Legislative_.§sse~m_bly

Now, Mr. Speaker, I would like to refer at this time to surveys which have been made in the past, and which are still in process. I have on my desk great iles of these surveys and I could have brought ten times as many but they were rd to carry. Now I would like to divide these surveys into two groups. First, the earlier sur- veys and later on, the economic reports. Now the earlier surveys were in my opinion useful; they were largely Island products, they were not too costly, and some of those to which I would just now refer to very briefly is the survey of the late Dr. Cyrus MacMillian way back in 1930 on education. There was the report of the Royal Commission on higher education headed by Dr. Bonnell; there was the LaZerte re- port on education. Now none of these surveys has caused this province a great deal of money and they certainly proved useful, but I would say to the former Minister of Education, while I congratulate him for his great expansion on education, that when he took office he took off in a great rush and neglected to wait until Dr. LaZerte could bring down his report. Consequently, instead of having this province divided up into about seven areas for the regional high schools, we have many dis- trict. We did not have a Boundaries Commission working who could have settled all districts before any district was specified as a district for a regional high school. So that now we have in Mount Stewart. for example. a bus travelling from Mount Stewart to Charlottetown, we have another bus travelling from Tracadie to Morell, there is a five mile gap where these busses meet every day. And this is not all. I have been told there are places where four and five busses meet every day, where districts overlap. I state that these rural high school districts have cost this province a great deal more money than was really necessary.

When we come down to these economic reports which I referred to. I am not sure of the cost of them all. Here is quite a heavy one marked Prince County De- velopment Plan. Another one. The Study and Feasibility of Processing Dehydrated Potatoes. There is Prince Edward Island Community Development — two books in that. no there are three books in it. Economic Development Opportunities in Prince County and so on. Apparently we have spent a good deal of money on this type of report and now we are down, finally, to the Acres reports, and these have a three hundred thousand dollar price tag on them. I don’t know what the other members have been able to do with these who have received copies, but I do confess quite frankly that I was not able to understand them. When I have to deal with such things as “the metrics of correlation co-efficient for variables of rural development in Prince Edward Island” I will admit that I am out of my field entirely. So I think Mr. Speaker. that we have paid $300,000.00, or are about to pay it, for a bunch of “answer pushers” to come down here from Ontario or elsewhere: they stay in this province for a few months, they go back to Ontario. they give us a bunch of paper and a bill for $300,000.00. There was as was indicated earlier in this House no “super” plan attached to these reports. After we read them over, if can construe and construct what the variables of certain co-efficients represent, we are supposed to make our own plan. My mind is not closed on this and maybe the next reports will get through to me. and I may be able to understand them. I am a bit hopeful. but at the same time I lack a certain amount of faith. One of the last reports was mentioned in the House this morning, the Agnew-Peckham report. In this report, one of the recommendations is for a whole new “lock, stock and barrel" of the hospital situation in the city. They do make some statements like both Charlottetown hos- pitals are very usable and fairly satisfactory. It is difficult to consider abandoning either one of them or particularly both of them at this time. I see a price-tag of “4,500,000.00 attached to this project. Now I don't know whether their building fig- ures are correct. what with the trend of building costs. it could reach ”0,000,000.00. There is no doubt one complete new hospital would be better, but the question is. can we afford it? And this brings me to the point where. in the field of health, I think it is going to be necessary to establish priorities, and to look at the whole package at once and make our decisions as to what is the more important. Perhaps I am a little bit disturbed as far as the priority to a program to which we are partially committed, at least to the study of it. This may have to receive priority although there may be other things in the department that are equally, or more, pressing. Of course I refer to Medicare. I must say that there is just one more “Ottawa plan." I have seen many of them come into effect in this province over the past twenty and they all have one common pattern: they are all made in Ottawa. This particular plan has four basic clauses. The plan must be operated on a non-profit basis by public authority or by non-profit designated organization, such as Blue Cross. Insured

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