MR. SPEAKER: Further petitions.

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It gives me great pleasure, again, on behalf of the people of La Poile, to present this petition to the House of Assembly concerning their lack of a waiting room-restroom facility in the Town of Rose Blanche-Harbour Le Cou which might service the needs of the residents in that area of the coast.

This is the second time I have done this, Mr. Speaker. We call it the porta-potty petition, really, it has become known as, because these people who use the ferry service on the South Coast do not have a restroom to wait in. If they travel on the ferry service from Port aux Basques, where they usually go for medical appointments, or Corner Brook, and they go back to Rose Blanche to await the boat, it could be any kind of weather – it could be a fine day - but you still need washroom facilities. These people just do not have them. We went through the situation down in Ramea, Grey River and Francois where they faced the same thing for a number of years, and government did respond to the need in that particular case.

Again, I will implore the government, if they could look after that inhumane situation, actually. Besides health factors and public safety and everything else, we do not need people in this day and age who use our public ferry service, and particularly – not only the residents, but there are tourists all year round who find themselves in need of a washroom because they decided to go visit these outport communities and they actually have nowhere to go. They have to go bum someone’s bathroom in their home or go find a restaurant or whatever that might be kilometres away. So we implore government, if they would, Mr. Speaker, to please give this consideration and hopefully the Minister of Transportation will have an opportunity to see that the necessary work is undertaken there as budgetary provisions hopefully will allow in next year’s Budget.