Mr. Chairperson (Ben Sveinson): Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This section of the Committee of Supply will be considering the Estimates of the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. Does the honourable Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs have an opening statement?

Hon. Shirley Render (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs): I do, Mr. Chair.

I am very pleased to introduce the Estimates of the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs for 1999-2000. I was delighted to be named minister of this department in February of this year, and I welcome the opportunity today to say a few words about some of the major activities in the department.

One of my first major initiatives as minister was to issue a discussion paper on the protection of personal information in the private sector. We wanted to hear the views of Manitobans on federal legislation that has been proposed in this field, and we also wanted to hear Manitobans' concerns about the protection of personal information in the private sector.

The director of the Consumers' Bureau held six public consultation meetings to enable Manitobans to present their views and concerns. Two of the meetings were held in Winnipeg and one meeting in each of Brandon, Thompson, Winkler and Dauphin. The first meeting took place on April 22 and the last on May 10. In addition to the public hearings, we will also be receiving written submissions until September 30. We have heard from a number of businesses, consumer groups, professional organizations and individuals, and we hope that before the September 30 deadline other Manitobans will come forward and give us their views on the protection of information in the private sector.

Mr. Chair, on April 1, 1999, the Manitoba Securities Commission became the fourth special operating agency in my department, joining the Property Registry, Companies Office and Vital Statistics agency. The greater flexibility of special operating agency status will better enable the commission to carry out its role in protection of Manitoba investors and also in ensuring that the securities market is fair, efficient and transparent. The commission's systems refurbishment is now completed. The project replaced the former system and integrated the commission's technology with the national prospectus filing system. The new system is also Y2K compliant.

Mr. Chair, the Residential Tenancies Branch is always a very busy place, and over the last several years the workload of the branch has been increasing. The budget this year includes three additional term staff to assist us in maintaining service levels, and in February the Residential Tenancies Branch engaged KPMG Canada to re-engineer its business processes. We want to identify ways to improve service, increase efficiency and make better use of technology in the branch. The re-engineering study has looked at the way the branch does business now by analyzing current processes and procedures. Our consultant met with various clients of the branch to gauge the level of satisfaction with existing services and to identify areas where clients want improved service. Best practices of similar organizations in Canada and the United States are being examined, and this re-engineering study will recommend a future model for the branch's processes to enable the branch to provide improved service.

Mr. Chair, Manitoba landlords and tenants are increasingly taking advantage of the information offered on the branch website and the talking yellow pages. Hits to our website are now averaging 5,000 a month and last year almost 3,000 callers accessed our talking yellow pages.

I would like to speak very briefly right now about life leases and life-lease projects. As probably most of you know, life leases are a unique form of rental housing because tenants pay a large portion of the cost of construction, but because there is a considerable demand for life-lease projects in Manitoba, we passed The Life Leases and Consequential Amendments Act last year. That act will protect tenants through required disclosure of information, requirements related to the use and holding of funds contributed by tenants and adjustments to The Residential Tenancies Act, so that it applies more effectively to life leases. This legislation is the first of its kind in Canada.

Since the act was passed, the department has been developing the regulations. A working group representing landlords, tenants, lawyers, service clubs, developers, lenders and trustees provided very useful suggestions as we developed the act. This same group continued to provide valuable input into the development of the regulations, and we are right now working towards completing the regulations and proclaiming the new act.

We are also preparing information to inform those involved in life-lease housing markets about the new legislation and regulations.

Our new co-operatives act, also passed during the last session, will be proclaimed July 1, 1999. This new act is progressive, reflecting the needs of co-operatives. It will enable them to compete on a level footing with other business structures. The new act also facilitates the development of new generation co-ops, which was a recommendation of the province's rural task force.

Mr. Chair, all six Land Titles offices in the province have now implemented the electronic land titles system. Land titles information in the electronic system is available for search by our clients now from 6 a.m. in the morning to 10 p.m. at night, seven days a week, from the convenience of our clients' own offices through Manitoba On-Line.

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Both the Property Registry and the Companies Office, special operating agencies, are part of our government's Better Systems initiative which will change the way government provides service to its citizens. Under the Better Systems initiative, the re-engineering of the Personal Property Registry will be completed this year allowing on-line registration and proclamation of our new Personal Property Security Act.

Enhanced service options in Land Titles and the Companies Office are also being developed.

Finally, Mr. Chair, I would like to speak just a little bit about the Elmwood Cemetery. As most of you know, over the last several years concerns have been expressed about the condition and maintenance of this privately owned cemetery, and a number of concerned citizens, including Bill Norrie, Charles Birt and Robert Filuk incorporated a not-for-profit corporation called Friends of Elmwood Cemetery to own and operate the cemetery.

Title to the cemetery was transferred to Friends of Elmwood Cemetery on October 8, 1998. The nonprofit corporation will be undertaking a fundraising campaign to raise sufficient capital to produce the income required for the annual operation and maintenance of the cemetery. A three-year business plan has been submitted to both the province and the City of Winnipeg requesting interim funding.

The 1999-2000 Manitoba budget includes grant funding for the Friends of Elmwood Cemetery to cover 50 percent of the anticipated operating deficit of Elmwood Cemetery as outlined in the corporation's business plan for 1999 to a maximum of $128,100. The City of Winnipeg is providing matching grant funding. I am very encouraged with these developments and look forward to continuing to work with the Friends and the City of Winnipeg in this very important community effort.

Mr. Chair, that concludes my opening remarks.

Mr. Chairperson: We thank the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs for those comments. Does the official opposition critic, the honourable member for Elmwood, have an opening statement?

Mr. Jim Maloway (Elmwood): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, I do. I would like to congratulate the minister on her appointment, and I hope of course that she stays around a little longer than some of the other ministers we have had in the department over the last 11 years. I would like to at this point commend her predecessor; Minister Radcliffe, when he was the minister, actually developed a little different rapport with the opposition than some of the previous ministers had in that information was given to us very readily. We found him very, very open and very easy to deal with, and I would hope the minister follows his pattern as opposed to some of the previous ministers who held this office.

There is a whole range of topics that I wanted to talk about and some of them just involve getting updates from the minister as to where they sit right now. Last year, Minister Radcliffe and I worked out a list of topics, and we basically left things open in Estimates where we could move back and forth. It worked well for both of us, as opposed to simply dealing with one line at a time and closing it off and going to another one.

One of the areas that I want to deal with this year will be the whole issue of the Y2K and how it impacts on the department. I know the deputy is here and probably will be able to provide us some information about this, in this one hour that we are here, because I know they have briefings and so on in this area and they know what is going on. I expect that there are to be some problems. You cannot expect that an operation the size of the government would not have some computer problems regarding Y2K, even with the installation of a brand new system throughout the government.

I wanted to also find out where the province sits right now with regard to franchising legislation. For the minister's information, good old free-enterprise Alberta had the only franchise legislation in the country up until about four or five years ago. They changed it under Ralph Klein, so now it is not as strong as it used to be. It came out of something that happened that was peculiar to Alberta. But I have always thought we should look at doing something here in this province because franchising is a developing area. I mean, I do not know what percentage of businesses now are franchised, but it is increasing every year and in another 10 years it is going to be a lot more substantial than it is right now.

I see many, many problems with people who are not well equipped; teachers, for example, who retire or people from the police force or any profession nowadays, when the person retires, oftentimes they have a very large severance package, they are still relatively young, and they go looking for business opportunities in the franchise area. I see too many cases where people lose everything. They lose 10, 20 years of work because of some bad information when buying a franchise. So, yes, it is a successful way of operating a business today and it is a proven method, but no one likes to look at the failure rate. But the failure rate is still there, not as high as regular businesses, but it is still substantial.

From memory now, what Alberta did, and by the way, Alberta legislation was so good that franchise companies would bypass Alberta. So you could always tell which companies were really solid because they were the ones that operated in Alberta. The other ones would basically run their franchises right up to the Saskatchewan border; they would hop over to B.C. and start over there, and they would leave Alberta to the very end, if they touched it at all. That is because they required full disclosure and they required that the fees be put in trust; for example, if you were to put up a $20,000 fee or a $50,000 fee for a franchise. What has happened is franchise companies have promised that if you sign up with us, we will run a $1-million advertising campaign in Manitoba, and so on, and what happens is people sign up based on all these verbal promises. They turn over their money to the franchise company and the franchise company, through no fault of their own really, other than just overexuberance, they find themselves in financial trouble, and the million-dollar advertising campaign never materializes. So the result is, the ones that are set up die on the vine because there are not the supports. It is basically robbing Peter to pay Paul. They use money from new franchises to solve problems in their original franchises, right?

So what Alberta did was set up a very good system that required that if you made promises, then you had to live up to them and you would hold the fees in trust until the promises were kept. So we are not saying that companies cannot make promises. All we are saying is, if you are going to promise a million-dollar advertising campaign in Manitoba, then you have to do that or else you do not get the fees that you are promised. So that was one of the major elements here, and there were other disclosure provisions and so on. It seems to me that obviously this government is looking for votes right now, and this might be a very smart move on their part. I mean, I am advocating it because to me it just seems like a sensible thing to be doing, to protect our people, our future entrepreneurs who are going to be possibly losing a lot of money.

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I can tell you want to ask me why there are not a lot of complaints about this, and the reason is because, when franchises are sold, there are usually 50- and 100-page agreements that basically are–well, they prevent you from talking about the problems, right? So there are all these gag orders written into the agreement. When you give your money, you lose your money. It is your problem. You walk away, and you are not allowed to talk about it. So that is why you do not hear a lot. I get calls about this and have for many years. That is the problem. Before you are going to go to the press with a story like this, there is always something in the contract saying you are not allowed to do that, you know. I know you have this high-powered committee that researches areas for you, and I know I have asked many times what is happening with that, so perhaps that could be referred to them for some sort of an update as to what is being done. Just because Alberta might weaken their legislation is to me no argument for not having any at all.

Another area we want to talk about will be the whole area of the lemon law. I have got some examples where the current lemon law does not seem to work, and it is possible, I suppose, to chalk some of this up to misunderstandings and so on. All I know is that there are certain states in the United States where the lemon law is a lot tougher than others, in fact, in Florida, which I believe has some of the toughest, and I have sat through some of their hearings there in Florida. I think Florida has used-car lemon laws as well. Nothing is more frustrating than people buy new cars and find out that they just do not work the way they are supposed to. Up until lemon laws came about, people were just left to sue, and it becomes quite an onerous process, so these lemon laws have been very, very helpful in the United States and Canada.

The minister–I am not certain which minister it was, but four or five years ago you signed a national program so there is a national lemon law program. I would like to get an update on that: how it is working and whether some effort could be made to make representations to toughen the national law based on, say, the toughest provisions in the States and/or perhaps looking at going it alone with a really tough Manitoba lemon law.

Once again, I know that it is working to a certain extent. Some people are getting satisfaction, but there still are enough cases that are slipping through the cracks here that are not being dealt with, and clearly there is room for us to take another look at that.

I wanted to get an update, too, of the area of the loan brokers. That was a problem here a couple of years ago, and I am not certain exactly whether the activity has been completely eliminated or whether it still exists. I know that the department did take down one or two operations two or three years ago. Also the whole area of different renovation scams and just scams in general–I think this Mr. Wuckert, his case has finally found its way through the courts, but I remember we were talking about him a way back almost 10 years ago. So it seems like some of these people just never go away. The cases take so long to solve, and the same people end up coming back at something else. So this whole area of pyramid schemes and so on–I know there are a myriad things out there, that you never get rid of them for very long. Police tell me it is just the same guys, the same 40, 50 people in each province; it does not matter what the scheme is, it is the same people. They are selling gold coins one year and the next year it is something else, but it is all based on this multilevel marketing. Now they are selling phone cards. I believe there is a company doing that.

So I would like a fairly detailed explanation as to what is going on as far as the department is concerned in that area and not a narrow kind of an interpretation, just in general what is happening, telephone scams, loan brokers, housing renovation scams, the whole ball of wax. Fitness clubs, I do not know what is happening with them, but that is a favourite. Every six months one of them is going under, and we suggested some possible improvements there. I think Minister Radcliffe was open to try and solve that problem, and I do not know whether he did anything about it but certainly was interested anyway.

Warnings to consumers. I have not noticed a lot of warnings to consumers. I do not know, maybe you are doing it, but I have always thought that it would be–you know the Securities Commission will issue a warning when there are people out selling things they should not and so on. I do not know why the Consumer department or the Consumer minister would not be issuing more warnings.

Last year, Minister Radcliffe and I talked about all the different areas that should be looked at for Y2K. For example, was he meeting with the banks, was he meeting with the treasury co-operatives and other financial institutions that are registered in Manitoba to determine whether or not these organizations were Y2K compliant? Was he meeting with business councils, the Chamber of Commerce, because this was certainly a serious problem, and nobody knows yet what the cost to the economy is going to be. But certainly it would be helpful if the governments took some initiative in this area and met with–now he got back to me, and he, I believe, told me he had met with at least some of the organizations that I had suggested to see whether they were getting compliant.

I know that I met with the federal Y2K commissioner last year who came into town, and after about an hour meeting with him, he was quite discouraged, that he really thought that things were going to be worse in the economy. He said, until maybe a year before that, that people had not even recognized that embedded chips were even a bigger problem than the computers, and you know that embedded chips are into everything these days. So he saw that as a huge, huge problem, something that had not even been seen, had not been foreseen a year before.

You know, we have huge exposure and liability in municipalities alone: water pumps, water plants, sewage plants, street lights and so, right across North America. So the lawyers are really getting ready for a big cash-in here next year. They are looking forward to this, because this will be the big law retirement of the century.

The insurance industry has been just in a state of panic. For the last while they have been sending out notices every month to all of their insurance customers telling them that they are not responsible for things that do not work. I am talking now not necessarily homeowners, but I am talking about the whole commercial area, right? Because that is where the problems are going to be.

In the area of mining, if you have mining equipment, you have embedded chips in mining equipment. All of a sudden the mine shuts down or people get stuck in the elevators or get stuck down the mine; you are going to have a lot of down time in production. You are going to have people possibly injured because of this. So that is the exposure with the Y2K. Up till now, it has been seen as that your toaster might not work or your VCR might not work or the plane might fall out of the sky or maybe your heart equipment is not going to work properly, hospital equipment. But you have to look beyond that to the whole area of the economy and how widespread the trouble is going to be with the municipalities, with different industries and so on.

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I know that Hydro has done some testing lately, and they have found their systems work. But, honestly, nobody actually knows whether this is going to work or not. You can set it up and you can test it, and that is what we want to get into, is what is the government testing? How has it been going? Does it test? But even if you test the system, until you get all the parts working together, you do not know whether they are going to work 100 percent.

For example, if you have a production plant in Canada–let us say a car plant–and 99 of your 100 parts are made in countries or plants in North America that have no Y2K problems, right? You have one part that is made in some country in South America or Europe or Asia that perhaps is not Y2K compliant, the plant is not Y2K compliant. Because of the new production, just-in-time production that you see in plants, then what you may have is mass layoffs because you are waiting for one part from Korea, perhaps, that is not going to get here, and your whole plant is going to be shut down. So this is a huge area.

There are lawsuits already for the last year, lawsuits already in progress. In fact, a plant–I think it was a canning plant–went out of control and threw out its whole production of salmon or whatever it was producing because the computer thought it was 1900 and the product was a hundred years old, and therefore it is just automatic that you destroy the products. So they lost an entire bunch of production over that.

There is a grocery store chain in the midwestern United States that would not take credit cards and stuff that were dated the year 2000, and so the whole line shut down. So this store is in real trouble, because what customer is going to come to a store that will not take the card. The line-ups were atrocious, and this has happened already. In fact, a lot of the Y2K problems are going to be evident before, so they should be showing up right now. You are going to have payroll problems. I know all of you have been paid, I think, at least I think I have been. The problems with the payroll department should have actually started showing up April 1 this year when they went on the new system. So there are certain things that should show up before the beginning of the year. I am not that pessimistic about it that I am stockpiling food, but I do not plan to be flying New Year's Eve. I think Manitoba government, though, compared to other governments across the country, has shown a little earlier interest and seemed to have shown a bit more effort, I am told, than some other departments.

You know, in the United States, they were getting into a panic last year because only a fraction of their government departments were even looking at the issue. The Securities Commission has mandated that all the companies on the stock exchange must file Y2K reports with their financial filings each year. That is important, because if you have money in these companies through your RRSPs or through your pension plans or whatever–I mean, think about it–if the company's stocks go into the toilet because they are not Y2K compatible, then you are going to be a big loser out of it. So that is affecting how people–what sorts of companies they invest in, and it is necessary to kind of pressure them to improve their–now some people have said this is big hype from the computer industry. You know, the computer industry is going to sell billions of dollars–nobody in the computer industry was talking about this until a couple of years ago when they have known about it for years and years. Now all of a sudden they announce, well, you have to replace all your computers, so it is good for the computer companies' sales. Well, that is certainly true. It goes without saying.

But anyway, perhaps when I get through some more of what I wanted to talk about here, I could ask you some questions today because we may not be back on for another few days–[interjection]

No, we are just on today because we are filling in because Housing was supposed to go longer today, or Sport, and the critic I believe had to go for another engagement. So we are pinch-hitting today just for an hour. [interjection] No, we are just on for an hour today, and we may not be back here for another couple of weeks, or maybe we will be back here tomorrow. But my understanding has been we are just going for an hour today. So, if it is possible to ask her these questions on the Y2K question, we can use up the rest of the time doing that.

Now the whole area of demutualization, you know, there are a lot of stories on that these days. I know the minister's position is, well, it is a federal matter and let them worry about it, but the reality is that I think there should be some studies done here in Manitoba just to show how it is going to affect the Manitoba economy. I know the stockbrokers are happy. They are all happy because they are going to make some money here, and some people are going to have a few dollars extra to spend. But I am concerned about the overall effect on the economy as far as the investment that the insurance companies already have in Manitoba. If you are demutualizing a company that does not have any investment here in the first place, then I guess it is a benefit because some Manitobans are going to get some benefit out of it, right? But if the company is already here and if the company has a hundred million dollars invested in Manitoba, and it gets demutualized and the result is that the investment gets moved to Toronto–[interjection] Right, then that would be a concern.

So this is what I am really interested in knowing, is that some kind of study, you know, one-page, two-page, a hundred-page study that says that based on the federal information that we have now through the financial institutions department, that we can say with some certainty that there is a hundred-million-dollars worth of investments because we already know what percentage of policyholders are Manitobans. The insurance companies have said that. They have said, well, 25 percent of our policyholders are from Manitoba. Well, then, why can they not go the extra step and tell you how much investment is in Manitoba? Then, once they flush out the retained earnings to the policyholders, what is going to be left. Because that is what they are doing here. I mean, what you are talking about here is essentially a greed situation. You have company executives and presidents from these insurance companies who golf at the same golf courses as the bank presidents, and they earn a fraction of the benefits money-wise and stock options and so on. They are jealous. I know we should not be shedding too many tears for them, but they want to be in the same league. They are in the same golf carts and golf clubs and now they want to earn the same money.

So, think of the MTS, if you will, because, you know, it is a very similar situation. If you are the president of a mutual company, if you can demutualize the company, what will happen is that you can, through having stock options and so on, turn around and end up with, you know, a million-dollar-a-year salary and make a million dollars in stock options, be right up there with Matthew Barrett and all the other high rollers. That is what it is about. Never kid yourself, that is what it is really about. The big push to do this is to–they will tell you it is because of globalization and global competition and they have to play with the big boys and they have to acquire new things, new assets and so on and they are not big enough and so on. But remember, some of these companies became mutual companies in the '60s. Why? They became mutual companies in the '60s to protect themselves against the very thing that they want to do right now. They wanted to protect themselves from being taken over. They were worried that international companies would come in, buy up the shares, and they would be out on the street, okay? And that is exactly what is going to happen to them. I mean they are hoping to make money on the flip, right? That is what they are hoping to do. So that is what it is all about.

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The other mutual companies have been around for maybe a hundred years, and they were set up at a time when there was not a lot of money available, you know, in the 1800s, and they got together as a community organization and formed a mutual insurance company like Wawanesa or Portage la Prairie or any of these other companies. That is how they were set up in the first place. They built up through prudent management over the years a lot of retained earnings. They have lots of money, but nobody can get their hands on them right now. As soon as you demutualize them and put them on the stock market, then it is open season. Anybody can take them, right? So that is what we have to recognize here. So it really is a crapshoot.

I mean, think, the business community makes it sound as though the money is not doing anything, that the money is somehow going to come out of the sky and people are going to benefit, and they are going to be given this money because they are participating policyholders. But where is the money coming from? Right now it is being invested in Manitoba or Saskatchewan or Toronto; it is being invested by the insurance companies. It is right here. It has not gone anywhere. All we are doing is taking it out of their retained earnings account and flushing it through and giving it to the consumer. Right? Then you are going to put the shares on the stock market, and they are going to be eaten up by international investors who presumably–when all those profits that have been built up over a hundred years, they are all gone, now the profits are going to go out of the country.

So this is what we want to find out. We want to find out what is going to happen down the line two or three years. Are we going to be worse off financially because of this? Is it sort of a short-term gain for long-term pain? You know, do we want that?

So I am not going to prejudge it. I mean some of the comments that I have just given to you right now, you would be quite surprised where they come from. Some of these comments come from very high business people in this country who will say exactly what I have just said in a few minutes. Excuse me a moment.

What do you mean, two minutes?

An Honourable Member: That is what you have left.

Mr. Maloway: Oh, I did not realize that. I thought I could go right through to six o'clock. That is fine. I will certainly take another couple of minutes and go through a couple of more things, and then we could perhaps ask some questions to the minister that the deputy can answer. Let me just see what I have. Well, Elmwood Cemetery, we are going to talk a bit about that, but the minister is certainly moving on that area herself.

Mrs. Render: Mr. Chair, if I could just interrupt for a moment. The honourable member and I were discussing ahead of time that in his introductory statements he would give us a sense as to where he wanted to go in the Estimates which would help us plan and so that we were not tying up staff. If it were possible–I do not know how stringent the rules are–if the honourable member would like to take a few more minutes just so that we have a sense as to sort of the spectrum of questions he wants to ask, I have no problem with that.

Mr. Chairperson: Is there leave of the committee to allow a few more minutes for the honourable member for Elmwood to put some more comments on the record? [agreed]

Mr. Maloway: I did not write up a complete list, but I just wrote down the things that came to mind. This will certainly be most of them, but there may be a couple more.

The Elmwood Cemetery, we have discussed before. The BPA, The Business Practices Act, I would like to review that a bit and see how that is working. It has been around now for–and once again, Minister Connery deserved full credit for pushing this. I remember introducing this legislation back, oh, gosh, 10 years ago, and the minister basically copied, we said, xeroxed the bill and brought it in. It was kind of a revolutionary thing for a Conservative to do, but it was in the minority government situation, and Ed was a little redder than most people thought. Most people saw him as kind of a right-wing business guy, but in reality Ed was kind of progressive in some areas, and this BPA was his big contribution.

I would like to know, when it finally was brought in, it was watered down, I believe, by Minister McIntosh, so we did not get as strong a one as we wanted. I would like to get an overview of how many cases it has dealt with, certainly. How is the advertising part of it? It was supposed to deal with advertising. I know there are federal rules on advertising too, but how many false advertising claims have you been dealing with? I know that it is a positive thing. The people that I have talked to have always said that it has really helped their case quite a bit. I understand that they have lost their special constable status last year, and that may or may not be hampering their ability to investigate things. I would like to know why that was lost and how it could be recovered, or how it could be dealt with in a different way.

I wanted to know what was happening with the house-flipping scandal that I was involved with back in '95, I guess. We followed that up through, and then last year some charges were laid. I understand they went in camera on some of the trial proceedings. Why they would do that, I do not know, but maybe you have some more up-to-date information on that.

Insurance trust funds, Minister Ernst was dealing with an insurance agency that somebody had run off with the funds and was trying to resolve that, and I think made a suggestion–I forget what the suggestion was now, but anyway, if you can give us an update on that, whether there has been any more activity in that area.

You have mentioned the Securities Commission being an SOA. Now that is just happening as we speak, I guess, starting April of this year, so we will not know as much about their problems, I guess, for another year right now.

Perhaps if I could end my introductory comments now, and then maybe we could ask the minister some questions that the deputy could answer regarding the whole question of the Y2K readiness. Then we could use the rest of the time on that.

The Acting Chairperson (Mr. Dyck): Under Manitoba practice, debate of the minister's salary is traditionally the last item considered for the Estimates of a department. Accordingly, we shall defer consideration of this item and now proceed with consideration of the next line. Before we do that, we invite the minister's staff to join us at the table, and then we would ask the minister to introduce her staff that is present.

Mrs. Render: Sitting right to my left is the Deputy Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, Alex Morton, and sitting to her left is Director of Administration and Finance, Fred Bryans.

The Acting Chairperson ( Mr. Dyck): I thank the minister for that. Now the next question I would ask is: is there some latitude as far as questioning is concerned? Is it agreeable that we allow that or is it line by line?

Mr. Maloway: The practice that Minister Radcliffe and I established for the last couple of years was exactly that, that we allow wide latitude, and we got a much better result than we did in the good old days with Minister Ernst where we had to go line by line. It was totally acrimonious, the entire thing, and we got very little done and lots of acrimony. We do not want to do that.

The Acting Chairperson (Mr. Dyck): I thank the member for those comments. Does the minister have a comment, or is she agreeable?

Mrs. Render: I think, as the member and I discussed ahead of time, as long as we have a sense where we are going so that we do not have all of the staff sitting here. We run a tight, efficient department, and I do not want to take them away unnecessarily. So I have no problem sort of roaming around as long as you give us a sense ahead of time where you are going to be roaming.

An Honourable Member: Yes.

Mrs. Render: Okay.

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The Acting Chairperson (Mr. Dyck): I believe it is agreeable that we can roam. I will now open it up for questions from the honourable member for Elmwood.

Mr. Maloway: I understand that the deputy minister meets quarterly with the Y2K people. I would like to know what they decided at the last Y2K meeting at the end of May as far as the department and Y2K readiness is concerned.

Mrs. Render: Consumer and Corporate Affairs is Y2K ready. The department has five major systems, and three of these five major systems, Land Titles, Personal Property Registry and Companies Office, have all been made Y2K ready under the Better Systems initiative. The other two, Vital Statistics and the Securities Commission, were made Y2K compliant in separate projects completed earlier.

Of the remaining 53 businesses and desktop applications in Consumer and Corporate Affairs, 28 were already Y2K ready, and the other 25 were modified to be Y2K compliant by the Consumer and Corporate Affairs IT area or through the government-wide desktop program.

So as I said in a very short sentence, Consumer and Corporate Affairs is Y2K ready. This does include the computer hardware and software as well as noncomputer office equipment.

Mr. Chairperson: As previously agreed in the Assembly, these particular Estimates would cease at quarter to six. That being the time, committee rise.