Bill 10–The Boards, Committees, Councils and Commissions Streamlining Act

Thursday May 31, I spoke at 3rd reading on Bill 10 which is designed to reduce the size of many government boards and to eliminate a number of them. My comments (from Hansard) are below.

Hon. Jon Gerrard (River Heights): Yes, Madam Speaker, we're, in fact, in favour of a number of the changes in this bill and reducing some of the boards in size and so on, but we're not in favour–in fact, we're strongly opposed–to two of the changes. One is to the board of CancerCare Manitoba. That's a board which specifically has currently broad representation, which gives it a very effective position. And it has worked very well and given Manitoba very good health care in the area of cancer, so we don't agree with the change there.

The other is to the removal of the advisory council for workplace safety. Under this government, we have seen problems with workplace safety. I have raised some issues recently related to the death of Todd Maytwayashing. I believe we need to improve the situation of workplace safety, partly because of these accidents and deaths and partly because we have one of the highest time‑lost-to-injury rate in all of Canada, so we need a particular emphasis on making sure that workers are working in safe environments and that workers can go home at the end of the day.

And so we don't support those changes, and we'll be voting against this bill. Thank you.

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