we've used for the amount of interest that we will pay in the short term and in the long term, and also going out.
I think those are important factors. In the past, many people were somehow always cautious or suspicious that the government, basically, was using assumptions which were unrealistic. The assumptions are included in the budget document. People should expect no less of government, and we have put it there. I think it's important that we say that.
Mr. Chairman, going with a few more details on our department, we have our Controller's Office, which is headed by Kevin Malloy. He is an excellent employee; he's had considerable experience through government. He has been around two or three blocks, two or three departments, and has brought a level of competence to that division that is very much appreciated. I should point out that with a limited staff and the changes that we've made in accounting, what he has done has been nothing less than heroic. Last year during the summer, he basically had a back operation and he was still calling to give us advice. For that, Kevin, I want to thank you very much.
They're responsible for government accounting, delivering centralized internal audit services to government departments and also payroll. As I mentioned before, they spearheaded the government move to consolidated accounting, which means that everything is included, it's an all-in budget, in compliance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, and also the move to have tangible capital assets as part of our accounting. That's pretty important. Mr. Chairman, as the new standards emerge and are adopted by the Public Service accounting board, this is relating to the national standards in accounting, it's this division that will ensure that our province maintains that it is a leader in accounting practices.
Mr. Chairman, the other division I want to talk about is the Investments, Pensions and Treasury Services Division. They are responsible for the administration of provincial pension plans, which includes the Public Service Superannuation Plan, the Teachers' Pension Fund, the MLA's pension plan, Sysco's pension plan, and I believe there are a few other ones in there, if I could remember them all. They are also responsible for the investments of the province. Of course one of the key functions of this division is the management of the provincial debt.
Mr. Chairman, our staff in this group has been instrumental in reducing the province's foreign-held debt from a level of 72 per cent back in 1995 to 28.9 per cent at March 31, 2002. Like I mentioned before, we are actually going to meet our targeted debt by September 2004, and for that I am very pleased that we have been able to exceed our targets. I should point out that about a year or a year and a half ago those targets were a little further out than that, and we've been improving it, and that's very good.
Mr. Chairman, I should point out - I think it's important to point out - that they've been very impressive in the returns that we've had for our pension plans over the last five years. I think you should always use a longer period than just one, that it really is appropriate to do it that way, because you could get yourself in a situation that you could - any one year is an anomaly, if you're up one year and down the next, that probably isn't a good way of
looking at it. If we look, they're judged in a certain category, and the category that they're in goes from assets of about $3 billion to $18 billion.
We manage almost $7 billion in pension funds in this province, and they manage it mostly through the Public Service Superannuation Fund and also the Teachers' Pension Fund. Those are the two major plans that we have under management. Over the last five years we've been third, first, fifth, second and sixth. So if you want to look at that, we've been in the top three of those groups. That's very impressive and a reflection on the quality of people we have there. I should point out that the overall return for the past eight years in those funds has been 10.7 per cent. I encourage all members, if they want to invest in a pension fund - no, I don't think you can do it. Maybe the critic for the NDP was considering investing in that, but I don't think you are permitted to on a personal basis, so I'm sorry about that.
Mr. Chairman, the other thing that they've done excellently is, basically, lowering or bringing about some stability in debt-servicing costs year after year in the last number of years. As mentioned before, the net debt services for the province this year are estimated to be $44 million lower than last year. I think that is an important thing. I should point out that that is due, to a great extent, to the fact that we have had the benefit of lower interest rates, but the fact is we have also lowered the exposure we have in foreign currencies, and that has been a very important situation for us.
Mr. Chairman, I just want to make mention, also, that yesterday I tabled, as I had indicated in my budget, a document called A Balanced Approach to Surplus and Debt Management. I think this is a very important document. I should point out to Nova Scotians that this is available on the Web site. We are trying to have many of our documents, as a matter of fact I believe all of my budget documents, available on the government Web site, and as such it would be something that would be very advantageous to people to understand.
I've travelled this province from one end to the other, and I always find myself somehow amazed. When I walk on the street one person will come up to me and say, Mr. LeBlanc, you say that it took us 40 years to accumulate this debt, why do you want to pay it back all in one year? You may think that that's improbable, but I can tell you that discussion has happened numerous times. Many people believe that when we're talking about having a balanced budget that what we're trying to do is pay off the entire debt of the province.
What we're doing, of course, is just trying to balance our current revenues with our current expenses. The fact of the matter is for us to deal with it the first thing we had to do is bring about a balanced budget. That was the turning point; that was the first step. The next step is to try to bring about larger surpluses, so that will increase our ability to actually start paying down the debt dollar for dollar. The Opposition has stated many different times, you can't have a balanced budget if you're adding to the debt. This is not even a debatable issue.
The Auditor General is saying that it is, all the people who are learned in accounting are all saying it is, so it's not a debatable issue.
The fact of the matter is, Mr. Chairman, that that is the first step. The other thing we have to realize is that the reason we are adding to the debt this year is that we are making some capital spending. I make no apologies for investing in the infrastructure of this province. During the mid-1990s the capital spending in this province fell to very low levels, and because of that we are starting to make some investments bit by bit. On those capital projects that we have made, we are amortizing them over their useful life, which means that in this year's budget we have included considerable amounts of amortization in this year, expensing those buildings, expensing those roads, expensing those hospitals that we have built over their life.
Mr. Chairman, I'm going to give an example. I've said it in the past and I will say it one more time because I believe when you look at it, it puts into perspective why this new type of accounting makes sense. We have a building that is located adjacent to Province House, called the Johnston Building. For many years it held the Department of Social Services and the Department of Community Services. That building needed considerable work. It didn't need $1 million, it needed $6 million, $7 million or $8 million of work to fix it. I know that many in this House have had the opportunity to go into the building and know what I'm referring to. Because of the old accounting methodology that we had in this province, the situation is that the work was always put off.
We as government are always faced with demands every year, whether it is in Health, in Education, in Community Services or road construction. I have been listening to the debates here today, Community Services was here before and people were asking for more spending in almost every different category of that department. I'm sure that if I was listening to the debates going on in the Red Room, they would be asking for more spending also. So the situation is, we know we have demands, and it doesn't matter how much we're going to give, we're going to have more demands over and above that.
The situation is that maintenance kept being put off because under the old method of accounting we would have had to expense all those repairs in one year, even though we would build that facility and we would have the benefit of that facility for 30, 40, 50 years. Does that seem realistic? I don't think for a second that anyone believes that is realistic. We built that building. We repaired the building, and the cost is - I'm not sure what the exact number is - probably $8 million or $9 million that we're going to spend to fix that building.
Mr. Chairman, by doing that and having that done, we are going to amortize that building in our statements over the useful life of that building. I tend to think that's probably - I don't know what the exact amount is - 25 or 30 years. Usually most buildings are amortized over that useful life. The fact of the matter is that in this fiscal year, in this year, the Department of Transportation and Public Works would sign the lease at Purdy's Wharf,
down on the waterfront, and we all know, we've all seen the two towers down there. They've been there for a long period of time. We all realize that space in downtown Halifax is not cheap, especially with the oil and gas operation that is there.
The situation is, Mr. Chairman, because of the fact that we've renovated that building, the Department of Transportation and Public Works is going to be moving out of that building and moving there. We own that building. We're going to be saving $1 million in lease payments that we were going to have to make down there. What I've been told is that there is still going to be room over and above the demands of the Department of Transportation and Public Works. Most people look at that and say, well, God, that makes sense. It's a pure business case. Why are you saying that this makes sense, and why is it a big deal? Well, it's a big deal for government, because we didn't do it. Why didn't we do it? We didn't do it because of the fact that under the accounting methodology the government was using we would have had to expense it all in one year. (Interruptions)
If you want to talk about other issues, I will then. You're encouraging me, I will talk about a few more. Let's talk about P3 schools. P3 schools was an instrument used by the Liberal Government to basically keep it off the books. Let's put it on the table. It had nothing to do with efficiencies. It had nothing to do with building better schools. (Interruptions) You want to join the debate? The member for Dartmouth East wants to join in. He can ask me questions on this issue, and I will be more than prepared to answer them. I hope you ask me that question. (Interruptions)
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. I would ask all honourable members to please direct their comments and questions through the Chair.
[1:00 p.m.]
MR. LEBLANC: I apologize, Mr. Chairman. I got sidetracked on that, and I will endeavour not to do that again. On the P3 school issue, the issue is when we came to government we made a decision to review the P3 school because we felt that it had many flaws. We reviewed it with the Department of Education and also with our department, and we basically decided that this is not the direction that we wanted to take. One of the easiest things to do, once you started changing the accounting and saying let's look at this in a more businesslike manner, the debate of whether or not we could keep it off the books, which was what the Liberals were trying to do because there were lease payments, then the situation was clear.
The situation for ourselves was that we looked at the P3 concept, and there were some advantages to it, one of which is they're using the same type of design for buildings. When we're building new buildings today, what we're doing is we're trying to use relatively similar designs. I saw in the paper the other day that someone said they didn't agree with that. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. He was saying that we should design different
buildings for different circumstances and different scenarios and different environments, it will make them look good.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, maybe I have it all wrong, but I think it's time that we build buildings for kids to be educated in, not to be monuments to architects, monuments to certain people who want to design. What I'm concerned about as a parent is that my kids receive an education of the quality that they deserve. As to what the building looks like, as long as it's clean and the environment is safe, that is what I'm looking for as a parent and I think that's what I'm looking for as a politician and as a Minister of Finance. That is not to show any disrespect to any architect or anyone else.
I know the fiscal challenges that we face as a government. If we can save money by trying to use similar designs, am I prepared to take that direction? You're darned right I am, and I make no apologies for it. The fact of the matter is when we get to the P3 schools, some other problems came out, and let's use a few of them. How many schools, when they want to use them on the weekends or use them in the evenings, we get into problems, the people who manage the schools, we have to have their permission to do so. We get into problems sometimes with how they're being funded, and how fundraising comes in.
I don't have all the details of that. The people I have talked to in Nova Scotia enjoy much more the conventional types of buildings that we've built. There have been some built in my community, because in my community we had the situation with the Charter and having to have schools being divided between French and English and having homogenous French schools, and those schools have been built. The quality of the schools is excellent, and I've looked at some in other constituencies and I think everyone agrees that having this new concept has been positive. I can tell you in all honesty I received no complaints when we made the change from the P3 process to the other one. We don't want any more Horton Highs. We don't want any schools built to that degree that don't focus on the classroom, the books that are needed and the teachers rather than the buildings. We have to change our focus.
Mr. Chairman, there are a few other things I want to mention, and then I will be more than prepared to take questions. (Interruptions) No, it isn't up by the way, but I'm getting there.
The issue is that one of the things we talked about is consolidation. We have worked hard to bring about consolidation of the financial statements. We have worked very hard to make sure that everything is in. Many people have talked - I've heard the Opposition critics talk about the hocus-pocus budget, I think they referred to it, and I don't think the Auditor General appreciates that because he very much believes in the direction we're taking. I think I remember the Auditor General saying that his dreams had come true when we moved to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles because that was one thing that he wanted, for the government to move in that direction. (Interruptions)
Mr. Chairman, I'm going to be here as long as they want. You want to ask questions, I will take all the questions you want. That doesn't bother me at all.
The fact of the matter is that under consolidated statements, everything is in. What is the difference between the accounting methodology that we have and the accounting methodology that was there before? The difference is before it was selective.
This isn't just the Liberal Government that was there before, it was the Conservative Government that was there before them, it was the Liberal Government there before them, and it was probably the Conservative Government before them, back to the 1960s. The changes that have come about with the way that you do accounting in government have basically come about mostly since the early 1990s, going forward. So it has been a recent phenomenon. The fact is when you move to consolidated financial statements, when you do that, what happens is that you bring together everything that government does in one central picture. That means that you don't keep things out of the picture.
What's an example of that? When the previous administration was in power, one of the things that they kept talking about is the fact that they said they had balanced the budget, one thing, first of all, but they also said they were going to use this health investment fund. The health investment fund was a $600 million idea. I see the member for Dartmouth North listening . . .
AN HON. MEMBER: It was $640 million.
MR. LEBLANC: Was it $640 million? Thank you for correcting that. The issue is that they were saying that the amount was basically a deferral of revenues into the future. They would pay out of this fund from the royalties coming in the future. Mr. Chairman, under the accounting rules that we have now, we don't have the ability to even profess to come up with a wild scheme like that.
The other thing they were doing is there were considerable losses in Sysco, and there were also considerable losses under Nova Scotia Resources Limited. The fact is they didn't include that in their numbers, but other agencies that were making money, such as the Nova Scotia Liquor Commission and the Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation, they included it. The good things they included, the bad things they excluded.
By bringing this around into consolidated statements, what happens is that everything gets judged in one picture, one pot, and the total is shown. The changes that we have made will allow Nova Scotians to judge whether or not we are making progress. One of the problems we had in the past, unless you were qualified in accounting, whether or not you had experience in financial analysis, for you to be able to say whether or not this made sense, it was difficult. We made a change when we were in Opposition - and the NDP supported our
change, I should point that out - to make the Auditor General the auditor of record. The reason we did that . . .
MR. JOHN HOLM: You followed our recommendations.
MR. LEBLANC: The member for Sackville-Cobequid says that we followed their recommendation. I'm not sure who made it, but I will say that we supported it. If it was you, great; if it was us, I'm glad you supported it. I don't recall who made it first.
Mr. Chairman, I should point out that the situation is one that by making the Auditor General the auditor of record it brings about a further degree of independence. It doesn't mean that the auditors who were there before were not qualified, it just means that there is - I will just finish this thought, Mr. Chairman. How much time do I have left?
MR. CHAIRMAN: I was just wondering if the honourable Minister of Finance would permit an introduction by the honourable Minister of Education.
MR. LEBLANC: Certainly.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable Minister of Education.
HON. JANE PURVES: Mr. Chairman, I would like to draw the attention of the House to a number of parents and children in the east gallery today. They are members of the Nova Scotia Home Educators Association, parents who have some children with them. I wonder if they could rise and receive the welcome of the House of Assembly. (Applause)
MR. CHAIRMAN: Indeed, good afternoon to the Nova Scotia Home Educators Association. Welcome to the Legislature. Welcome to all our guests in the Legislature.
The honourable Minister of Finance has approximately one and a half minutes left until the time for today has expired.
MR. LEBLANC: Mr. Chairman, I will just wrap up. I was going to say that the Auditor General, making him the auditor of record, I believe it was a very positive step. It brings about even more credibility to the information. I want to say, again, that has no reflection on the other auditors who were there before. I believe in many other provinces the Auditor General was the auditor of record, and I believe that Nova Scotia should have followed that.
Mr. Chairman, I've covered many different areas, and I could still talk about some other ones, but hopefully in some of the questions that come forward I will be able to answer the questions. I assume that, obviously, this will be going forward on Monday, and I will take all questions coming forward.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, that pretty well expires the four hours for today.
The honourable Government House Leader.
HON. RONALD RUSSELL: Mr. Chairman, I move the committee do now rise, report progress and beg leave to sit on a future day.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The motion is to rise and report progress.
Is it agreed?
It is agreed.
Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
[1:10 p.m. The committee rose.]
