Legislative Assembly

Henry W. Wedge: (Third Prince)

Now, Mr. Speaker, my remarks in French were naturally short because I did not expect I would be on till next week, but I undesrtand they are very anxious to rush the proceedings of this House and there are seven or eight Members more to speak. But I do want to at this time to compliment the Mover of the Speech from the Throne, who I think is a new Member in this House; he did an eloquent job of presenting his motion. His English, I think, is exemplary, and his approach to the problems that are before this Province, I think, have been well covered. I want to also compliment the Seconder of the Motion, Mr. Jardine, who has had several years experience now, and of course we would expect that he would be quite capable of carrying out this duty. I want to join with the other Member, also. in welcoming the page boys here again this year. I think this was a wonderful undertaking for these students to come in here and get another experience, other than schooling. I hope it does not interfere with their classes; they will have to work extra hours in order to keep up with the other members of their class, and I think it is a wonderful ex- perience and possibly as much as they would get in many hours of school. But I hope they have not been disappointed by much of the wrangling that has taken place here. I can assure them that this is not a usual thing to take place and it just happened that one of the bad occasions, when there is a change of Government, and naturally there are a lot of questions to ask. I want also to join in welcoming the other nine new Members elected in the last Provincial Election, I hope too that they will enjoy doing their part for the people of their individual districts.

Now, there are several items I think that I should speak on here. We realize that we have had a great delay in the opening of the Session this year. It is dif- ficult to understand the real reasons for this. It was my understanding we were awaiting the final report from various people to outline the massive Development Program for the future of this Province. However, we seem to be very disappointed: all we got was something known as the “White Paper”. It was tabled here, I read it over. I do not know how many of the other Members read it, but apparently it did not get much publicity because it was very difficult to read into that paper just what it anticipated for this mass Development Program which we all are anticipating.

We have had many studies in the past several years under different divisions of Government, A.R.D.A., V.E.D.A., and now we have FRED and there are several others. Sometimes when I talk to the agricultural people in this Province. they are getting to wonder, and they are expecting an agricultural miracle. And all they are getting is surveys and snoopers, and nothing apparently is happening. It is unfor- tunate to hear this morning, one of the speakers mentioned it now, even the Acres office is closed and nobody is there available to answer any questions.

I think we should be interested in this long term improvement, because from a local viewpoint. But one project would swallow all the money we have got, and with nothing to show for it ten years later. Most of the A.R.D.A. projects are not of a million dollar scale, but part of the work is the job of training community leaders, which is very impotrant. It is no use having people outside hand over the finished program on a plate. There is the need to find rural development officers who can do a good public relations job; getting people interested in making fresh starts can be the hardest part of this job. Too many of our people have lived too long with the stagnant standard of living and the sight of our ambitious youngsters leaving for the city. Many of the farmers on the poorer farms, we can well under- stand, are over the fifty year limit; some farmers are naturally poor managers and they cannot make a living in an area when profitable farming demands more than planting, spraying and sweat. And so, we are looking forward to the final Acres report, and I trust that the Members of this Legislature will have an opportunity of reviewing this and discussing it in the hopes that it will develop some of our more retarded areas in this Province and help the economy on an overall basis.

Now, we heard many things in the Speech from the Throne, and in the area of political promises, there was one I noticed, the Farm Labour Pool. I do not hear any more about this and I was just wondering what that meant? I wondered whether the Department of Labour are going to establish a pool of labour to supply the need in the spring and fall when people are needed. But like some of the other things,

possibly we are going to have to wait until another election; then some of these promises will be implemented. 2 5— — 4