LegislativekAssembly

L. George Dewar: We were promised that the minimum wage for labor would be increased. Nothing done.

L. George Dewar: A crashed program for senior citizens homes.

Hon. M Lorne Bonnell: It’ll be crashed.

L. George Dewar: Immediately after the election. Well, I should give the Minister

credit for building the senior Citizen’s home in Tyne Valley. I express my appre- ciation for that.

Hon. Alex. B. Campbell: Great man. Hon. M. Lorne Bonnell: Tignish.

L. George Dewar: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I’m afraid that unless there’s a change in the attitude of the Members of the Government, unless there is even a change in Govern- ment that the people of this Province cannot look forward to any progressive de— velopmental policies which will insure that people will be employed, that the farm- ers will again become prosperous, that the laboring men in the Province will be sure of employment and that the teachers and the civil servants will receive further consideration in the matter of salaries. I know the Provincial Treasurer has diffi- culties making ends meet. It’s always been the case here in this Province. It was- the case in 1959 when the former Government assumed office. In fact, it was much worse. There was only $10,000,000 to deal with at that time. Ten million dollars. It was the complete revenue. That was all there was, including the provisions from Ottawa and all the services of the Province had to be run with that amount of money. It wasn’t much wonder that the Government had to take urgent action to increase the revenues for the Government and provide a decent level of service for the Province, and I would urge the present Government to look in to this matter instead of cutting back the services on the policies that would insure progressive improvement in the affairs of the Province. As I pointed out, during the first five or six years of the 1960s we had great development in this Province. Everything was going ahead. Everything was booming but once again we’re slipping back. Mr. Speaker, the Government should once again look at it’s statement that it is accept- ing full responsibility for its commitments and see that they’re carried out fully and effectively. Thank you. (Applause)

Hon. M. Lorne Bonnell, Minister of Welfare, and Minister of Tourist Development: Mr. Speaker, on rising to take part in this Budget Debate, I would like to congratu- late the Provincial Treasurer on the wonderful job he did last year to cut down the expenditures and to almost balance the Budget for the last fiscal year; a big job, a job which he told us he would do last year, a job which the member who just finished speaking promised to congratulate him on and apologize for making a wrong judgment last year. But he had so many reservations he finally didn’t do it at all. But then, that isn’t like him, as a rule, he is as good as his word, and I can’t quite understand how come he didn’t carry out that apology because I have great respect for his honesty and integrity.

I want to congratulate the Provincial Treasurer again for the manner in which he delivered this speech, a speech that wasn’t easy to deliver, because of the fact there were new taxes, broadening the tax base in order to put Prince Edward Island in a sound financial position, something that should have been done four or five years ago. But because of the carelessness and the irresponsibility of the government of the day the thing was let run wild so that they didn’t know what they were spend- ing and what their revenues were.

I would like to congratulate the financial critic who spoke today and his ad- dress. He got up and spoke for fifteen or twenty minutes; and he had a hard Job, I realize perhaps the hardest job of anyone in the Legislature, to find fault With that budget. He was able to keep going for fifteen, twenty minutes and brought out a few minor points where he thought things might be changed. but he couldn’t find anything substantial to really make an issue of or to bring forth. any good argu- ments against the Budget. I still want to congratulate him for hIS effort, and he certainly did well even to find fifteen minutes of criticism, and actually it wasn’t all criticism; I think some of it was constructive.

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